James Stout

I think it was a New York Times investigation along with someone else.

It was a good podcast about labor violations at sea.

And they specifically looked at some of these fishing vessels and the fact that they use people who are essentially an indentured servitude.

But they also touched on private maritime security.

These days, we see a lot less piracy off Somalia, right?

Like it has reached its peak.

I found this little chunk in an article I was reading on JSTOR this morning that I thought was interesting.

Quote, maritime security companies have been consulted on Greenpeace activists attempt to climb onto a Gazprom offshore platform in September 2013.

to protest drilling in the Arctic, and attacks against oil and gas installations by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

So I guess these people have a wide remit in which they operate.

As I say, they're somewhat different from land-based PMCs because land-based private military contractors are generally operating either with backup from a state or as backup to a state.

And so there is like an accountability mechanism somewhat there.

We saw in the global war on terror that we still lack accountability mechanisms for private military contractors on land, but that certainly remains the case on the ocean, right?

Yeah.

So another thing we should consider here is the historical parallels, right?

And the obvious historical parallel would be to look to 1987 and what's generally referred to as the tanker war, right?

What the United States attempted to do was to open up a channel.

The Strait of Hormuz is very narrow, as I said.

Its narrowest point is just 21 miles.

There are two channels, because obviously not the entire 21 miles is deep enough for ships to go through.