Kitbag Conversations - Proto Kitbag 6: Tessaron News

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

I am joined this week with Tessaron News, and fellow news and intelligence page on Instagram. By sharing a similar background, Tessaron and I look at several topics through and analytical lens, including (but not limited to): - Russian capabilities assets in Ukraine - The future of the United States Marine Corps via Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) - And China's recent military past and projected future   

Hello everyone and welcome back. You're listening to Crowetone Report and I'm sure you're going to be really excited for this guest. I'm speaking this week with Tesseron News, a very popular news page on Instagram and one you most likely follow. So Tesseron, how are you doing today? Hey, I'm doing good. Thanks for having me on and I one you most likely follow. So Tessarron, how you doing today? Hey, I'm doing good. Thanks for having me on and I look forward to the conversation.

Too easy, man. Hey, real quick, where does Tessarron come from? Yeah, so I guess when I was trying to come up with the page for the name, or the name for the page, a lot of information out there. I know you were in the Intel community, so was I. And we'll get into my background here a little bit. But I wanted a name that kind of like data mining, where taking all these conflicting narratives, taking all this information and kind of merging it into something that's digestible to the average person. So digestible to the average person. So just got on Google and I was like, okay, what's some good names? And it wasn't really, wasn't really find anything.

Atlas actually came up. I know we all follow Atlas News and that was one of the suggestions. And I ran it by one of my buddies that I work with. He's like, oh, are you a religious guy? No, not really religious. But he's like, well, there was an old Assyrian theologist back in the fifth century who actually tried to combine the narratives of the Bible, you know, the gospels into one coherent timeline,

one coherent narrative. And that's called the diatessaron. So I really fell in love with that idea. Felt like the diet tesseron was a little bit of mouthful. So just cut off the diet. So a little bit of play on words. You know, disclaimer. Yeah, Catholic not extremely devout. You know, both my both my kids are confirmed and I'm confirmed. So yeah, just play on words from diet, test, or cool, man. Did you, uh, is that the name you've been using the whole time? Or did you have like

an early, early draft? Like before I was click news where I was like, Oh, company level Intel cell, that's pretty cute. But I kind of branched away and made it more organics or yeah, something my own. So have you always been Tesseron? Yeah. It's funny that you asked that. Uh, cause when I, I originally started out on Twitter and I was calling it, uh, the Tesseron forum, because I really wanted it to be more of a kind of just like meeting the minds thing. However, you know, I was running that for about a week, getting some interaction with the page, but how social media is currently set up, unless you really make it like closed off page, which I didn't want to do invite only, it's kind of hard to control the conversation, as I'm sure you're aware, and your listeners are aware. So I just

changed the news because that's really what it was doing. I was putting flash updates on there and people were just running away with it. So, so if I'm trying to dip into Twitter before and it's a little difficult to throw out because I know we used to be analysts man. It's you write the full picture and then have the assessment you building the pieces. It's really hard to work on Twitter. So it's really cool to see guys like Intel crab and those do really well delivering like quick flashpoint news. But have you had any success on Twitter? Because it's really hard for me to break out into there. Um, no, I mean, I think people like find me on Twitter and follow it. I've gotten a few

updates past few weeks. It's up to like 200 followers. I don't really use it that much. You know, my biggest gripe with Twitter when it comes to open source analysis, trying to put some fleshed out content is just the character cap. There's not enough space to actually put some good info that I want to put out. Really good for flash news updates and I use Twitter a lot. If there's someone on the ground, there's an explosion in Kabul, there's a fire in India, someone reports it. Can you hear me? Can you still hear me? I can hear you.

Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah, I might have to edit that. So you want to just rephrase the question. I was getting a phone call and that just jacked me up. Oh, yeah, not a problem. Talking about Twitter and building your profile on there. Yeah, yeah. So up to about 200 followers, I don't really use it that much for sharing content. And that's mostly because of the character cap. I find it's really difficult to get my point across. I don't even remember what the character cap is, but it's really difficult to get my point across. I don't remember the character cap is but it's really small

250 250 you know most of my most of the captions I use on Instagram usually Are sitting at around like 250 words. So 250 characters is definitely not it also Kind of find like the interface kind of not friendly to, you know, discussion kind of like on Reddit, how like comments dropped down, I've kind of found it kind of hard to follow. But great for flash reporting, I use it a lot. You know, when the blue check marks got something to say, that's usually a good indicator of policy or important events.

Or, you know, flash news too. If there's someone on the ground, you know, there's an explosion in Cabell this morning, there's an explosion in Karachi, someone's putting it on Twitter. And then I can use that to start peeling back the envelope there. Do you throw in the Boolean logic and try to narrow down your focus if you're doing a little research? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I, you know, I've gotten a lot of people asking me, oh, why are you so quick with this stuff? You know, how are you getting this much content out?

And it's AI. I would absolutely drown if, well, you know what, I wouldn't even drown. I would drown all day looking for stuff. I'd probably miss 90% of it and then I wouldn't be able to put out as much if I didn't use AI. When I was in the Marine Corps, I was given access to a lot of analytical tools, data miner, Palantir, or they just scrub social media, scrub local major news assets. And that's really what feeds me. If I, you need that tool, if you're, if you're planning on doing a page like we have, or you're trying to be a journalist, you need something to help you sift through the noise. Yeah, man, I absolutely agree.

And it's really good to see that your page exploded because the zuck is out there. And it seems like my page, number one, and almost everyone in the community, they've really stagnated, but you're one of the few that continues to grow. And I know you threw out a few days ago or a few weeks ago that said like, Hey, if you're reading this, please reshare something, please comment, please subscribe or something, because it helps with the algorithm build your page And I don't know everyone that said that yours is the only one that stays consistent outside of you know, Atlas or popular front But it's really good to see that

Regardless of the shadow ban and I know you are that you're actually still doing really well Yeah, and it's actually kind of frustrating I was actually on the phone with my brother and all the other day and I told him, you know, he's from Cuba and I told him to check out my page because I just reported on that gas leak explosion at the Saratoga hotel. He's I can't even look up your page. Really frustrating. And that's one of the reasons why I'm heavily debating just moving completely off of Instagram and onto Atlas. You know, Atlas news, the website, if any of your followers haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it.

He definitely, he's doing something that I don't think has been done for a long time. And I think for the first time in this weird niche social media open source intelligence community that we're a part of because we do rely on the infrastructure and the backbone of a company that has its own shareholders, its own narrative, its own motivations. So, you know, on the one end, it frustrates me. And on the other end, it's like, you know, I'm relying off your stuff to do my reporting. So it's a love hate relationship. But, but yeah, really, you know, it blew up probably right around, you know, definitely doubled in followers since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because I was fortunate enough to be in a place where I could report on it. I was out in Norway when they actually did invade. So I was able to get some, a place where I could report on it. Uh, I was out in Norway when, uh, they actually did invade.

So I was able to get some, you know, firsthand account of what was going on, uh, within a NATO country that is, that has a land border with Russia. Uh, and I think people really attached to that. And, uh, yeah, I'm just happy. Uh, people keep following, uh, and I'll keep doing what I'm doing until Instagram bans me, I guess. Man, it's really good to hear it real quick before we dive into the meeting of this.

You're absolutely killing it on the Atlas app. It's like Atlas is number one posting most of the stuff and then it's you. And so how did that come up? Did he DM you or do you talk to him regularly? Cause I know he's got his whole, his entire thing going on, but it's really interesting to see like, like you're just saying, considering moving off of Instagram and Twitter onto the Atlas app and you're absolutely driving that entire focus.

Um, yeah. So, you know, I don't want to peel back the onion too much on him and his team. Um, but you know, it's a group of individuals that had a vision that were frustrated with, um, how real, you know, it's a group of individuals that had a vision that were frustrated with how real, you know, and I say real news, like, not this cushy, rosy narrative that you see on CNN or Fox News. It's like actual war. I call it war reporting.

War reporting is more accurate than news. And he saw, you know, accounts being blocked, accounts being banned, content being taken down, which is, uh, you know, which he, you know, personally funded, which just, you know, really attributes to, uh, to his vision. Um, yeah, he hit me up, uh, it was Instagram DM and go figure. He's like, Hey, I'd like to, like to get on a call with you, see if you, uh, like to come on as a writer. And I didn't really know what he meant by that because I didn't know he was working on a website. So I was like really know what he meant by that because I didn't know he was working on a website so I was like what are you gonna give me like your login info on Instagram and like I'd write articles for you because I'm trying to do my own thing he's like no no I'm

making this website and then it flourished from there yeah I'm up to something like 60 or so articles since the website launched and I think it launched in February. Um, so I was just really fortunate. I was grateful to be brought on because, uh, you know, I really value the people with vision and, uh, and I think Atlas news is going to go a long way. Um, you know, we're talking White House credentials eventually, hopefully. That's good stuff, man. Really good to hear it. Yeah.

Atlas is absolutely killing it. I don't know how long you followed them, but I remember when he was the war blog in like 2014. I found him at 200 or so followers when you or Crimea was annexed and he was the only one talking about it like a real low level niche area. It's really good to see where where he's at today. But so good to see where where he's at today. But so I really want to talk to you about because we're, you know, both used to be analysts in the Marine Corps about the Russian armor in Ukraine, because they've been absolutely eaten up. And honestly, since let's just talk about some aviation too, about how badly they've performed in the entire entirety of the invasion, Because our background, everyone thought the Russians were better than they were. And they're like, you don't mess with the T-72 and you don't mess with the Hind. And then, no, they're just getting eaten up by end laws and all the good jazz that

was supplied by the US. So what's your take on that? Yeah. So I guess before I get into my take, I'll just tell your readers, I was an Air Intelligence Officer in Marine Corps, 0207, got out about this time last year, and now I work for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is an NGO. It's got a government, it's got a branch office here in the United States and then its main office is in Vienna. And OSCE has a special mission deployed to Ukraine. They've been there since 2014 to enforce the Minsk protocols and the Minsk agreements between Ukraine and Russia. So that's kind of where I'm coming from in my experience, my passion about this. So yeah, so you look at the Russian tank park, what's active, what's reserved, your readers will have to actually get on there because I don't have the numbers in front of me, but we're easily talking about more than 6,000 in reserve and probably three to 4,000 active,

largest tank park in the world and that's mainly due because the Russians sell their ship. Besides energy arms exports, arms exports is one of the leading drivers of the Russian economy. So they make all these export variants T-64, T-72, T-80, T-90. Sure, we're gonna see a export version of the T-14 Armata here soon. So it's always important to flesh that out because when you look at American planners and how we plan to fight Russia, we knew that their center of gravity is their huge tank park, their motorized rifle brigades, their guards tank army. That's what led the thrust into Ukraine. And that's exactly what we would assume. Now, American planners have been looking at, you know, you have the, the Klinengrad enclave,

which is their, their, you know, sometimes warm water port in the Baltic. You know, American planners like, oh, well, we got to close the, we got to close this Tewoki gap and make sure that the Russians don't send 3000 tanks across the border into Poland to connect mainland Russia with Klingrad. Obviously, that's not what happened instead, it went for Ukraine and this is now returning Europe to an age of ground wars in Europe. So we identified that as their center of gravity. And what did we do? We built really kick ass weapons systems that defeat armor. Obviously, don't don't mean to interrupt man, but it kind of goes back to the Cold War. How we always knew that the Russians, you know, former Soviet doctor and their entire

thing is overwhelming firepower through already and through tanks. Like, how do you counteract that with planes? We made the A-10 Warthog, which is the tank buster. We're like, yeah, we'll just, they don't have planes. We'll just secure the skies. But it's really interesting to see that javelins are absolutely destroying these preconceived notion of the dominant, only Soviet, because they keep waving the Soviet flag and the Russian central gravity Yeah, yeah exactly and you know, I know you're an Intel analyst you've probably done center of gravity analysis before I know I have When you have a center of gravity Identify the critical vulnerability and once you identify the critical vulnerability you export it So we identify the center of gravity the Russian ground forces as their huge exploit it. So we identify the center of gravity, the Russian ground

forces as their huge tank park. So we developed, we developed javelins, loitering munitions, MQ-9 with micro munitions, armor piercing, high explosive rounds. And then we funneled all that shit to Ukraine. You know, I've seen some estimates from the for the Center of Strategic International Studies, the United States has sent a third of its entire javelin inventory to Ukraine. I know some people were upset about that in the intelligence community. Some politicians are sounding off about it. But you know, we developed these weapons over the course of 5060 years, we've been building up our inventory, you know, for the same amount of time with the purpose of destroying Russian tanks and a ground war

against Russia. So in some ways we're completing that objective, but we don't have to put American service members in danger. So it's actually working out the weapons obviously are working as designed. And yeah, you look, you know, there's been some footage in the past few days of a couple T 90s from the 136th Guards motorized a rifle brigade in Luhansk with their tops blown off. You know, in the spirit of keeping with the discussion question, you know, their performance. President Zelensky said that a thousand Russian tanks have been destroyed in Ukraine so far. Take that with a grain of salt considering it's from the Ukrainian president but let's say they had 4,000 in their active tank park and president Ukraine is saying a thousand have been destroyed. Like I said,

take with a grain of salt but that's a fourth of their tank park destroyed since February, huge loss for them. One of the things I want to highlight about the T-72, the T-80 and the T-90, as I'm sure you're aware and some of your listeners are going to be aware. CNN just covered it yesterday, this jack-in-the-box thing. You've seen the jack-in-the-box vulnerability, how the Russian tanks store their munitions in the turret. So you could get a mobility kill on the T-90 through the T-72, but if that fire breaks out into the turret where most of these top down attack weapons hit, you know, the secondary explosions from that, that's what's killing the crew. And that's what's popping off the turret off these chassis, which is one of the reasons why, you know, I really got to applaud the Russians on their late ingenuity because the Abrams has been storing

the ammunition on not in the turret, you know, for the past 30 years. Now the T-14 Armata is going to have an autoloader in the turret and the the crew compartment is going to be completely isolated from munitions storage. So that's how the Russians trying to fix it. Obviously, you know, the T-14 kind of dead in the water. I don't know if you saw the video during the Moscow military parade in 2014. I believe it was they had a t14 but it broke down on the parade ground and had to tow it off So they've still got some way to go with that But yeah a critical design flaw and that's why uh, these american weapons, which I gotta say again that's the reason why they were designed to be attacked down is to uh,

Take advantage of this jack-in-the-box vulnerability. Um, they're they're doing why they were designed to be attacked down is to take advantage of this jack-in-the-box vulnerability. They're doing what they were designed to do. I have this video pulled up from my page right now, footage from Brovary, Ukraine, where there's literally an entire Russian tank company hemmed up in this suburban area and they're getting destroyed by Ukrainian artillery and a couple of Ukrainian T-64s and T-72s. It's like a platoon minus of their tanks versus off against this company that's bottlenecked. And while this is a single tactical scenario, I think it is telling of the overall performance

of the Russian ground forces in Ukraine, their logistical supply lines, just poor tactics. You know, when you're rushing over the Swarovski Gap in flat rural terrain, it's easier to mass armored power and use your artillery. But when you're fighting in suburban areas, like we saw outside of Kiev, it really negated any really negated any advantage that their armor gave them. And in some ways actually created liabilities because now you're just a big hulking target. And God, everyone's talking about the TB2 by Rockstar. Maybe this is the end of the age of tanks.

I know a lot of people don't agree with that. A lot of retired forces, Armory Corps generals don't agree with that. But I think if you watch even an hour of armored combat footage, you train, it is not the same. It is not the same success even remote success that that American tanks had in the 2003 push Baghdad. Well, that's, that's a really good point because, and we'll get into this later about the old hats talking about the end of the age of tanks and how it's not true, but looking at the early days of the war and how the Russians was in an armored column without infantry support in it, Harkov or Kiev. And it's like, Hey man, I'm not a smart guy. But I don't do you think

any Russian sat down and said, No, we need to send. Why are we sending an armor column by itself into an urban area that's in the American military, especially the Marine Corps, you don't do that because tanks are vulnerable as is there. And it's crazy to see that the Russians are still doing it and it's been what 70 days. And so it's really like you just said, those American weapons and those British weapons that are being sent over who are doing the exact same job they were designed to do are eating up the Russians. And it's on one hand, it's almost like they don't want to change their tactics. But on the second, and I know we both know this, they're very top down.

So I think a lot of the failures that are being found on the tactical level are not reaching the operational and strategical. And so they're just being told to keep going. And so you'll see a lone T-72 being sent to reinforce the front in the Northeast, but we just know it's not going to do anything. It's the armor has been called out and it's not going to work. And armor is a really intimidating factor, but if you could take it out for nothing, oh, it's just a big Jack in the box like you just mentioned. So it's, I don't want to say mind boggling, but to see that the Russians, whose ace in the hole was use overwhelming armored force, essentially to roll on urban areas, did not use. And I'm sure they watched the 91 invasion of Kuwait and Iraq

or the 03 invasion of Iraq again. It's weird to see that they didn't take a single after action and went, yeah, let's do that. They just kind of doubled down into that old mindset of, yeah, what do we do? Yeah, we're gonna keep keep doing that. We have a doctrine, we're going to follow it. It's going to come from the top. It's going to go all the way down to the bottom. And that little 19 year old Lance corporal is going to drive this tank straight into an urban area with no support. Yeah. And you know, that's actually something that I think we should flush out. You know, I brought up I brought up the performance of of American tanks, you know, not only in the three push the bag that also the first Gulf War, you know, nearly the battle of 73 Eastings.

I do have to put the disclaimer that very different operating environment. You know, against the the Iraqi Guard Corps of Tank Park there. The M1 Abrams in a desert environment, completely rural. You know, you look at all the the technical advantages that the M1A2 had over Iraqi T-64 T-72s You had integrated night vision so the gunner didn't have to look at a night scope and then look through the firing scope That was one of the reasons why single Abrams was able to destroy something like 12 Iraqi T-72s Not the same obviously not the same scenario in Ukraine not only in terms of geography, but also capability. I would put Ukrainian T-72s against Russian T-72s. It's the same platform.

But yeah, I agree completely with everything you said. When they sent 2000 plus tanks pretty much into their own backyard, thinking, you know, the war's going to be over in three days, we're going to push to key, we're going to, you know, string the ones key up in the street. And then as soon as they start running into significant resistance to being bogged down, the fog of war got to them, not only with their logistics, but also their other frontline units. And yeah, boggles my mind, I still got this video up from Brevary, just completely on a column of T-72s completely unsupported by infantry just getting schwacked and you know obviously can't see in the

video if it's being supported by by TAC air or or or loitering munitions or or artillery but yeah I think the Fog War definitely reached the Russians in the first couple days. One thing I do want to say though, because, you know, a lot of folks, you know, a lot of disparaging comments about the conduct of the Russian military. Got to remember that, yeah, they're getting, you know, they're getting turned back. Obviously, they're not actively assaulting northern and northwestern Ukraine anymore. They've kind of relocated their strategic objectives to the east and the south. They still did get into the suburbs of Kiev. And you can make the argument, oh, the Ukrainian military wasn't ready.

And you can make the argument, oh, the Ukrainian military wasn't ready. The Ukrainian military with Western support, pretty capable force. So I don't want readers to just hear another Russian military sucks. I think they are extremely capable. And if Ukraine hadn't been supplied the weapon system that exploited the critical vulnerability of Russia's center of gravity. I think Kiev would have fallen. Obviously not the first three days, but you know, maybe by mid-March, if America, UK, Russia, Poland, Romania, weren't actively supplying them with these advanced weapons. It's also something really interesting to bring up because if you look at combat footage from Donetsk in 2015 or the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian military was criminally

underdeveloped. They were still wearing old Soviet fatigues. They were wearing the old World War II tin helmets. The Russians, if they wanted to do it, they would have absolutely curb stomped American history exile, Ukraine, because everyone kind of pushed them to the side as like the sickman of Europe essentially, because you got the largest landmass and one of the largest populations, but their economy has been in shambles since the fall of the Soviet Union. And so at that point, it's like the Western forces, especially NATO said, no, we got to reinforce these guys. So it's really cool to see a picture of a Ukrainian soldier in 2010 compared to Ukrainian soldier in 2014. And it looks like, because they're wearing all army ACUs or multi-cam and they look like

an American reinforced military. So I wonder if the Russians took that into consideration when they were planning this invasion because back in the day they didn't have any optics on their weapons. Now their AK-74s are equally matched in terms of capabilities with the Russians. So you're bringing up all these tactical standpoints in the Ukrainian military. Everyone talks about the Netsk airport. That was a slaughter. The Ukrainians, they held out, but it's good they were in defensive positions.

It's really easy to hold out. But one-one, they were not doing very well. We also talk about, or you just mentioned, they got to the suburbs of Kiev or Kiev. And if the Russians are invading a country with 200,000 military personnel, let's say that's 70,000 combat units and the remainder of that is a logistical supports and your, you know, your enablers or something like that. Fighting not even one-on-one in an urban environment, pretty sure Americans trained to fight three-on-one or five-on-one to take a city.

And they were doing that all at the same time. And they took Kyrgyzstan pretty quick, but the remaining large cities, they got bogged down. And I think it's because maybe A, they didn't take into consideration that overwhelming support, or B, they really thought they were still fighting the same Ukrainians from 2014. thought they were still fighting the same Ukrainians from 2014? Yeah, you know, yeah, I completely agree with what you said. You know, as you were saying that I was thinking, you know, what are the, what are the main differences between 2014 Ukraine and 2021 Ukraine. One of the things that, you know, I find it ironic that our president now was also vice president when the Russians first tried this. So I am a big fan of the policy changes that happened. I don't think the I don't think the United States was in a position

to support the Ukrainian military in 2014 because of the reason that you outlined because they were so horribly corrupt and inept. We didn't want to give advanced weapons to a force where we couldn't trust them to turn around and just, you know, hand some of that gear over the Russians. Not saying that that was an issue and maybe that was or was not part of the calculus. I'm definitely not saying anything disparaging about the Ukrainian military, but since then a lot of the officer positions have rotated through. Obviously the political leadership has rotated through and then also you know you look at 2014 versus you know 2022 Ukraine, what's exploded in the last eight years, social media, the information war. The only reason why, well, maybe not the only reason, but one of the large reasons why Russia hasn't been able to quote unquote, get away with it at this time, is they lost

the information war. You know, I've seen some estimates up to 70,000 Russian troops entered Ukraine during the 2014 Donbass war. Obviously the Russian, the second invasion is a lot harder to ignore. But you know, back in 2014, you didn't have guys, you did to some extent, but you didn't have it definitely to the level that we're seeing now. You didn't have people like like Cossack Gundy, you know, Aidan Asselin or Sean Pinner. You didn't have them posting live updates, GoPro footage. You didn't have this huge pouring out of international support because people didn't have didn't have ground access, didn't actually see what was going on. And you know, let me reiterate again, part of that is due to, you know, the explosion of social media in the last 10 years. And then part of it is also due to just the overtness of the Russian operation.

So, yeah, definitely. A lot of people like to point their finger at the Arab Spring is the big, almost the first social media war that insurgents of revolutionaries were coordinating attacks via Twitter. And they were saying we're hey we're here and it was open comms but they were moving in and doing their things and the whole world could watch and you're right that social media wasn't too popular back then. But today it's the Russians completely lost the information more because Kossack Gundy has been there in Ukraine for years and he's been the number one outlet for like a western idea from the outside looking in so everyone's pretty tuned into what they're saying even if he was banned twice and had a relatively low follower count he was still putting out

information and so maybe it's because on one hand no one really thought there was going to be a And so maybe it's because on one hand, no one really thought there was going to be a large-scale ground war in Europe. But on the other hand, it's maybe people back in 2014, they just really didn't care. They're like, oh, well, there was a fork in the road of how the next ground war is going to go and say Taiwan or something where the whole world is going to be on the defender side. Because if you're being told in media and video games and on TV for 30 years, let's say, let's say post 9 11 for 20 plus years that the Chinese and the Russians are the bad guys, whatever they're going to do, the whole world is going to be on the side of the defender. So I'm really interested to see how, and maybe we want to segue into that, how the Chinese would handle a very similar situation. Yeah.

I mean, you brought up, you brought up some really good points and I actually hadn't even considered, you know, the culture kind of pre-Battle Fires that, you know, American video game companies media have portrayed. That's something I'll take back. Every Call of Duty. Every Call of Duty since 2007 has been The Russians are the Bad Guys. And if you watch any gangster movie or just media in general, we need a quick, we need a quick villain.

It's going to be the Russians super easy, super default. What are the Russians going to do? Stop us? No. So, yeah, because, you know, uh, realistically, you know, Ukraine is a great, uh, not euphemism, but great comparison for what could easily happen to Taiwan in the next 10 years. I don't know if you want to get into the Chinese aspect right now. I would definitely like to dip into that. So real quick, we talked about it earlier, Marine Corps ditched tanks in Ardee within the last five years under the current commandant.

And I've talked to him on it before, and he's very much committed because this happened before the war in Ukraine. He was like, tanks got to go. It's not going to work. And a lot of the old hats were very upset going, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's changing too much about the Marine Corps. But after the war in Ukraine, he was almost completely vindicated because if the Chinese are training to counteract tanks, what do you do? You drop tanks. So I don't know if you have an experience with that or have any background knowledge or anything, but. Yeah. So, okay. So the, I was at the temporary manual on expeditionary advanced basing operations.

That is the living document that the commandant and his advisors are trying to flesh out right now. You know, every day I'm on Marine Corps Gazette, United States Naval Institute proceedings where everyone is debating this hot topic. You have General von Reiper, retired four-star Marine Corps. He was writing under the pseudonym as a Marinus for a while on the proceedings, basically coming out and bashing the commandant. Yeah, you were right, obviously in Marine Corps ditched tanks,

so completely divested, sent a lot of them to the army, sold some to Australia, and then put them in a reserve tank bark for possible future use. As for the artillery, I haven't seen the exact numbers on which M777 batteries are being stood down. I know that it is happening, but I don't have the official numbers. So that's something your readers can go research while running our apps. I know I used to work with guys in eighth Marines and they, a lot of ARRI guys,

and they were pretty upset that they essentially lost their job that already was going away. And I know the Marine Corps has kept a few and they've had the force redesigned with the Marine Litoria Regiment or third Marines rather out in Hawaii. But it's amazing to see that there was a lot of foresight on the front end of America's expeditionary force that's going to be the first in any anti-combat zone. Projecting the future, going, yeah, we're ditching this. Who are we fighting? China? Where's the fight? China? We're not fighting the Russians anymore? Cool. We'll let the Europeans deal with Russia. I think it was a lot of Trump holdover, but I think it's a lot of

being prepared for the next fight because the Marine Corps was being painted as the second army for a while and everyone really wanted to get away from that. And so the new EABO plan is essentially island hopping from World War II or World War II and securing that first island chain and preventing any of the Chinese troop movement in that area in the event of a war.

Yeah, so yeah, a lot a lot of stuff here to unpack. You know, while you're talking, I actually pulled up the actual numbers for what the what the Marine Corps is divesting. So 24 infantry battalions, we're going to go down to 21 artillery batteries from 21 to five, amphibious vehicle companies from six to four and reduced tilt rotor attack and heavy lift squadrons. Now exactly what you're just saying, you know, EABO, you know, how do tanks help us do that? How do artillery batteries help us do that? How do all these legacy systems help us do that? Not only help us do that? How do all these legacy systems help us do that?

Not only help us do that, because obviously amphibious vehicle companies, artillery can be used in EABO operations. However, when you look at what happened in Guadalcanal in 1942, infantry Marines cut off in the jungles, no naval support, no air support, basically acting as a guerrilla force. That's called distributed operations. That's what the Marine Corps is trying to get back to. Probably twofold, yes.

Definitely to prepare for combat with China, because with China, extremely modern military, probably second to us, yeah, probably second to us. Yeah, probably second to us in terms of size and also advanced capabilities. I definitely say they're more capable than the United Kingdom, more capable than France. So it's kind of a Sweden, definitely more capable

than all of our allies that are located near and around China, you know, Australia, Japan. So, but there's also a second aspect to that which you hit on. The Marine Corps being identified as the second land army. Throughout the history of the Marine Corps, there has been six or seven attempts to absorb the Marine Corps into the Army. Now, a lot of the reason why that hasn't happened is because the Marine Corps propaganda machine is strong. We publish books, we have nice uniforms,

we're physically fit, we're able to sell to the American people, hey, allow us to have money to be Marines, have our own uniforms, do our own thing, we will win battles for you. And this is how we're going to do it. And this is why we're different from the Army. So yeah, with that with that groundwork laid, you know, we talked about what the Marine Corps is divesting from, but what are we gaining? MQ9 Reaper. Yeah, MQ9 Reaper. Yeah, I'm Kenan Reaper. There's currently four VMUs,

which are the Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadrons in the Marine Corps that fly the RQ 21 Blackjack. What's going to happen the next five years is VMA one and VMA three, which are on the west coast in Hawaii, they're going to be given the MQ nine, the VMA two is they're going to be given the MQ-9. The VMU-2 is going to continue to operate the the RQ-21 until they run out of money for that program record. And those VMUs on the west coast in Hawaii are going to stand up a 24-7 orbit of MQ-9 in the Indo-Pacom region for the Marine Corps. So we don't have to keep begging the Air Force for ISR.

We're getting that capability. We're also getting the Marine Latorre regiments. Now the Marine Latorre regiments, you can say a lot about it, whether you disagree or agree with their combat power. But just looking at it flat face value, it's composed of one infantry battalion, one ship killing battery, one anti-air battery and one combat logistics battalion. Now, obviously that anti-air battery probably gonna be operated by LAD. I don't know what that ship killing battery is gonna look like.

I don't even know which weapon system they're gonna be using, but that's how the Marine Corps is planning to do distributed operations. They wanna take these Marine Latorre regiments, drop them off an island, and hey, reduce your electromagnetic signature, reduce your ability to get killed. We don't want you to have these huge iron mountain deposits of logistics. We don't want you to have this huge headquarters set up. We want you to survive against mass precision fires from the People's

Liberation Army Rocket Force and the People's Liberation Army Air Force. You're absolutely right. It's, Rancor is really doubling down on their decision. And I, in passing, spoke with a commandant a few months ago and he was very serious and almost wanted to sit down. He's like, do you have four hours? We can talk about this. down. He's like, you have four hours. We could talk about this. I'm like, I do not have four hours, but very serious, very committed. And Marine Corps is going right back to where it came from. And if you think about a big picture, there's two divisions in the Pacific, one third Marine

division, second, second infantry division in Korea. Their whole job is to stop the Koreans, not the Chinese, because if a war starts, we can go tinfoil hat theory here, pretty sure China's going to absorb the North Korean government and pour in from the South, just kind of keep those guys down and disregard the second Busan perimeter situation. But the Marines are a bit out there, so they have to stay ahead of the curve one or three or maybe five steps to be able to counteract this rapidly militarized States. And so what is, I want to know your theories about this.

The Chinese government based their entire military doctrine around the Soviets back in the day, and they've been stepping away from it, but they haven't had a single war and a conventional fight in a while. So how do you think they would perform one-on-one? Because the workstations haven't either, but they've been training in, they fought in Afghanistan 40 years ago, but they were also in Syria and they fought in Chechnya and they fought in Georgia. And they use all of those little micro wars to kind of plan their doctrine around. Did they listen to

it? Probably not, but the Chinese really haven't. So how do you think they would, in comparison to the Russians right now, how do you think they would perform? And this might be just, you know, a long shutter conversation that can go for hours, but. Yeah, I mean, you look at, you know, know Chinese military doctrine but also Chinese culture um you know I definitely think President Xi Jinping has done an excellent job of gearing up uh the Chinese psyche for an offensive war. You know I'm not going to say that the Chinese military hasn't had any experience in fighting foreign wars.

The Chinese supply the largest percentage of troops to the UN mission in Africa, and you've got Chinese soldiers being killed by militants in Africa. So they're definitely seeing combat there. Also, you've got People's Liberation Army um, doing anti-piracy operations, uh, in the Horn of Africa and, uh, and East Africa, they've got their base, uh, in Djibouti. Um, so they're out there, they're hooking and jabbing, definitely not to the extent of, uh, the Russians in, uh, you know, getting their black eye in the Ukraine, not to our extent, uh, in executing the global war on terror.

Um, but you know, there's a lot of ways to learn. You can learn by experience, you can learn by observation and, you know, there's a lot of ways to learn. You can learn by experience, you can learn by observation. And, you know, as we know, the Chinese intellectual property theft, hacking, all of our most of our after action reports are unclassified when it comes to doctrine tactics. So, you know, I don't want people to be wrapped up in the idea that, hey, the Chinese haven't fought a foreign war. So the second that the Chinese soldier faces off against an American Marine, they're going to crumble.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I think it's wishful thinking. But you know, there is some, there's some value to that in having that experience. You know, as soon as you induce friction into a war plan, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, not having that experience of getting punched in the face once on a operational and strategic level. Yeah, I think it is going to have some sway but I don't want people to go into a conflict with China thinking we got this because extremely capable. Yeah, and we can, I can kind of get into the composition disposition of the people's liberation army Navy and what that would look like against Taiwan. If you want to get into that real quick before we get into that, I want to not draw a comparison, but mention that Russia invaded Crimea and Europe really didn't do anything, but China builds an aircraft carrier

and Japan builds three and Australia builds two. And it's almost like there's a naval arms race going on in the Pacific, not seen since the 1930s, where the local states are very hesitant at trusting any Chinese increase in military size or capability, where in Europe they were going, oh, the Russians won't do anything. Which is, you can take that as you will. I know a lot of NATO partner forces, especially Poland, went, no, you can't trust the Russians. And we were training the Ukrainians. But the Japanese on their own are rewriting their constitution to say, yeah, the territorial defense force has got to go. We live

next to China. So it's, you're absolutely right though. And I do want to bring it back up before we dove is that the Chinese have been sending military forces to Africa and a peacekeeping humanitarian role. And not a lot of people talk about that because in Africa, who we usually talk to or talk about the French in Mali, who just lost against the insurgents. And then Wagner was hired by the local government through the Russians to help stabilize the region, but the Chinese just showed up and said, like, yeah, we're here to help. And they're also exporting a lot of their industrial capabilities into that

region. but I do know that the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Taiwanese, the Australians, maybe not New Zealand, but those local neighbors are more mobilizing and very passive tense for anything that may happen. Yeah and I'm really glad you brought that up because, you know, you and I have the foresight and, you know, based on being intelligence background and then also knowing the geopolitical relationships there. I see a lot of talking heads talking about China, the United States, it would never be China v the United States. I don't see any scenario playing out where,

you know, if you've read 20, I think the book is called 2040 or they do a great job and sorry, I'm kind of all over the place with this because I'm extremely passionate about this one issue. You look, you read Ghost Fleet. Ghost Fleet presents a scenario which I think is extremely unrealistic, in which case the Marines in Okinawa get wiped out in a Russian and Chinese joint attack, kind of like Pearl Harbor, and our allies don't do anything. Australia doesn't do anything, Japan doesn't do anything. South Korea doesn't do anything. I don't see a scenario where American ships are being sunk in the South China Sea or American bases in Guam. Japan, South Korea are being hit and those partner countries don't get involved. China does not have a lot of alliances, at least in good faith. They do have alliances with Myanmar.

They do have a tentative partnership with North Korea. But there, I don't see it as a, I got to choose my words carefully here. I do see it as an ideological support and that they are all authoritarian dictatorships. However, you look at the bonds that hold together cultural, political, historical, Australia, South Korea, and the United States fighting defensive wars with them against the Japanese empire in the 40s. And then all the nation building that we did in Japan, which built this great alliance between us and them,

you don't have that between Russia, excuse me, between China and their kind of satellite nations that they're buying out. So, you know, yeah, you probably see the Myanmar military and the North Korean military get involved. But I think the through AUKUS and then through the Quad, I think the United States has set itself up comfortably to combat China with allies there. That is true. And we just talked about those humanitarians being sent to Africa. If China and Myanmar are quasi relationship and Myanmar has a, had a coup go down last year, don't you think if you want to be good friends, you would send your peacekeepers to help stabilize the reason almost like Kazakhstan and the Russians back in January, where just, I'm

not totally dialed into that entire relationship. Maybe you are, but I think you know, with our alliances, huh? With Myanmar, that relationship. China, Myanmar. Oh, yeah, I don't know if you want to elaborate on that. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, I might have to edit a little bit. Yeah, so the the relationship between the the Burmese government Myanmar, if your listeners aren't familiar, Myanmar and Burma can be used. synonymously. But China has helped the Burmese government and their northern borders. They've turned away ethnic fighters at the border.

China has engaged outposts of ethnic fighters on the border. There's a significant Chinese population along the northeast border between Myanmar and China, which China tries to protect by negotiating with the Myanmar government. But Chinese companies also have extensive mining rights in northern Myanmar that China obviously wants to see flourish and they don't want regional conflicts to affect their bottom line. So I think China wants to keep that border secure. They want to keep their interests engaged. They also want Belt and Road to thrive in Myanmar. They want access to their ports and infrastructure. So that's why, you know, when I was talking about the health of the relationship, it's definitely more of an economic political one as opposed to, you know, the Myanmar are our brothers

and we want to protect them. Yeah, that's kind of how I see that relationship. Sorry, to cut you off. Yeah, I can definitely see that working out. And if you're the Chinese and you have to find allies somewhere, you're probably going to partner with the locals, your local neighbors. What is China border? 17 countries, 1900s. It's, they already have the North Koreans in the bag. They're kind of like the rogue state, but nothing happens in North Korea without the Chinese consent. But yeah, I wasn't totally educated on that relationship of sending support to the Northern border with Myanmar or Burma. But yeah, it's a really good point to bring up. And yeah, you're absolutely right about, I don't see a kinetic war between the US and China going down anytime soon because the two economies are so

intertwined that both would be, especially the Chinese, they'd be ruined. Because if they're an export economy and the whole world sees them as the aggressor against the neighboring state, no one's going to buy their stuff. I mean, you could look at Lithuania who recognized Taiwan and immediately the Chinese try to shut that down, but the Lithuanians are going, I'm over here. What are you going to do? So.

Yeah. And you know, you bring up the, uh, you know, what a, what a conflict between the United States and China would look like. Um, you know, we're both, both countries are building towards the possibility of it. Um, but what that would actually look like. I brought up ghost fleet, kind of unrealistic scenario made for a great read. Like I brought up ghost fleet kind of unrealistic scenario made for a great read. And then I read 2040, which in my mind was a extremely plausible scenario, in which case you have kinetic at least the first half of the book. When it starts going nuclear, that becomes a little less, you know, I buy off a lot less on that.

But you know, what happens in the book in case your listeners haven't read it, China has a spy ship. It's disguised underneath the People's Maritime Militia. It's disguised as a fishing vessel, but it's actually full of crypto gear and it's a listening ship. It has a onboard emergency and a United States destroyer, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, tries to render aid into the vessel.

They board it, realize it's a spy ship, and then they try and steal our steal. Then they seize the cryptological gear. And then the Chinese military sinks that ship. And then that just rolls downhill into a full kinetic war. And then you have nuclear weapons being used against San Diego, Shanghai. So made for a great read, but I think those opening moves are extremely plausible. All it takes is a single miscalculation between two ship captains or one battery commander. And you know, you and I know this, maybe your,

your listeners don't. The centralized command authority of the Russian Federation looks like a playground compared to how centralized decision making is in the Chinese military. You know, you have direct direct control coming from Beijing to tactical units. So, you know, yeah, is it possible that a, you know, a low level Chinese commander will make a decision and sink an American vessel? Maybe, not likely, but you know, as China continues to build up

the People's Liberation Army Navy capability and they're putting more ships out to sea, the possibilities for miscalculations are just going to increase. And I want to loop back a little bit because we were just talking about one social media into China's allies and their previous kinetic conflicts. Number one, China's sensors, a lot of their almost the entire internet censored. The Russians, they can do whatever they're the second largest or were the second largest native speaker on the internet outside of English. It's Russians were really intertwined with what's going on. And that's why Americans or Ukrainians or Dutch could go on to a Yelp review and talk about what's going on a war or what's going on in the war in Ukraine by commenting on a coffee shop

in St. Petersburg. But the Chinese don't have that. And the Chinese have a very centralized education system where you just talked about it. They're preparing their population for a potential war. The Russians were doing that too, but they were also really tied into the West, where China is very centralized. And two, I don't think a lot of people remember that China supported North Korea during the Korean War and invaded and surrounded the Marines. That's kind of like a famous story. But two, they were sending a lot of their guys to Hanoi during the Vietnam War to support combat operations against the Americans. And once the Americans left and South Vietnam fell, they had a land war against North Vietnam,

or just Vietnam at that point. And so the Vietnamese are very hesitant. And even if you want to look at like political ideology, they're both communist governments, but the North Koreans do not, the Vietnamese do not like them. And so it's almost a presence in the region because these boards are very recent that the

Chinese, if they go somewhere or they have any kinetic relationship with a allied force, they almost potentially, and I could be wrong, don't want to trust them in the full extent because they went, Oh, remember you supported Vietnam, then you invaded them and then immediately had a border clash with the Indians. And then they're still having border clashes with the Indians today. But social media aspects are really big because they have tick tock, but it's very censored and the only tick tocks they get from the West are from state approved and you just said, said it is centralized. So the government is approving down to the lowest tick tock account with six

followers or whatever. What gets shown in China and it better be pro Chinese. So I don't know if you want to elaborate on that. Yeah, I mean, you know, China got internet access in 1988 and then the great firewall was thrown up almost immediately. I've never been on Chinese internet, but I've seen screenshots of it. I've gotten a few demos with some virtual machines. And it's like another world, just the the site access you can get. I've been on WeChat, I've been on Weibo, I've

seen Little Red Book, and I've seen Duyan, which is their their primary social media platforms. And this is what really worries me the most because this authoritarian model where you have it's hyper techno authoritarianism is one of the terms that I really like that I've seen used to describe the CCP. Surveillance of their citizens, state-run social media, it's extremely pervasive, extremely censored, complete control of information, and then obviously making access to Western internet illegal through the use of VPNs. That's what worries me the most. Because you know, the Chinese military, hard power, really simple ways to combat that what we've been doing, you know, since friggin 1775. However, this explosion of social media and how the Chinese are packaging their hyper techno authoritarianism into an exportable model. I think that's where everyone needs to be worried about because if they find a

way to package this system in a way that other countries can start buying it and implementing it on their citizens, that's where you really see the paradigm shift in global politics. The Western Judeo-Christian ideals of liberty, enlightenment thinking, all that crap that we sell, sorry, not crap, all that ideals that we sell, America's here to bring you freedom, that kind of stuff. If that is displaced as the global hegemony for this hyper-techno-authoritarianism, in which case you can just censor everything you want and surveil your citizens and crack down on them with social credit scores, I think that's where we see America losing.

Well, we can look at... I don't mean to interrupt you, but there was the Olympics in China recently. And when these Olympians were going to China, they were not allowed to talk about the living conditions, but a few Australian Olympians bought a phone, like a burner phone, and were posting the living conditions, how the rooms were disgusting, the water pipes would break. They were getting fed malnourished meals to where the Chinese Olympians were getting fed full, really nutritious meals, but everyone else was getting fed next to nothing or undercooked chicken and that the Chinese authorities were showing up to the Australian Olympian compound and went, yeah,

give me your phone. And they recorded these interviews or not these break-ins of the Chinese authorities saying, no, delete this. No, you can't show anyone this. And they reported that to the Olympic committee and they said, hey, shut up. We're at the Olympics. We kind of want to win. So it came down to almost like a, the Chinese essentially won where you can look at CNN or BBC or Al Jazeera that reported on this, but it was a one or two article piece. And then quickly died because they went, everyone went, oh yeah, we all partner with the Chinese. We don't really want to ruffle that relationship. But yeah, I haven't had not thought about how other nations would adopt that social credit system. But we can look at it on Instagram.

I mean, we're all shadow banned. So yes. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, the vignette that you mentioned about the Olympics, if China cracks the code on how to make that the popular way of doing business mainstream in the world, that's where you see the United States stop being the world's superpower. So yeah, I guess. So we're gonna go to about that time.

So if you have anything you would like to plug, go right ahead. Yeah, I mean, obviously run the Tesseron News page on Instagram. If you want to follow it, you got to look up Tesseron News 2 and then follow the link to the original page since I am shadow banned and you can't look it up. Also go on the atlasnews.com. I'm writing on there as well. Yeah. And, you know, everything that we talked about here today, I hope sparks some sort of interest that way you go out and research it yourselves. When I was in the Marine Corps, I would, when I would have the initial counseling with my Marines, I would tell them, you know, this is one of the metrics that you're going to be graded on for your foot rep is being an auto didact. I need you to not be. I need you to be an intelligent intelligence Marine 24 seven meaning when you get off work, it doesn't stop. You have to be reading all the time. You have to be researching stuff all the time and you have to one, give a shit and then to be interested,

which are kind of synonymous. But yeah, so I highly encourage all your listeners to just fact check everything we said. And, you know, I hope I have sparked some interest and I hope it was worth your time as well. And thanks for having me on. Of course. And real quick, last question. Do you have one Instagram, one Twitter, one YouTube page and one book that you recommend for getting pretty good dialed in information? Uh, for a general sense. I have a ton of resources.

Yeah, you can't use single source reporting, but it's like Instagram, you just go to Atlas News. Like that's the best one. Yeah, I guess that would be, if you're just looking for like flash military reporting, I would say, you know, all those pages that make up our niche little open source community on Instagram. One thing that people don't freaking read, and I think they should, especially if you're an American, the Congressional Research Service, they publish articles daily.

And this is what congressmen and women are reading to get spun up on issues. So if you Google Congressional Research Service, go on on their website and you can probably read some articles that they just published today and they cover everything. Nocturne, policy, funding. Yeah, highly recommend to readers read that as well. Okay. Well, Tess Raum, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you very much, man Anytime. All right, take it easy Thank you. Thanks for watching!