Natalie Winters

Obviously, there's a lot of

developments going on, not just in the Taiwan Straits, but in mainland China with the meeting between the opposition leader and Xi Jinping.

I'm curious how you think the sort of various outcomes of what we're seeing going on in Iran kind of affect the PRC back at home, obviously, with reporting being that they were kind of quite instrumental in helping the ceasefire even be agreed to.

But how you think this just sort of affects the broader geopolitical situation?

Yeah, I mean, from start to finish, from cradle to grave, basically all of the domestic drone manufacturing done in Iran is aided and abetted.

It's buttressed by Chinese technology manufacturing.

And I understand what you're saying on the China front.

I think there's no disputing that these countries have acted as proxies.

But I think to me, to help square that logic chain, I think it's incumbent that the administration really seriously then address

our defense industrial base, right, and the shortages that we're now seeing as a result of what is going on in this conflict, not just by the rearrangement of forces, but by the deployment, right, of interceptors and missiles that we're seeing we now have really critically low levels of.

And I think that in some cases, the way that the Pentagon is approaching...

kind of fixing or trying to up those numbers is just by giving massive amounts of money to the same military, industrial complex giants, these defense primes that got us here in the first place.

And I don't think, I mean, in my opinion, that we've seen enough movement

to deter the Chinese from, I think, viewing America as being in a place that is, from a defense industrial base perspective, adequately supplied to effectively deter China.

Obviously, this conflict is going on in real time, so that's something that has to play out.

It takes years to make just one submarine.

But I'm curious how you sort of view that problem as factoring in to the lens of the China issue, but also the

ability or the prospect of boots on the ground and how you think that would affect the calculus?

Brian, if people want to read that piece, I'm sure they will.

Where can they go to get it and where can they go to stay up to date with everything you're putting out?