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Chapter 1: How are drones transforming modern warfare?
You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Towson, stand-up comedian, speech writer, prose writer, many other kinds of writer, and most likely to be carved in stone upon my death, podcast host. I'm joined, as always, by my panel of experts, our expert on the military and foreign policy, Chad Scott. Chad, how are you doing?
I'm doing great. Really looking forward to speaking with a good friend of mine here. This is going to be awesome.
Yeah, this is going to be a great episode. I'm really excited. And I can't wait to hear what you guys get into as well. And I'll be here to explain what the passerby, the average American does not understand because you guys are both experts. So I'm excited to really get into it with you both. And joining us, of course, as always. our expert on energy, both renewable, oil, global oil markets.
You know him as Mr. Global, Matt Randolph. Matt, how's it going?
Oh, it's great. I'm knee deep in the swamp and the Capitol Police have already seized my Yeti cup and I'm sitting here feeling very lonely without it.
And are you enjoying your complimentary NSA bugged hotel room? Yes, I am.
That's why we're having all these tech difficulties. No, they did. They took my Yeti cup. And if you're from the South, your Yeti cup is like your child. It's like your emotional support cup. I was about to say, that's maybe a real cultural insult to you. I'm like, dude, I'm just trying to get into a gift shop. Like I got to get my wife something before I leave.
And they took it and then they lost it.
Is the logic that Yetis are large enough to conceal a handgun? I don't. Because I've seen some of that.
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Chapter 2: What insights did Preston Stewart gain from his trip to Ukraine?
And we're going to talk about energy policy and how high energy prices impact people. Right out my window is the Supreme Court of the United States. So, like, I'm literally in the middle of the swamp and I need to take a shower. I feel like I feel a little dirty.
I like that we've reclaimed that now that Washington has been infected just by the worst people on Earth. Well, you heard it here first, listeners. If we do not reach a sensible national energy policy, it's because I went long on this episode of the podcast and Mr. Global was late. So if humanity is doomed, you can blame me.
But for this episode, I don't want you to blame our guest because it will be my fault if we don't reach 350 parts per million in the atmosphere, climate solidarity. in the next week. However, I'm so excited to bring this guest to the podcast. We're really excited to talk to him.
He is the host of War Stories, a podcast that breaks down war, conflict, geopolitics in a digestible way, making it easier for everyday people to understand. Sounds familiar. a former U.S. Army officer and West Point graduate with a degree in international relations and has served as an officer in the 101st Airborne, the Texas National Guard, and the U.S. Army Reserve in Tennessee.
He has a massive following across multiple social media platforms and networks and does amazing works of charity for 198 Ukrainian causes. I'd say that he does amazing works of charity for Ukrainian causes. I'm so excited to bring to the podcast. Welcome, Preston Stewart.
Matt, thank you so much for the introduction. Looking forward to chatting today with my buddy Chad and getting to meet Matt and chat for the first time here.
So happy to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us. Preston, I was hoping for those of you who might not be, for the listeners rather, who might not be as familiar with your work, in spite of my stellar introduction that explained almost everything, I was hoping that you could go into a little bit more detail.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and sort of how you went from military service to being a content creator who comments on these sort of things?
Yeah, absolutely, man. So I left active duty in 2014. So it stopped being my full-time job then. From 2014 to 2025, I was in the Guard and Reserve. So bouncing around between those two.
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Chapter 3: What role does energy infrastructure play in the Ukraine conflict?
the Russian-Ukraine war. And then as other conflicts have kind of come and gone, Iran, US, which as of today, I don't know, maybe it's over. I wouldn't say it's gone. Go on.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you with my pessimism. No, no, no. That was it, man. My skepticism. I'm curious. You touched on this briefly, but what's the difference between a tank and artillery? I'm sure that when you talk to other people who have served, for example, in the military or who work with the military in government, there's a lot of jargon. There's a lot of shared vocabulary.
And obviously, one of the things that we try to do in this podcast is open up these conversations to other people. And I personally, as someone without a lot of military expertise, I find that what often happens when we discuss military especially military action abroad, is that we use these same phrases and everyone's kind of parroting each other.
And you even hear in civilian conversations, people saying these phrases that we don't 100% understand because it's like, okay, someone gave me some building blocks and now I know how to rearrange these to have an opinion on Ukraine, which is not to say people are like, you know, not trying to understand the situation.
But what I'm curious with you is like, how do you break through that kind of jargon or that kind of established vocabulary to, like, it sounds like people are really reacting to the clarity of your media. Like, how do you, how do you cut through and how do you know as a person who's really on the inside of it, what you need to make available to other people?
or comprehensible to the average American.
I'll be honest, Ned, it's kind of a daily thought process. Is this too far in the weeds or not? And I try to navigate that with pulling on experts. So we'll do interviews from time to time with people that are very well-versed in a certain subject and try to kind of pick their brain rather than my trying to get too far down in the weeds. But It is. It genuinely is a balance.
Look, the military jargon can be really cool and can sound awesome, right? Effects on targets and target packets and all sorts of things you can put together. The number of acronyms through the roof, like you mentioned, and you can use that. It's kind of speaking code to your tribe in certain ways.
But the number of people relative to the rest of the audience that would understand that is pretty minuscule. So I try to – take that information from military sources, be it Ukraine, Russia, or here in the United States, Israel, Iran, and kind of just back it off a step or two.
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Chapter 4: How is Ukraine adapting its military strategies in response to Russian tactics?
And there's a guy we had on recently talking about all the situation in Mali. And it's a great example of like, I don't even know how to pronounce most of those towns. I don't know what the geography of Mali is. I don't know the history there. I can read some articles on it and get an idea.
But he would just dive right in to like, you know, what's happening on the northern approaches to the capital city. And we had to back out a little bit and say, hey. Higher level. What is this group? What is that group? How do they play together?
So it's selfishly kind of I love it because I get to learn and talk to these guys and ask the questions, the very simple questions of like, I don't have any idea what you're talking about. Can you start over at the square one? So we try to keep that as a part of it. It's easier in English language interviews. We do some with Ukrainian soldiers.
And when you get through a translator or it's a second language, it gets a little bit harder to kind of walk that line. But I think it's important, man. I think it's what you guys are doing here, too. It's just an ability to reach a larger audience.
Yeah, it's kind of funny because we'll even cross services. We run it because I have conversations with Alex, our mutual friend, Alex Hollings, and he's like an air power guy. And I'm like, OK, well, I'm you just because we were both in the military. We can often speak different languages. I mean, I was a ground logistics guy. He's an air power Marine.
So it is, it's kind of fascinating, but kind of diving into more of what you've been doing recently as an avid follower of your content. I know you got back from Ukraine. I think it was just a few weeks ago, maybe a little longer based on the release timelines.
Before I get into that discussion on the tactics and strategy and all the cool people you met and everything, I do have a question, and it's something I've always wanted to ask you when you go there. How do you actually get in and do the things you do? Do you go through Romania? Is it Poland?
Do you fly there, then get on a rail, meet with a liaison, and then they kind of prep and you work together? Yeah. And then the other question is, do you just shoot the footage for OPSEC, operational security reasons, and release it when you get back to your home? Or are you allowed to just edit on site and show what's going on as you're going through it?
Yeah, and I appreciate the commitment to the show because we text. You could have just sent these over. We'd be talking on the phone. I want to know. You held it in this environment. Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm trying to go with you is what I'm trying to do.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of drone technology on civilian safety?
How do I do it?
How do I do it? And where do you get the ticket? Who do you ask? So the, it's been different.
I've been over two times and the first one, my parents actually described as an adventure and the second time more as a business trip. And they were, they kind of matched that. So the first time around, we went through, it was all personally funded. Like I bought the tickets and.
went through romaine or excuse me uh poland so we landed in warsaw get anybody can get to poland normal flights uh bounce around a little bit from warsaw then it's a uh a train into kiev and that was like 17 hours so it's an overnight train pretty comfortable all things considered uh the second entrance was through moldova which never thought i'd ever be in moldova yeah and
And it's like a two lane road. You fly into that airport. It's pretty small. We got on a bus as a group this time, and they brought us through kind of a southern entrance into Ukraine down near Odessa. Customs is a mess getting in and getting out. It's just it's a it's an active war zone.
It's a war zone.
It takes forever. Yeah. But then getting around the country is a bit different and a bit unique. I was fortunate my first time to effectively be with the military start to finish. So I was with an American volunteer that's fought there since 2022. So we were in a military vehicle and able to just go through checkpoints and go to straight to military headquarters.
You wouldn't be able to do that if you just showed up. But the weird thing about Ukraine is any one of you guys can just show up right now in Kiev. You can get there and and start walking around.
In terms of the OPSEC and the recording, there were a handful of times where they would say no pictures, no phones, instances where we couldn't even bring phones into an area, command posts, some drone factories, things like that. And then with no phone, there's clearly no recording with anything else. most of it was pretty open. Like I was pretty surprised.
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Chapter 6: How does the military jargon affect public understanding of the war?
And they say, yes, fine, go for it. Like, zero issue at all. Then there was another one where we talked with some of the guys from the Middle Strike campaign, and it was over the top, where they let us record anything, but then they wanted... everything blurred to the point where it wasn't really worth releasing.
Um, and, and we respect that, you know, run it through, but in retrospect, I wish they would have given us that information up front. We would have gone about it in a little different manner, but, um, teamwork, I'd say start to finish.
Yeah. So when you say middle strike, you're talking about like, obviously not frontline, but obviously not deep strike hitting Moscow. You're talking about kind of their logistics in the back, the, the command post. That's when you're, when you say middle strike, that's what you mean. Yeah. Yeah, man, it's getting wild.
It's they showed us a drone that it's a bomber. So fixed wing drone dropped something about the size of an 82 millimeter mortar. And it's relatively autonomous, as in they set the coordinates with the bombs. They send this thing off it because there's not a direct connection of controlling it. It's very hard for Russia to intercept it. It's very hard for EW to jam it.
It has an accuracy of five meters. Yeah, there we go. Thank you. And they have a massive return rate on these things. So they can fly out past 50 kilometers. And I think they said they're launching multiple missions a night. They've lost one in like the last four months.
It's incredible. So to be clear, that's like there's no transmission that can be interrupted because they're pre-programmed. So they're not detectable in that same way.
Interesting.
Yeah.
There are still ways to shoot it down. I mean, you can shoot it down, of course, but compared with other drones that are being controlled start to finish, there's just fewer ways for Russia to do that. So that's the kind of stuff that's starting to emerge.
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Chapter 7: What are the humanitarian efforts supporting Ukraine during the war?
Or is this just kind of another flash in the pan tactic where, yeah, Ukraine has found some distance to have tactical advantages, but really Russia will catch up and we'll be back to a stalemate kind of situation? What are your thoughts on that?
Overall, much more optimistic than my first visit. Maybe it was weather. This was springtime in Odessa, which is a beautiful city in the south. Last time was winter in eastern Ukraine on dirt roads. So I don't know. Maybe that plays a part into it.
But overly optimistic in the sense that Ukraine is now, I would argue, for the first time in the war, at least in the last few years, if not in the entire war, they have Russia on their back foot. Russia is trying to adapt and trying to respond, and they're having a hard time doing that.
Now, we should expect that Russia will find a way to stop the volume of these drones flying between 50 and 300 kilometers. But they haven't yet. And it's been a growing issue over the last couple weeks. And I'm excited to get Matt's take on this because we're seeing the refineries get hit. But it's very hard to pin down, like, what does that actually mean for the war effort?
I would add that we went to the Black Sea Security Forum. And in there, they were maybe a little too optimistic, I would argue. There was a lot of talk about after the war, especially with technology and innovation and how they can bring drones to the rest of Europe. And I get the desire to want to start talking about that.
I think it's the right move at that level, but shows you how far it's come. I'm sorry, where was that conversation, just for our listener? That was in Odessa at something called the Black Sea Security Forum. It was a pretty cool event. They had these military conferences essentially around the world, and this is one that's hosted on the Black Sea in Odessa, so a southern port in Ukraine.
I want to say this is the third year they've held it. But, you know, kind of a think tank type tech companies come in, military companies come in, units come in, politicians. The U.S. was represented by Senator Kelly, Senator Gallego, and Senator Blumenthal were all there speaking. Mm-hmm. It's pretty wild. A pretty big discrepancy.
I don't mean to interrupt. I just want to make sure our listeners understand who are the players having these conversations. And you're saying that it was pretty optimistic or overly optimistic even in the framing of it, you think?
I think so. But it's also that that's a bit different than the soldiers that we interacted with. We're very much head down. We've got a job to do and we're going to keep doing that job. And as you go up the chain to the politicians that are trying to solicit more investment into their country and to try to paint a good picture.
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Chapter 8: Why should Americans care about the Ukraine conflict?
That is the one thing I think Russia could be effective at is really hurting the Ukrainian people by striking that energy. And you know better than all of us, Matt, what that looks like. So do you have any thoughts on that or any discussion on what you think with the energy situation there?
So actually one of the things that I agreed with from the Trump administration, I think Preston would agree with me, under the Obama administration, they really –
did not want ukraine striking russian energy infrastructure they i don't know whether it was through agreements through you know the weapons we were giving them or whatever but ukraine was really kind of hands off with russian energy infrastructure under the obama administration you mean biden you mean biden yeah the biden did i say obama um yeah yeah the biden yeah people will use that against me now um you're gonna go to congress who was the most recent president
But no, really, when Trump came in, he was like, you know, have at it, you know. And so since Trump got into office, they've really been hammering Russia's energy infrastructure. And what's amazing is to see, you know, Ukraine will wipe out some refinery. And the moment Russia gets it back online, they just wipe it out again. Like, so it's just this never ending thing.
But what kind of got wrapped up in all of this? So first of all, China was buying. the vast majority of Russian oil because it was under sanction. So it wasn't really getting to the market and having much of an effect on prices globally.
Uh, but then you had the whole, you know, us, Israel, Iran thing kickoff, and that really muddied everything that was happening everywhere because most of this oil from all these places was going to China. Uh,
as far as how it it's not really had a huge impact on energy prices globally but the lifting of sanctions against russia by the united states has helped russia tremendously being able to sell oil to countries that were facing shortages uh to like you know europe and southeast asia and so that's that's given russia a huge boost in uh in money basically uh they've they've made a lot of money on this
it's going to be really interesting to see how this works with the iran deal maybe or maybe not wrapping up and and how because the fact the matter is most most all iran's oil went to china most all of russia's oil went to china so it was never absorbed by The paper market, right? You know, the price you see when you Google oil prices. Is that going to continue?
If Iran sanctions are lifted, are Russia's sanctions, what's going to happen there? Because it seems like they're lifted and then put back in place and then lifted. All of that things, all of those things matter. And now Russia or China has been.
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