Glenn: Prepare for war unlike any we have seen in our lifetime

May 18, 2015

WRITER

While discussing the GOP field on radio Monday, Glenn realized he needs to get the candidates to discuss their war strategy as there may be conflict coming unlike anything people have ever seen. Why?

Below is a rush transcript of this segment

GLENN: Now let's go to the audio -- do you have Rand Paul or -- here's Rand Paul being asked about ISIS and Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

VOICE: You're sort of implying you disagree with that. Do you believe the world would be a better place if Saddam Hussein were still the strong man in Iraq?

RAND PAUL: I don't think that's exactly how I would put it, but I would say I think we are more at risk for attack from people who are training, organizing and fighting in Iraq than we were before, so for example, ISIS is a more of an aberration than even Hussein was, so you have this radical brand of jihad, radical brand of Islam that is now strong and growing stronger because of the failed state that Iraq is. You have the same thing going on in Libya. So this is a valid debate. We'll have to have this debate, not only in the Republican primary, but in the general, as to whether or not it's a good idea. Is intervention always a good idea or sometimes does it lead to unintended consequences?

GLENN: Usually. Usually it leads to unintended consequences.

PAT: Where would you be on that? How would you answer that we? It's difficult.

GLENN: Give me the question.

PAT: Is Iraq better or worse off without Saddam Hussein? I mean, it's worse now, I think, than it was under Saddam Hussein when he was alive, but would it even be worse, if he were still alive? I don't know.

GLENN: There's no way to answer that, but if I had to go back with everything that we know now --

PAT: Would you go in now?

GLENN: No. I would not.

STU: This is the great point of libertarianism and we should consider it more as conservatives and --

GLENN: Are you becoming a conservetarian?

STU: I have read The Conservetarian Manifesto. It's a great book and it goes over those particular arguments well. But as far as this war goes, it is not -- say you believe George Bush was great and you think he did a great job prosecuting the war. When you start these giant government efforts, you can't eliminate the idea that somebody else, like Barak Obama, comes in to screw it up. Let's -- even if you believe, if you are a piper partisan and believe Bush was great, when you start these things, you still have to allow for that, the same way that dumb Progressives say, well, we should just let the president do whatever he wants. Immigration, just let him do it. We say wait until the next guy gets in. You aren't going to like that opinion anymore. Same with war. If you had the perfect guy prosecuting this war, whoever you think that person is, maybe it would have turned out better, but it seems like something always changes that you don't know is coming, then it winds up being worse every time. It is a tough thing to predict. And at the moment -- with the information we had at the time with Iraq, it felt like the right decision. But more and more, as I am growing, as someone who thinks about the world -- I think I am growing, as I grow, you start to consider these things, there's a lot of stuff you don't know.

GLENN: You're becoming Donald Rumsfeld.

STU: There's no knowns and no unknowns. And unknown knowns and unknown unknowns. It is a lot of times this is what happens. Even with the right information, would this be better; we don't know. It is so impossible, because you may have someone else that comes in, a different general, a different piece of information slides in. At the end, you wind up with this, where we kind of, as conservatives agreed it was a good case to go in. And Saddam was dangerous and we don't know. It is possible that Saddam may have done something even worse than what ISIS is doing. We don't know, but it is so impossible to manage, you wonder in the best course of action isn't to just lay back a little bit.

PAT: No. I know that's a bet I have coarse of action.

GLENN: So now tell me what you do with ISIS. Do you lay back a bit?

PAT: No. Well, yeah, because I don't have any confidence in this administration to do it right. George Bush didn't do it right, these guys certainly aren't going to.

STU: Absent of Ted Cruz, and everybody Ted Cruz --

GLENN: I haven't talked to Ted in depth, on what would you war strategy be?

STU: We should do that next time.

GLENN: I don't know where he stands on that.

STU: Even if you think he's the perfect guy, we think he will do it right. Four years later he might not have the job. It is still going on, everybody if you pull all the troops -- there's always going something going on.

PAT: Bush could have taken care of -- come on. In four years, certainly. Eight years, he could have taken care of Iraq, to the point where it was subdued. I mean --

STU: He kind -- he did, kind of. All right sort of didn't. A lot of messing around.

GLENN: The middle part, before the surge, there was a screwup. Then he started the surge, and it got good. I mean -- walked with actual shock and awe, it would have been better.

PAT: Put the hammer down and get out.

STU: Isn't this the communist argument all the time? If Stalin would have just done this. They never do this. The right thing never occurs.

GLENN: I'm kind of with --

PAT: We used to. It's been a long time.

GLENN: Up until Tragedy and Hope.

STU: A lot of that happened before there were these sort of restrictions. Again, we can say we want them to go in and act like World War II, but the -- we have one bomb that flies offer target by six inches and it's like the biggest story in the world forever. People who were naked in a prison was the dominated the news for six months. I mean, how do you --

PAT: But they were in a pyramid.

STU: And a dog was barking nearby. How can you prosecute a war in the a way we'd say would be a winnable way. And when you can't do it that way --

GLENN: I don't think naked pyramids are winning a war.

PAT: No.

STU: I'm not -- when you have a thing --

PAT: Goes nuts, just because you saw men in a naked pyramid and a dog barked near them, you can't prosecute a war like that.

STU: We talk about World War II, where they did shock and awe certainly in World War II. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of civilians died. It was not at pretty picture. And obviously, war is hell, but is there any way that America, with the backbone they ever today, with the 99 percenters with Occupy Wall Street as part of this country, with all that, they are going to accept a war effort like that? And you'd better freaking be right on that one.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: You are saying if everything changes. Maybe that's true.

GLENN: Except a couple of variable changes. Economic collapse and terrorist attacks here on our own soil, where they go into a school and just kill a bunch of our children, yeah. We'll bomb the snot out of them. We'll bomb the snot out of them, if you had a Republican. If we had President Obama, I think we'd just go on some apology tour, but if we had an economic collapse, where people were frightened, really, truly frightened, and then on top of it, you had a really bad terrorist attack, I think we would.

STU: We had a really bad terrorist attack. 3,000 people died to start this. In Afghanistan, there was still some of that. It wasn't as --

GLENN: You didn't have it -- remember, we were still in good times. We still were -- we are not in fear of losing our country yet. Once you -- most people are not. Most people are not. When you have a real, true fear of losing everything, losing your homeland, and that happens when people are invading -- it is going to be different this next time. It's not going to be 19 guys who got onto a passport and just came over here. Now it will be home-grown. They will be in multiple cities, so you won't know. Did you see what ISIS came out and said? That ISIS, their number one goal now is to hit America and kill the president.

I cannot imagine --

STU: Yeah, that would change perspective.

GLENN: That would change perspectives entirely. Unfortunately, it would change perspectives here in the United States. We got the Patriot Act the last time. Can you even imagine what the Department of Homeland Security would be if they, God forbid, hurt the president?

JEFFY: Yes.

STU: And 90% of the population --

GLENN: Everybody would be screening for it.

STU: Yeah. To go back to what you talked about a mill times, this is why you have to have your principles and know what they are, before that tough moment goes into effect, because you need to be able to rely on them and not make decisions based on emotion.

GLENN: Not enough of us knew the constitution, and we were -- we believed that we would never lose our security. We believed we would never lose our privacy, we would never lose our country. So we were like okay, well, I'm going to trade some of my freedoms, because they're going to give it back. They won't take this. They won't do that. We know now, at least a portion of us, unfortunately, the vast majority still doesn't get it.

I don't know what it's going to take, but you change a few variables and we will -- and I would suggest that you prepare for all-out war, war unlike we have ever seen in our lifetime, because that's what I believe is coming, unfortunately. I'm hoping that there's a way to put this genie back in the bottle, but I don't see it.

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

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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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