FDA Secretary Makary on MAHA, Cancer, Microplastics; Will Thibeau on the Warrior Cast

He's editor-in-chief of BrightBart News and a New York Times best-selling author.

And on this podcast, he brings deep research, prescient analysis, and world-class guests.

He's Alex Marlow, and this is the Alex Marlow Show.

I'm absolutely excited for this podcast.

I've got two great guests for you today.

The first one is the Commissioner of the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration.

Marty McCarrie, this is a super sophisticated guy who's got an unbelievable track record.

He was an oncologic and gastrointestinal surgeon,

trained at Johns Hopkins, and he has a master's in public health.

From Harvard, perfect guy for this type of role,

essential to the Maha movement, essential to trying to restore the trust

in our medical community, which has really been eroded since the coronavirus.

We get into why there's been this huge uptick in gastrointestinal cancers for younger people.

We get into the efforts Trump has made to lower drug prices.

We talk about food safety.

We talk about holding people accountable for that baby formula crisis

that I wrote so much about and talked so much about during the Joe Biden years.

We even get into microplastics.

It's a wide-ranging interview that you're going to love

before we hear from Will Teebo, who's an Army veteran.

And he is tasked with the American military project at the Claremont Institute,

which does a lot of good work.

His mission is to restore the warrior ethos.

And how is that going under Trump and Hexath?

I think pretty well, but I want to get his cake

as someone who lives and breathes this stuff every day.

All that to come on the show.

Let's get into it with Marty McCarry.

All right, FDA administrator.

Marty McCarry is with me.

The administrator, I'd really like to talk to you for a long time.

Really nice to meet you in person.

You too, Alex.

And it's so much on my mind.

I'm going to go something that's probably not first thing you would think of.

The one thing that I've been noticing, because I track medical news a lot,

is it seemed like there's a huge uptick in GI cancer.

And I'm sure there's something you guys have noticed.

Do we have any of you made any progress trying to figure out what's going on?

Because it just feels like more young people coming down those types of cancers

and you're devastating.

Well, one of the theories why cancer is going up in people under age 50,

while it's going down in other age groups,

is that it's what we're eating.

Yeah, because it's interfacing with the GI track directly.

Literally, what we eat is going alongside of that mucosa in the GI tract.

And so the cancers going up are colorectal cancer,

duodenal cancer, small bowel cancer, pancreatic cancer.

These are the GI relabancies.

We've got to talk about a healthier food supply.

We're doing a review of the chemicals.

We've taken action to remove the nine artificial food dyes.

Now, they've been associated with behavioral disorders, not with cancer.

But these are chemicals that do not appear in nature.

And what happens when we eat food that has

30 ingredients on the back, chemicals that don't appear in nature,

it is resulting in an immune response in inflammation.

Body doesn't recognize it.

And that low grade inflammation over time may be one of the reasons that

cancer is triggered in the GI tract.

So what do you think people should be doing to caution themselves from this?

Because the Secretary Kennedy threw out a stat that

something like 70% of the food reading is processed, just horrifying stuff.

I mean, it feels like that's got to be a big part of what should we

be doing to take care of ourselves, the screen, etc.

Yeah, I would say eat healthy foods.

And that's realfood and at realfood.gov, we've laid out what we consider to be

healthy foods, things that come from good soil, things that are not as chemicalized,

meats that come from good farming techniques, seafood that comes from healthy waters.

If we can reduce the overall toxic and chemical exposure,

I think there's benefit there in terms of longevity.

So food safety is a huge priority for this administration and for the Maha team

that you are a part of.

Oh, what does that look like in terms of policy and in practice?

How are you guys working on that?

Yeah, so we're doing a review of all chemicals that appear in the US food supply

that do not appear in the food supply of Europe and other parts of the world.

Now, there's over 1,000 chemicals that appear in our food supply that are banned

in other countries because we've had a regulation called

grass, which allows companies to self-declare chemicals that are safe

without really showing anything.

Grass stands for generally recognized as safe.

It's a rule that was set up to allow butter and salt to appear in the diet without

having to go through rigorous testing.

We don't need testing for salt.

Salt's been around for all of mankind, one of the most common elements in the world.

But it's been overused now and applied to novel chemicals that have been engineered

to make food more addictive or engineered to increase the shelf life of food.

So we're doing a review of all those chemicals.

We are going to close the loophole on the grass rule that allow these chemicals.

And the biggest thing is not banned or prohibitions.

It is educating the public and that's what a secretary of Kennedy has done.

It'll be one of his great legacies.

So one thing that is interesting is I don't think we fully think about

what of our food is processed.

We hear processed food.

We don't like it.

But it's not just candy bars and gummy chews.

It's other stuff as well.

What do you feel like are the things that people are just generally just blind

to eating that's unhealthy?

Well, we're coming up with a definition, an official FDA definition of

what is ultra-process.

And the reason is is that look, you can eat whatever you want.

This is America.

You can have ding dong's and twinkies or whatever else you want.

But when the government is purchasing food, shouldn't we be purchasing

healthier food with US taxpayer dollars?

And so our food pyramid, the new nutrition guidance and our review of these

chemicals is designed to inform procurements.

We spend $400 million a day at the USDA on school lunches and other food programs.

It's like snap.

The military is buying food in bulk for millions of people.

So what we want to do is make those decisions based on good science.

And we want the purchase of real food, not junk food.

Yeah, I saw a video of how to make a cracker with a cracker to get the supermarket.

And it's horrifying.

Like if you have the amount of steps that go into making a cracker,

the amount of ingredients that go into it,

it just seems like there's so many things where we've just been sort of

well to do a little stupor.

And a lot of it is food pyramid related.

This has been something that I've been talking about in my broadcast for years.

This was the original government hopes to me because it was very clear that

the food pyramid is making it deeply unhealthy.

And finally, we've ended that.

Please share the thinking.

Well, look, let me tell you what happens when you destroy

real food and you have now food that's empty.

It's empty of micronutrients.

It's chemicalized.

It's not even food.

It's sometimes it's just what we call inside.

It's food like substances.

And what happens is you eat it and you eat more of it.

And you feel full, but you're not satisfied.

Yes.

And then that makes you have the appetite to eat more.

And what do you have then?

You have 38% of teens today have diabetes or pre-divities.

It's not their fault.

Okay, this is not a willpower problem.

This is what happens when you give micronutrient,

poor food that's chemicalized, that's got a lot of air.

And it gives this false percent signal to the brain that,

hey, I'm full, but I'm still hungry.

Is this more of a regulatory lack of regulation?

Or do we need new regulation or different regulation?

Because we're generally deregulation people.

Yes, certainly.

But in this case, it feels like things have just got way off the rails.

I think it's an education issue by and large.

Yeah.

Now, when the government is buying food like in the SNAP program,

we should buy food more wisely.

And so in the Trump administration, for the first time ever,

you're seeing SNAP dollars go to healthier food and not junk food

because of new waivers.

And this is thanks to the leadership of Secretary Rollins,

where the SNAP programs at the state level,

administrative state level can have these waivers.

So they don't have to buy sugary drinks with SNAP dollars.

Number one thing on SNAP dollars is sugary drinks

followed by, you know, highly processed junk food.

Yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of the sugary drink companies,

they're actually making a lot of zero calorie drinks.

To be infinitely, it sounds like an infinite improvement for people,

but people would just get hooked on the liquid calories,

which just seems like it never works out for anyone.

Well, we won't be able to buy real food.

And if you buy real food, turns out it is more affordable.

So if you eat out for breakfast, let's say you go to fast food for breakfast,

it's going to be roughly $5, $6, $7.

You make two eggs, a little piece of bacon and a piece of toast,

$2.60, about half the price.

So this is a big theme, is that real food is healthier,

it's going to lower healthcare utilization down the road,

and it's more affordable in the short term.

And you know, when we think about drugs at the FDA,

we are actually prioritizing drugs that lower downstream healthcare

utilization, because we have got to change the focus of our healthcare system.

So if a drug reduces the number of dialysis sessions you need,

if it avoids the need for surgery,

if it means you're less likely to come to the emergency room in heart failure,

or in the case of one of the powerful cancer drugs where you're evaluating,

eliminates the cancer, literally makes it disappear.

This is not a chemo, this is a drug, this is a medication.

The tumor disappears, this is with some GI tumors that have a certain mutation,

it's about 5% to 10% of GI tumors are candidates for this drug.

And you don't need surgery, chemo, or radiation.

Now your wife is in this space, she's familiar with it, PD1 inhibitors,

exciting new class, why are we not rallying around,

this incredible therapy, if you're at the bedside,

you want this to get to your patients.

So I've got to answer for you, and I think it's the coronavirus,

I think people lost any trust in the government,

to navigate medical crises.

And this has been a big shame, because I've come from a Western medicine background,

I'm married in several practices, Western medicine,

and I speak to an audience who's increasingly skeptical of anything

that comes from their doctor, it's causing a lot of tension in the clinics for doctors,

and I feel like there's a long way back.

I honestly think that Secretary Kennedy is a great spokesman for this,

because contrary to I think what people think of him,

I think he really is a scientific method guy who wants to look at the evidence,

but there has been this erosion of trust with the medical community,

what's the path back for that?

Well, first of all, I couldn't agree with you more about Secretary Kennedy.

Secretary Kennedy is again making it okay to ask questions,

and that's what he's doing a lot of times.

Now, we as a medical profession,

with all of our mites and scientific rigor,

need to provide good answers for those questions,

but the question he's asking, many Americans are asking,

and I couldn't agree with you more that the erosion of trust

in the medical profession, in the Biden administration,

and I'm not, this is not a political kind of calling out of the Biden administration.

This is data published in the Journal of American Medical Association.

Trust in Doctors and Hospitals was at 71% in 2019.

The year before we came into office in 2024, it was 40%.

Wow.

That's a 31-point drop in trust in a profession I'm incredibly proud of.

Yes, and so we've got to rebel that public trust,

so we're doing everything we can to move to an age-stratified approach with vaccines,

use common sense, get more drugs approved,

talk about food and root causes,

and that's how we're going to rebuild public trust,

not by censoring Americans.

So, one of the big moments of last night,

I think one of the big moments of the President's first year,

most favorite nation drug crisis ahead.

This is revolutionary, and again, it gets a one-thousands of the coverage of,

you know, an activist getting shot in Minnesota.

This could be revolutionary for people and can you describe something to us?

Well, first of all, 95% of Americans love this reform that President Trump got done,

and that is saying that we're the largest purchasers of drugs in the world.

We deserve the best price in the developed world.

We don't want a price lower than Zimbabwe.

Right.

We want the best price in the developed world.

Why are you going to London and buying a drug for one-tenth of price?

That's a real example.

That's with the GLP-1.

Well, now we have the lowest price in the developed world on so many drugs.

Yes.

They're at TrumpRx and Medicare and Medicaid now.

We'll have access to those low prices for many drugs.

A few quick ones you can do in the generous with your time.

Microplastics, how concerned are we?

Yeah, they're going up, and no one really knows the consequences of its estrogen binding properties,

of its inflammatory characteristics.

You know, things are happening in our society that we don't have an explanation for.

As we watch microplastics levels in humans go up to the so high to the point now,

where it's like half of 1% of brain weight at somebody at the time of their death.

So, we're concerned.

We want more education on this, and that's why you'll often see me with a mug or a steel bottle.

Yeah, so what should we be doing in our personal life?

Just trying to cut out the exposure to plastic, hot plastic, what is it?

Yeah, I think, you know, where people get their biggest burden of microplastics are with the

sort of cheap cups and plates and silverware and food that comes packaged with microplastics.

So, there was a study in San Francisco area by some investors.

They were just curious, where are the most common sources of microplastics?

And they found that foods that are prepared with a lot of plastic packaging,

or where the animals are fed, the feed, with the plastic still in the feed,

and that's just a lazy way to feed animals, with the plastic still on the feed.

So, those are the sort of sources where people can educate themselves,

and do everything they can to try to do.

It's hard. I'll be honest with you.

You cannot go to a microplastic free living.

Yeah, interesting.

Was it developing one?

We'll have to touch base on this one again.

Last one, just one that's personal to me, because I did a big, I wrote a book on Joe Biden,

and he had a huge crisis with the baby formula.

FDA did not regulate that very well.

I did not see any accountability for that.

Does that come across your radars or anything being done?

That Biden's FDA really messed up from the baby formula.

It led to a big crisis, big shortage.

I'd babies at the time, it's really hard to get the formula.

Has there ever been any accountability for that?

It was a real tragedy, and the root problem was that there was no innovation in the baby formula

space, so you had really just dominant companies that were controlling this marketplace,

and the real root issue is that we have to allow or competition more innovation,

more types of baby formula, and have a healthier marketplace,

than have really just one company dominate so much of the marketplace.

Because when that happens, you have a supply chain that's dependent on that one company.

Why is it you can't buy baby formula in the United States

without added sugar, or you can't find baby formula in the United States

that doesn't include seed oils?

Parents want baby formula without added sugar without seed oils,

so we are changing the monographs on baby formula to allow for more as part of operation,

storage speed. We're going to get it done, and you're going to see more options.

We're already pretty close.

I'm having here at FDA Administrator Martin McHerry.

Nice to meet you in person.

You too, Alex.

Good to be with you.

Here's something most people don't know. When Warren Buffett was just 13 years old,

he didn't put his money into a savings account.

While other kids were earning next to nothing at local banks,

Buffett put $114 into a little known investment.

Today, that $114 would be worth over $15 million,

and it wasn't a risky trade, it wasn't even insider knowledge.

It was an account that's been around since 1888,

and over the last 25 years, it's averaged 29% a year.

That's what happens when your money is allowed to compound.

Compare that to today's savings accounts, paying less than half a percent,

while inflation quietly eats away at your buying power.

Buffett understood early, banks are great businesses, just not for savers.

If you'd like to see what some investors call the 29% account,

go now to secretaccount29.com.

That's secretaccount, the numbers 29.com.

secretaccount29.com.

Our new guest to the show, Will Tibo is here,

he's the director of the American military project at the Claremont Institute,

which has done great work for a very long time, a lot of longevity over there.

Will, we thought to bring you on because you're an army veteran,

and I thought that what the president did,

to say the union earlier in the week,

I thought he made a real point to recognize people who are not household names,

who are not well-known, who are war veterans,

both modern and from, feels like ancient times, but it's not,

but he had the medal of honor going to the gentleman Royce Williams,

who was World War II, but also people who were involved in the Maduro raid.

I just think that him acknowledging some of our war fighters.

I don't know why this ground was seeded by the left to Trump,

but it feels like something we used to universally agree on was a good thing,

and then now we don't, but it's so important,

we do have a warrior class, and I want to get your reaction to that,

because it feels essential to me to have a country that's driving.

Yeah, Alex, it's such an astute point, and I want to hit on one thing that you talked about

that undergirds a lot of my work.

We have a, not just a warrior class, but a warrior cast.

The fraction of the American population that serves much less the fraction of that fraction,

that serves in combat, and then obviously the fraction of that fraction that achieves such

heroic feats, like we saw honored on Tuesday night, or vanishingly rare.

And that's because the military is an inherently conservative institution,

and I don't mean Republican, or part of the GOP, but I mean,

the military exists based on hierarchical tendencies,

meaning the individual sacrifices and subjugates for the greater good,

for the good of the whole.

And that is something foreign to our small L liberal society.

And I think it's something, you know, again, I'm not saying there's scholarly evidence

back justification for that, but I think it's something that almost ingratiates

and cuts against the grain of what it means to be a Democrat today.

The Democratic Party is contingent upon the ultimate fulfillment of individual desire

and the government's guarantee of those so-called individual rights.

The military is everything opposed to that ethic and that way of life.

It's not to say that everyone should be in the military, but I don't think it's a mistake

that you find such a spree decor and such honor of our nation's heroes

during President Trump's State of the Union.

And you understand that it can never happen under the leadership of a Democrat president.

Yeah, and a couple of really important things I want to expand on in there that I think that

Trump was very precise in this.

And then him honoring Roy Schwiliam's World War II Aviator 100 years old, I think was,

that is one type of warfare that is we forgot about this type of warfare because we don't have

those sort of big world war with ground invasions as we've had in the past.

Hopefully we never do again, but it's important for us not to forget that that was within

the last century. This is not that far off.

And then also a honoring Eric Slover who was one of the pilots flying helicopters in the

Maduro raid just a few weeks ago. And I love the air Slover story because he gets shot in the

leg in the hip and he's bleeding. He doesn't even know he's going to survive. Who knows?

And he still is able to land the helicopter amid enemy gunfire and be a part of a crucial mission

that could transform the whole hemisphere. And you look at the guy and he just looks like a warrior.

He's just got the jawline. He looks stoic. He's exactly what you would want your child to grow

up to be like. And they just gave us all these guys. They gave us all these people to be on

our side. And I just I can't believe it because we want them on our team.

Well, right. And we want our team to be the team that honors and bestows almost gratuitous amounts

of praise and attention on these kinds of Americans. It's perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned

for that to happen. As you probably know, Alex metals metals of honor. Obviously some take

80 years and some take five weeks. But the point I think is that President Trump is not willing

to let bureaucracy get in the way of honoring an American hero. And you and I wouldn't be talking

about chief Slovers heroism. The fact that he took four bullets to the leg, landed the helicopter

knowing that there is going to be no other seamless orderly way to get operators and soldiers

off of the objective in Venezuela. I mean, you know, you cannot script a metal of honor much better

in my opinion. So, you know, maybe maybe there were some bureaucratic steps that President

Trump could have followed. But you don't you don't adhere to that bureaucracy and get the chance

to honor chief Slover at the perfect time for the nation to witness and understand his heroism.

Here's something most people don't know. When Warren Buffett was just 13 years old,

he didn't put his money into a savings account. While other kids were earning next to nothing

at local banks, Buffett put $114 into a little known investment. Today, that $114 would be worth

over $15 million. And it wasn't a risky trade, it wasn't even insider knowledge.

It was an account that's been around since 1888, and over the last 25 years, it's averaged 29%

a year. That's what happens when your money is allowed to compound. Compare that to today's

savings accounts, paying less than half a percent while inflation quietly eats away at your buying

power. Buffett understood early, banks are great businesses, just not for savers. If you'd like to

see what some investors call the 29% account, go now to secretaccount29.com. That's secret account,

the numbers 29.com. Secretaccount29.com. Yeah, it's so it's so cool. And you think about it is it

look, there's a lot of ways to contribute on this country, but I don't know why we would ignore

the warrior class. It's so naive. It's the World War II less than a hundred years ago,

World War I just over a hundred years ago. Some of those brutal wars in the history of humanity

were recent. And for us to be so arrogant that we think that it's just going to be people with

joystick and drones as the only warfare we're going to have. And you're going to be doing it from

a 6,000 miles away. Like we can't have that. We need to have a warrior class of people. And I can

tell you, as I'm a father of boys, it's the one of them in particular. I mean, the guy is a tough

kid. He wants to be tough. He wants to do tough stuff. And I like that that there are these men

who are examples for him. And they're kind of getting pushed out of our culture to some degree.

But I think we can bring this back because I think in our hearts, we know that we're drawn to

these leaders. We're drawn to people who have physical bravery. So my question for you is what do we

do to encourage that? It starts with honoring them. It starts with aligning status, even frankly,

wealth in position in society, with heroism, virtue, and bravery. In my mind, there are

few ways that you can give too much to a veteran. I'm not trying to be self-agranded as in

here. I love it. But I, you know, present company excluded. Trust me. Yeah. The point is,

although the warrior caste is an exclusive, very small group, we should still view it as an elite

group. And this is the trouble I have, candidly, with the left. The left wants to do everything

possible to break the warrior caste. They see the fact that, you know, the military has come from

frankly, generations of service and not as, you know, rarely outside of service members' families,

where there is a tradition of service. They see that as a problem to change, with gender integration,

with expanded diversity recruiting initiatives, and ultimately, with expanded access for illegal

immigrants to serve in the military. Because the left sees this military caste as a problem.

And, you know, in my mind, the military caste, you know, I've been informed by the work of Samuel

P. Huntington, especially his book Soldier in the State, the warrior caste is a reality throughout

history of societies that have balanced individual rights and democracy, with the and really self-government,

with the elite professional military that is charged with executing violence on behalf of the

American interests. Those two things are intention, but there are certain things that cannot happen.

A military cannot be a place for equal opportunity and diversity. One of these things where

how do we even get this mindset in general? It's like, I got a bunch of young kids and I tell them

all the time life is not fair. It's like, why do we feel like that we need it to be that all

genders are represented equally in the military? And if you're a trans person, it's all equal.

I can tell you, it's the, I was a baseball player growing up. The six four lefties got, I'm

six foot, it was kind of skinny right handed hitter. It's the six four lefties got more attention.

It wasn't fair. It just happens. So the why are we teaching people that no, we can even in the military,

even in military combat, it doesn't matter what you're like and what your biology and what your

what chemistry is caution to your veins. It's all we're all just going to be equal. It was so stupid

and then we did this. So this is where I want to go next. Talking about the Department of War,

they're touting the historic recruiting numbers. How different is it to try to enlist? You've got a

Pete Hanks at the Department of War and you got Donald Trump in the White House versus Lloyd Austin

and Joe Biden? Well, it's exactly the point I was making Alex. The military is now seen again

as a place where you are going to have a mission unlike the rest of America. You're going to have

an experience unlike that of the university system. You're not going to be in an organization that

functions like a Fortune 500 board, boardroom. You're going to be in a place that is special and

unique. You're going to be in a place probably rare, you know, out rarely outside of being an NFL

quarterback where you are pushed to your physical and intellectual and emotional limits all at once.

That's what I always loved about being in the military, especially in the Army and serving in

the range regimen. It forced you to be excellent in all verticals and it tested you every day.

Selection was every day, as we would say. I think Americans want that challenge and they understand

that they are going to be challenged and that there is going to be this unique expectation

of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Again, candidly, what we saw into the Biden

administration and what we had seen for decades, I think before it, was that the military was just

another institution of social and political conditions that you can find in plenty other places

in America. And people didn't want that. How much do you think people have? How much do you think

things have changed? Because from my vantage point, all I can pick up on is really vibes and numbers

that are put out in press releases. But it feels like the counts for something. But how much progress do

you get the impression we've made in the last year plus under Trump? I think it's a lot. I mean,

you cannot understate the turnaround of these recruiting numbers. It was unprecedented to

miss recruiting numbers, recruiting goals. Again, because the services set goals themselves.

It was unprecedented to miss goals and the Army and the Navy and the Air Force at least missed

them for three years in a row during the Biden administration, if I'm not mistaken. What I anticipate

talking with friends being around the military in Washington, DC, is there is this morale and

a spread to core back that we can focus on the mission again. We being those who are still

on active duty. There's no more time or room for BS that warriors are going to get what they need

and that they're going to be sent on missions that are dangerous. Their lives are not going to be

easy, but they're going to do so when it counts. And they're going to do so when it serves the

American people, which again was this another aspect of trust that fell apart in the proceeding

decades. Do you think we can go back to where it was? Because sometimes I feel like this is the nature

of what I'm fighting against every day with the left. It feels like whenever we make

progress, it just seems like it can be undone so quickly. Is it we have to win basically every

election or else we risk? I guess the more specific thing is it how much damage was done during

let's just focus on the Biden years? Yeah, a lot. It's not too late. I will say that, but I think

one thing people don't understand, but it's a kind of eventuality that I think was most consequential.

In this realm was the effect of race and sex based quotas for military personnel and programs.

Do you realize that in the second year, the Biden administration, the Pentagon, in placed

force-wide for service members and civilians, promotion quotas based on either civilian or

service members race or sex? For example, 22% of DOD civilians at GS-15 had to be Hispanic women,

just as one example. Those do have a corrosive effect. The mindset shift has been stark,

but if we just rely on executive orders, you know, secretary headsets, bold, policy changes,

those are all things that to your point will be undone day one of a future administration that's

not inclined in the same way. I think we should take advantage. It's not all about legislation,

but this is a time where you need to take advantage of our majorities in the Senate and House

and codify so much of this change in law so that it takes a force of law to undo it, which never

took place, you know, we've been running 60 years of executive orders and administrative policies

that have undermined the military. Let's now codify the restoration of our military in law so

it doesn't happen again. Here's something most people don't know. When Warren Buffett was just 13

years old, he didn't put his money into a savings account. While other kids were earning next to

nothing at local banks, Buffett put $114 into a little-known investment. Today, that $114

would be worth over $15 million, and it wasn't a risky trade, it wasn't even insider knowledge.

It was an account that's been around since 1888, and over the last 25 years, it's average 29%

a year. That's what happens when your money is allowed to compound. Compare that to today's

savings accounts, paying less than half a percent while inflation quietly eats away at your

buying power. Buffett understood early, banks are great businesses, just not for savers. If you'd like

to see what some investors call the 29% account, go now to secretaccount29.com. That's secret account,

the numbers29.com. Secretaccount29.com. Okay, so I want to ask about a couple specifics here,

and you've had some writing on this, which I think is worth highlighting. But let's talk about

women in the military, particularly in combat roles, and you're a good person to opine on this.

Just for me, I try to let... I'm trying to be an Occam's Razor guy, try to look at things in

their simplest forms. I just live in biologically, tend to be physically weaker, but some of them

can be brave. I'm not trying to dismiss it out of hand, but is this going well? How is it going?

There's also the whole point of sexual dynamics in a platoon, doesn't seem very smart to me,

but again, I haven't been there. How is this experiment going? Is it something that you like?

Is it something we should correct? What do you think? It always gets lost in the fact that it's

never meant to denigrate an individual woman's service or the capacity or heroism of a woman

who has served in combat. That's not the point. The point is to understand if such a policy that

allows women to serve in any unit she wants is good for military readiness. In the most important

kind of rethink to understand is that until Secretary Hegseth's announcement that he was going to

study the effects of sex integration on combat units about a month ago, there was no examination

from the military on the effects of this policy change since President Obama removed the

combat exclusion policy in 2014. In the 15 years preceding that policy change, however,

the industry produced a plethora of studies that showed vast discrepancies between how combat

units perform when they are sex segregated and when they are sex integrated. A random corporation

study that closely examined marine core units where women were trained like professional athletes

put in these scenarios and on every metric except creativity, which is important, but it is just

one metric, especially when you compare it to machine gun marksmanship, timeliness on missions,

medical evacuation. In every metric except one, sex integrated units performed worse than sex

segregated units. Even back as far as the 90s, you found that sex integration in military units,

even non-combat ones had deleterious effects on unit cohesion. So you have a lot of evidence

that readiness and job performance at the individual and unit level does suffer and that's because

the military is unique. The military is not a law firm or a university class project. It's a very

special place that I think we should seek to preserve at least some of it as all male because

you know having boys, right? Boys and girls are different and such units organized around that

principle function differently. And it's clear that since President Obama's policy change,

it had become this reason to be to make sure that women had opportunities because they were

women. And it really did come to detract from mission requirements in legitimate merit. The point

is that even if women met all the standards, I think it would say something about our culture

that we were so eager to send women to fight wars on our behalf. Exactly. It's such a great point.

And it's one of these things where, of course, there are individual exceptions. I can't believe

you have to say this stuff. I have this debate all the time with immigration. It's because I'm

very tough on immigration, but I've lots of, of course, you know, wonderful immigrants in my life.

And it's the, my father-in-law is an immigrant. It's the, it's not an individual thing. It's a,

I'm talking macro. I'm looking at the forest here, not just the trees. But if you look at the forest

here, it just seems why is a culture? Do we want to send the fairer sex to war when we have enough

men at this moment? I'm not saying forever to fight the combat wars that we need. And so it just

seems very logical, but I feel like you say that and up until it feels like a few months ago,

you could run the risk of, you know, losing every corporate sponsor you ever had, be out of a job.

It is completely absurd. And that all makes us weaker. Another thing that obviously makes us

weaker is funding the transit of the military, which we did for a while. Are we still doing that?

And can we get an update here? No. Again, by force of executive order and administrative action,

we're, you know, a soldier, if he wants to serve, stay in uniform, must exist as his biological

sex, which again, is so absurd that you even need to say it. Why do we have to say that exactly?

You know, and I think the implementation has taken time. Are there, are there folks who have

undergone some degree of transition and who are still in? Yes, but that, you know, there is a,

there is an understanding that they must abide by the reality of their biological

sex. I think what's ending thankfully is the military as this safe haven for a mental illness,

as a safe haven for personal fulfillment and identification. You know, you would have instances,

I can tell you from personal experience, where struggle sessions would take place over one

trans-service member, because it is true. This is a vanity, this is a vanishingly small,

you know, proportion of the military, but it took an outsized, you know, degree of relevance

in order to affirm and provide taxpayer-funded care that was accessible to no other American.

In many ways, the military led the trans-integration movement. In my view, it should always be the

opposite. The military should never be the leader of social change. It's totally right. Very well

put. Well, the next one I want to get to, and maybe we need to do a part two if we don't have

enough time to fully answer it, but I've been spending some time earlier today as we're recording,

talking about what's going on with AI and the Department of War, where there's a standoff

between Dario Amadez and Thropic and the Department of War. I'm trying to understand this. I want

the, my audience understand it. It seems like, basically, the AI company and Thropic would have

some sort of a kill switch where they could not do what's necessary to help our war department,

but still want to cut a deal with us. Anyway, which seems completely unworkable.

Pete Hagseth has put his foot down, but can you give us some more detail on what's going on

and what you think the outcome could be? Right. And so Anthropic, which is the provider of,

you know, what many consider to be the best, large language model and the only large language

model, at least for the time being, that could function on classified military networks.

They, they had an internal company policy that they didn't want their software to be used for

domestic surveillance of Americans, one, which is illegal. And the military doesn't conduct,

and even if the president asked them to, that would not be the military's job. But again,

it's illegal. And then second, autonomous, they didn't want their software to be used for autonomous

weapon systems, which, which again, is not something that the military does, the military does

not take humans out of the loop of lethal kinetic decision making. And so in my opinion,

and Thropic used these two principles as red herrings in order to force a confrontation

with the Pentagon, who, who wanted streamline access to a very important aspect of military

decision making platforms, they, they wanted to, they didn't want to, you know, consult Dario Amade

in the middle of a war, if he was comfortable with his software being used for certain,

certain instances. You know, in, in my mind, this, this begs the question of, of what is the role

of the military versus a private company in our political life? The military is accountable

to the electorate, through the appointment of Secretary Heggseth and President and the election

of President Trump. A private company does not get to then produce, you know, oligarchical layers

of oversight on how the military uses the tools it buys, just based on the company's preference

and the company's policy. If anthropic wants access to the military market, then I think they

should be willing to let the military be the judge of when is the appropriate application

of their software and then let the American people be the jury into how it's used.

I'm sure they would agree, but, but they're trying to let their company's constitution override

the American constitution. Yeah, but it seems like anthropic is really the only place that can provide

this specific type of AI that is useful to us. And so at the moment, and so I don't know if maybe

it's, if it's another company can catch up, but it just seems like that sounds, that sounds unrealistic.

But the thought that this company is making demands of the military, basically at a moral level,

they're basically moralizing to our military, I just find this to be sort of frightening to be frank.

Well, exactly. It's about the military being accountable to the American people.

And if we're going to use such important critical software, if the military is, then it's the

military's job to adjudicate right and wrong. Again, no one's asking to mass-surveil Americans,

that's not possible, it's against the law. No one's asking to use unfettered autonomous weapons.

You know, it is a question of the military having autonomy for war fighting. We've been through

this. Google did this with a project called Project Maven almost 10 years ago. Google has

since regretted that decision and they'll basically do everything now to get back in the military's

good graces. So the military is not foreign to this. It is, I think, this persistent everlasting

tension between Silicon Valley elite and the U.S. military. Okay, Will Chippewa, there's great

stuff. We're going to be able to keep up with what you're doing. You're writing everywhere.

So just tell us what you need to keep up with stuff you're thinking about.

Yeah, I'm on X at William Teebo, full name spelled out. Check out the Claremont Institute

Center for the American War. We got to spell Teebo for people, T-H-I-B-E-A-U. Not a joke.

Tee-H-I-B-E-A-U, you guys got to get that. I like Teebo.

It's a little different spelling there, but okay, so what else we need to know?

Yeah, that's it. We have some good work coming out before the summer.

Check out the Claremont Institute again and stay tuned.

Okay, well, make sure to keep me in mind when you got stuff you want to promote because

you get to catch up and get that perspective and you do some great work and I'm happy to

showcase some of it here. All right, that's today's show. Thanks to Misty for putting this together

and everyone in the audience needs to produce your Greg Evan and we'll see you all next time.

Here's something most people don't know. When Warren Buffett was just 13 years old,

he didn't put his money into a savings account. While other kids were earning next to nothing

at local banks, Buffett put $114 into a little known investment. Today, that $114 would be worth

over $15 million and it wasn't a risky trade, it wasn't even insider knowledge. It was an

account that's been around since 1888 and over the last 25 years, it's averaged 29% a year.

That's what happens when your money is allowed to compound. Compare that to today's savings accounts,

paying less than half a percent while inflation quietly eats away at your buying power. Buffett

understood early, banks are great businesses, just not for savers. If you'd like to see what some

investors call the 29% account, go now to secretaccount29.com. That's secret account, the numbers to 9.com.

secretaccount29.com