Just Where is That Self-Driving Car Taking You?

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1:00This is the Tom Harbin program. Hey, welcome to the program. I'm Align with us is Joe Siruncioni, the National Security Analyst and Author, former advisor to the State Department, plowshares, fun, all kinds of what an incredible background Joe has. He also has a great substag newsletter. It's called Strategy and History. The URL for it is Joe Siruncioni.substag.com, C-I-R-I-N-C-I-O-N-E or just put, just go to substag.com and plug in strategy and history and it'll pop right up. Joe, welcome back to the program. It's been too long since we've talked. Well, thank you very much for having me Tom. Pleasure to be back. It is always a pleasure and an honor. I was fascinated by your piece six months of failure over on substag talking about how

2:02last week marked the beginning of the seventh month of this absolutely unnecessary illegal criminal war that Donald Trump has launched. We were talking about the damage that this war has done to Americans, to average Americans, to America's reputation around the world, to the rule of law and how it's basically helping Putin and Iran and Xi and everybody else. So go for it Joe. So let's just sum it up. You know, one, Trump has not accomplished a single one of his objectives. The regime is still there. It's stronger than ever. It's more hard line than ever. Two, the Iranian people have not been liberated. They are probably suffering more now than they ever have been in part due to the economic conditions that have deteriorated in Iran because of the war. Three, they have not solved the nuclear problem. Remember, this was the big justification for the war. There was supposed to be two weeks away from a bomb that was never true. We've done damage to the program, but we have not eliminated that program.

3:04They still have a highly-umaged uranium. They still have advanced centrifuges. They still have hundreds of scientists and engineers that can rebuild that capability. And finally, and this is where they come to the damage part, we haven't shown American resolve. We've shown American incompetence. So we've we've sewn out among our allies regionally and globally about the wisdom of US decisions, about our ability to implement a military to protect them, to be able to secure them. And it also states, which have thought that having US bases in their region was going to give them security, now look at these bases as a liability. It opens them to attack. And finally, I would say that it shows that the US military, which actually seemed to perform very well at the beginning of the war, you may remember people saying that this was a tactical success, but a strategic failure.

4:05Well, it's now clear that the military did not perform well, both in the mistakes that were made in killing innocent people. Remember the very first day of the war, we killed 150 Iranian schoolgirls and we've hit schools and hospitals since, but also in the failure to anticipate what Iran was going to do and to protect our own forces. So we now know there's been significant damage to the US bases in the region. In fact, there's a study going on and the Pentagon right now about possibly closing, retreating from 15 of those bases because we cannot defend them. And as a result, for example, the heavy damage to the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet and Bahrain, we weren't able to supply on naval forces, leading to the catastrophe aboard our aircraft carriers and other ships where sailors are funding shorter food are not getting the medical support they need or some of them are threatening to are trying to jump off the ship because things were so bad.

5:07This kind of exposure of the incompetence of the American leadership from the president through the Secretary of Defense, and I would include Admiral Bradley Cooper, the head of the Ascent Combe, has really exposed America as more bark than bite. So it's weakened America across the board. Let me just add one other thing and then I'll shut up. The Wall Street Journal published a killer graph today showing the rate on bonds, the interest rate and what was going on. And right before the war, that was steadily going down. It had hit a low of 3.9%, which is not great, but that's the direction you wanted to go in. And Trump had been hounding the Fed for months to lower the price. The war begins and the interest rate on bonds climbs. And in six months it's now climbed a full percentage point to 4.9%. That means higher mortgages, higher car loans, higher business loans.

6:09And there's nothing the new hand picked head of the Fed can do about that. It's a killer blow to the U.S. economy. It's causing people to doubt the stability of the U.S. dollar. So this war, this war of whim has had global repercussions that extend not just to our alliances, but to our economy and to U.S. credibility and legitimacy in the war. It is a continuing disaster. We're talking Joe Srincioni. I did. Joe, I know when you were a congressional staffer and when you ran plough shares and all these extraordinary groups that you've been associated with, you're a keen observer of international and security politics, what's your take on the extent to which the stupid war and the damage that's done to our military and the weakness of America that it has exposed? Enhances or increases the chances that Putin will become more adventurous in the former

7:14Eastern Europe and that Xi will do the same in Taiwan and that Trump's stupidity thus could be leading us directly into World War III. I don't buy into the World War III scenario, but I understand what you mean. But in increasing the risks that Putin will act in Europe or Xi will act in the South China Sea have increased. And in part, because a big part of the U.S. ability to mobilize other countries against aggressive and periodist actions like Putin did in his invasion of Ukraine is that we condemn those. That there's an international standard that you do not try to change national borders through military action through invading. So Putin's invasion of Ukraine was the first time a country had tried to change the borders of another country in Europe since World War II. And here we go in Iran and we do the same thing.

8:15The same thing as Putin is a very similar action. And Xi and China sees this and go, well, if you're saying that you could invade another country and take over, remember Trump just a couple days ago, declared that the straight of Hormuz was U.S. territory now and he posted on truth social, he might rename the straight to straight Trump. Well, if the U.S. can do that, why can't Xi take over Taiwan? What's the difference? If the international norms no longer apply, then Putin can do what he wants. He can act aggressively. And so we weaken these international standards, these international norms. As many people are now saying, the United States is no longer the leader of the free world. Because we're acting in this dictatorial, imperialist manner that's shattering the very legal, diplomatic and political order that Republicans and Democrats have spent 80 years building to try to prevent the kind of global catastrophe that World War II has.

9:19It's almost as if Vladimir Putin had asked Donald Trump to destroy America. Joe, I've got about 45 seconds. I'm curious your thoughts on that remark. If Donald Trump was a paid Russian agent, he couldn't be doing a better job of weakening America. He is destroying us from within and he is ruining our global reputation. This hurts not just Americans in the pocketbook, but it hurts America's standing as the core powerful member of a global alliance that has prevented these individual conflicts from attestizing into World War. We've lost that ability. We're a country that people no longer rely on. Yeah, and a tragedy it is. The great Joe Serencioni, check out his sub-stack newsletter. It's called Strategy and History. Hold on, substack.com. Six months of failure, the most recent piece. Joe, you're brilliant. Thank you so much for dropping by and sharing with us. Thank you, Tom.

10:20Always great talking with you. I'll be back with more of the news of the day and your calls in just a moment. Stick around. Did you know your brain is roughly 73% water? That's why even mild dehydration can sometimes contribute to things like headaches, dizziness, brain fog, and irritability. Staying properly hydrated with water and electrolytes plays an important role in supporting memory, focus, and mental alertness. As we age, hydration becomes even more essential for helping our bodies function at their best. That's where native hydrate comes in. Native hydrate is 100% natural with a thoughtfully designed formula that includes BCAAs and all nine essential amino acids to support muscle recovery, strength, and overall wellness. It helps replenish key electrolytes to support your body's natural energy levels, and it's

11:21free of artificial flavor, sugars, and dyes with only five calories per serving. Every order comes with a 365-day money-back guarantee. Try and risk free at nativehydrate.com slash Tom THOM. And see what it can do for your hydration and wellness. That's nativehydrate.com slash Tom. They said it could never happen here, but the blueprint sold and it's clear. Divide the people, break their trust, turn dreams to ashes, gold to dust, out of dismantle the public in 12 steps. History whispers and we forget. Tire and stance where truth once stood. 12 steps down and gone for good.

12:29Get out of the unions, silence the press, sell off the future for the rich to possess. Flood the airways with anger and lies, blindfold the people, cover their eyes. Out of dismantle the public in 12 steps. Every storm broken, every vow kept, when money buys the law and the land. Freedom slips like dust through our... Welcome back. Researchers along, this is our geeky science for the day, but it's also kind of a, whoa, what, tell me about this one. November last year there was a severe solar storm. It was the strongest in two decades. And a paper was just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. And in that paper, a team of scientists found that GPS systems, global position satellites,

13:36global navigation satellite systems, experience, quote, significant positioning errors of over 33 feet during the super storm. Now back in November, that was not that big a deal because it, well, actually it turned out it was a big deal. They said it was large enough to disrupt precision agriculture and autonomous transportation industries. Now what they're talking about with precision agriculture is harvesting crops, planting crops, watering crops. It's all done by computer now. Even the trucks and tractors are run by computer. And they use GPS. And in fact, the May 22, there was a super storm like this in May of 2024, which scientists estimate cost farmers half a billion dollars in damages because it messed with these systems. Now they say fortunately that November storm occurred long after the farming season concluded.

14:43The concern that people are starting to raise now is that, I mean, back, you know, two years ago, there were not a lot of autonomous vehicles on the road. These rubber taxis, the Waymo and now, you know, Uber wants to get into this business and Tesla, you know, is talking about getting into the business. They run off GPS. And if a solar storm could knock your GPS off by 33 feet, I mean, if you're going on the street and suddenly your car tries to go 33 feet to the left to the right, you're no longer on that street. This is wild stuff. I guess the saving grace is that probably 99% of what the cars are doing when they're driving as autonomous vehicles is they're reacting to the cameras that are all around the car or the LiDAR, the low-froguesue radar that's on the front of the, or the light radar that is on the front of the car.

15:43But this is kind of spooky stuff. Also, in the Trump administration, you know, we've got this cyclist spora pandemic going on right now. It's not officially a pandemic. I shouldn't use that word, but whatever you want to call it, we've got, you know, more than 17,000 confirmed cases of cyclist spora infection. This is a parasite that lays eggs and those eggs take a couple of weeks to hatch and typically they're called OVA. And typically when you get infected, it's not the parasite that you're eating, it's the eggs of the parasite because they have a blue on the outside of them, basically. And they stick to the leaves of the plants that the parasite, you know, has attached itself

16:45to. And then when they get into your gut after two weeks they hatch and suddenly you're like, oh, look at this. And it's explosive diarrhea and you're chained to the toilet for the next week or two or in the hospital. So you would think that, you know, a government would want to protect us from this. And in fact, we used to have active monitoring throughout our food supply for 10 different parasites. Cyclist spora was one of them. So, but Donald Trump in his infinite wisdom put a lawyer, a former heroin addict, sex addict, brain, dead brainworm guy lawyer in charge of our public health. And in his infinite wisdom, Bob Kennedy reduced the number of diseases that we're looking for in our food supply from 10 down to three. And cyclist spora was not one of them. So we stopped looking for cyclist spora and guess what's on my way? We've got a lot of cyclist spore. It's all over the place.

17:47Now that said, there was still a little bit of a bright note here. And that is that there were three major US Department of Agriculture Research projects into cyclist spora looking for ways that we could prevent it, that, you know, maybe we could break the glue and wash the lettuce, you know, with a particular chemical or compound or enzyme or something, or kill off the cyclist spora in ways that are not toxic to humans or deal with the infection once you've got it or, you know, whatever. I mean, you know, there are three major research projects that we've been funding for several years. Now into specifically into cyclist spora to prevent us from having these kind of problems, or if we do have this kind of a problem to prevent us from dying from them, I mean, there's already been two deaths from cyclist spora and Michigan. So of course, the Trump administration, you know, following Vladimir Putin's instructions

18:50to make America sick as sick as possible, as poor as possible, as weak as possible, the Trump administration just shut down two of those three major research projects. No more research into cyclist spora. We're not looking for it. We're not doing anything about it and we're not even going to look into what we could do about it. And this is amazing. This is the Reuters, you know, the news agency, the first sentence of the article, the Trump administration is shuttering two of the three US Department of Agriculture Research projects, the study in cyclist spora, food borne parasite that is second to tens of thousands of Americans this summer. We have cyclist pariahs as cases across 48 states plus the district of Columbia. This is the largest food borne illness outbreak in recent US history. There's in addition to the 17,000 known cases confirmed cases, there's 11,844. And this is a day old story, so there's probably more since then that are, you know, being

19:55investigated. Meanwhile, the postal service, there's a whistleblower, somewhere inside the postal service and Trump and the FBI and the postal police are frantically looking for, who is this whistleblower? Who is this person who spilled the beans? A federal court, a federal judge ordered the post office not to proceed with the plans and implementation of this program to basically only deliver your ballot to you if you're on Trump's approved list. But our Postmaster General and the Postal Board of Governors went ahead and did it anyway, which is a violation of the law. It's a violation of a court order. And this whistleblower says this is going to be an absolute crap show. They use the S word. And Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, is leading this. He published a report yesterday showing that, you know, what this whistleblower had to

20:55say, that the technology was, the requirements for the technology were never properly documented. Plans were constantly changing as the staff raised toward a September 1st rollout yesterday. The official, this is the whistleblower. He said, potentially millions of Americans may not receive their mail in ballot this election cycle, and it timely matter, or at all. And Richard Blumenthal, the Senator, said, the main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans. One-third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail. And the U.S. Postal Service puts all of their votes at risk. One of the things that the whistleblower said is that the way that the Post Office designed this system, typically the communities that have the highest number of what are called spoiled ballots or error rates, you know, where the ballot arrives, the mail in ballot arrives, and they didn't fill it out completely, or they wrote in something when you're not

21:56supposed to, or they forgot to put the return address on it, or whatever, that these are things that cause your ballot not to be counted, and they call them spoiled ballots. Typically the communities that have the highest rate of that are black communities. This, you know, of course, is the result of 400 years of racism and discrimination, and, and, you know, funding our schools with property taxes, so poor communities to black communities have crappy schools, you have lower literacy rates. I mean, you know, we understand why this is. So what they did is they put together a system where if one ballot in a batch from a, postal area where the post, post person is collecting mail, say, you know, a thousand homes, if one ballot is bad, all thousand ballots get thrown out. The entire batch doesn't get counted. And why are they doing that? Well, because they know that there's more likely to happen in black neighborhoods and Hispanic neighborhoods, basically in poor neighborhoods.

22:56I mean, it'll hit poor white people the same way. You see the same error rates in Appalachia, you know, again, where education is, is, you know, problematic. But here we are. It's a mess. It's an absolute mess. You Republicans, if you can't win, cheat. And Donald Trump, you know, he's been cheating on golfers all life. There's a professional golfer who wrote a whole book about it after playing golf with Trump. He cheated on all his wives. He cheated at business. He's been convicted of fraud. He's been convicted of rape this guy, you know, so it looks like he's going to lose. He's going to try and cheat. For listening to Tom Hartman, visit tomharmman.com for audio and video archives. It's talk media for the scene among us. I'll be right back. Gabe and place your fill California. Hey, Gabe, what's up? I'm how you doing. Good to talk to you again. Thanks for having me on. I was listening to your rant about how you encouraged your colors to call your car representatives.

24:02And encourage a war resolution act, war powers who are resolution act. But I think there's one country you left out there and I think that's Cuba. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. By international law, a blockade, by definition of international law, blockade is an act of war. And I get to go to the party. By the way, if it starves the civilian population, it's a war crime and that's what we're doing. Right. Exactly. And I think this might have been a better question for Mark Pocan. But do you think it is possible that I mean, I know that they've already tried to different war resolution acts to reign and trump with Iran. But technically, do you think it's possible that Congress could try to pass the war resolutions act to stop the blockade? Well, technically, it's easy. Politically is the challenge. I mean, right now with the Republicans controlling the House and Senate, it would require discharging position in the House and it's going to go nowhere in the Senate.

25:04But let's check in after January 3rd when the new Congress is going to sworn in. But you're absolutely right. And Mark Pocan would be at the front of that line, by the way. He just came back from Cuba a couple of weeks ago. And on this program, he was talking about how the garbage is piling up in the streets because they don't have any fuel for the garbage trucks. And the city, you know, Havana is stinking now. And people can't get to work. And people are dying in the hospitals because they don't have medical supplies and they don't have electricity and the surgeons are operating using their iPhones as flashlights, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, Cuba is in a real bad place right now because Marco Rubio wants to be president. And Trump is willing to go along with war crimes in order to get what he wants, you know, as he did in Iran, as he did in Venezuela, and as he's doing in Cuba. And by the way, he's bombed eight countries now so far. And none of them with congressional authorization, not a single one.

26:06So we are looking at one of the most extraordinarily lawless administrations, certainly in my lifetime. And arguably in the history of America, you know, I realized Polk, you know, in the Mexican American War was pretty diced. Abraham Lincoln was a huge opponent of that when he was an honest representative. And Andrew Jackson was a pretty awful president. But, you know, certainly in the last 150 years, we've seen nothing like this. It's just nuts. So Gabe, thank you. Great question. Thank you. Sean in Portland. Hey, Sean, what's on your mind today? Yes. This is Sean. And I have a question for you, Tom. Has anybody brought up the parallels between December 7, 1941 in February 28, 2026? Well, December 7, 1941 was Pearl Harbor. What happened in February 28th?

27:06We were negotiating with the Imperial Government of Japan over trade. Right. And that was turned a day of intimate because it was a sneak attack. Right. And then on February 20, 28, 20, 26, we were negotiating over the nuclear agreement that had been ripped up by Trump because that negotiated with Iran going on. Right. With Iran. And they did. And then US did a sneak attack on Iran. Yeah. From Iran's point of view, what we did when we decapitated their leadership was a Pearl Harbor kind of event. That's one of the reasons why they're not, you know, playing nice with us. Right. Right. That's why I get very frustrated. And nobody mentions that. But they both were in the middle of negotiating when they attacked. Yeah. And the Democrats, which I am one, say, well, what's our strategy to win and what's this and

28:09what's that? And the Republicans all say, oh, this is a great war. You know, we'll get everything done. And everybody else is in the middle and they just want to get out. Yeah, it was a crime from the get-go. Yeah. I mean, it's just, you know, there's just no other way to say it. This was what Trump did and Netanyahu did was a war crime by international standards. And starting out by killing, you know, 150 little girls. I mean, that, you know, headsets, the incompetence, putting a drunken charge of the Pentagon was never a good idea. Yeah. So. No, it wasn't. Yeah. Okay. Thanks a lot Sean. Good to hear from you. Yeah. Well said. And welcome back. Lorraine and Hannah, California. Hey, Lorraine, what's on your mind today? Hi, Tom. I'm not too sensitive about Hocking Jeffries and few previous callers back on just kind of suspicions about Hocking Jeffries. And I feel the same way. And I don't think that there are, I don't think we're the only Democrats that don't have

29:11a lot of faith in him. And so while I, I see that it could be a shiny object, I do agree that he could possibly use some PR work just with his own party because I don't find him to be highly effective. And if the Democrats haven't asleep everything, we need somebody really good to be our speaker. And you know, there are just so many other people that are so much more well spoken than Hocking Jeffries and get the message across better. So I do, I think that it would be an improvement if they would encourage him to come forward to just Democrats too. And you know, everybody and just say, Hey, I'm going to fight for you guys.

30:12He's just not a strong leader. I don't feel. I get your objections, Lorraine. And I was deeply disappointed when last week he came out and said that he was not in favor of Medicare for all. That's the job of the speaker of the House and the leader of the majority party in the House is mostly, you know, kind of administrative. It's, you know, moving legislation through and making things happen legislatively and raising money also, but mostly moving legislation. And Nancy Pelosi picked Hocking Jeffries out years ago and tutored him basically, trained him for this job. And you know, if you were to take, for example, you know, Rokana or, you know, one of these other high profile Congress members who are aggressively going after the Epstein files

31:15or going after Trump corruption or want to hold hearings on, you know, how Don Jr. Oude and Kusay, you know, Don Jr. and Eric are making a fortune off the White House and all that kind of stuff. And have them become basically the administrators by becoming speaker of the House. You would dramatically diminish their effectiveness. This is an evolving opinion on my part. I'm not, I'm not, you know, planting this flag here. I think that if he actually can get things done and there are some strong indications that he can, other than his reluctance to promote Medicare for All, which troubles me deeply, as I said, he may end up being the best guy. I was surprised, isn't quite the strong enough word, but there is too strong, rather. You know, when Mark Poghann said that nobody else is basically, you know, running a flag up the flagpole trying to become speaker. It sounds like he's going to be our speaker if we get the House. And so I think probably we need to try to influence him.

32:20I agree. I think that if he starts to show results, then we need to support him 100 percent. I agree. So we'll see. We'll see. I'm willing to give him a chance. Lorraine, thank you for the call. Thanks for being with us today. We'll be back the same time, same place in the meantime. Don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires all of us. And that includes you. So show up at your local Democratic party and get involved. Tag your it. Have a great afternoon. Be good to yourself and the folks around you stay safe. Eat your veggies. Get your exercise and I'll catch you up. You've been listening to Tom Hartman for audio and video archives. Visit Tom Hartman.com.