Challenges Of Getting Aid To Gaza, w/ Preston Stewart

NOTE: This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI and may not be 100% accurate. When quoting or using for any other purpose, we urge you to consult the recording, or contact the speaker or Noisecutter, in order to verify accuracy.

Rex Chatterjee (00:11)
And welcome to this episode of the Noisecutter podcast. We’re here with Preston Stewart, who is a, how do we describe it? YouTube sensation, TikTok, Instagram sensation, his videos on global conflict, bring a level of insight that I find to be truly inspiring and something that, you know, I don’t see really anywhere else. And it’s truly a magic of the platforms. Preston, how’s it going?

Preston Stewart (00:37)
Hey, thanks, Rex. Really excited to be here. I, accidental career path, we’ll call it that. So it’s been a lot of fun being able to spend time talking about discussing things that I’m interested in. And I guess that’s what we’re doing today.

Rex Chatterjee (00:49)
Yeah, I love that. I mean, that’s one of my other interests. I have a whole separate podcast about people with varied career path to what do they got today and maybe we do one of those. But I guess if you want to give us a high level, how do we get here with you being the internet’s thought leader on global conflict?

Preston Stewart (01:12)
One of many, there’s a lot of great sources out there. I appreciate it. So my, I grew up very interested in the military, was in high school on 9/11, kind of drove that decision to want to enter the armed forces. My grandfather, grandparents were both in, so it’s something I grew up thinking about. From high school, went to West Point, was fortunate enough to get in there, attended the US Military Academy, studied international relations and terrorism studies. There again, just this interest in international relations, kind of caught on.

Rex Chatterjee (01:22)
Mm-hmm.

Oh wow.

Preston Stewart (01:41)
Conflict, foreign affairs, things like that. Uh, entered the active military in 2009 field artillerymen spent a couple tours in Afghanistan, uh, back here to the United States, left active in 14 and kind of started bouncing around the civilian sector. Uh, I’m still in the reserves today. So still get to go put the uniform on once a month, but it’s a, it’s a small part of my day to day. But I, I spent time in a commercial real estate. And.

tech industry and I just they were great and surrounded by great people and really good companies But it wasn’t like a passion or an interest so I’ve always been interested in this and around the time of COVID started making content about it and Just the slow grind man. It’s been a lot of videos a lot of pieces of content Hopefully it gets better over time and that’s what got us to today

Rex Chatterjee (02:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

the…

specific thing that I wanted to dive in on first is the proposed, or I guess currently in planning, lots or logistics over the shore operation in Gaza. to us, it’s been billed as, okay, we’re going to build this floating bridge, drive it onto the shore, there’s not going to be any US service members on shore at all. So it’s being billed as this kind of very low risk.

operation to deliver aid from ships to other ships to the one end, the floating end of the pier, so to speak, and then they drive it over. But that’s all we know. And so what can you tell us about these operations and what’s going to happen?

Preston Stewart (03:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, man, I’ll tell you what, something I’ve learned and spending more and more time diving into what’s happening in Gaza is there is a, uh, A political aspect, essentially a biased aspect to all of this. So there’s ways that you can frame this in a very positive light for anyone or in a very negative light. And I’ll try to present, um, as much as I can from both sides there. So for starters, I’m not a Navy guy. I get confused and I see our ships try to figure out what is what. So, uh, I don’t have any experience with this specific type of operation. That said.

We do have this ability in the US Armed Forces to, in a very short period of time, I mean, just over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been air dropping supplies across Gaza. That is incredible, right? The fact that we have, and the reason they’re able to do that is because we have forces forward stage in the Middle East, right, they didn’t fly from the United States. But there has been some pushback on that, it’s not enough or it’s not being well distributed. But the capability of the US Armed Forces to be able to do that humanitarian mission at the drop of a hat.

Rex Chatterjee (03:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (04:16)
It’s impressive. It’s really cool to see our young men and women be able to pull that off. The same, I think, applies to this LOTS operation, moving ships, that these are coming from the United States, so it’s gonna be a while. It’s just gonna take one minute to get across the Atlantic and to where they can actually put this into place. It’s something that’s really designed for, you think, humanitarian-type assistance. A hurricane comes in and completely wrecks a port to where ships can’t get in. Well, how do you start building that port?

Rex Chatterjee (04:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (04:45)
And one of the ways is through this type of military operation to start offshore and build in. It’s an incredible feature. It’s crazy that we’re able to do this. I think it’s great that any country around the world is interested. It’s going to cost us a lot of money to be able to do this, right? The time and energy of our armed forces doing this, but we have the ability. So great. They’re going to do this and provide aid and medical supplies and food to the people in Gaza that need it right now. The other side of that kind of pushback.

is there are also roads that lead into Gaza, a lot of roads that lead into Gaza. And the entity that is guarding those roads is a very close ally of the United States, Israel. And some of the pushback here has been, hey, instead of sailing a ship across the ocean and doing this pretty significant operation that why not, that’s going to cost a lot of money, and it’s going to take 30, 60 days before this is in place. Why don’t we just

park these ships in an Israeli port and drive these trucks into Gaza. Yeah, so that’s a major piece of pushback here. It’s hard to dial in exactly the issue. Israel is spending a lot of time looking at all the supplies going in to make sure that nothing goes in that could be used by Hamas. But that’s a challenge because tourniquets could be used by Hamas. They can also be used by children when they’re caught in the crossfire.

Rex Chatterjee (05:47)
Right, right.

Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (06:12)
any sort of food or water could be used by Hamas militants, but civilians need that as well. I think it’s, I’ve strangely seen a lot of arguments recently of people kind of contesting the amount of aid going in, but either way, I think there’s, it seems pretty clear that there’s more ways to get aid in if needed. So that is one of the pushbacks on this operation. The last thing I’d bring up is the risk to U S service members. I generally think that’s overplayed Hamas.

Rex Chatterjee (06:15)
Right.

Preston Stewart (06:40)
does not like the United States at all. They regularly hold us accountable for what’s happening in Gaza. In the same sentence, they’ll say, this is Israel and the United States. So in their eyes, we might as well be dropping the bombs to make that clear. They do not like us. They do not want us there, not by a long shot, but they’ve got their hands full with Israel right now. It does them no good to start taking shots at U S forces off the coast. It makes this so much harder for everything Hamas wants to do. That doesn’t mean they won’t act.

Rex Chatterjee (06:42)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Preston Stewart (07:10)
in an odd way. I mean, you could argue that October 7th was not in their interest to carry out. They did that anyways, but it’s not, it would be, I would be surprised if Hamas opens fire, for instance, on US forces as they’re putting this pier together.

Rex Chatterjee (07:26)
What about, and maybe this is just a question of distance and Israeli naval patrols, but what about Hezbollah and Iran?

Preston Stewart (07:36)
Yeah. That’s the bigger issue here. Really, when you’re looking at this whole picture in the Middle East, Hamas is kind of center stage right now because they’re the ones actively fighting every day with Israel. But realistically, Hezbollah is a significant step above Hamas and Iran even above that. Hezbollah is kind of the tricky one here because it’s kind of a non-state actor, if you will. It’s not Lebanon. It’s a major military force there. And I think they’re getting overlooked a lot.

Rex Chatterjee (08:00)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Preston Stewart (08:06)
in this conflict, a war with Hezbollah would be massive. And the US very well might get involved. Whereas there’s, you know, I think less than a 0.01% chance we get involved in Gaza. We’re just, we’re not going to be there. But to your point, Hezbollah does have the capabilities. Hamas has some like torpedoes they’ve shown in the past, but I don’t think they have access to ports to be able to tow those things out there under Israeli surveillance and try to fire those off. Hezbollah does. Hezbollah could strike these US ships.

Rex Chatterjee (08:07)
Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (08:35)
They had the capabilities. It would just be a matter of can the U S or Israel intercept those munitions. It’s a possibility. It would just be speculation, but I don’t know. I don’t know that that’s in Hezbollah’s best interest right now.

Rex Chatterjee (08:53)
Right. So going to circling back for a second to the question of there are roads and there are trucks. So one of the images that I guess it’s a bit stale, so to speak, now, but is the image of the convoy of aid trucks that are just on the Egypt side of Ra’afah. And apparently they’re not being let in, et cetera, et cetera. But so it’s like the way we think about it, it’s kind of like, okay.

Preston Stewart (09:12)
Mm-hmm.

Rex Chatterjee (09:21)
If the aid that is coming in off the ship could be seen as maybe duplicative in terms of what it actually is and similar in terms of quantity, why wouldn’t the focus be first on the most cost effective and least risky route of just like, and also closest, right? Because the civilians are now massed in Ra’afah, which is right on the other side of the border with Egypt, right? So what’s going on with the…

if you know and like why isn’t that sort of a focus.

Preston Stewart (09:52)
That’s correct. I think that’s, I think that’s a big question. And it’s, this is one of those where in, when I’ve seen people dive into it, it’s kind of twisting and turning to explain why it’s not realistic. Israel has control, a portion of control of the Rafah Gate of what comes into Gaza. So it’s not like that’s exclusively Egypt making a decision. And Egypt does play a major role here because they do border the southern portion of the Gaza Strip.

Rex Chatterjee (09:55)
Hahahaha

Preston Stewart (10:21)
Now to your point where so many people are pushed up against this right and what did Egypt do? Right? They built a bunch of tank ditches and put up more fences. So there’s certainly more that Egypt could do. But it’s, I have a hard time looking outside of Israel for control of those access points. And if it was a problem in the South, then just go further East. There’s multiple points East and North. There’s other places you could go.

Rex Chatterjee (10:43)
Think about the tank.

Yeah, right. Yeah, the thing about the tank ditches was, to me, crazy. It’s like what? Ariel Sharon’s long gone. What are you scared of Egypt? Like, why are you building ditches to suppress a potential tank invasion in Sinai? Like, I don’t know what’s going on there, right? But what pressure can the US exert? Because the Egyptian government does, they are a client state of ours for defense acquisitions, right?

Preston Stewart (11:11)
Yeah, but Israel is too. And I feel like the energy, personal opinion here, but I feel like that energy is better spent on Israel. Because again, if you pressure Egypt through and through, they still have to deal with Israel to get the aid into the Gaza Strip. I think we are starting to see that a little bit. There was a letter that supposedly Israel just signed and returned to the United States that Congress put forward saying any country receiving our weapons cannot

Rex Chatterjee (11:19)
Mm. Sure.

Yeah.

Preston Stewart (11:40)
cannot block humanitarian aid delivery. And for countries at war, yeah, right? So it’s kind of under the radar, but also because I don’t know how, if we’re necessarily gonna enforce that, but that is a potential mechanism. That seems like it’s about it at this point, because the, I don’t know, there’s, Israel’s doing what Israel wants to do.

And it doesn’t always align with what the United States necessarily wants them to do from my perspective, at least.

Rex Chatterjee (12:08)
Yeah, no, I mean, I think that is echoed, I think, in the thoughts of a lot of folks, particularly even those who were just kind of first stepping into thinking about these questions, right? It’s like, I mean, one of the other concerns that I had hearing about this is like, this seems like a quite involved operation. And yet there’s so much hesitance around putting US service members at risk, that the way at least it’s been framed to me is that

No boots on the ground means that we just put this thing onto shore and then from shore points who’s accountable for what? Because we’ve seen footage of the desperate situations that often turn violent at aid distribution points. We do know that Hamas is more than willing to block, suppress, potentially even kill civilians who get in the way of Hamas resupply.

What’s going to happen on the Gaza side of this floating pier is my question, but I don’t know. I’m not saying you have to have an answer, obviously, right? But that’s a question.

Preston Stewart (13:15)
Yeah, that’s a problem no matter what, no matter where the aid comes from, whether it’s dropped from overhead onto the beaches, brought in on these ships or driven in. There have been videos and accounts of looting these trucks, of the trucks being attacked, Hamas at times. It’s also a weird mix. We’ve seen videos of Hamas riding on top of these trucks with weapons.

Rex Chatterjee (13:18)
Yeah.

Preston Stewart (13:39)
they’re being presented on the one hand of look, Hamas hijacked this truck. And on the other hand of Hamas is the only entity that can protect the trucks from the looters that are the starving civilians. And it’s, it’s a, so what do you do if you want somebody in Gaza to protect those trucks, you got one option if it’s not the IDF. Um, so it’s messy. I’d say at baseline, I have heard rumors that the IDF is going to be screening the equipment coming off the ship when it gets to Gaza and they will be assisting with that distribution.

Rex Chatterjee (13:49)
Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (14:09)
know. But I mean, you’re hitting on one point after another as to why this is just such a challenging, challenging spot.

Rex Chatterjee (14:15)
Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing is like the and this is kind of why I specifically wanted to dive in on this topic. Obviously, there’s huge things going on in the world elsewhere. But this is one thing that and again, you know, politically, I’m kind of down the middle. But when I heard this, you know, rolled out, specifically coming right after the big uncommitted vote issue that happened in Michigan,

perceived blanket support of Israel by the Biden administration without any sort of, quote unquote, any sort of regard for innocent civilian and Gazan lives, Palestinian lives, that this gets trotted out. And it was light on details. And I understand operational security and the need for keeping details scanned in a risky operation. But at the same time, the perception, at least to me, I think to a lot of people was like, is this just a,

bandaid on what could be an ax wound if the democratic base gets eroded by the Israel issue. But that’s why I’m focused on this and I have all these questions. But I guess the other one last thing on this and we can move on to something of bigger import but tell me if I’m wrong about this. But it seems as though IDF infantry, especially…

of the sort of, I mean, I think they’ve got a stronger NCO corps than we saw in Russia, sure. But like, they’ve got a bunch of young guys, and young guys managing a chaotic situation doing ultimately a police action, right? In terms of policing the aid distribution on the shore side of this pier Couldn’t that be a recipe for something really disastrous?

Preston Stewart (16:05)
Yeah, but it’s not unique to the IDF. Humanitarian efforts like this, I didn’t really have any experience with that in Afghanistan. We had small-scale aid distribution, but by and large, the areas I was in were mostly devoid of the population, and it was the Taliban coming in that we were trying to get out. But the challenge is, when you have these masses of people, it can be used by enemy forces. And Hamas is showing that they’re willing to do this.

Rex Chatterjee (16:24)
Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (16:35)
They set up shop in a building and open fire while Israeli forces are doing that. And it kind of ties Israel’s hands or whoever’s putting that aid out. Do you open fire and risk hitting civilians or you just take it? So it’s a, it’s a bad spot. Now, to your point, the less trained, less experienced somebody is in that situation, the more likely it is to get out of hand and a massacre could occur because one shot rings overhead and guys freak out, open fire and kill 50 people in front of them. Um, that’s, that can be a thing.

But these are, I’m glad you mentioned that, because I think this is something that gets kind of brushed aside, as in it’s humanitarian, just go in there and drop the aid. There are still, Israel just conducted an operation into Shifa Hospital a couple days ago, and released videos of their soldiers coming under fire as they approached. Which, regardless of where and how and all those things, that was an area that was cleared by Israel months ago, and they’re coming under fire still. So there’s really not any place in Gaza that’s clear.

And like you can guarantee and say there’s no way Hamas will ever be here. So every aid distribution point runs that risk.

Rex Chatterjee (17:42)
I’m trying to remember from which conflict that is it all kind of blurs at this point. No, it was the Iraqi police recruitment, right? And it was a huge explosion. I wish I had the like actual incident on like that I could name top of mind, but there was some coverage during the Iraq war of an effort to recruit Iraqi policemen and I believe it was AQI blew the thing up.

And yeah, I mean, to me, it just seems like whenever you’re trying to do a good thing for people in need in a, you know, hot zone, so to speak, right, it just kind of presents a target. I don’t think Hamas is going to run going around killing its own people the way Iraq was. But yeah.

Preston Stewart (18:27)
Correct. Yeah. That’s a, it’s a, there’s a different dynamic there. AQI to your point was targeting Iraqi civilians to try to drive division. We’re really not seeing that in Gaza. Hamas is not, they’re not, there’s been occasional reports and such, but that’s not one of Hamas’s tactics is to kill Palestinians.

Rex Chatterjee (18:34)
Right.

It’s more the intermingling of nesting in with the population and keeping firing positions among apartment buildings and whatnot. The Ra’afah thing, right? And so Israel says, look, we’re going to go into Ra’afah no matter what anyone says.

Preston Stewart (18:52)
Exactly. Yeah.

Rex Chatterjee (19:04)
where do we think ultimately the Biden administration and America sort of falls out on this, right? Because on one hand, you’re like, look, this just seems like a bad situation. But on the other hand, I understand Israel saying, look, we can’t tolerate Hamas’s existence anymore. How does this all shake out?

Preston Stewart (19:23)
I think it’s timely conversation. We’ll have to check the news once we get off this call, because I think there’s stuff coming out today about this. But that stuff is just the United States saying strongly, I hope they don’t do it. Or maybe there’s another way, which you mentioned earlier, the protest vote against Biden. And I can see that you’re kind of against his unconditional support, blanket support for Israel. I think it’s hard to say otherwise at this point, because all of the pushback against Israel is like strong words.

Rex Chatterjee (19:29)
Oh, first thing.

Yeah.

Preston Stewart (19:53)
or maybe a change in rhetoric. Like, and that’s what we’re seeing around Ra’afah right now, which is occasionally they’ll say something like, I sure wish they wouldn’t do it, or they would be careful. So if that’s the extent of like the pushback, I feel like it’s not really much pushback. I would say that Ra’afah is going to happen. It’s just, this is the closest Israel has ever been. Regardless of how you think the war is playing out or where you think it’ll go in the future, this is the closest Israel’s ever been to actually dismantling Hamas.

Rex Chatterjee (20:02)
Yeah.

Preston Stewart (20:20)
They’ve got their foot on their throats. It’s hard to see that they say, you know what, we got them cornered down in Ra’afah let’s back off and see what we can negotiate it. The nothing in this war has gone that route so far. Um, that said Ra’afah is like five X the population. It was before the war. And I don’t know. I don’t know how Israel does this because they, they either move people out into those areas that we were just talking about a second ago are still not secure. And they’re still Hamas running around in central and Northern Gaza.

Rex Chatterjee (20:28)
Yeah.

Preston Stewart (20:50)
How do you do that? There’s nothing up there. Most of the strip is just completely destroyed. So how do you move these people into that area? They’re not going into Egypt, clearly. That seems like it’s been off the table forever. And if you go in guns blazing to Ra’afah, again, just for people listening, if you have four people living in your house, imagine that is actually 20 people. That’s the operation they’re trying to do. It’s packed, overflowing with civilians. So even the most targeted, disciplined,

deliberate style military operations is going to result in a lot of civilian casualties. There’s just be no way around.

Rex Chatterjee (21:24)
Yeah, this is kind of like watching a car crash in slow motion, right? We know bad stuff is going to happen. There’s really not much anyone… It’s the least worst path, maybe, right? If you’re Israel for sure, right?

what could we see at the end of this? But it’s kind of like, there’s so much in between that’s gonna happen that looking at end states is almost a mistake right now. I don’t know what your thoughts are.

Preston Stewart (21:49)
Yeah, it’s hard to not see a scenario where Israel, I feel like I’m gonna phrase this weird. I envision a scenario where Israel is dealing with some sort of insurgency for a long period of time in Gaza. Just I’m, and maybe this is a shortfall, but I tend to look at our experiences in recent conflicts, Iraq and Afghanistan, and we can do a really good job. And Israel at times has done a very good job of moving through and eliminating military threats during deliberate clearance operations. But then once you’ve, you know,

Rex Chatterjee (21:55)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (22:18)
taken out those mortar firing points and eliminated the rockets and closed out the tunnels. The mindset that brought about Hamas, the ideology is still there. You can’t root that out. We didn’t. We got close at times in Iraq and Afghanistan, but big picture. AQI, maybe. We got rid of that to a degree. It also morphed into Islamic State. It’s hard to take that and say…

Rex Chatterjee (22:41)
Sure.

Preston Stewart (22:47)
Well, we haven’t done it successfully anywhere. So Israel will, it’s just hard to see that recipe for success, if you will.

Rex Chatterjee (22:55)
Yeah. No, I think that’s the wisest point, right? It’s like you’re… I’ve heard it tossed around the term generational terrorism, right? And that what this operation into Gaza ultimately does is creates a new generation with even perhaps even the biggest grievances against Israel that have ever existed perhaps since its independence, right? Or maybe six day war, but you know.

Preston Stewart (23:24)
I don’t know, right? I mean, I, if you put yourself in the shoes of a, an innocent Palestinian who had nothing to do with Hamas or didn’t even like Hamas before this war started and, and now you have family members who are dead because of this, it’s,

where does that person shake out? On the one hand, you would like to think logically that there’s some, the fingers being pointed at Hamas. Look what Hamas brought to us before they carried out this attack on October 7th. I wasn’t concerned about this, but I don’t know, if I’m in their shoes, it’s pretty easy to look at the person that pulled the trigger and killed my family members and have some degree of hatred there. That has to be happening to some degree, right? And if it’s just 1%, then there’s more.

not more, but there’s new Hamas members, if you will, or new people that want to carry out some sort of violence against Israel that are being created every day. I don’t know what that, that number’s not zero is all I could say, you know.

Rex Chatterjee (24:16)
Right. Yeah, no, and you’ve got the old school Hamas figures still running around. Like there was some mention of Marwan Barghouti like the other day in the news and I’m like, what? I haven’t heard that name in a long time. Yeah. I don’t know. I guess any other kind of broad thoughts on the Israel situation or we can turn to other things as well if you want.

Preston Stewart (24:40)
It’s just tough. It’s very, people are very strongly in their camps on this one. And I can understand why, because this is not, this is not the US war in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is so much more central to the livelihood, the lives of so many people around the world. And I just, I don’t know, it’s sad every single day. I don’t know. I thought earlier you were gonna ask, what can Israel do? I have no idea, man.

they’re in such a tough spot. I can understand why they want to get rid of Hamas and they don’t want Hamas right there. I also don’t have any idea how they’re going to do that in the middle of this massive civilian population. I feel for the innocent people that are stuck there every day and feel for the innocent Israelis that were like, it’s just, it’s one of these aspects of war where like it just kind of sucks. People die and I wish that wasn’t happening.

Rex Chatterjee (25:08)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there’s been, you know, it’s funny from an American perspective, we don’t, unless you subscribe to like Haaretz and a bunch of other, you know, and read Hebrew, right? Which I don’t. It’s tough, I guess, to kind of really get a sense of like what the political dynamics are on the ground in Israel. But at least I’ve heard from some sources that have, you know, some sort of connection there is that there’s, you know, support for Likud and for Netanyahu have eroded, right? Since October 7. And

Yeah, you have to support a wartime leader, sure. So there’s talk in the US now of like, oh, Israel doesn’t want Netanyahu’s serving up on a platter. And then you had the Schumer speech, which I thought was an own goal. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this. But calling for elections in another democracy is kind of like, what? It’s a bit much. My insight was that, look, I think that the folks you’re trying to appease here want to see the stop of US arms sale.

Sales to Israel, right? They want to stop seeing US bombs being used to take out Palestinian civilians in this lip service oh we need elections Hurt you and didn’t help you at all. But I don’t know. I’m sure you’ve got tons of thoughts on all that

Preston Stewart (26:37)
Well, I think this is an interesting conversation here because it’s the whole aspect of how important is this. You’ve got what’s happening in Israel and Israel is going to make decisions for Israel and their politics, their government, all that. But then there’s this piece of, we’ve been talking a lot about it here, US support for the war or what is our government going to do? And I’m torn because on the one hand, there has been a, from what I can see, there’s a much louder consolidated voice.

pushing for some sort of ceasefire, not pro-Hamas, but wanting to see a stop to the violence. But when you get to our government officials, again, like it’s, you got to really, to your point, you’re kind of picking apart this Schumer speech to find something that might be kind of somewhat against what Israel is doing. I don’t know, the other hand is when you look at how Americans vote, foreign policy is never, even in the top 10, 20, right? So,

Rex Chatterjee (27:34)
No.

Preston Stewart (27:36)
Is it enough of an issue for enough people to actually matter or are we just seeing politics be politics and they’re like, whatever, I’ll talk about this, but it doesn’t actually matter.

Rex Chatterjee (27:46)
Yeah. No, I mean, I think, and that’s a great point you made, right? That foreign policy isn’t really top of mind for US voters come election time. And I think part of the reason why that is, and I think part of the reason why I love the fact that we’re having this conversation and I love that you’re creating content about this kind of stuff, is a lack of education, perhaps. And I don’t want to punch down on people, right? But I think if more people cared about this stuff and listened to folks like you and

consume that kind of content and we’re more informed on what’s going on globally. I think it would be easier for it to matter more come ballot time, come election time. But I feel as though there’s pockets of folks who really care. And then for a large swath of Americans, whether they consume news from Fox or OAN or from CNN and MSNBC, regardless, I think these are just stories that they hear and then it’s like…

Okay, but onto the kitchen table, right? Onto domestic issues.

Preston Stewart (28:48)
Yeah. I mean, I do care about this stuff. It’s what I’m focused on all day, every day, but there’s still probably like seven things in a given day that are more important to me living my life here in middle Tennessee. At least seven more, right? I mean, it’s the list is probably really long. If you think about the things that are most important in your life, that have a direct impact on your life day in and day out as, as important as I think the war in Gaza is right now, it’s pretty low in terms of the direct impact.

Rex Chatterjee (29:00)
Sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, same. It’s 100% true. What are the other things that you’re focused on content-wise, what have you been working on, what’s on your mind?

Preston Stewart (29:30)
Trying to not lose sight of what’s going on in Ukraine. It’s lost some focus as the shift has been towards Israel and Gaza. I’ve just noticed a lot more people. There’s much more, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the new thing. I don’t want to write off what the Palestinian people or the Israeli people are going through as just the new thing. But I do think there’s an aspect of people getting tired of what was happening in Ukraine. There’s not major news coming out of there unless you’re really following it. And then there is.

Rex Chatterjee (29:33)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (29:59)
but the lines have largely stabilized, but it’s still a, you know, it’s the largest ground war in Europe since World War II. It’s massive and it is far from decided. So trying to spend a lot of time on that. And then something that has not been as much of an issue since October 7th that I thought would be is kind of a resurgent terrorism threat between Al-Qaeda Islamic State and some of these other organizations. Historically, those organizations kind of use Palestine. They say, we’re here to support the Palestinians. We hate Israel. Look, come join our side.

Rex Chatterjee (30:18)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Preston Stewart (30:30)
They even kind of issued some calls right after October 7th, kind of praising Hamas. And it looked like they were going to try to inspire attacks around the world. And especially as the United States has essentially just like let Israel do whatever they want. I expected that to play out, even lone wolf style attacks. And we really haven’t seen it. So still keeping an eye on that, because that is a way we were talking about how the war in Gaza doesn’t necessarily affect us here at home. That’s a way where it will. When somebody watches the news and sees.

the United States, US bombs falling on Gaza. It doesn’t take long for somebody to become radicalized and carry out an attack in New York or Nashville.

Rex Chatterjee (31:02)
Right?

Right.

Preston Stewart (31:09)
And I say, I say radicalized, maybe that’s not the right term. Islamic State and Al-Qaeda are trying to kind of radicalize people, but I can understand how somebody would feel helpless watching that play out.

Rex Chatterjee (31:19)
Yeah, no, I think that’s a sentiment for a lot of Americans, quite frankly, who are, for one reason or another, whether it’s having ethnic or family ties or simply just being politically on that side of things, feeling helpless watching the government that they elected, or that is our government do something that for them is horrific.

to what extent is, and this is just an open question, but is the fury at Israel’s attitude towards collateral damage in Gaza?

There’s people saying it’s intentional. I don’t necessarily go along with that, but does it rise the level of wanton negligence? It’s also a really tough situation given the density of folks and Ra’afah coming into this now with 1.4 million people squeezed into this tight area. What are your thoughts on that? I don’t know what the right term is, battlefield discipline.

Preston Stewart (32:18)
Yeah, collateral damage is a good way to put it. Um, civilian considerations. It’s very hard to make a judgment on that kind of stuff from the outside. So as some examples, if a soldier sits there and sees a family of five or six innocent civilians walking towards them and they open fire, clearly that’s a problem. Like you can’t have that. Um, in, in no situation is that okay. And then of course, if you get into a military structure, going back to world war two, you could find in some of the Nazi documents talking about, we’re going to exterminate people.

Rex Chatterjee (32:27)
Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (32:48)
Like, there you go. It’s written as an order. That’s easy to discern. But you get into these challenging situations where what if Israel watches a Hamas member from overhead fire a mortar and run into a small building? They drop a bomb, kill that guy, and they happen to kill six civilians that were also in that building. Where’s the line on that? In some cases, the US has had the ability to wait and say, wait a minute, we can’t confirm there are no civilians there. Israel…

Rex Chatterjee (32:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (33:18)
doesn’t appear to be doing that. They’re also executing this war, all things considered, very, very fast. It’s that kind of thing. On the extreme end, if there’s a large residential building and you think one Hamas member lives in there and you drop the entire thing, kill 5,000 people, that is very clearly an inappropriate use of force. But there’s some way to balance that is very challenging each time around. I think at this point we’ve seen

Rex Chatterjee (33:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Preston Stewart (33:46)
some, some good examples on both sides of the spectrum. There’s been some cases, especially early when Israel was dropping a lot of bombs where it looks like they were targeting more willing to accept civilian casualties than maybe the United States would have been. But there’s also been cases where they’ve been very, very deliberate in trying the hostage raid to go pull out the couple of people from Ra’afah. They risked a lot of soldiers lives to do that. In the manner that would kill as few.

Rex Chatterjee (34:05)
Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (34:15)
civilians as possible from what it looks like. So it’s tough.

Rex Chatterjee (34:18)
Yeah. No, I think that’s right. I think there’s solid arguments on both sides. It’s funny, this is maybe a transition over to the Ukraine stuff. Last night, I rarely so often get time to watch TV without my wife. There’s things that I would watch that I frankly would not want to subject her to. Last night, I watched 20 Days of Mariupol, which I am a fairly tough and stoic-

person and it was… it’s a… have you seen it yet? It’s a tough fucking watch.

Preston Stewart (34:53)
Yeah, it’s hard to watch. It just won a bunch of, it won an Oscar, didn’t it?

Rex Chatterjee (34:57)
Yeah, did. And it was incredible. I’m glad that the Hollywood community also is not losing sight of that conflict as well. It’s an incredible piece of documentary filmmaking and the, I don’t know what the right word is here, like the sound mixing the, because it’s not music, right? It’s like, but the way they scored it with the sound effects, the whole thing was just an experience to watch. But they quoted Otto von Bismarck, right?

His quotes hackneyed over and over again. But the quote that they used was like, there’s three times when people lie the most and it’s like, I forget the first one, the second one was during war. And the third time was during an election or something like that. Right. But the whole point is like, you know, in, in war time, right. Truth is kind of like the first casualty and you kind of, I don’t know, get a mix of, of information, but I think to the, to the Gaza point,

And to whether or not Israel is appropriately dealing with the potential of collateral damage, I think it’s kind of that. There’s a fog, right? And we don’t necessarily get an accurate picture.

Preston Stewart (36:06)
Yeah, and something I think about a lot when covering these wars is there’s a mix of, there’s just a lack of information sometimes. We have the idea that because of the internet and Twitter and acts and all these things, that we have real-time access to the war. We don’t. There’s a significant delay between what’s happening on the ground and what we’re getting. And even then, if you get 30 minutes of Hamas and Israeli footage of those organizations fighting tomorrow, it’s going to seem like a lot. But that is a tiny fraction.

Rex Chatterjee (36:22)
Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (36:34)
of the overall what’s happening in Gaza in the last 24 hours. So we have very, very little insight into what is actually happening on the ground day in and day out. And then there’s this whole mix of what information is being deliberately withheld. You have no idea because it’s being withheld, right? And then what information is being intentionally deceitful. Sometimes you can weave through that, but other times information is unintentionally deceitful.

somebody might share a story or present something in a certain light and they think they’re saying it might, I might do it. If you think you’re presenting it in the correct light, but it turns out it’s incorrect based off the information hand. It is so messy. Um, and it’s never more messy than in the middle of a war zone.

Rex Chatterjee (37:16)
To kind of switch gears and to go into the Ukraine stuff, I mean, so one, listeners out there, if you are feeling that your mettle is up to it, I would say watch 20 Days in Mariupol. I mean, I thought it was incredible. It’s gripping. You’ve seen it. Yeah, Preston, what are your impressions of it?

Preston Stewart (37:40)
Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s worth it. Tough watch. Pretty simple. All things considered, it almost just looks like they turn on the cameras and let it go, which is great, because it essentially just documented some of the early days in the war. So Mariupol is in the southern portion of Ukraine was one of the first places kind of hit and then quickly surrounded. So the film crew just barely got out of there. Before essentially Russia took complete control of the city. It’s there were a lot of civilians that did not get out of there. That’s kind of the nature of that story.

Rex Chatterjee (38:10)
Yeah. And moving to kind of present day, you mentioned that, you know, battle lines have sort of stabilized. from the global kind of news perspective, right, the theme or the leitmotif, right, was that there was a Ukrainian counterattack that sort of fell apart and Russia has been able to kind of turn the tides a bit.

that there’s been a bit of focus on its domestic defense production, its cooperation with Iran and North Korea and what I’ve seen and tell me if you think I’m onto something here, but there’s a bit of a reshaping of global economies. Sanctions have not stopped the flow of, let’s say, this water. It’s like a dam and a river, and then the river just finds a new way. Then there’s the Russian taking of Avdiivka in February.

solidifying battle lines there, but that’s all what I guess I know and I’ve been writing about and I’ve seen in the mainstream. What are we missing and what would be helpful to know?

Preston Stewart (39:18)
It’s about it. The, uh, or that’s kind of big picture for sure. Um, that offensive that Ukraine kicked off this past summer, that was their, their big first chance to try and to retake a bunch of territory in hindsight. It looks like, uh, Russia was permitted a lot of time to build up their defensive structures and Ukraine went up against a very, very significant defensive force. Um, they did capture territory. They did suffer pretty, pretty high losses. It’s hard to know exactly what that number is, but just watching the footage, Russia had this area dialed in.

more landmines than we’ve seen in a war in a long, long time. Since then, I agree the taking of Avdiivka was a major issue or newsworthy issue. Avdiivka has been on the front line since 2014. So, no, it’s easy to forget that this war started now 12 years ago, or 10 years ago. But Avdiivka is an area that Ukraine was able to build up their defenses for around 10 years. So Russia taking that just…

They’re on the offensive right now. Things have shifted. Russia is pressing in a handful of areas. They do have the momentum right now. Your point on, and there’s a couple of things I think worth keeping in mind here that are hinting at that. Your point about the sanctions, we thought a year plus ago that Russia would be crippled by these sanctions. They were going to run out of missiles was a big talking point because they weren’t going to have access to these subcomponents from US and other markets. They found a way around it. Some was sourcing through North Korea, some through Iran.

some of the components appear to be coming from China, but like not necessarily military components, but dual use that can be swapped into, you know, GPS type munition. They figured it out and they’ve increased production. They’ve increased ammunition production, more replacement parts for their vehicles. They have turned out more men. They’ve been able to offer enough money to where people are voluntarily signing up to go fight in this war that has seen, you know,

Rex Chatterjee (40:49)
Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (41:13)
for a lot of these rural areas in Russia. There’s stories of spouses writing in saying, hey, Preston, soldier at the front line, you should sign up for an assault unit. We’re like, these guys are getting killed left and right because that would make you so much more money. I would love that, you should do that. So there’s a lot of advantages. Right now for Russia, one of the challenges for Ukraine is obviously one of the major news ones is Western military equipment. That aid has slowed down significantly and hit a major roadblock in the United States.

Rex Chatterjee (41:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Preston Stewart (41:43)
but also manpower in Ukraine. Ukraine chose at the beginning of this war to not conscript soldiers under the age of 27, I believe. So they have volunteers under the age of 27. But like that is what a fighting force is made up of is 18 to 27 makes up, that’s the core of a military. And Ukraine hasn’t tapped into that. And it’s becoming a major concern, I’d say.

Rex Chatterjee (41:54)
Yeah.

Right? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s probably one of the most shocking facts, right? Is if you look at, I mean, you know, obviously much better than the general public would, but the demographics of even our army, right? Enlisted folks, I think are roughly, yeah, in that age bracket and to… Yeah.

Preston Stewart (42:23)
47’s old for the army, yeah.

Rex Chatterjee (42:26)
There’s something that I kind of stumbled across yesterday, which was shocking to me as someone who has never purchased a 155 millimeter shell, is that they cost $8,000 a piece. That’s what I’d read and I was shocked because isn’t it just like a large bullet? What’s the difference between an artillery shell versus…

Preston Stewart (42:42)
I’ve seen a lot of numbers, yeah.

Rex Chatterjee (42:53)
you know, any kind of missile that’s guided, the cost differences are exponentially different. But then 8,000 bucks seems to look like a lot of money.

Preston Stewart (43:01)
I would imagine, and I’ve seen a lot of costs, a lot of different numbers thrown out there, but there’s a few components to an artillery shell. I would imagine that they’re including all of those. So you have the fuse, the actual projectile, and then the propellant. So the shell is just essentially a chunk of metal for the most part. When you’re talking about high explosives, there’s some nuance to that. The propellant then has to be very, very precise. And the same for the shell. This isn’t just a cannonball. They used to churn out over a hot fire.

Rex Chatterjee (43:17)
Well, yeah.

Preston Stewart (43:29)
This thing has to be very, very precise and dialed in. So the manufacturing process is substantial. With the propellant, it has to be perfect every time because you adjust that propellant, it’ll determine how far the round is gonna go. So there has to be a lot of consistency between that propellant. That’s gonna cost some money. And then the fuse, I would imagine is pretty expensive. We have, it’s the tip on the artillery round. We have different types of fuses. The most baseline simple fuse,

Rex Chatterjee (43:55)
Mm-hmm.

Preston Stewart (43:58)
detonates on impact. So when that thing hits something, it blows up. We also have fuses that are delay. So they go into the ground or into a building just a little bit before blowing up. And then we have time fuses where you have to, it’s a timer. As soon as the thing is fired, the timer starts. And at a set point, it detonates. And then we have something called variable time fuse, which is a sensor. And when it’s seven meters above the ground, it detonates. Essentially it turns that artillery round into a shotgun blasting down.

So a giant artillery shell flying 15 miles away when it’s seven meters away from the ground goes, got it and detonates. There’s probably, now I should say at the same time, I’m sure we’re overpaying for that stuff. It’s just kind of the nature of the US government. But yeah, there’s probably some expensive components in there as well.

Rex Chatterjee (44:39)
Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah, I mean…

Then I wonder about like, okay, so hearing all that, then Russia, you know, in their domestic production is I’ve seen a Russian car before with my own eyes, right? And so to say that like, look, Russian industrial production is capable of turning out one of the worst automobiles in the world. And then we’re talking about very precise manufacturing and then North Korea has got a stockpile as well. It’s like, does the general public have a, you know, dangerous underestimation of what defense production can actually be like in…

places like Russia and North Korea and Iran.

Preston Stewart (45:27)
Yeah, that’s a real conversation. There was an article I was reading today about what a war of attrition would look like with a near peer adversary. And that’s one of these questions. I just described kind of the standard 155 millimeter artillery round. It’s kind of fancy, all things considered. And to your point, $8,000, how much better is that than a $400 round? Now we’ve seen some Russian rounds that come without the fuse. That’s a problem. Round’s not going to go boom. It ends up just being a big chunk of metal flying through the air. So you don’t want that.

There has to be a difference there. If you put that into the number of, let’s say, I’m not gonna risk doing the math live here, but that means roughly 100 US rounds and Russia churns out a thousand, that’s a problem. And it doesn’t matter if ours are better. Even if theirs have a 10% dud rate, which is huge, it would shut down a plant in the United States and they had a 10% dud rate. But if they have the quantity, that much more quantity than us in a war, it’s a major problem. So-

That’s the simple stuff. How does that apply to tanks or aircraft? This isn’t World War II production lines. One of the ways we won that war was churning out so many bombers and fighters and tanks every single day. That’s not what we do today. And that’s not what our military’s based around. So if that is the fight we get into, I don’t know, it could be a problem.

Rex Chatterjee (46:54)
Yeah. I think we’re talking about sheer numbers versus technology. I think there’s probably a lot more tech in current generation armor in the US versus perhaps say in Russia. I was looking at figures of tank production in some place north of Moscow.

They were talking about being able to churn out on the low end estimates of 70, but on the high end estimates of 350 tanks a year, but then are we talking about things that could stand toe to toe with American armor? Are we talking about things that are basically deathtraps for Russian folks?

Preston Stewart (47:31)
Yeah, tanks are probably a rough example because toe to toe, it’d be a bad day. Just we, we’ve seen Bradley’s recently, the infantry fighting vehicles knockout. You’ve seen that video. Yeah. So I feel, I feel, I feel pretty confident one to one U S armor versus Russian armor, but then to your point, you know, one Abrams tank against one Russian T 72. Got it. Not a big concern. What about five or 10? Like there’s a number there where that matters and they can hit the Abrams faster and with more rounds than they can.

Rex Chatterjee (47:40)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’ve seen it.

Preston Stewart (48:00)
knock out that number of tanks. So, um, it’s a question. It’s a real question. And one of the ways that we’re seeing this in Ukraine right now is Russia is firing a lot of very cheap drones at times or missiles or rockets at Ukraine. And Ukraine is using these incredibly expensive air defense interceptors that can’t go on forever.

Rex Chatterjee (48:05)
Mm.

Yeah. No, and that’s the thing, right? I was watching a video the other day and my wife stumbles in and it’s like, what is that? Right? And I was watching a video of a CIWS system, right? Like it was a Phalanx on the back of a ship. And it’s like, oh, it’s this big honking machine gun that uses radar to track an incoming missile or drone and then launches a crazy number of bullets at it. But, you know,

Preston Stewart (48:35)
Mm-hmm.

Rex Chatterjee (48:48)
Even the what five second barrage out of a CIWS costs less money than The Shahed drones that they’re talking about now. Again, I saw a figure of like two hundred thousand dollars per. I don’t know how much it costs operators. Yeah.

Preston Stewart (49:00)
They’ve been all, yeah, they started at like 20,000 or something and we’ve slowly seen that number might be closer to 200, but even at 200, that’s very cheap. Especially when you’re looking at the Patriot interceptors or some of the short range air defense assets being used. Yeah.

Rex Chatterjee (49:17)
Yeah. The economics of it, right? That I think is a point that a lot of folks might miss. I haven’t seen it in big format media, right? But this is not an economical way to fight this conflict. And with Iran now, and maybe you could speak to that, is Iran kind of cozying up in its defense exports and even production exports, right? Iran is setting up factories inside of Russia to produce these Shahed drones.

Preston Stewart (49:47)
inside of Russia and Yemen potentially.

Rex Chatterjee (49:50)
That I haven’t heard. That’s interesting.

Preston Stewart (49:53)
and not factories to produce the munitions, but there’s been rumors of IRGC personnel helping to assemble the drones and some of the munitions in Yemen because they’re coming in parts. They can’t ship them. Like in Russia, they can just ship the whole munition. You can’t do that to Yemen because they’re under sanctions and the US is intercepting all the ships. So they’re shipping them in parts and there’s been a lot of speculation that there’s IRGC personnel in Yemen helping to assemble these munitions to meet, essentially turn them into these Iranian munitions and then to help with the targeting of them.

Rex Chatterjee (50:03)
Right.

Preston Stewart (50:22)
Yeah, Iran is, they’ve found a market for these inexpensive, I mean even some of their missiles are relatively inexpensive, especially when you compare them to what we have here in the US.

Rex Chatterjee (50:34)
Sure, sure, sure. And to your point that you made just a bit earlier, right? It’s like, it doesn’t really matter if it’s one of our super fancy high tech ones versus 100, right, in a barrage. You know, even if you have a significantly high dud rate, yeah, that’s a problem.

What do you think about Iran’s global position in light of all of these conflicts? Because that’s one of the one, and it’s frightening, because in many ways, I think we’ve funneled resources towards them in our responses to Russia vis-a-vis the sanctions. But Iran seems to be benefiting a hell of a lot from the conflict in Ukraine, in Yemen, not to mention, I mean, the Tower 22 thing was a bit of an anomaly. But in…

the Levant and Iraq more broadly and then in Gaza, sort of, but that’s more political than anything else. But, you know, how are they feeling in Tehran right now? If you had to guess.

Preston Stewart (51:35)
It’s always mixed, in Tehran. I would think that they feel pretty good right now, and I would also say that they’re trying to avoid a direct confrontation with the United States. That shouldn’t be a shock. There’s never really been a time that Iran has said, you know what we would love to do right now is just go toe to toe with the US. So there is always a lot of talk about that. I don’t think that’s on the radar at all. And the reason for that is their proxy strategy across the Middle East has been incredibly effective, and we don’t have a great way of dealing with it.

you know, when a couple of weeks after October 7th, when Israel started striking targets in Gaza, Iran put out through some of these proxies to start striking US forces in Iraq and Syria, and we were catching it from all different directions, multiple strikes a day. It went north of 100, I think, over a couple of months period of time. And every one of those could have killed an American soldier. Every one of those struck an American base. Every one of the like… And then who do you go after? We’re going after these proxies. And like sometimes that…

Does the trick other times it doesn’t. How do they get those weapons? Why do they have these advanced drones and rockets and missiles that they’re able to use, but it doesn’t, it’s not proportional for us to intercept a drone from a random Iraqi militia and then conduct a strike in Iran. We’re not going to do that. It would look crazy. So I just, I think they’ve got a good thing going from their perspective. They just kind of sit back and let the Houthis fight their fight. Let Hamas fight, let Hezbollah maybe get there.

their, their hands dirty a little bit with Israel in the North. I just, I think we’re seeing the early stages of this proxy strategy really play out for Iran. And I don’t know what the right move is to counter it, but again, if I’m in their shoes and let this play out a little bit longer.

Rex Chatterjee (53:18)
Sure, yeah, I mean, Iran’s strategy, right? Like, it’s… The way I look at it, right, I kind of view the… This is going to sound horrible. I view the IRGC as the McKinsey of terrorism.

Like they have, right? They have some seemingly unlimited number of clients, right? Who want to do, right, yeah. And they don’t actually, I mean…

Preston Stewart (53:30)
All right, okay.

Yeah, everybody.

Rex Chatterjee (53:40)
They maybe take more of an active role than, let’s say, US Special Forces, right, serving as trainers. But still, they’re not the primary fighting force. Like the Quds Force is out there consulting, here’s how you assemble a drone once it’s been sent over in various containers. And they get to reap the windfall of not having to risk their own people. And in many ways,

Is it accurate to say they’re a force multiplier for the random terrorists? Whether it’s the Houthis, whether it’s Hamas, whether it’s whomever else.

For…

Preston Stewart (54:18)
Oh, 100% yeah. Yeah, they it gives a sense of legitimacy and access to these weapons. Look at what the Houthis are launched. The Houthis are launching anti-ship ballistic missiles into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden The Houthis, they shouldn’t have that stuff, but they do. And they’re striking ships. That’s not this is not the Yemeni manufacturing arm and the defense industry of Yemen really ramping up in the last few years. These are direct shipments from Iran. The Houthis are who they are today because of Iran. Hamas to a degree is who they are today.

Rex Chatterjee (54:28)
Yeah.

Preston Stewart (54:48)
partially because of Iran. Hezbollah is who they are today because of Iran. So yeah, it’s a good relationship for these organizations to have. And if you look at the militias across Iraq, this big benefit that Iran has is what happens if one of those drones strikes an American base and 15 Americans are killed? What are we going to do? In the US, is there really going to be an appetite to go to war in the Middle East again? I don’t think so. And Iran’s right there. So we’ll just step in. Great. The Americans are gone. Now we’re back in control here. I just, I feel like it’s a…

Rex Chatterjee (55:09)
No. Yeah.

Preston Stewart (55:17)
a low risk, high upside play for them right now.

Rex Chatterjee (55:21)
Yeah.

Any kind of final thoughts, any stuff that you want to get out onto, I guess, this platform or out to the world.

Preston Stewart (55:30)
Yeah. Just that I appreciate the, the invite here. It was a fun conversation. I, um, the, the more time I spend in these subjects, the more I realize how there’s multiple angles and biases and some information being released and others not. So anybody who’s interested in these subjects, war, conflict, national security, just know that there’s, um, look at a lot of sources. If you, if you like what I do, that’s awesome, but, but also go look at some other sources.

just it can be intentionally muddying or unintentionally muddying. So just be cautious. It’s a minefield for sure.

Rex Chatterjee (56:08)
That’s a good note to end it on. Preston, thank you so much for coming on today and discussing this with us. And in the show notes for this episode, we’ll link to all of Preston’s socials and other platforms where you can find his content. Yeah. I guess until next time, right?

Preston Stewart (56:28)
Sounds good, Rex, thank you so much.

Rex Chatterjee (56:30)
Of course, thanks.