The Undocumented Mark Steyn

October 23, 2014

Writer

Mark Steyn is one of the smartest commentators around today, and Glenn had the opportunity to chat with him about his new book on radio today. Mark believes the battleground needs to be in culture, arguing liberals focus their efforts there while conservatives only care about an election every other November and are surprised nothing changes.

WATCH:

Below is a rough transcript of the interview

GLENN: My opinion there are probably two people that come really right off the top of my head that I think have been some of the most courageous people when it comes to the fight against radicalized Islam that have been mainstream for a long time early on. And that is Michelle Malkin and Mark Steyn. They've been very clear, unafraid and have really been persecuted for their viewpoint. If I'm not mistaken, mark, his Canadian citizenship was prosecuted for hate speech because he spoke out years ago about radicalized Islam and he said, warning this is a real problem. Now, in his own country, we are all Canadians today. Now, in his own country, two people were shot. Canadian parliament is meeting now and at least their prime minister has come out and said, this is terrorism. None of this, mumbo, jumbo and political correct crap that is coming out of the mouth of our politicians. They're somewhat clear that this is Muslim -- I don't want to say extremism. This is Islamic psychopaths that have done this. And Mark Steyn is with us today. He has the book, The Undocumented. Mark Steyn. Don't say you weren't warned. How accurate is that, don't say you weren't warned, Mark?

MARK: Yeah, that's sadly true. It doesn't give me any pleasure. I know the Canadian parliament really well. At the time of the hate speech stuff that you mentioned just now, I testified there to the House of Commons in that block where that barbarian was rampaging down yesterday morning and where, thank God, he was taken out by the sergeant of arms, who is basically a ceremonial figure. It's what a military man or a retired police officer does in the years before he goes off to enjoy his pension. And thank God that that brave guy realized that his ceremonial role had turned real and took down that savage yesterday because otherwise there would have been a lot more dead people.

GLENN: So, Mark, there's two things here. They're doing a moment of silence now in Ottawa. There's live coverage everywhere. Canada is somewhat in a state of shock. I have to say we were all going numb to some of this stuff which is a really bad sign. But there's two things that come to mind. There's two paths. We're at a fork for Canada right now. They could go the Patriot Act way and beat their chest and start to, you know, go unfortunately some of the ways that we went. Or they could just sober up, wake up, get rid of political correctness and actually start dealing with the issues. Which way do they go?

MARK: I hope they don't go the Patriot Act way. I love America, but I'm tired of the big national security state, which is why Capitol city-wise I preferred in recent years to wander around Ottawa rather than Washington, D.C. where they get into the -- an obscure office of the department of paperwork. You have to go through 45 minutes of background checks and show your Social Security number.

We have a kind of 40-car motorcade culture, where we seal off our ruling class from the people they rule. We have absurd regulations like the -- just the head of Thanksgiving, I talk about this in the book, the absurd kind of things. The consistency of pumpkin pie you take home for Auntie Mabel at Thanksgiving. If it's like dry and tasteless like the Nevada desert, you can take it on the plane. But if it's moist and succulent, it counts as a liquid. And a jihadist could weaponize your pumpkin pie.

And instead of going down that kind of big security state route, I think we need to be honest. We need to recognize we're up against an ideology. We're not fighting pumpkin pies. We're not fighting gel. We're not fighting shoes. We're up against an ideology, and we need to drive a stake through that ideology. So I don't want to go the Patriot Act route.

GLENN: But do you think they have the courage to do that? Look what they did to you.

MARK: Yes, but to be fair to the Canadian parliament, they had a lot of these hate speech laws -- I mean, if you look at Canada as like a particularly insane American college campus, that's how it was for hate speech laws.

And the great thing about my case is that, God bless them, the Canadian parliament understood that the hate speech laws had gone too far, and they repealed them. And it was a difficult process, and a lot of those fellows weren't on board with it because they think it means you're in favor of hate and you don't like the people, but eventually that went through the House of Commons and the Senate, and it got royal assent, and that law was repealed. And I think that's the sign that Canada has opened up and recognized reality.

When I look at the dishonesty about what Major Hasan did at Fort Hood. When I listen to the president yesterday using phrases like "senseless violence" -- I mean, he always sounds so sedated when he's asked to react to something like this. And you keep thinking, come on, man, a bit of righteous indignation wouldn't -- you could at least look as if you're kind of upset or angry about what's going on. But he could never do it.

And that kind of sedated attitude to these events, most obviously when the poor fellow had his head chopped off by ISIS, and Obama gives his usual listless performance and then goes back to the vineyard country club about 20 minutes later, at some point, you have to -- if you're not getting angry about this, about the world we're building for our children, where somehow we're expected to put up with a little bit of low-level beheading every now and then, or some guy is going to run you over in his car because he's gone freelance jihad -- I don't want my kids living in that world. And I think we shouldn't be changing the way we live to accommodate lunatics.

GLENN: So what are we headed for? We have kids now in Australia. Kids leaving to go join ISIS. We had two girls from Colorado that went to join jihad. Where are we headed?

MARK: You know, I think it's like -- I think that's what's so disturbing about a lot of what has been in the news recently. The fellows who did this thing in Ottawa and San Jon Sarish (phonetic) there, where people who were born in Canada and converted to Islam. The fellow in Moore, Oklahoma, who beheaded a woman was a recent convert. The fellows that hacked drummer Rigby to death in the streets of London were Nigerian Christians who converted to Islam.

So it is almost -- I think we're at the stage -- and they're not converting because they suddenly saw on the road to Damascus, and they've come -- and they've undergone some kind of spiritual divine transformation.

What conversion means there is that they're joining the coolest gang on the planet. And if it's now not something to do with being born in Waziristan or Yemen or whatever, but a Quebec quire Catholic can suddenly decide he'd like to be one of the jihad boys, or some fellow in Oklahoma can suddenly decide, wow, this is the coolest gang to belong to, then I think that is actually far more dangerous than some fellow sitting in a cave in Afghanistan dreaming about destroying the great Satan because it's not a foreign war anymore. It's within us. They are us and we are them. And that's a very dark place to go.

GLENN: So what happens next? Let's talk about nuts and bolts. Let's talk about the sporting event that is politics and the election. Okay. So I want to know a couple things. What happens, in your opinion to this election? Does it -- and does it even matter? What happens to the presidential election? And would you want to be president of the United States with all the damage that has been done and the wreckage that has yet to be reconciled?

MARK: Well, that last one is a terrible -- we're approaching the stage where this president has outspent two and a third centuries of his -- he's run up more debt than two and a third centuries of presidents combined. And whoever succeeds him is going to have to be serious about the implications of that.

I've listened to you for years. And you're absolutely right that -- when the choice is between people who want to go off a cliff full-throttle and somebody else who says, no, let's go off the cliff in third gear, that doesn't make any difference to how you land when you're at the bottom. You're still dead.

And I would like a real choice, and I would like someone who is willing to move the meter. At the end of my book, I write about a couple of contemporary figures and a far more remote one. About Reagan, Thatcher, and William Wilberforce who was an obscure backbencher who got slavery abolished, which was a feature of life across the entire planet for all societies. And they didn't take a focus group. And they didn't run the numbers. They actually changed the way people thought. And they move -- they didn't move toward the center, as the consultants tell you to do, they moved the center toward them. And that's what I'm looking for. So that's what I'm looking for this November, and that's what I'm looking for in two November's time.

GLENN: Have you seen that? Have you seen William Wilber? Paging William Wilber for us. Paging William Wilber for us. To the campaign trail. Stat.

MARK: No, I have a great fear that the -- the smart guys in Washington would say, he's way too crazy. We don't want the money going to him.

GLENN: Right. So let me ask you this: First of all, you're a Canadian citizen.

MARK: Right. And I live in New Hampshire, and this is where my children are.

GLENN: All right. All right. This is all a beard. Okay. This New Hampshire thing is a beard. The Canadian thing is a beard. What's with the English accent, Mr. Canadian? You carpetbagger.

MARK: I love the people who is it's a phony accent. It's like hell to keep up.

GLENN: We meet you in the street at night and you're like, hey, how you doing?

PAT: You actually attended the same school as JRR Tolkien.

MARK: Yeah, that's right. I had his old Greek dictionary. I wasn't the same time as him. Because I would have told him, lay off all that troll stuff. It's not going to go anywhere. I had his old Greek dictionary, and I actually had an exchange of letters with him when I was 11 or 12 years old. The best selling authors I regret to say aren't always when you send them handwritten letters, and so I went to school --

GLENN: So funny, I just went through his handwritten letters. I have a library. And so we're collecting a lot of stuff. And I just went through some handwritten letters. One is explaining about Gandalf and why he named him Gandalf and everything. Some amazing stuff. I was going through these letters and some of them were just to fans who said, hey, I want to thank you for this. What he would write back to them. I had that very thought. Who does that now? Who has the time to write people back in hand, not typewritten. What did he write to you.

MARK: I know. Well, he wrote to me again about an obscure point in The Hobbit I had raised. And he wrote me a nice handwritten letter explaining that. And the idea. And as you say, who has the time to do that now? And these days people get annoyed if you, you know, if you email someone or you tweet someone and they don't instantly respond in five, six, seven seconds.

And the idea of someone painstakingly writing this out in hand. And putting it in an envelope. Putting a stamp on it and taking it to the post office to mail. It's like, he doesn't need me, and yet he did it for me.

GLENN: Do you still have the letter?

MARK: Yeah, I have it in the attic at my mum's house, but it's still there.

GLENN: Say it with me. Mom.

SPEAKER: It creeps across the border.

GLENN: Don't worry. Don't worry. We've got everything creeping across our borders. We don't seem to care anymore. It's very hard for me to watch a James Bond with my son because he's like, is she his mom? Why does he keep calling her mum? I'm like, I don't know. Mum sometimes means mom. Sometimes it means ma'am. I don't know. They're English.

MARK: Yes, it's like the queen you call, ma'am. Which rhymes with jam. And James Bond calls M halfway between -- he calls Judi Dench halfway between ma'am and mum. So she's like a maternal queenly figure.

Actually, in the book, there's a whole big chunk of stuff about James Bond, so you can get your full thing of Ian Fleming and ma'am/jam thing going there?

GLENN: Mark, I don't know why you're not on more. I thoroughly enjoy you. You're really truly one of the bravest men alive today because you will not shut up or sit down. I hope that continues. New book: The Undocumented. Mark Steyn. Don't say you weren't warned. Mark, thanks a lot.

MARK: Thanks a lot, Glenn. And I may yet cover have a Ramahanukwanzmas. As life goes on, I think it's actually one of the most profound statements of what has happened to us.

GLENN: You know, I have not heard Ramahanukwanzmas for a long time. I can't believe you even remember that. But we should pull that out for this Christmas.

MARK: We've got it all worked out.

GLENN: Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. God bless.

Fort Knox exposed: Is America's gold MISSING?

Christopher Furlong / Staff | Getty Images

President Trump promised that we would get a peek inside Fort Knox, but are we ready for what we might find?

In this new era of radical transparency, the possibility that the Deep State's darkest secrets could be exposed has many desperate for answers to old questions. Recently, Glenn has zeroed in on gold, specifically America's gold reserves, which are supposed to be locked away inside the vaults of Fort Knox. According to the government, there are 147.3 million ounces of gold stored within several small secured rooms that are themselves locked behind a massive 22 ton vault door, but the truth is that no one has officially seen this gold since 1953. An audit is long overdue, and President Trump has already shown interest in the idea.

America's gold reserve has been surrounded by suspicion for the better part of a hundred years. It all started in 1933, when FDR effectively nationalized the United States's private gold stores, forcing Americans to sell their gold to the government. This gold was melted down, forged into bars, and stored in the newly constructed U.S. Bullion Depository building at Fort Knox. By 1941, Fort Knox had held 649.6 million ounces of gold—which, you may have noticed, was 502.3 million ounces more than today. We'll come back to that.

By 1944, World War II was ending, and the Allies began planning how to rebuild Europe. The U.N. held a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where the USD was established as the world's reserve currency. This meant that any country (though not U.S. citizens) could exchange the USD for gold at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce. Already, you can see where our gold might have gone.

Jump to the 1960s, where Lyndon B. Johnson was busy digging America into a massive debt hole. Between the Vietnam War and Johnson's "Great Society" project, the U.S. was bleeding cash and printing money to keep up. But now Fort Knox no longer held enough physical gold to cover the $35 an ounce rate promised by the Bretton Woods agreement. France took notice of this weakness and began to redeem hundreds of millions of dollars. In the 70s Nixon staunched this gushing wound by halting foreign nations from redeeming dollars for gold, but this had the adverse effect of ending the gold standard.

This brings us to the present, where inflation is through the roof, no one knows how much gold is actually inside Fort Knox, and someone in America has been buying a LOT of gold. Who is buying this gold? Where is it going and for what purpose? Glenn has a few ideas, and one of them is MUCH better than the other:

The path back to gold

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

One possibility is that all of this gold that has been flooding into America is in preparation for a shift back to a gold-backed, or partial-gold-backed system. The influx of gold corresponds with a comment recently made by Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who said he was going to:

“Monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.”

Glenn pointed out that per a 1972 law, the gold in Fort Knox is currently set at a fixed value of $42 an ounce. At the time of this writing, gold was valued at $2,912.09 an ounce, which is more than a 6,800 percent increase. If the U.S. stockpile was revalued to reflect current market prices, it could be used to stabilize the dollar. This could even mean a full, or partial return to the gold standard, depending on the amount of gold currently being imported.

Empty coffers—you will own nothing

Raymond Boyd / Contributor | Getty Images

Unfortunately, Glenn suspects there is another, darker purpose behind the recent gold hubbub.

As mentioned before, the last realaudit of Fort Knox was done under President Eisenhower, in 1953. While the audit passed, a report from the Secretary of the Treasury revealed that a mere 13.6 percent was checked. For the better part of a century, we've had no idea how much gold is present under Fort Knox. After the gold hemorrhage in the 60s, many were suspicious of the status of our gold supply. In the 80s, a wealthy businessman named Edward Durell released over a decade's worth of research that led him to conclude that Fort Knox was all but empty. In short, he claimed that the Federal Reserve had siphoned off all the gold and sold it to Europe.

What would it mean if America's coffers are empty? According to a post by X user Matt Smith that Glenn shared, empty coffers combined with an influx of foreign gold could represent the beginning of a new, controlled economy. We couldstill be headed towards a future where you'll ownnothing.

Glenn: The most important warning of your lifetime—AI is coming for you

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Artificial intelligence isn’t coming. It’s here. The future we once speculated about is no longer science fiction—it’s reality. Every aspect of our lives, from how we work to how we think, is about to change forever. And if you’re not ready for it, you’re already behind. This isn’t just another technological leap. This is the biggest shift humanity has ever faced.

The last call before the singularity

I've been ringing this bell for 30 years. Thirty years warning you about what’s coming. And now, here we are. This isn’t a drill. This isn’t some distant future. It’s happening now. If you don’t understand what’s at stake, you need to wake up—because we have officially crossed the event horizon of artificial intelligence.

What’s an event horizon? It’s the edge of a black hole—the point where you can’t escape, no matter how hard you try. AI is that black hole. The current is too strong. The waterfall is too close. If you haven’t been paying attention, you need to start right now. Because once we reach Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), there is no turning back.

You’ve heard me talk about this for decades. AI isn’t just a fancy Siri. It isn’t just ChatGPT. We are on the verge of machines that will outthink every human who has ever lived—combined. ASI won’t just process information—it will anticipate, decide, and act faster than any of us can comprehend. It will change everything about our world, about our lives.

And yet, the conversation around AI has been wrong. People think the real dangers are coming later—some distant dystopian nightmare. But we are already in it. We’ve passed the point where AI is just a tool. It’s becoming the master. And the people who don’t learn to use it now—who don’t understand it, who don’t prepare for it—are going to be swallowed whole.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Glenn, you’ve spent years warning us about AI, about how dangerous it is. And now you’re telling us to embrace it?" Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Because if you don’t use this tool—if you don’t learn to master it—then you will be at its mercy.

This is not an option anymore. This is survival.

How you must prepare—today

I need you to take AI seriously—right now. Not next year, not five years from now. This weekend.

Here’s what I want you to do: Open up one of these AI tools—Grok 3, ChatGPT, anything advanced—and start using it. If you’re a CEO, have it analyze your competitors. If you’re an artist, let it critique your work. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, have it optimize your budget. Ask it questions. Push it to its limits. Learn what it can do—because if you don’t, you will be left behind.

Let me be crystal clear: AI is not your friend. It’s not your partner. It’s not something to trust. AI is a shovel—an extremely powerful shovel, but still just a tool. And if you don’t understand that, you’re in trouble.

We’ve already seen what happens when we surrender to technology without thinking. Social media rewired our brains. Smartphones reshaped our culture. AI will do all that—and more. If you don’t take control now, AI will control you.

Ask yourself: When AI makes decisions for you—when it anticipates your needs before you even know them—at what point do you stop being the one in charge? At what point does AI stop being a tool and start being your master?

And that’s not even the worst of it. The next step—transhumanism—is coming. It will start with good intentions. Elon Musk is already developing implants to help people walk again. And that’s great. But where does it stop? What happens when people start “upgrading” themselves? What happens when people choose to merge with AI?

I know my answer. I won’t cross that line. But you’re going to have to decide for yourself. And if you don’t start preparing now, that decision will be made for you.

The final warning—act now or be left behind

I need you to hear me. This is not optional. This is not something you can ignore. AI is here. And if you don’t act now, you will be lost.

The next 18 months will change everything. People who don’t prepare—who don’t learn to use AI—will be scrambling to catch up. And they won’t catch up. The gap will be too wide. You’ll either be leading, or you’ll be swallowed whole.

So start this weekend. Learn it. Test it. Push it. Master it. Because the people who don’t? They will be the tools.

The decision is yours. But time is running out.

The coming AI economy and the collapse of traditional jobs

Think back to past technological revolutions. The industrial revolution put countless blacksmiths, carriage makers, and farmhands out of business. The internet wiped out entire industries, from travel agencies to brick-and-mortar retail. AI is bigger than all of those combined. This isn’t just about job automation—it’s about job obliteration.

Doctors, lawyers, engineers—people who thought their jobs were untouchable—will find themselves replaced by AI. A machine that can diagnose disease with greater accuracy, draft legal documents in seconds, or design infrastructure faster than an entire team of engineers will be cheaper, faster, and better than human labor. If you’re not preparing for that reality, you’re already falling behind.

What does this mean for you? It means constant adaptation. Every three to five years, you will need to redefine your role, retrain, and retool. The only people who survive this AI revolution will be the ones who understand its capabilities and learn to work with it, not against it.

The moral dilemma: When do you stop being human?

The real danger of AI isn’t just economic—it’s existential. When AI merges with humans, we will face an unprecedented question: At what point do we stop being human?

Think about it. If you implant a neural chip that gives you access to the entire internet in your mind, are you still the same person? If your thoughts are intertwined with AI-generated responses, where do you end and AI begins? This is the future we are hurtling toward, and few people are even asking the right questions.

I’m asking them now. And you should be too. Because that line—between human and machine—is coming fast. You need to decide now where you stand. Because once we cross it, there is no going back.

Final thoughts: Be a leader, not a follower

AI isn’t a passing trend. It’s not a gadget or a convenience. It is the most powerful force humanity has ever created. And if you don’t take the time to understand it now, you will be at its mercy.

This is the defining moment of our time. Will you be a master of AI? Or will you be mastered by it? The choice is yours. But if you wait too long, you won’t have a choice at all.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Trump's Zelenskyy deal falls apart: What happened and what's next?

SAUL LOEB / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump offered Zelenskyy a deal he couldn’t refuse—but Zelenskyy rejected it outright.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington to sign a historic agreement aimed at ending the brutal war ravaging Ukraine. Joined by Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump met with Zelenskyy and the press before the leaders were set to retreat behind closed doors to finalize the deal. Acting as a gracious host, Trump opened the meeting by praising Zelenskyy and the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers. He expressed enthusiasm for the proposed agreement, emphasizing its benefits—such as access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals for the U.S.—and publicly pledged continued American aid in exchange.

Zelenskyy, however, didn’t share Trump’s optimism. Throughout the meeting, he interrupted repeatedly and openly criticized both Trump and Vance in front of reporters. Tensions escalated until Vance, visibly frustrated, fired back. The exchange turned the meeting hostile, and by its conclusion, Trump withdrew his offer. Rather than staying in Washington to resolve the conflict, Zelenskyy promptly left for Europe to seek support from the European Union.

As Glenn pointed out, Trump had carefully crafted this deal to benefit all parties, including Russia. Zelenskyy’s rejection was a major misstep.

Trump's generous offer to Zelenskyy

I believe Trump is playing 4-D chess with Zelenskyy. pic.twitter.com/L19RtQdCF6
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck)
March 3, 2025

Glenn took to his whiteboard—swapping out his usual chalkboard—to break down Trump’s remarkable deal for Zelenskyy. He explained how it aligned with several of Trump’s goals: cutting spending, advancing technology and AI, and restoring America’s position as the dominant world power without military action. The deal would have also benefited the EU by preventing another war, revitalizing their economy, and restoring Europe’s global relevance. Ukraine and Russia would have gained as well, with the war—already claiming over 250,000 lives—finally coming to an end.

The media has portrayed last week’s fiasco as an ambush orchestrated by Trump to humiliate Zelenskyy, but that’s far from the truth. Zelenskyy was only in Washington because he had already rejected the deal twice—first refusing Vice President Vance and then Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It was Zelenskyy who insisted on traveling to America to sign the deal at the White House. If anyone set an ambush, it was him.

The EU can't help Ukraine

JUSTIN TALLIS / Contributor | Getty Images

After clashing with Trump and Vance, Zelenskyy wasted no time leaving D.C. The Ukrainian president should have stayed, apologized to Trump, and signed the deal. Given Trump’s enthusiasm and a later comment on Truth Social—where he wrote, “Zelenskyy can come back when he is ready for peace”—the deal could likely have been revived.

Meanwhile, in London, over a dozen European leaders, joined by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, convened an emergency meeting dubbed the “coalition of the willing” to ensure peace in Ukraine. This coalition emerged as Europe’s response to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal. By the meeting’s end, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a four-point plan to secure Ukrainian independence.

Zelenskyy, however, appears less than confident in the coalition’s plan. Recently, he has shifted his stance toward the U.S., apologizing to Trump and Vance and expressing gratitude for the generous military support America has already provided. Zelenskyy now says he wants to sign Trump’s deal and work under his leadership.

This is shaping up to be another Trump victory.

Glenn: No more money for the war machine, Senator McConnell

Tom Williams / Contributor | Getty Images

Senator McConnell, your call for more Pentagon spending is as tone-deaf as it is reckless. The United States already spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined — over $877 billion in 2023 alone, dwarfing China ($292 billion), Russia ($86 billion), and the entire EU’s collective defense budgets. And yet here you are, clamoring for more, as if throwing cash at an outdated war machine will somehow secure our future.

The world is changing, Senator, and your priorities are stuck in a bygone era.

Aircraft carriers — those floating behemoths you and the Pentagon so dearly love — are relics of the past. In the next real conflict, they’ll be as useless as horses were in World War I. Speaking of which, Europe entered that war with roughly 25 million horses; by 1918, fewer than 10 million remained, slaughtered by machine guns and artillery they couldn’t outrun.

That’s the fate awaiting your precious carriers against modern threats — sunk by hypersonic missiles or swarms of AI-driven drones before they can even launch a jet. The 1950s called, Senator — they want their war plans back.

The future isn’t in steel and jet fuel; it’s in artificial intelligence and artificial superintelligence. Every dollar spent on yesterday’s hardware is a dollar wasted in three years when AI upends everything we know about warfare. Worse, with the Pentagon’s track record, every dollar spent today could balloon into two or three dollars of inflation tomorrow, thanks to the House and Senate’s obscene spending spree.

We’re drowning in $34 trillion of national debt — 128% of GDP, a level unseen since World War II. Annual deficits hit $1.7 trillion in 2023, and interest payments alone are projected to top $1 trillion by 2026.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s a fiscal time bomb.

And yet you want to shovel more taxpayer money into a Pentagon that hasn’t passed a single audit in its history? Six attempts since 2018, six failures — trillions unaccounted for, waste so rampant that it defies comprehension. It’s irresponsible — bordering on criminal — to suggest more spending when the DOD can’t even count the cash it’s got.

The real threat isn’t just from abroad, though those dangers are profound. It’s from within. The call is coming from inside the house, Senator — and not just the House, but the Senate too. Your refusal to adapt is jeopardizing our security more than any foreign adversary.

Look at China’s drone shows — thousands of synchronized lights painting the sky. Now imagine those aren’t fireworks but weaponized drones, each one cheap, precise, and networked by AI. A single swarm could cripple our planes, ships, tanks, and troops before we fire a shot. Ukraine’s drone wars have already shown this reality: $500 drones taking out $10 million tanks. That’s the future staring us down, and we’re still polishing Cold War relics.

Freeze every bloated project.

Redirect everything — every dime, every mind — toward winning the AI/ASI race. That’s the only battlefield that matters. We’ve got enough stockpiles to handle any foreseeable war in the next three years and a president fighting to end conflicts, not start them. Your plea for more spending isn’t just misguided — it’s a betrayal of the American people sinking under debt and inflation while you chase ghosts of wars past.

Or is it even that senator? Perhaps I have buried the lede, but I am not sure if the following stats will help people understand why this op-ed might have been written by someone in your office.

Your state, Kentucky is:

45th in GDP Per Capita
44th in Employment
42nd in High School Diplomas

And 11th in Defense-related defense contract spending

Who are you actually concerned about, Senator? The safety of the American people or your war machine buddies?

Thanks, but no thanks.

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