Kitbag Conversations - Episode 23: China Chat

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Hey all, this week we are joined by S2 Forward (@_s2_fwd_) and Kagan Dunlap (@kagan.dunlap), a former Marine infantrymen. This week we talk about: - US Marine Corps life style - Chinese economic situation - Camp Schwab, Okinawa - And the logistical capabilities of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Crotone Report. You're in for a treat this week because they're all former and current Marines hanging out on this podcast today. We're joined again by again, S2Forward, who's been on my podcast a few times. You see him around working with the Leaf of Minds Journal, who's also like a sponsor for the podcast. Give them a look, give them a shout. And then this week, we're joined by Kagan, who is a prior infantryman in the Marine Corps, is now lat moving or going to the dark side as they would call it in military, becoming an officer. And he's working his way up. And now he's, you've probably seen him floating around the community talking about China, Asia, funny videos, these kinds of things. So I think

it'd be really fun to have a conversation with us for about an hour or so. So, hey guys, how you doing? So, yeah, as Crotone said, I'm S2Forward. I cover mainly Middle Eastern European news, but in regards to Asia, I cover pretty much the situation with Taiwan. I'm an OSINT guy, news aggregator, current military guy. And, yeah, like, like he was saying, Crotone introduced me. My name's Kagan. Prior infantry guy was a tow gunner for five years out in the Third Marine Division before 2-3D activated and did an EO program. And now I'm getting ready to go towards more of a support role. I kind of been just pushing a lot of different types of content. A lot of it's like

funny stuff just for entertainment purposes, but then I also enjoy the current events stuff, because I think it's important that people stay informed as to what's going on around the world, because it directly affects us and impacts us and shapes a lot of the way that we approach situations. So, I find that stuff pretty important. And I've seen a lot of the stuff that, you know, Lethal Minds Journal has been putting out, Crotone Report and S2Forward and Alcon and all these other great pages. And, you know, if there's any other way that I can help magnify that message so that more people can be informed, I think that's a great way to do business. So, happy to be here. Absolutely. We appreciate you guys coming on. I mean,

big topics in the last few weeks, Russia's at six months now and they're at gridlock. Nancy Pelosi just went to Taiwan and called China's bluff and it really just highlighted how primitive and fractured their military is internally. And then we have everything going on in Africa where one person could say that they're being colonized by the Chinese and no one really wants to talk about that. Or you could just say like, Hey, it's a business opportunity that's incredibly flawed. So, I mean, we could just take this one in any direction really. And if you spent time out with in the Pacific, I mean, that would probably be a good spot to like launch from. S2, did you ever have an opportunity to go out there?

I'm actually really about to like in this next like month or so. I haven't ever been, I've only ever been to the Middle East, like Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, but not actually anywhere in the Pacific. You going on a UDP or something? Yeah, I am. And up to Camp Schwab in Okinawa. Yeah, man. In places of prison colony. Yeah, I was being facetious. Yeah, the yeah, so like all my Marines are like messaging me is like, this place kind of sucks. It's not too bad, but it's kind of what you make of it to a certain degree. I've done three UDPs out there with two, three, but we went to we went to Hanson the three times. I don't know if I don't know how how it's working with like how they determine if it's Schwab or Hanson that people

go to nowadays. But you know, it really is what you make of it. You know, if you're sitting in the barracks the whole time, not doing anything, just playing video games, you're probably going to be bored. But the yacht and like you get your scoop assert while you're there or you go explore the town or you zip line or you do stuff outside, go hiking, go go see some of the historical sites like the the the castle that's there. Pretty there's some there's some cool stuff. I mean, they got what's it called Hacksaw Ridge is there. So that's like pretty popular destination for guys to go check out. You know, so when I was there during like the COVID period that they were just dumping every access body onto Schwab's that little rink-a-dink PX was just flooded every

single day. You never got a haircut period. So it was really chill. And then there was never boos on the shelf because it was pretty much a dry city because everyone was just slamming Bruce keys. And then yeah, it was pretty good time. But yeah, I'm not really sure how they determine who goes where anymore. I've been out for a few years. So yeah, I'm not sure. I know that for the longest time, their Marines was rotating out specifically from Hanson. I know that the last time we went to Schwab, at least from my knowledge was the deployment that they went on the UDP they went on on 20, I believe it was 2012. They went to they went to Schwab. But then after that, they just did back to back to Hanson. They pretty much locked down the barracks that are

over near the main gym, the house of pain over there. So which was going to be in that area. I'm sorry. I was going to say like the house of pain I think it's across from like third Intel, like that just whole intersection. Yeah, yeah, right over by the little the small PX and everything. Yeah, but talking about third Marines, how we feel about the latorial regiment because hanging rubbing elbows with friends who were still in and working at headquarters, Marine Corps, it seems to be not a very popular idea. They were like, why would we create a latorial regiment when they were already doing the same job, we just rebranded. So I guess my really only hang up is the name latorial regiment, like we're latoral Marines,

because you know, latoral is inherent in the name Marines, they could have just just retask organize the the regiment. That's really my only hang up like with the whole entire First Island chain, like strategy or however you want to talk about it regarding EABO and operations in the, what do you call it, the disputed, what is it called? Well, within the WES, it's actually all like the document that says like, hey, we're going to be operating on these islands somewhere, not not the tentative EABO manual, it's the other one. Oh, well, anyways, the latoral regiment is, it would have happened anyways, either it would have been like, here's a Marine regiment, but at the same time, would they deploy and you're

going to get a bunch of attachments, but having your own organic, like your LAD guys, your more EW guys organic to the infantry regiment is more group to UAS operators, is going to be kind of necessary and then sort of fight on an island somewhere, because the, you don't have to move from island to island or just anticipate being on island for a hot minute, according to EABO. Okay, sorry, operation and contestant environment, that's what's called the loose, I couldn't remember for the life of me, or latoral operations and contestant environment. So this is essentially saying you're, have a plan to be there supporting the maritime environment, so surface warfare and, but from a marine perspective, so obviously the ground combat

element and the religious combat element and having your own organic anti-air assets and your own organic UAS operators, not like your stalker, not stalker, not your PUMO or Raven operators or Skydeo operators, but your stalker operators, so the actual ones I could last for like 18, 16, 12 hours, depending on the battery life and the weather, that's like where the money makers, like at least that's what I think. They recently, I don't know if it was the third MLR, but it was the Marine Corps as a whole talking about purchasing ships with the sole task of putting Marines on the first island chain or an island somewhere to do their EABO, so I honestly think that's pretty interesting. I know it's widely, oh go ahead.

Oh yeah, go right ahead, man. I remember like, well not remember, I know that like the whole EABO and the whole Marines shifting from getting ready to tank some more rockets, more stuff pushed down to the infantry regiment that isn't infantry is widely unpopular within the Marine Corps, but it seems almost necessary to fight in the next fight, you know, and we're also kind of seeing that in Ukraine right now with, for example, UAS operators, like there's footage everywhere showing that UAS operators are vectoring fires, they're having a more fidelity on whatever they're shooting at, you know, because we won't be able to have like a guy somewhere being able to be a spotter or have to rely on drones for that

kind of crap. I don't know if you guys are of the similar mindset, but when I was doing a lot of research into EABO and planning and sitting in on those, you know, G2 meetings with 3MF and 3rd Marine Division, I went, did the Japanese try to put guys on island and the U.S. just went around and they were like, shut up. That's like, all right, I'm pretty sure that's the same plan we're doing. And I'm not going to say I'm a pessimist or anything, but if we just went around the Japanese, what's to say the Chinese won't do that too. So that's just something I thought of immediately and a lot of the brass were like, hey, go stand over there. I was like, all right, cool, whatever. I mean, I think that is a valid point that's worth discussing. The like the whole

entire, you know, island hopping campaign America did is like, we don't have to take all the islands. We just have to take every other island to prevent logistics from going to those islands and essentially starve them out or wait them out to force a force a surrender. So that's really worth talking about. But the, I guess the idea of having a long range rocket or having a drone capable of flying out to a distance in order to, you know, vector in fires is where they're really pushing. I think that's like the argument for it. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of merit to the design and the implementation of it. And we had a lot of briefs while I was doing a Quantico the past year about

about the whole plan. The commandant actually came in and spoke to us about it briefly and so did a few other generals. They wanted to just, you know, get our opinions and go over it a little bit, just, you know, kind of touch on some of the different subject matters within the design. And I think there's a lot to it that is going to make us more flexible. And I think that we're going to be preparing for different things that we may not have encountered in the past when we were operating in places like Afghanistan and Iraq where it was like a primarily a large land-based battle. I think the one thing that's probably going to be a hurdle for us is figuring out logistics and the supply aspect of things.

Because, I mean, the last time we did something like this was quite a while ago, you know, but you know, that being said, I still think, and I think I've had this conversation with other people before, I think that as far as logistics and supply is concerned, we are probably the best or one of the best nations at that specifically, just because we've been engaging in that for the past 20 years plus, right? So we got really fricking good at it, especially when it comes to working with other branches. And a lot of you'll see like the big difference between us and like the Chinese, for example, is they're kind of a top-down mentality where we're kind of a bottom up, right? And because of that decentralization that we're able to have, there's a lot of stuff

that can get done at lower levels without having to get approval from the Commandant of the Marine Corps or from the President of the United States, whereas oftentimes the CCP, you know, they may be making like, they may want to like do a fire mission, but they might have to get approval from much higher up than we will. Same kind of idea. And that's just because they kind of like, their force design is very similar to that of the Russians. It's a lot more similar to their military design than ours is. So I think that's going to be a key thing in the future if there is any type of engagement or any type of deterring actions that we're participating in out there. I think it's twofold where traditionally, Third Marine Division's whole job is to soak up

as many bullets as possible until First Marine can get there and the rest of the Army. They're like, can you just keep the Chinese there? But after the Chinese mobilized or whatever, several thousand guys to invade Taiwan at a moment's notice and failed, I was like, oh, actually, I think we would win that. I don't think there is a much of a problem here. Like you just said, logistics are real big on our side. We have what's interesting is like the British and Australians are moving back into that area. The British sent their aircraft carrier that way. It's like one, we can interoperate very well with other branches, but on another hand, we have the Japanese, we have the British, we have the Australians, New Zealanders, all these other

countries are kind of on our side going like, yeah, let's kind of figure this out. And so we could look at one thing, RIMPAC, where everyone kind of jumps in and shows off their new toys, but then also just saying like, oh, they are organically moving into these areas. It's not because the Americans are telling them to, it's because everyone's trying to contain the Chinese. And if we call the Chinese bluff, it's going, oh, yeah. But then it goes right back to like, well, the biggest issue is moving guys to those islands and like disparate ways of the Paracel in the South China Sea. I think that would be the biggest issue. Yeah, I think that, I mean, exercise is like RIMPAC are important because like we do get the

opportunity to work with our allies and see how effective we can be when we're combining our forces and we're having to operate with each other. And that's another thing we've had a lot of experience with in the Middle East is, you know, working with other, with other nations and figuring out ways how we're going to fund different things and how we're going to get those those requirements funded or fulfilled. I mean, we've got, we've got spots all over the world that we can fulfill requirements for units that are operating in that region, regardless of who we need to pay. And there's, there's ways to do it. So like that's, that's going to be a pretty big, a pretty big aspect when it comes to anything going on out there

for sure, especially since we've got such a good, we get, we get a really good foundation built, obviously in Japan and in Okinawa and even South Korea. You know, we have a lot of resources out there and a lot of, we have a lot of options that we can tap into if need be for, for different ventures. Primarily for like the Eastern theater command, the Chinese command that's pretty much sole purpose in life is to take the islands in the East China Sea or Taiwan. I really, I'm honestly more concerned about their projection of their, their rocket forces, like we saw during that exercise, quote unquote, exercise slash show of force when old girl Nancy was on the island

of Taiwan. I'm more really worried about the rocket forces conducting any sort of attacks and the Air Force before I'm really worried about them projecting their like ground forces onto Taiwan because I really am, I don't have a lot of confidence in their amphibious capabilities right now, frankly. Well, yeah, of course, like going back to like traditional offensive operations, you have to soften the area. So you're going to send in your aircraft, you're going to send in your rockets. The Russians did that for the first, what, 24 hours before they actually kicked their guys in to Ukraine. And then at that point they were trying to seize territory, but that's land to land. That's not sending a couple guys on a boat 100 miles away

to seize a few beachheads. And then the entire time when these military is designed to defend, they're not take back the mainland that slogan's gone. No, their whole job is to defend against the Chinese. If the Chinese conduct amphibious exercises or whatever, but they have zero combat experience period ever in winning a war and or fighting a successful offensive operation, it's going like, Hey, I think the fate the odds are in favor of Taiwan here. I think another thing that's probably important to remember is that even before any type of long range strikes happen, I think the first thing, the very first thing that's going to happen is cyber. And I think that you can see that that's one of the first things that

started happening over in Ukraine before even the Russians invaded there, you know, as they were conducting tons and tons of cyber attacks on all kinds of stuff on their power grid, on their defense infrastructure, on their, their their air defense systems on everything. And I think that would be the Chinese have a huge contingency set aside that specifically focuses on those types of things. And I believe that that would be the number one way they would initiate, because that's the first thing they would want to do is disable our ability to counter their long range assets. You know, and the only way to do that is with cyber. And ultimately, that's where the space force would kind of come in. You know, that's one of the reasons why I think

that that branch was kind of like separated off was because of the the importance of that whole part of warfare now, which is that's a new thing. You know, that's something that we're going to have to we're going to go through some growing pains with that, you know, I think every country bases any type of offensive operation off of Gulf War one, where the American just spent 100 hours destroying the Iraqi defenses and blowing up all the logistics hubs and other munitions depots, and just destroying the logistical capabilities of the Iraqis. And also that's psychological where they're like, Oh, well, we're getting pummeled, we can't see the enemy. Plus, they haven't even invaded yet. And so we look at the

Russians and the Chinese are probably basing their entire model on that. We did it again in 03. And I think the Iraqis did a far better job the second time. But yeah, when it comes to cyber operations, the Chinese, of course, you can look down to like, Oh, they're going to attack websites and government computers and these things. And then it's also down to like, TikTok, which is just a weapon of demoralizing the average Taiwanese citizen by calling them dogs and all these other kinds of things where they're like, Oh, you're Chinese, don't think you're don't think you're out the hook. No, we're coming for you. Yeah, I think, well, the interesting thing about the Gulf War was that that was kind of a really

good test for us, because a lot of people like to underestimate the quality and the the, I guess, the overall level of capabilities of the Iraqi military at that time. But I think most people don't realize that Iraq had just gotten out of a very, very like vicious war with Iran at that point. So like everybody was combat hardened. And I'm talking like human waves, like trench warfare, like everything. And these guys were they were pretty damn salty by the time we actually started engaging them. And so one of the things that we did, like you're talking about is all these these strikes we initiated by trying to target anything logistically to cripple them as much as we could. So they not not only could they nobody could talk to each other, nobody to coordinate,

they weren't able to to set up and they didn't have any like, you know, lateral signal plans set up in case all their communications went down. And I think I can't remember I had a friend of mine who was talking about or talking to the other day, it was the prior 0340, 0341, he works for Northrop Grumman. And he was explaining to me that we did some sort, we did so many sorties during that, during that period of time, that it's, I think it's set the record for the number of sorties ran within a short period of time, because of how coordinated and how, like how we masked sorties to cripple these logistics and these communication abilities that they had. Because we wanted to make sure that when we did finally start sending in ground troops,

they were so disorganized and unable to coordinate with each other that we would just destroy them. You know, how we start stepping away from the Gulf War one, I don't think a lot of people realized that like you said, one, they fought that eight year Iran Iraq war, where they were launching scud missiles at each other like bottle rockets and trench warfare was like 1914 again, these guys were combat veterans. Also, Iraq had the fourth largest military on the planet behind us, the Chinese and the rest of the Soviets at the time, it was like, they were a very capable force, and the US absolutely ran through them. And so like going back to like I said, where every country I want to say today tries to base their offensive doctrine on

Gulf War one and the most picture perfect example of how a war could be fought, because it was over in days, Americans sustained such minimal casualties now, let alone allies. And so looking at going back to what ST Ford said about amphibious operations, that's 100 miles from the closest point between China and Taiwan. It's like, there's no way there's no way it's going to work. Or without not saying it's not going to work and like a perfect world that might for the Chinese, but saying like they would sustain such heavy losses and casualties and logistical ships. And that's just not including, you know, if they can get to the beach, that would just be a bloodbath.

Well, not not only that, they got to cover how many how many miles of water of open water? Yeah, it's like 100 miles. It's insane. Yeah, like the whole planet would know they were leaving on the way, you know. So that's not to say they wouldn't do it, but, you know, everyone would be quite aware of what was going on. I talked about this with all con as to before, but the Chinese have that 2049 plan where they have to have Taiwan by 2049. And I mentioned it all the time that that's not invasion by 2049, that's incorporation by 2049, which takes like a generation of squishing resistance and getting rid of public dissent. So they would have to do it relatively soon.

And so going back to what you said of they base their entire military and that former Soviet doctrine and the Russians doctrine, and it's not really seeming to work because it is that top down command structures, not the bottom up, which tiny Taiwanese is based on. It's going like, well, the Chinese days are numbered, everyone knows that they can't mobilize their forces and their people are pretty, pretty upset about what's going on internally. Oh, yeah, that's another thing that people don't usually talk about is they got a lot of internal strife within their own country right now, just like we do. So regarding successful of a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan, I think a couple of things

would have to happen first. So like Kagan's point about cyber having to like, not only just using kinetic fires, but also non-connected fires through cyber to hinder any sort of air defense or any sort of communications on the island itself. But I think looking at Russia, that was a pretty good, they really did show that they were like, oh, we're totally not going to invade Ukraine by holding the largest exercise in Europe at the time. And then in turn, invaded Ukraine. I think a big precursor to that would be a, hey, we're just the Eastern Theory Command just doing our largest exercise ever on the wherever essentially getting ready to move everything forward to prepare them for some sort of invasion. I'm also going to monitor those aircraft carriers

because geopolitically, that's a projection of force. That's your international credibility of I'm in charge. So the US has 10 nuclear carriers and the British went, I kind of want big carriers too. Got to go back to that old imperial mindset. They start bringing out their bad boys moving to the Pacific. It's almost like calling the Chinese bluff. And so they have three aircraft carriers now. And two are former Soviet shells that they propped up and they have one organically produced. And so you're just going to watch those because that's where the aircraft is coming from. It might come from mainland, but the closer the planes can get to the island itself and surround it on, say, three corners, it would also definitely an indicator. I also remember reading this article

while back just talking about how China has been converting civilian ferries for the use of amphibious operations. And I hate to keep saying or I was going to say the the book Ghostfleet is continue to just continue to show like, Hey, we're predicting the future, but that's neither here nor there. But I think it's really interesting that that would be if they were to mask like a shipping manifest from mainland China to Taiwan. And oh, hey, surprise, it's a ship full of tanks and, you know, military equipment. Back to like those old German commerce ships where they had cargo ships, but they had guns on the side. So if a British destroyer cruised up went like, hey, lay down your arms, they went absolutely not and would just blast them. And they were just

cloak and dagger their logistical ships back in like World War Two. Now, do you guys know the Chinese ships are all running off of diesel? Yeah. Yeah, whereas we we have a huge issue. Yeah. And ours are running off of nuclear power so they can stay out there for, you know, years. They need to kind of like our submarines, right? You need to get close enough to a resupply ship and do a razz real quick. That's which only takes a few hours and you can just keep going for months. So yeah, that's a that's pretty big. You know, I know some people like to say that doesn't really matter because they're so close to the mainland that they could just go back and refuel. But at the same time, if they were

trying to project it far out, you know, they're going to have a much more difficult time doing something like that than we would when we can just sustain ourselves out there for months and months without having to refuel. I wonder if anyone's considered Vietnam because the Vietnamese and the Chinese had a war back in the 70s. Vietnamese absolutely crushed them. And then the Chinese move now is to surround the local fishing areas with their like people's fishing militia little ricketing boats, but they just surround the entire and force the Vietnamese and the Filipinas out of the way so they could capitalize on that entire market. And the Vietnamese don't really like the Chinese. So I don't know if anyone's

you know, thrown an olive branch their way and said like, Hey, pal, just in case there is an operation, what are you going to do? I feel like much how Vladimir Putin was afraid of NATO expansionism. And so he invaded Ukraine, which caused NATO to have two more members join the organization and then bolstered like unity within NATO. China is, you know, they've been pretty vocal. They don't want an Asian or a Pacific NATO. And I feel like because of their aggression towards all their neighbors, either politically, economically or militarily, this is going to result into an Asian NATO. I know I brought it up here a few times, but the Vietnam, for example, and the Philippines, although they have a territorial overlap or

turtle planes that overlap in the South China Sea, China is claiming all of it. So that'd be one aspect to engage both countries to say, Hey, work with us or work with each other more accurately to counter any sort of alliance. It's almost like there was an alliance in the 60s and 50s called the CEDO, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization that completely failed. But I don't know, just bring that bad boy back. Well, and the thing is, is a lot of these countries that they want, like they're in vain focus is they want prosperity for their people the same way any other country does, right? You know, right now Vietnam is still kind of a developing country in the sense of just like comparing them to, you know, places like the UK or Canada or America

or things like that. But they're, they're making pretty big strides to develop their economics. And it's very, it's very much fashion after a capitalist system because they may see all of the opportunity that it's afforded people in the West, you know, and that's just one example. Taiwan's done the same. I mean, if you go to Korea, you know, Korea's South Korea's a thriving society. I mean, I was there in 2015. And I mean, they, they are very industrialized and very advanced and they have some of the greatest electronics on earth, you know, and that's as a direct result of having a capitalist society where, you know, the people are free. It's a free and open society where you can, you can build something and, you know, the government's not going to take it and

claim it for themselves. So it also goes back to like Hong Kong, which China didn't start making any money until Hong Kong and Macau were incorporated into the Chinese sphere of influence. That's when they started their economy started booming. It's almost like capitalism was working. And then the, in the mid 2010s, the Hong Kong people were going like, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. And there was weird, almost like they started bringing back pictures of the Queen of England and their old imperial colony flags are like, can we go back to this? So the British extended that, hey, you know, if you were born before 1997, you're allowed to apply for a UK citizenship. And then that's when the huge clampdown from the CCP came down in Hong Kong going,

no, two states, one party, it's not how it works anymore. No, it's everything. So yeah. And then looking at Hong Kong, that is almost a template of how they would subjugate, say if Taiwan rolled over, just let the Chinese in, it would go exactly like Taiwan or Hong Kong, because it's the people don't want to be a part of the CCP, you know, subject, subjugated populace. Yeah, I can see that. Do you remember the year when they took Hong Kong? It was 97? Yeah, end of empire. Yeah. And it was, that's when everyone goes, wow, the Chinese economy rapidly advanced

faster than any economy on the entire history of the planet where some people go like, well, the Soviets went from farmers to the outer space in 50 years, but the Chinese went from a fuel society to the number, the second largest economy on the planet within 20 years. That's impressive. But then you go, what year did that start? 97. I think there's something going on there. Well, you know, the Chinese are doing a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that's very economically driven across the planet, specifically in places like Africa, right? So what they'll do is they'll go in since they have all of this, all these materials and they have so much influence and they have money. They'll go into this, they'll go into a poor country in Africa and they'll be like, hey,

we noticed your road systems here need a little bit of maintenance. I'll tell you what we'll do. We will build infrastructure for your whole country and you don't got to worry about paying for it right now. You can just pay us back later, right? And they're doing that all over the place and then these countries end up becoming kind of enslaved via debt because the Chinese are coming in and investing all this capital. And then on top of that, they're like, hey, just also you got to make sure that we have access to all of your minerals and resources. And they've got bases all over Africa that are popping up. They've got one down the street from us in, I think, Djibouti. It's five miles, I think it's like five clicks or five miles away from the Navy base.

From the guys I know that went to Camp Lemoneer, they go, oh, we can see the Chinese mustering every morning. We can see them. Yeah, that's pretty ominous. Look at the two different ways because the two different ways the Russians and the Chinese are going into Africa, where if there's a problem in say, Mali, Russia just sends Wagner and they go, who's the problem? Cool. And they just hose everybody. They're like, cool, neutralized. But the Chinese just go to the top of the government and go, yeah, you need roads. Everybody needs roads. You need clean water. Everyone needs that. So it's two different ways. They're each achieving the same end state. They're just doing it differently because the average people are going, wow, the

Russians are pretty badass or taking care of everyone. The French were these guys. They just did nothing for eight years. But then the Chinese are looked upon as, yeah, I mean, these guys gave us a reservoir for water. But then I think everyone in Africa is waking up going, oh, this is not for our best interests. No, this is returning the clock back a hundred years. It's not good for Africa. I think the most recent, recent manifestation of Chinese deadchapping working is the Solomon Islands recently stopped the Coast Guard from refueling there. And I think like that's just like the most lowest level of Chinese exerting their influence over a country to see like get a goal they want. Well, that are Sri Lanka, which was in revolution a few

weeks ago. And there was reports of the Chinese going like, hey, we built that airport. Is there any way we could go in there and make sure it's not burned down? I'm not going to, our guys are just going to go in there, secure the airfield. Nothing crazy. We're going to leave. And I didn't see anything like that coming to fruition, but it's like, it would be insane if they did. Yeah, there's a lot of like real subversive, insidious things that they're doing because they, I don't remember, I can't remember if I'm quoting it correctly, but they talk about things like the thousand year, like thousand year plan or something like that. You know what I'm talking about where they're like, they're, they're thinking ahead a thousand years, like what's going to happen if we

do these things now? How does that impact our empire a thousand years down the road? Well, because they like to play the, like you said, the long game where they understand that the entire world runs in four years stints. And that's because the American president's elected every four years, plus or minus eight years. Let's say that, but the Chinese go, well, we just marched on Rome and said that she's never leaving power. So yeah, we could just wait this out and we'll just pick the next guy to take over. Same thing with Vladimir Putin, they just got to wait. But their biggest issue is that they have that top heavy population of aging men where the youth is pretty non-existent because no one's having kids because in China,

it's all guys, they have entire cities with no women where those, those ghost cities that everyone calls them just is essentially a perfect template of keeping a potentially aggressive male population in a box and monitored because they didn't want those guys revolting. And then you have the Russians who are going, we're going to give you hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a baby because we're not having any, we just lost 50,000. So looking at like the big picture of like a thousand years, yeah, it's cool right now, but what if in 10 years, a half your population dies off because you can't afford to A, feed them, give them clean water? Was it 15% of China's land is irrigatable? What is the word? I don't know. But yeah, they're allowed to self sustain

themselves about 15%. So they rely heavily on the African imports of food and rare materials and water and these kinds of things. And so it's, yeah, there's a lot going on in China that the CCP really want to address. And if you go on TikTok and mention it, you get banned. So, oh yeah, 100%. I think I read somewhere that China wants to be like the sole superpower. I think it was like, what, a hundred or a thousand years or whatever. And it's like direct competition is with the US. They don't even like really acknowledge Russia. It's like a huge economic threat to them. Just they want to be the sole superpower in the world. And I think that's pretty, should be a wake up call for everybody to start working towards, you know, countering China. If I wanted some living

space and I was a Chinese government official, I would just start looking into Eastern Russia, because no one lives there. What are they going to take Vladivostok? The Russians really going to fight tooth and nail to defend that? No, I don't think so. They know, they know that if they went into Russia, though, that would just be a horrible move on their part. That's the thing. Because, yeah, just like, I guess, just from the international, you know, perspective, just because they don't, they don't really have a whole lot of friends right now, you know, at least in Washington, Syria, that's kind of cool. But I don't think the Chinese have anyone. No, I don't. I mean, other than North Korea, you know.

Yeah, and that's just a loose cannon. Yeah. Yeah, there's always reports that you can see on was it live maps or telegrams saying like, Oh, the Chinese are sending guys to the border of North Korea. Like, interesting, I wonder what's going on in North Korea. They probably want to keep mass brainwash refugees from crawling into China. Oh, guaranteed. I mean, have you ever heard, did you ever, I don't know if either of you guys know who the woman who escaped North Korea, she fled to China and then managed to get to the United States. I think Joe Rogan interviewed her on his podcast. Oh, yeah. Long ago is beautiful story. But I mean, like, you know, really gives you a little bit of an insight on how things, the status of that country, you know.

I don't know if you guys ever watched Lawye 86 on YouTube, but he was an American who lived in China for 10 years from the like 2002 to maybe 2012. And then Xi Jinping became president. And he was like, it went from a pretty like a melting pot society to very interface, very racist, very nationalistic, very xenophobic, very like, unless you're Han Chinese, get out. And so he escaped, got back to the States. And since he's like, well, I know Chinese and I know everything about the system, because I lived there for 10 years, sort of making videos about what goes on in the country. And he's on, it's hilarious on his Twitter, it's just Chinese bots saying like, oh, go to hell, you don't know what you're talking about. But he always talks about like their

agriculture system or their real estate system, where it's completely failing because the Chinese people don't have any money. So they buy property because it's very sustainable. But then that goes down to like, Oh, the Chinese economy is collapsing, because capitalism is eking its way in where the Chinese people think, well, I can't have money, but I have a house. But if I get married, me and my wife have to live in the same house. So she has to sell her place. So we'll be permanent life partners, we will never get married, we'll have two places and rent out the second. And then it's just that mindset is spreading across China, where everyone's trying to make a few dollars, and is completely crushing the Chinese economy that's based on, you know, no dollars, no money.

You know, I have a friend of mine, I went to Corporal's course with back in 2016. She's a Chinese. Well, I don't think she was born in China. Maybe she was, I can't remember, but she's got a lot of family there still. And she was telling me about how a lot of the even the college degrees and whether the colleges are set up over there. Like, if you're part of like the like aristocracy, like in your say, you're a guy and you own a really big company or whatever, a lot of these guys will pay universities over there a fee for their degree to give to their kid. And then they'll just have their kid take over their business after they have a degree to show that they have some credentials, but they'll have no formal training. You know, and that's like the

aristocracy level. I don't know what exactly life would be like for say the middle or lower class, or even if there is that type of a thing over there. But what I know about the lower class specifically, like they'll say, if they're a farmer, they'll trade their goods, whatever, make a few dollars, and then they'll spend every access dollar they have on like a Pepsi, and they'll sit on that for weeks. And they're like, no, this is the coolest thing I have is a room temp Pepsi. And so they'll just sit on that and go like, yeah, I really absolutely love this idea of getting something beneficial out of the work I'm doing. And so it's when I think it was 2000, was it 2012 or 14? No, it was 2008, when there was the Beijing Olympics, and a lot of

the Olympians went there and thought like, wow, everybody in China does not seem to hate the US. They really want to be a part of Coca Cola and Juicy Fruit. So I, you know, the one thing that always comes to mind, and you guys probably know this better than I do, honestly, but like, you know, you see the level of poverty we have in America, you know, the, the type of poverty you see in this country is completely different from the type of poverty you see in other countries, you know, specifically like Africa or the Middle East, or probably, probably Asia or Eurasia and areas like that, like the poorest of the poor here are like the middle class there, you know. And this too, you might be able to elaborate on this,

but say if there's such a separation between America's lower class, which it could be considered China's upper class, it's very easy for someone who runs, say, TikTok to exploit the minor minute issues of American or Western culture where it's almost like, all right, look, we're not going to win in a fight. What we can do is have the people be very not cooperative. So they'll just say spam, you know, anti-U.S. propaganda or whatever, create division, these kind of things that are exploited through, say, TikTok or, you know, whatever the Chinese are doing today. Oh, absolutely. Like the, what is it, the militia that's solely dedicated to, like it's called like the People's Militia of, I can't remember the name, solely used,

like things like the cyber militia used to spread misinformation, like oriented towards the U.S. and internal issues or Taiwan, pretty much anything anti-Chinese is what they're countering. And I think it's insane. Going back to, going back to North Korea, though, I know, like it's, it's like a big wild card about what the Kim dynasty is, what's going to happen, you know, if it's, if it's Kim Jong-un or his sister, but I think, and this is just like a wild card, Koa, they're essentially keeping them in their, China's keeping North Korea in their back pocket to say if Taiwan were to go off and they attack them, they can use North Korea to leverage, leverage them to attack South Korea, to divert U.S. and allied forces to another crazy humanitarian disaster because Seoul would be wiped

off the earth, like straight up. Yeah, of course. And then I also think that if they were like to try diverting forces that also we'd see a lot of kinetic activity within the South and East China Sea through the Chinese maritime militia. So it'd be, if there'd be a flashpoint, it'd essentially be in Korea, the first island chain as a whole, more or less, except for like Australia, New Zealand and all them. Well, looking at South Korea, whenever there's defectors from North Korea, they are ostracized from society. They are unable to integrate with the South Korean culture, even though they speak the same language, they're going like, no, you're from the North, you're traitors, we won't want nothing to do with you. So they create their own little communities and

whatnot. But if the Chinese put their guys along the North Korean border to say, in a theoretically stop a human wave of refugees coming into North, or to China, we could say the same thing about the South Korean military and say Second Army Infantry Division, stopping refugees from crossing the border, because I don't think they want another, say Kabul on their hands, with millions of malnourished brainwashed individuals trying to escape captivity. And then that just leads to a whole other completely humanitarian crisis. Well, a lot of the bridges that lead down into South Korea are laced with explosives. So, you know, and everybody knows that on every side of the aisle, you know, because there obviously

there's contingencies for if any, they wanted to, you know, prevent any type of invasion to happen, you know, so I don't know. I don't know if that's something they're, they're really like, as concerned with, even though it is, I mean, it is a potential coa that there, it's not like outside of the realm of possibilities, but you know, possibly about North Korea, and you guys might have seen this, that there was, I forget who might have been Northern provisions who said that Korea offered up like 10,000 or 100,000 soldiers to fight in Ukraine with Russia. Like, what would that secondhand effect be like if a whole bunch of malnourished North Vietnamese, they're not North Vietnamese North Korean soldiers

show up and say Donbass. So you can look this up now. A lot of people don't know this. In Syria, North Korea, North Koreans, where they're building their, like their facilities regarding like nuclear energy and the reality. Yeah, it's really weird. And so if they were in the Donbass, they'd I think they'd just be doing the same thing, just a construction or maybe try getting some combat experience out of those guys for their future generals or colonels or whatever. That's just an idea. That's peer speculation. Yeah, I mentioned the Russians. Oh, go right ahead. Sorry, they, so I saw a video the other day, and this may just be one, one off, but I think they probably try to do that. They try to feed

their military a little bit more so than they do their average citizenry. So I don't, I don't know how malnourished their soldiers are. I'm sure that they're still malnourished compared to our standards, but I don't know if that's an even important side note, but this, you know, I'm sure that that's one of the things, especially when it comes to like the North Koreans trying to like do a show of force, like, Hey, look at our military, they'll have like all their most healthy, nourished soldiers performing in front of everybody, just for, you know, just for visuals. You know, meanwhile, everybody else is like, you know, starving. Imagine that the Russians would look too highly upon North Korean soldiers, they might just want them to like, A, build a bridge or

B, clear a land minefield, just like, Hey, we're not losing our guys. So, hey, do whatever. Oh, speaking of minefields, have you guys seen the guy tip of the spear? I've seen him around. Yeah. Yeah, I've been sharing some of his stuff. He's a former Green Beret. He's been over there in Ukraine clearing farmland of anti-tank mines for these farmers over there that are Ukrainian farmers. They're just trying to make a living and their farmland is just laced with anti-tank mines. And he's been going in there personally with a CMD, a compact metal detector, and just like digging up, like he's dug up like hundreds of land mines and just like disposed of them for these farmers so they can continue to grow crops.

Do work. I don't know if you get, if you guys haven't had an opportunity to check them out, I highly recommend it. He's a good dude. I've had some conversations with him. So, definitely. Yeah, there's, I do remember earlier when the war started that there was like, it looks like they were like drunk Ukrainian soldiers just picking up land mines on the road and throwing them in ditches. It's like, these guys are tough. That is insane. Yeah, they're a different type of person for sure. That reminds me of the Kurdish like Peshmerga when they were like the arming ISIS, IEDs like buried around Mosul or Northern Iraq. And they were out there with pickaxes just going right above where the IED was buried and then scooping it out

and like, hey, pucker factors in full effect, man. I can't, I couldn't be the guy to do that. It's sort of like, we do this every day. What? I'm like, this is just life. Well, those people grow up in just a harsh reality, you know what I mean? So like, it's just, it's hard for people like, well, at least for me, it's hard for me to wrap my head around that kind of stuff because I live so comfortably compared to a lot of people in other countries. But the important thing is just being able to acknowledge that and be aware of that. We've got a pretty damn good. Yeah. I think the only guy who's, or the only community of people in the West who are accustomed to that lifestyle is probably, I don't know, some Brits living in

Northern Ireland. They're like, oh yeah, bus bombs. What about it? Oh yeah, the Scots man, they're pretty hard people too. That's what the British commandos go for their school. Yeah, those talking about that, there is that base in Indonesia or it's Borneo, it's the island of Borneo, where the Brits, I want to say, send a lot of their guys for their Pacific training. So sometimes they go to like, Okinawa and hang out with Americans, or they'll go to their own little combat town with a Matt town and whole village and whatnot and Borneo and train up and that's where they send Gurkhas. And I was like, man, that's, imagine a Gurkha coming at with you with a shovel, like that guy lives a hard life.

Yeah, that's, that's for sure. But all right guys, I think we're getting to about, you know, that hour mark. So is there anything you guys like to plug or real quick, I do want to plug the leaf of my journal myself. That's too forward. We write for that guy sometimes. It's a really good time. He has his own podcast now. We jumped on that once he might do another one here soon. Give it a look. Yeah, I'll keep. Oh, go ahead. Oh, sorry. Just to plug my stuff real quick as to forward, you can find me on Instagram underscore s2 underscore fwd underscore. It's my original make out chat handle for those that know that is. You can find me on Twitter. I have a link

tree with all my stuff. Thanks. And for me, just, you know, you can search my name on Instagram and Facebook, but most of my stuff is on Instagram. So just Kagan, K-A-G-A-N dot Dunlap. And, you know, I'm going to continue to share the stuff that I see on the Croton report and also an s2 forward and lethal minds and everybody else that's influential in the military community, because we're collectively trying to make each other better and more informed, you know, and I like to throw out like, like, like you said before, I like to throw out stupid stuff that's entertaining and funny as well, because life is short, you know, and it's important to laugh once in a while, but we can also learn at the same time. So before we go s2 forward,

how did you get that on make a check? Because it's not uncommon to jump into a make a chat room. There's just everybody with the same name. So the it wasn't actually like s2 forward. I was in three seven from 2014 to 2018. And so as their call time is blade, so as a blade to forward all the time. So not actually s2 forward. So you lied. I got it. I'm a liar. You were you were in three seven, you said three seven. My buddy was their chief scout for a couple years. I don't know if you know a guy named Trujillo. I can't remember right now. I don't think so. Might have been after that. I'm not sure he came. He left from two, three years ago. He's one of my peers. Good dude. It's hilarious. Too easy. But hey, guys, everyone again. Thank you for coming on. And

I'm going to cut this right now. But afterwards, if you want to like, hang on for a second, like shoot the shit we can. But I'm going to cut the recording. Sure.