Brandon Weikert
Appearances
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Thanks for having me again. It's good to be here.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Well, Trump loves gold, and so I just assumed this was his continuing fixation on the color gold. The golden age, you know, it's all gold, man.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Well, the scientists that I speak with, I've been talking to these guys since I wrote the book. A lot of them were sort of on background sources for me. They're very skeptical, generally, of missile defense of the kind that we're talking about. I am not skeptical, obviously. I think we have the technology to do it. It's a question of political will.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
We finally have a politician in Donald Trump who wants to do it. So he's going to point the direction and the scientific community is going to have to catch up. This is what, by the way, JFK did, right? 1962, he goes to Rice University, gives a speech saying, we're going to go to the moon in 10 years. Everybody's looking around going, WTF, what is he talking about?
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
And almost to the day, a decade later, we were on the moon. Because of the political buy in. And I think something similar is happening here, especially because everybody in D.C. is aware that China and Russia notably have capabilities that can hit our homeland now.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
And more importantly, even some of these radical terrorist groups like the Houthis apparently have a Palestine to hypersonic weapon that's threatening the Israelis. So we don't want to live in a world where we don't have any kind of defense.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Well, at the time, the first time it was mentioned really was the Reagan administration. Remember Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative. Back then, the technology was really not quite mature yet. So, the scientific community was able to kind of push back and the
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
State Department types who don't want to upset the apple cart diplomatically did not want to up and mutual assured destruction by making nuclear weapons basically obsolete. So they were able to kind of drag that process out and not get it. But now the technology has matured. We now have directed energy capability.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
However rudimentary, we now have more complex systems that can go at different levels in and out of the atmosphere to shoot these things down. We have better sensor capabilities today. So the technology has finally caught up with the dream. And so the idea here is that we are going to create a comprehensive layered defensive network
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
And basically, they're going to have to come along with us, these diplomats and these scientists, because they're allocating $175 billion for it. So, that's too much money to ignore. So, it's going to happen, I think, just because of the amount of money they're throwing at it.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Big lasers, basically. Big energy weapons. Laser beams. Yeah, the giant freaking lasers. Now, we have had a lot of problems. The Chinese are actually ahead of us on directed energy weapons. The Russians might be on par, if not ahead of us. But the idea is that by dumping this kind of money, $175 billion into the program, Whatever issues there are with that particular technology will be overcome.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
This is something that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has explicitly noted, along with hypersonic weapons, that he wants his defense department to get done. And so when you have that kind of level of political buy-in and that kind of money floating around, They're probably going to figure it out.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Now, whether or not it's going to be the defense contractors taking a cut off the top for themselves, that's a whole other story. But I think we're going to get there politically and technologically a lot sooner than people realize.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
I mean, I actually think we could probably do it cheaper than $175 billion, but of course, they're not going to let that happen. But, you know.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
I think so too. That might be why Trump wants a trillion dollar defense budget. That might be the real reason is we're going to space, baby. Yeah, there you go.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Well, the first thing I would argue is that it's been inadequate for decades. Going back even to the Cold War, everybody kind of knew our air defenses when it came to intercepting nuclear weapons. We could do it, but not the way that our defense planners really wanted to be able to do it. The costs involved were always high. It's very technical. Think about it.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
You're basically shooting a bullet with a bullet. Okay? That's basically what you're doing, is that you're firing a missile at an incoming missile. And so, that has always been very complicated for anyone to do. So, this has always been a problem. And our current system is basically very rudimentary, the ballistic missile defense shield. We don't have enough of those interceptors.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
They're very expensive to make. After the Cold War ended, the political class sort of didn't care anymore because there were no more enemies. And so, we're playing catch up in that regard. What the Golden Dome is, is it's not just ground-based and sea-based interceptors. It's now also space-based. So we're going from the ground up and from space down.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
And so the idea is it's going to be very layered and it's going to have multiple advanced sensors with multiple points of intercept. And obviously, the more eyes on a target and the more capacity to intercept a target, even if it's moving fast, the greater the likelihood you can prevent it from hitting its intended destination or its intended target.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Yeah, you're lasered in, to pardon the pun, you're lasered right in on it. So this system will also deal with the ballistic missile threat, the conventional threat. But yes, it's going to also significantly address the hypersonic weapons capability. The problem with hypersonic weapons is not necessarily they're going fast. That's a misnomer.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
They're not necessarily going faster than a ballistic missile. The problem is the way that they can radically maneuver after they get to their terminal phase. So they're coming in like a ballistic missile would, but then they start kind of going crazy and that's to evade known capabilities of our air defense system as it stands.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
So what the Golden Dome is trying to do is they're trying to basically add layers of sensors in space because they also are able to launch faster, and these systems are able to evade, in some cases, our tracking capabilities.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
So, they're trying to add other layers of tracking, and then eventually they want to put, and this is something that Lockheed talked about at a conference I was at back in 2021, they want to also put interceptors in orbit because they think it might be actually easier to knock A hypersonic weapon out from orbit rather than trying to shoot up at it as it's approaching.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
So that was an interesting theory. That was back in, I think, 2021, 2022 in D.C. They were talking about that. And I don't know if that is what they're still going with, but I know that was in 2021. They were talking about this capability.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Well, the first thing is, and the Russians also, you know, Putin was very upset, although I note that his upset was not as vocal as I thought it would be. And I think that's indicative of how interested in a deal he wants with Trump. But anyway, Xi Jinping was quite upset. And that's because. I think it's a matter of projection.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
The Chinese know that space is not only our greatest advantage, our ability to use space for coordination and communication over vast distances, for interception as well, but they also know that it's our greatest weakness because we are so poorly defended in the strategic high ground of space.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
We have let our space capabilities, our military space capabilities, wither on the vine since the end of the Cold War, and China's catching up with that. And so they're worried that we're going to start plugging those strategic gaps. I'll remind your audience, after Trump announced the creation of Space Force, now mind you, China's had their own Space Force since 2010, as has Russia.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
But after Trump announced Space Force in 2018, 2019... The Chinese were apoplectic over that. So they're projecting, they're letting us know this is a key vulnerability they don't want us to strengthen. They want to exploit it, whether it's with nuclear missile threat, hypersonic weapons threat, or just anti-satellite weapons attacks to deny space to Americans.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
This is why they're so apoplectic over that. It has nothing to do with the concern about international law or norms. The Chinese regime doesn't believe in the international law because they think it's a Western construct.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
I mean, my favorite right now is that demanding a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine, even as they're threatening to absorb Taiwan. It's indicative of the regime.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
That's right. That's right. We're getting rich off of the war. Yes.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
Yeah. Well, I think we're going to get started. I don't think we're going to get the whole system stood up in four. I think it's going to take about a decade. I think the key thing here about feasibility is we have the underlying technology and the handful of things we don't yet have, we're still developing. So it's not like we're starting from scratch.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
And so I believe that when you have the political leadership that we have right now to get it started, that's the key thing, getting it started. I think that we will start seeing it happen. Now, the question is, can it cover the whole North America? The reliability or usefulness of the comprehensive system, that is TBD. That's to be determined.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
But ultimately, I do think, I look at this as mitigation. So I think that if we can mitigate the threat that ballistic missile and hypersonic weapons pose by a significant percentage, even over parts of the country, I think that's a win. And you have to remember, this is how the Russians have thought about missile defense. People don't realize this.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
We actually didn't start the push for missile defense. That was begun by the Soviet Union in the late 50s, early 60s. They ringed Moscow under Khrushchev. They ringed Moscow with the Galosh weapons system. which was an early form of air defense for nuclear weapons attack.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
And the Soviets were very clear, we're not going to save the whole country, but we can prevent the Capitol from being taken out in a first strike. So it's mitigation. And if you live in Florida like I do with hurricanes, mitigation is a big deal down here. So you're not going to necessarily avoid a hurricane, but you can at least survive it and weather the storm.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
This is the thesis of my book, my argument, and I show the history of it. First, we militarized space, which is basically meaning we were using it for surveillance and communications. But in my research, it looks like space has already been weaponized. Back in the 80s, there was a lot of talk that the FOB system, the fractional orbital bombardment system,
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
The Soviets and the Americans were trying to put it up there. We know the Russians and the Chinese have put co-orbital satellites, otherwise known as space stalkers, in orbit. These are small satellites that tailgate our systems. And with grappling claws, they look like something from Moonraker, they can latch on and push our satellites out of their orbit.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
I have an article pending at the National Interest right now talking about one system in particular, our geosynchronous orbit. That's the highest orbit around the Earth. We've got the nuclear command control communications, NC3 functions. We've got the wideband global SATCOM and the mobile user objective service system for the Navy.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | May 24th, 2025: U.S. Intel: Israeli Strike Incoming & Trump Reveals The Golden Dome
All three of those systems, the Chinese have targeted with these space stalkers. They have placed, I think it's the Shijian-21 in orbit, and that system can latch on to our systems in geosync and push them out of orbit. You could technically destroy or at least degrade America's nuclear deterrent by getting rid of those NC3 functions in orbit.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Well, the Arctic is basically America's back door. And for about 30 years, at least, since the end of the Cold War, we've left it relatively open and undefended. And for a period of time, that was okay. But now we're living in the age of
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
you know, the return of empires, the multipolar world order in which both Russia and China are operating together to try to damage America's standing in the world, to threaten us, not just abroad, but closer to home. And one of the areas that Russia in particular has pointed out to become an area of Russian dominance is the Arctic. Greenland is a strategic location.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
It's sort of the linchpin for the whole region, and it's basically sitting open. And Denmark owns it technically, although there's some debate even about that. But they're not really doing anything with it. And there's maybe 56,000 people living there. It's this massive landmass. And by the way, it's chock full of mineable rare earth minerals. Denmark doesn't have the ability to mine for them.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
They turned to China during Trump's first term to try to get them to do it. And of course, that's what prompted Trump initially to say, we got to get Greenland. And he's continuing with that strategy because he knows the Chinese and now the Russians aren't stopping.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
So it all goes down to mineable rare earth minerals and oil and natural gas. All of that is some of the world's largest untapped reserves are in the Arctic. Russia has like an 1100 kilometer shoreline with the Arctic. In 2007, many people don't know this, but the Russians sent a submarine to the North Pole and planted a flag underwater in the North Pole. The symbol was, we're taking it.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
A year later, the Russians announced in their national strategy memo that the Arctic was becoming a Russian enclave, that it was actually more important to Moscow than even Ukraine or at the time Georgia was. That shows you why they've been revitalizing those old Soviet naval bases in the Arctic.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Also, because of whatever's going on with the climate up there, there are these new waterways opening up. The Russians are building the world's largest icebreaker fleet to move the ice out of the way to build the northern sea route, which Russia says is going to become an alternative to the Suez Canal. So there's a lot of economic, military opportunities there.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And the Russians have about a 10 to 12 year start on us. and in developing the Arctic.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they were clearly, that was not just a little PR stunt. At the time, BBC and these other Western media sources sort of downplayed it. It was like a little cutesy thing that the Russians did. But everybody, I mean, I knew what it was. They were telling us, they were telegraphing what they're planning to do.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And like I said, a year after that, that's when Moscow issued their national strategy memo saying, in which they said by 2020 they plan to basically control over half of the Arctic, which they did by 2020.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And now there's a new round of national strategy documents being released by Moscow, which clearly indicate that not only are they going to expand upon that dominance, they're going to bring the Chinese with them. And so now we've got the Chinese crawling around in our backyard.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Yeah, that's a great question. The Russians have the Northern Sea Route. Of course, America and Canada are sitting on the Northwest Passage, the famous Northwest Passage. We can't use it because the United States and Canada are in a territorial dispute over who controls it, which is ridiculous.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And by the way, this is why Trump's ... Another reason he's talking about absorbing Canada is to settle that dispute in our favor. But the Russians with their Northern Sea Route, they're using nuclear-powered icebreakers. They have, I think, seven of them or eight of them. We have two very old non-nuclear icebreakers. We're having trouble building new icebreakers.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
So the Russians have a lead on us. They use those icebreakers to basically create paths in the ice for ships to follow through, either civilian container ships or military vessel surface warships. And now the thing with this route is it basically connects Vladivostok, which is Russia's farthest port city on the Pacific Ocean, all the way up to the Baltic Sea of Northern Europe.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And so basically this is being billed as a safer route. easier route for ships to use. It's actually shorter for ships transiting through the Suez Canal, rather than using the Suez Canal, which, as we remember, two or three years ago, there was these huge jams. There was a ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
There's all the instability of the Middle East that we always have to worry about that could blockade Suez Canal transit routes. So, this is bypassing the instability of the Middle East. basically by getting international shipping to go through Russia's backyard, which, of course, will give them a lot of advantages.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Yeah, we have a Space Force facility in Greenland. It's a monitoring and tracking facility, officially. There might be more going on there than meets the eye in terms of surveillance and whatnot. We used to, in the Cold War, have basically an entire network of facilities and tracking stations in Greenland, going to Iceland, throughout Canada.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
that we maintained that was part of our national defense for tracking incoming Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. Today, we don't have those capabilities the way we used to. We mothballed them at the end of the Cold War. I was speaking, actually, yesterday with a Russian...
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
In Russia, I was communicating with them over Zoom, and one of the things he said is the Russians are very worried about what Trump is saying, because not only could that allow for the Americans to possess the rare earth minerals of Greenland and have real capabilities to compete with Russia economically for control over these trade routes up there, but more importantly, the Russian submarine force, which is probably their best naval asset, their submarines,
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
They plan, if a war breaks out between the United States and Russia, they plan to basically sneak their nuclear submarine fleet underneath the ice of the Arctic, which is poorly defended, and to launch nuclear strikes on American East Coast cities by transiting through the Arctic, which we are not defending against.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And so they're worried that we're going to plug that gap under Trump, and I think we will.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Personally, I think it's already a done deal. I think it's just a question of officially recognizing it. It looks like the Greenlanders are already going to be pushing for independence from Denmark. If anybody remembers the absorption of Texas and California into the United States in the 19th century, both of those entities were once part of Mexico. They declared independence.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
They existed for a period of time as independent republics. and that made it easier for them to be ultimately absorbed into the United States. Something similar, I suspect, is happening.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
The bottom line is, Denmark cannot develop Greenland or provide for the Greenlanders the kind of possible economic opportunities that the United States could with all of the development programs we want to do in terms of building
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
mining operations there and creating really an entire industry of mining rare earth minerals, oil, and natural gas up there that will bring all kinds of prosperity to that region. Totally.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
It would become a massive economic boom, not only for Greenland, but it would increase our GDP as well as a nation.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
I am the worst person to talk to about this because I'm fundamentally an offensive realist, and I do not believe morals should ever enter into the equation when we're talking about the affairs of nations. in the international order, it's a game of power and the ability to basically defend yourself while keeping your enemies on the back foot.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
We are no longer, in fact, in the post-World War II environment that you're talking about where there was a rules-based order. We are back to the 19th century, a multipolar order, specifically a tripolar order in which there will be spheres of interest and it will be a question of which power has relative greater power over the others.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
The three powers today, the United States, Russia, and China, all of us, all of us, and we're a little late to the game in the United States, are doing this in our respective spheres of influence. Russia and Ukraine, China with Taiwan and the South China Sea. This is just the nature of the beast, and we'd all better get used to it and start playing the game better than they do.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
They've come up with a BS-laden term that's never existed before, calling themselves a, quote, near Arctic power. And that is sort of their attempt to muscle in on the great game that's going on for all those massively lucrative resources in the Arctic and all the, they want access to the trading routes up there that are being created. And so my personal opinion is if Beijing were smart,
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And they won't do it because it's very complicated legally. But if they were smart, they could possibly make a claim on the South Pole and Antarctica. But they really cannot make the claim on the Arctic. There is no shoreline that they share. There is no ocean that they share with the Arctic. That is not their area.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
But what's going to happen is, the closer that Russia and China become over the Ukraine war, the more likely that Russia will bring the Chinese with them. And it's already starting. And that's where the complications are going to arise for the United States.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Well, Russia, they're a strong power, and a lot of the Western media gets Russia wrong. At the same time, though, they're not the strongest of the three great powers. The United States is still the top dog, the Chinese are second, and the Russians are third. And so by basically pairing Russian military strength in the Arctic with the economics and science of China,
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
you have a really unstoppable force. China's the second largest economy GDP. So they're a real competitor with the United States. And so Russia brings them along. It's like a double whammy for the Americans.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
The first part always with China is the geoeconomic, even more so than the geopolitical threat. We talked earlier, they tried to basically angle in on those rare earth minerals in Greenland. They almost got them in Trump's first term. That's what prompted him to basically become obsessed with Greenland. They're trying to do that again, the Chinese are.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And they're trying to do that not just in Greenland, but in parts where the Russians control as well. They're working with the Russians, creating partnerships and whatnot. And so that's the biggest problem, is the Chinese have like a 90% share of the world's rare earth minerals. Those are essential for building any kind of technology that was designed after 1970, basically.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Laptops, phones, everything require rare earths. The Chinese already control almost 90%. The worst thing for the United States would be to allow them to get a complete monopoly on those things. By getting Greenland before China does, we basically ensure that we're getting our own source of rare earth minerals.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Yeah, well, I mean, I am considered a fairly serious person, except on X, where I tend to make really inopportune jokes. But other than that, I am a serious person, and I'm fully on board. In fact, this is the basis of my next book. I've been working on it for three years, The Race for the Arctic.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
and multiple people I've spoken to for the book, real policy people, heavy hitters, military people, retired and current, are very serious about this. And this is conversations that have been had even before Trump was in office the first time. So this is, I mean, remember, we tried to buy Greenland at least two other times in our nation's history.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
William Seward, the guy who bought Alaska under Lincoln, was the last guy to try to do this. So this is, and actually, no, Harry Truman. Harry Truman was the last guy. After World War II, we tried to do that. It was Seward and under Lincoln and then Truman. So this is not new. Our media is just, as you say, silly.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And they also, it's the same kind of reaction they had to when Trump said he was running for president the first time. You were right when you said that. It's the same thing with Greenland. And they're going to be proven wrong again in the media, just like they were with Trump's presidency.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Well, it's basically, if you don't control, and just look at what China's doing in the South China Sea, in the Indo-Pacific, look at what Russia's trying to do in Eastern Europe, specifically with Ukraine. If you don't control the areas nearest to your country, there's no possible way you can project power reliably outside of that area.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And you will always be threatened by rival powers who will move into those areas. And right now we have significant gaps geopolitically in our hemisphere. And we need to plug them because we're entering the new age of empires. And if we don't secure our sphere the way China and Russia are securing theirs, they will eat our lunch here.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
And then we will be surrounded the way that the Americans surrounded the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
Just like the Arctic, there's a bevy of on-tap natural resources. The Chinese have built a bunch of satellite stations there. There's a lot of stuff going on in the South Pole. I would argue maybe even more than what's going on in the North Pole. The thing with Antarctica is...
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
There is technically an international treaty that is governing the use and development of Antarctica that regulates how many people can come from each country, that regulates what exactly countries that have research stations there can do. It's predominantly supposed to be used for scientific research purposes only.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
But that's why it's not a lot going on there in terms of people going back and forth. the way that there is in the Arctic, because it's heavily regulated. But I argue, just as with space, the treaties governing Antarctica are going to evaporate in the new age of empires, and whoever gets there first will have a lot of resources at their disposal.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
That's a great question. I would say it's not even a question of expanding. For us, it's a question of just fulfilling what was begun by our founding fathers. If you look back at our history, yeah, we started out as a collection of 13 colonies that became states.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
But the reason one of the reasons we went to war with Britain in the first place for the revolution wasn't just because of no taxation without representation. It was because they weren't letting us go beyond the Appalachians and we wanted to keep expanding. So it's just sort of a completion of a natural flow that's been going on where we should go next.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
After we get Greenland, we should seriously talk about Canada, if not the whole country of Canada, then Alberta and Saskatchewan. And we need to be talking about Iceland as well. in terms of the northern, and then obviously Panama Canal Zone is another one we need.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 18th, 2025: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Reached & Why Greenland Matters
A Disaster of Our Own Making, How the West Lost Ukraine. It's available now wherever books are sold. And what's your Twitter for everyone? At WeTheBrandon.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
It's great to be back. Thanks for having me.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Well, the first thing is I have a lot of friends in the Navy and they were kind of making fun of President Trump because they were saying, well, this is a short range system and we don't really have the kind of threats that Israel does. Israel is obviously a small country surrounded by enemies. So what's this really going to do?
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Well, if you actually read and heard the executive order that President Trump issued, there's a lot more to it than just Iron Dome. That's the beginning. He makes it very clear. He explicitly states in that EO he wants space based missile interceptors. And so that is much more applicable to the self-defense in the United States.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Obviously, unlike Israel, we are a continental-sized power, and we are blessed by geography to have two massive oceans separating us from our big rivals, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Hey, they're on notice. They're on notice now. Greenland, too. Denmark. That's right. But besides that... I forgot about Greenland. You're right. But no, it's true. So we're blessed by geography. So an Iron Dome is helpful if, say, there's a terrorist threat operating just across the border in Mexico, which, you know...
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
there are now reports, it's no longer just rumor, USA Today did report that, for instance, some of the javelins we gave to Ukraine may have ended up in the cartels, and there's other reports now saying that there may be even bigger systems that the cartels have purchased on the black market, systems that Iron Dome would be useful for deterring, but obviously against China and Russia, Iron Dome is not as helpful, but
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
The EO, the devil's in the details. Trump knows exactly what he's doing. He knows if he comes out and says, I'm going to build a space-based defense system, all of the peacemakes, all of the globalists, all of the utopians are going to come out of the woodwork and try to do to him that which they did to Reagan when Reagan announced a similar thing. We called it Star Wars back in the day.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And so Trump is just basically saying it's Iron Dome, but there's a lot more to it.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Right. And, you know, in the book, in my book, I kind of outline the distinction between, for instance, militarization and weaponization. So really, we've always had militarized space. What do you think Sputnik was, right? Sputnik was a Soviet military operation at the first stage. unmanned human system put into orbit. And ever since then, it was in the context of the Cold War.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And then beyond that, we now have surveillance systems. We have critical communications satellites, civilian and military. We can't exist without space. So it's not that big of a deal to go from militarization to weaponization. And as you allude to, in my opinion, and I show this in the book, And the book came out now five years ago. So if anything, it's moved beyond this.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
But as I show in the book, China and Russia using dual use technologies have already weaponized space with these co-orbital satellites. And indeed, the Chinese modular space station that is a rival to the International Space Station that will exist longer than the ISS, which is set to be decommissioned in a few years. China's military space station is explicitly a military affair.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
So this has always been the argument of what I call in the book the utopians, which is that, well, the system is too complex. We can't rely on it. I can assure you that between 1982, when Reagan first announced strategic defense initiatives, so-called Star Wars initiatives,
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
uh and 2025 i can assure you the technology has certainly advanced significantly you could have made the argument believably back in reagan's time that we weren't quite there yet but we're there now uh and it would not be that difficult for us to really scale this technology up especially if we did do a manhattan project style uh program to get space-based defenses and by the way
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Your audience, I think I've been on before talking about hypersonic weapons, which the Chinese and the Russians have large numbers of. We do not, and we have no active defense against hypersonic weapons. Most of the defense experts that I speak to pretty regularly are convinced the only way we could shoot down hypersonic weapons would be with space-based interceptors.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
So even if we're not talking nuclear war, we're talking conventional warheads on a hypersonic weapon, the only way we can stop it is with space-based defenses. Trump knows that. And by the way, I don't know if you know, but my friend Sean Ryan did a great interview with Pete Hegseth right before Hegseth was nominated as SecDef. And I highly recommend everybody watch it. It's two hours.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Hegseth details the hypersonic threat. So Hegseth, Trump, they all get it.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
It comes down to political will and, frankly, lack of strategic vision. We've had for 30 or 40 years now, the end of the Cold War, we took our position as victor for granted. We thought not only was it the end of the Cold War with an American victory, but that it was the end of history. If you remember, that was Francis Fukuyama's thesis that enraptured everybody.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Of course, Fukuyama himself has since walked that back. But in fact, our enemies did not think it was the end of history. Certainly the Russians didn't. I mean, what a horrible way to end history for them if that was the case. The Russians and the Chinese looked at it as an opportunity, especially when they realized that the Americans were going to seek to dominate the global commons.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
They wanted to create alternatives to that.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Well, basically, the way I see it, and I might be wrong about this, but the way that I see it is we need a layered national air defense system. So you want the long range, be able to deal with it at the long range in space. Then you want to have it at sort of the medium range and the high atmosphere.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And if all else fails, because this is obviously we're talking about shooting down missiles and hypersonic weapons, it's not going to be a foolproof system. If all else fails, you want to have that shorter-term capability sort of as a last-ditch effort to stop the incoming weapon system before it destroys its target.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Well, Trump in the executive order called it space-based interceptors. To me, it sounds like they are planning to use basically projectiles launched from, say, a satellite. They would track an incoming missile or rocket coming in, and then they would have the satellite ready. They would probably pair it with artificial intelligence algorithms for accuracy.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And then they would pop off a series of projectiles to basically destroy the warhead in orbit. Because remember, they have to pass through the atmosphere, through space, on their way down to target. That's how they get to us so quickly. Now, Reagan back in his day was talking about lasers.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And we know the Israelis, by the way, are creating a new system, an enhancement of the Iron Dome called Iron Beam. By the way, both Iron Dome and Iron Beam are being funded heavily by DARPA, by our military scientists.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And so I would hope that the Trump administration is planning to not just rely on sort of the brilliant pebbles approach, but would actually place lasers eventually directed energy weapons. That would be much more efficient than spewing debris in the atmosphere, which would just clutter the atmosphere even more and then risk spaceflight operations indefinitely.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Well, you're not working against gravity. You're working with gravity, right?
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
No, you're right.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
No, but that's one of the key things, and that was actually in the 80s why the Reagan team was looking at space-based, because they realized that it's, you know, simple physics, it's actually more efficient and safer to knock out an incoming weapon in space looking down in the void and shooting into the atmosphere where gravity can increase the speed of the projectile we're shooting at the...
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
the incoming weapon system, as opposed to waiting for that weapon. If it's nuclear, especially, you could still have radioactive fallout over the target. You don't want that, especially as most of those targets are civilian. So you don't want to render a city uninhabitable in the long run by knocking out the missile, but still spewing stuff everywhere. And so that is one of the key advantages.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
I've been told when it comes to hypersonic weapons, There was a Lockheed engineer I talked to a couple years ago now. And take from this what you will, of course, because they have a financial interest in pitching it this way. But the Lockheed engineer I spoke with a couple years back told me that it has to do with the sensor network and basically being able to detect
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
farther away, this incoming hypersonic weapon, and the more kind of sensor data you can collect on that weapon as it is approaching, the more likely you can anticipate, especially if they use AI, you can anticipate some of the radical maneuvers and intercept it that way.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Okay, so in terms of space weapons on the offensive side, China and Russia are very much ahead of us. Not necessarily because they're better technologically. It's because, like I said before, they had the political will and the foresight to invest resources over a long period of time into building real working systems that So, for instance, China has what's known as the Shijian-21.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
This is a co-orbital satellite. It's a tiny, relatively cheap satellite they put a few years back in geosynchronous orbit. That is the highest orbit around the Earth. That is where some of America's most sensitive... Military satellites exist.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
We've got things like the Wideband Global Satcom, WGS, things like the Multi-User Objective Service Satellite, MUOS, that's the Navy, that's what they use to mass their fleet. you know, and coordinate attacks across the horizon. And then there's also the NC3, Nuclear Command Communication and Control satellites. By the way, if we lose any NC3 satellite, we do not have replacements on hand.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
It will take years to rebuild them and deploy them under current acquisition rules. And the Chinese could basically knock out at least part of our nuclear triad by knocking out one of those systems.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Yeah. The reason I even got into space policy, because I am not a rocket scientist either. I was working on the Hill about over a decade ago, my goodness. It feels like just yesterday, but it was over a decade ago, and my first day went on a briefing, and they were briefing us, the Space Command guys were, about lack of spares, and the reason they lacked spares, this was 2013-ish,
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
The reason they lacked the spares was because they weren't being given money by Congress to have extras on hand, and it was because Congress deemed it was too expensive and not needed. So in terms of the NC3 satellite, my understanding is... The reason we don't have many SPIRs for the systems I'm talking about is because they're so far up.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
We never anticipated that an enemy would be able to reach them or would even want to reach them because it's so hard to get there. But the Chinese have placed these co-orbital satellites, which are tiny satellites with grappling hooks, Looks like something from Moonraker.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
They tailgate our systems, and then on a command given by Beijing, they latch onto those American satellites and can push them physically from their orbit and knock them out permanently. And so there are no spares. For the Wideband Global Satcom, luckily, we were able to get funding when I was working there. We were able to get funding to have two or three additional spares on hand.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And I think as of last year, there are now three spares for the WGS, which the Army uses. But for the NC3 and the MUOS... My understanding is there are no spares on hand and we cannot expect any spares anytime soon.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
No, you're right. And I got a little worried when my book first came out. I was told that illegally copied copies of my book were sold very well, apparently, in Russia and China. So.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
I think our enemies are figuring out that the Americans have a nearly trillion dollar defense system that is reliant entirely on these satellites that for a few hundred thousand dollars, you know, that it costs for one of these tiny co-orbital satellites China has, they can knock out our entire trillion dollar or at least our nuclear triad or degrade it significantly. Yeah. Pretty quickly.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
So how it was gamed out when I was doing this in government, we talked about this. It was gamed out by the Air Force that within the first half hour of losing those systems, basically the U.S. military is rendered deaf, dumb, and blind indefinitely. And you can imagine if I'm Xi Jinping and maybe I'm mirror imaging here, but if I'm Xi Jinping and I know I want to take Taiwan before the U.S.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
military is fully prepared because I know Trump is going to be doing reforms, I'm going to first do a space and cyber Pearl Harbor deal. At the same time, to completely distract the Americans at home and then with the space Pearl Harbor, make it physically impossible for U.S. forces to mass and defend key positions throughout the Indo-Pacific before I do anything.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And after I know that, then I go into Taiwan. Why wouldn't you? The Chinese built a laser, an actual laser system. And I mean, you know, laser. And I think it's their Cola East facility. I might be wrong about that. I used to know exactly where it was. But they they built a laser system that temporarily blinds.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
I'm passing by American satellite systems because when you temporarily blind a system, it's harder to attribute to malign action. You know, it might be that the American operators think, oh, maybe there was a solar flare or maybe there was a malfunction on board.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
And they'll spend more time trying to figure out how to fix or repair the broken system rather than think, oh, my goodness, we were just lased. And so there's other systems the Chinese have developed, and they're quite ahead of us in terms of being able to knock out our satellites at every level, not just the high level.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Yeah. No, I'm not saying the Chinese are smarter than us. I'm saying that... Generally speaking, and I'm not saying this is immoral, I'm not making a moral comment, but generally speaking, they have better leaders with a greater strategic vision. The Chinese know what they want, and they understand what they have to do to get it.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
What they want is to replace the United States as the dominant world power by the 100th year anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, so that would be the year 2049. And they have acted on that grand strategy, whereas American leaders until... I believe Trump understands this. I think Trump, he doesn't get enough credit.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
I do think Trump is actually a strategic thinker despite the braggadocio. I think that Trump is the first president we've had probably since Reagan who really had a grand strategy and knew how to apply all the tools of statecraft to get that grand strategy into effect. The problem is we've had 30 or 40 years of really bad leadership that we have to make up for in four years
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
Really, it's 100 days less than now because Trump's going to start losing political capital significantly over the next 100 days.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
You get killed if you're wrong. They'll kill you if you're wrong in China. You know, I tell my kids all the time.
The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | February 1st, 2025: Is Iran Setting A ‘Trump Trap’? & America’s Own ‘Iron Dome’ System
I tell my kids all the time that they're competing with Chinese students. And in China, they kill the dumb ones. So that's the competition we're up against. So, you know, it's.