Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to American Power. I'm Nat Towson. I am your host, a stand-up comedian, speechwriter, many other kinds of writer, and again, most importantly and most nobly, podcast host. I am joined, as always, by my panel of experts. Up first, our military expert, Chad Scott. Chad, say hello.
Hey, everyone. Former U.S. Army officer with more than 16 years of experience, 11 of which was active duty in combat, command, multinational military planning with deployments to Iraq, Korea, Europe. And I have two master's degrees from Maryland, one from Hopkins. Super glad to be here.
That's two more than I have. Also with me is our energy expert. You know him as Mr. Global. Please welcome Matt Randolph.
Hey, Nat. Yeah, I am the energy expert and Forbes contributor. That's me, Mr. Global. Everyone knows him. We don't have to, without mention, he knows.
No, I just kind of forgot who you were. I was doing that thing where I was trying to introduce you guys to each other so you'd say each other's names. Have you met my wife? Yeah, exactly. You're not picking up on the queue. I'm like trying to make eye contact with Chad, but over the Zoom, it's not quite working.
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I get confused with Mr. Worldwide, so...
I follow them both on TikTok. It's confusing. Who is that? Pitbull?
Pitbull. Oh, that's Pitbull. Yeah.
He's kind of like your alter ego.
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Chapter 2: What is the current situation in the Iran conflict?
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I think the thing that I keep coming back to is not to be conspiratorial.
I mean, I don't think it's conspiratorial to say that, you know, a lot of the Democrats who would have to be involved in an impeachment hearing are still taking money from AIPAC, still need those things to not be categorized, you know, attacking aid workers, things like that, to not be categorized as war crimes because they've propped up their entire political identity there.
on that narrative over the past two, two and a half years. And for them to turn and say, hey, you know, that double tap, that attacking the aid workers, that, you know, attacking food supplies to civilians, you know, evacuate bombing the place that you evacuated, you told civilians to evacuate to.
That getting publicly drawn out and categorized as war crimes is going to force a lot of these Democrats into the light to say, well, yeah, of course I knew that was happening in Gaza.
You know, teenagers with a cell phone could see that that was happening in Gaza, you know, like and they lost the information war on like, you know, we would never bomb a hospital, all these things that turned out to not be true. And now they kind of have to maintain this narrative of, well, ultimately, all these things are justified, inflicting harm.
is justified if you are a perceived threat, I suppose, which is a completely illogical argument. But I don't see them publicly airing the definition of war crimes anytime soon when that's still what's funding their campaigns.
They wouldn't even care. But that's the thing, and I wanted to ask Matt this, is does... Is any of this going to matter for Trump? Because he's so hyper-focused on the markets and stuff.
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Chapter 3: How do Trump's statements about strikes on civilian infrastructure relate to war crimes?
I think he's trying to do this to kind of create some impact on the markets positively. Does this actually stabilize the energy markets? It seems like things are getting crazier and crazier. I mean, what do you think on that regard?
Yeah, before we get predictive, can we talk about where we are at the energy markets right now?
Yeah, yeah. Not good. Not good. Period. End of podcast. Thanks.
Short episode, folks.
Yeah. To catch some of the folks up that may not have heard me talk about this before, oil is traded on two different markets. When you look at oil prices on your phone, that's the future market. That's the paper market, what we call it. There's also a physical market. What did it actually cost to purchase the actual oil?
And like I said, when you look up oil prices on your phone, you're looking at the paper market, the futures market. And that's why it's so easy to be manipulated by the administration or anyone else trying to profit off of this war. Typically, the physical market is within a dollar or two of the paper market. So if oil is 100, typically physical oil is 101 or 102.
Well, today, West Texas Intermediate, which is U.S. oil, was trading $40 above the futures market. And what that means is that Buyers mostly in the Middle East because a lot of people may not realize this, but the Middle East does produce a lot of Arab light oil, which is very similar and comparable to West Texas Intermediate. A lot of people think they just produce heavy crude. That's not true.
They produce a lot of light crude that's just like ours. So today it was trading on the physical market at $40 above the futures market, which means US oil was selling for around $150 a barrel. The physical market is what actually sets gas prices. Now, we normally just use the futures market one because it's free access on all of our phones.
You have to actually pay to see the, you know, you gotta pay like Platts or SPC Global to see the physical markets. But if this continues, because last week we saw that happen with Brent and it came back down this week. But now U.S. oil is trading over 140, 150 a barrel physically.
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Chapter 4: What is the impact of targeting power plants on regime stability?
They're being moved to Deal with this Iran situation that was self-inflicted But a broader point is Iran itself has an incentive to keep this going This is what the leadership of Iran is thinking right now time is really no longer an enemy to Iran they see it as a weapon that they can use against the United States and The regime survived this opening shock.
Sure, the Ayatollah was killed, but the IRGC replaced them relatively quickly. The regime did not collapse. And by IRGC, I mean the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They're still intact. Their oil is moving, especially to China. Both the... Public reporting out of places like Reuters and stuff and the U.S.
government is saying that Iran likely still retains meaningful missile and drone capabilities even after taking heavy losses from the United States.
And that means Iran has every reason to believe that the longer this drags on, the more pressure of this war will shift onto the Trump administration, onto Washington, and that economic pain is going to spread, which is going to build that political pressure. And I've been thinking about this. It's almost like an uno reverse situation where
The Iranian regime may actually end up outlasting the Trump administration because of how much of a quagmire this is becoming. And Iran correctly calculated they don't need to beat the U.S. militarily. They just need to stay standing long enough that the costs start mounting and they outweigh the gains for the U.S. Plus, Iran now has a change in their equation.
If the Strait is at risk, if they can keep the Strait of Hormuz at risk... All of those global markets are going to stay nervous, and it shows that the United States is not powerful enough. They're no longer strong enough to fully restore the old status quo. And that means they realize that we have a lot more leverage than we thought. So this is benefiting Tehran.
It's benefiting Russia because of the distractions, because the U.S. is spending... a lot of money focused on Iran and all of that exquisite weaponry that we would have, all of the high-end missiles, the JASMs, which is the joint airstrike missile or something.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but the JASMs, the Tomahawks, all of those high-end missiles, China's really loving that we're using all those up because those were supposed to be for them. So those three, what we would have traditionally called this part of this axis of evil, they're really loving this. And unfortunately, it's leaving us strategically weakened over the long term.
And that is why we don't have universal single-payer health care. So, every one of those missiles. A lifetime of health care. OK, let me ask you this. When you say that the Iranian regime could could outlast the Trump administration, are you saying that American democracy entirely will collapse?
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Chapter 5: How are rising oil prices affecting the global market?
This is the type of people we are dealing with in this fundamental realm. The Iranian regime doesn't care what happens to anyone so long as the Iranian regime survives. And that means we are going to be, if we want to inflict the type of pain on Iran that is necessary to get them to capitulate,
I think it's a situation where we have to, and I don't want to do this, we have to compromise ourselves. And we don't want to do that. We have to do things. It's almost like in Vietnam when we started agent orging jungles and firebomb. It's the whole firebombing Dresden thing. Are we willing to do that? And if not, we need to...
Trump needs to take a step back and find a diplomatic way out of this with our allies. And that's the only way I think this is going to become some sort of end game is either we become evil and terrible as Americans, more so than what we have previously done in some of the other situations, or we do what we've always done and say, hey, allies, come with us and work with us.
And maybe we can work this out with Iran, give and take. They get something, we get something, and open this up. The thing is, I don't think that's in Trump's lexicon. I don't think that is in, he is a win at all costs and I don't care. And I'm worried that it's going to fundamentally change the structure of our fabric within the United States.
Well, let's go back for a moment on that note and talk about the speech last week. Because I think last we talked, we were speculating, what's he going to come out and say? Because at the time... Yeah, it was on the Find Out podcast. We talked a little bit on our own podcast, but then on the Find Out podcast, it was even closer to the event. And we were talking about, would he... claim victory.
And I think you guys successfully predicted that he would have some kind of mission accomplished, some sort of success report, or would he announce an all-out invasion? And
I'm curious what you think of what he actually chose to talk about and how that affects what you were just talking about, which is, you know, our standing in the world, our perception, you know, of will potential allies help us see an end to this? Or is he taking steps in the complete opposite direction? Like start starting with that speech.
I feel like that's the most recent, very public statement he's made about it.
The speech was basically a collage of his tweets for the last two weeks. Like there was absolutely nothing in that speech that was of any substance or value. And that was reflected in markets because oil went to like one hundred and fifteen dollars a barrel as soon as the speech was over. Like he didn't say anything. I don't even know why he he gave a speech. I still don't understand that.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of U.S. oil trading above futures prices?
But I mean, that's not really going to be related to Iran. That's related to the fact that our utility bills are insane in the United States. So like the balcony solar things you were talking about, that was already occurring. And I expect that to grow significantly.
Oh, that predates this past month, obviously, by a long shot. As we are now starting to look at like, oh, no, the cost of driving a car might suddenly skyrocket. That's an overall increase in cost of living.
Yeah, if I had a man, if I had a dollar for everyone that asked me if they should get solar, like I wouldn't even know who I am. I'd be on an island somewhere.
But I feel like there's a button you can set up on TikTok for that. You're saying that like it's fantastical. Like if someone would pay me for energy advice, like that's kind of your whole thing, man. I'm pretty sure we could work that out. I mean, I'm trying to get rid of you.
But the thing is, I can't tell someone if they should get solar or not, you know. I can tell them to look at, you know, because everyone's situation is different. You know, your home. Do you have an efficient home? What are the utilities like where you live? Like everyone has 50 things that they have to consider when making a purchase like solar because it's still very expensive.
Now, I believe in the future, solar is going to be built into everything. You know, your landscaping is going to have. You're going to have fake trees that are that are giant tree looking solar panels in the future. That's just going to power everything. You're not even going to see the solar.
You know, we already have solar roofs where you have normal looking shingles that are actually solar panels. So like solar is going to take over everything eventually. But I think with EVs, there's a lot of fatigue. You know, if you go back, you know, Bush, Obama. And then we had Trump and Biden.
It seems like every president we've had for the last, I don't know, 20 years, we've had periods of extremely high gas prices. And those tend to last a long time. And then occasionally we get a year or two of fairly comfortable gas prices. And then here comes the fatigue again for $4.55 gas. I think that wears people down. And I do think a lot of people will...
really get this fatigue and just start looking at AVs, you know, a little more seriously now.
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Chapter 7: How does the conflict influence U.S. military strategy in the Middle East?
I think that's going to be such a huge development for all of us who want to counter what is going to be a very deadly weapon in the future.
And while I wish a as rapid as possible cessation to the Russian hostilities in Ukraine, of course, I will agree that that is not the worst thing that I've heard all week. So, Chad, thank you for the other least worst thing that I've heard this week. You both succeeded in the challenge. And I thank you for bringing up Artemis, because I do think it's I don't want to brush past it.
There's a nerd inside of me and outside of me and is the current me who's very excited about space travel. And I think it is important that we take a moment to have that amount of wonder. And I like to imagine that if the astronauts on Artemis farther away from Earth than anyone ever has been before, any human being in the history of our species.
ever has been, we're able to look down and look at Earth and maybe realize that in spite of all these conflicts that we're experiencing right now, you know, just how insignificant we really are, but that America is a little less insignificant than everyone else. For Chad Scott and Matt Randolph, Mr. Global, I'm Nat Towson, and this has been American Power from Find Out Media.