Original subtitles

-If you ask a group of randomly selected Americans

how secure do you feel today,

you might be surprised at the results.

People might say that they feel more confident

that we're being protected from terrorist attacks.

But are their lives as a whole more secure?

And the answer to that is likely no.

-I can't breath. I can't breath.

-Because security is more than just the protection

against terrorist attacks.

It's one's health.

It's once economic well-being, it's public safety.

All that comes together in how people view their own security.

-But the U.S. government views security

almost exclusively in terms of military might.

Spending around a trillion dollars a year

on a military they claim will shield Americans from harm.

The reality is that even using this narrow interpretation

of what it means to be safe,

the government is losing the battle.

-National security is the most basic level

is about keeping the American people safe,

but the threat to America's national security

is greater right now than any other time in our lifetime.

♪♪

-For over 70 years, our leaders have told us

one thing under the bright lights.

-The protection of the lives and property of Americans

is the responsibility of all public officials.

-I care for trying.

-And it is my first duty

as president to protect the American people.

-We have it so well under control.

-But America's shadow government has spent trillions of dollars

on secret plans that serve one premise.

When the shit really hits the fan, we're on our own.

-I have nothing. Nothing.

-And while we are dying and increasingly senseless ways,

America's vast military machine never goes without.

♪♪

♪♪

October 2017, North West Africa.

American special forces are on patrol deep in the Niger desert.

-They were out on our patrol trying to find local affiliates

of ISIS near the Mali border when they were ambushed.

-The ambush was captured by a camera mounted

on one of the soldier's helmets.

♪♪

-When I watch that video,

I think of the worst case scenario.

When you go through training at Fort Benning as an infantryman,

you think you'll never be left alone.

[ Gunfire ]

-[ Panting ]

-By the time helicopters were able to come in

to rescue them, it was too late.

-We always say leave no man behind,

and that video is American troops left behind, left to die.

♪♪

[ Gunshots ]

If we have drones and satellite eyes in space,

how do we let American troops get abandoned?

It's outrageous, and it's the epitome

of how little at times

our political leadership cares about the troops.

♪♪

-Suddenly, that raised a lot of questions,

what the hell were the soldiers doing in Niger

in the first place?

-Do the American people know they're there

and have they been asked whether it's the right thing to do?

This is what happens when you have war without accountability.

-I would not at this time draw any particular conclusion

from the incident that happened yesterday.

I think that it does reflect the fact, though,

that we're having enormous success against the core

of the very heart of this movement.

♪♪

-It really is a beautiful case of how the U.S. military really

is out there in the world

with very little knowledge back in the United States.

♪♪

-In 2017, America was planning a mission to Mars.

The early phases of the space force

were being developed, and American sons

were being slaughtered in Niger by $50 AK-47s.

We have prioritized weapons systems and defense contractors

and the needs of corporate interests

over the needs of our sons

and daughters from Brooklyn, Detroit and L.A.

♪♪

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

♪♪

-Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪♪

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Since the end of the Cold War,

the United States has been the world's undisputed superpower.

♪♪

-And while it's true that Russia has an equivalent number

of nuclear weapons, they have a third world economy.

And while it is true that China has a competitive

economic strength of the United States,

it has a third world military.

And though they might be catching up,

the truth of the matter is that no country

is as powerful as the United States,

no country has the capacity to wage war in the way

that the United States wages it,

and the United States is the sole superpower.

♪♪

-But it didn't come cheap.

The United States possesses the most powerful military force

ever assembled, and with 1.3 million

active duty troops, over a million reservists

and almost 800,000 full-time civilians,

The Department of Defense is the largest employer in the world.

To maintain this vast military arsenal,

the United States spends more on defense

than the combined total of the next 10 countries.

♪♪

-Third of all, global military spending

is done by our government.

You know, the military budget is over $700 billion,

but if you add in the military work done

by like the Department of Energy and other parts

of the government, generally estimates

are that the real spending on military in the U.S.

every year is about $1.2 trillion,

enormous amounts of money.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

-You might think that the end of the Cold War would lead to,

well, a peace, right?

The country's been at war for decades now.

It's no longer a war. It can reinvest in welfare,

in education and infrastructure and foreign aid.

There's all kinds of things it can buy with its peace dividend.

-And I remember the early 90s and the hopefulness.

I mean, you had the end of the Cold War,

you had the tearing down of the Berlin Wall,

and the world could really have gone in a different direction.

-All such hope for a peace dividend

ended when the government took the American people back to war.

-Well, after 9/11, President Bush

declared a war on terror.

-Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda,

but it does not in there.

It will not end until every terrorist group

of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

[ Applause ]

-What followed was a militarization

both in the United States and abroad.

-After 9/11, President Bush declared a national emergency

and he called up reservists

and extended tours of duty and things like that,

basically amplifying the military forces

available to him for overseas deployment.

-In October 2001, the first salvo

in the American war on terror

was fired when U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan.

-So, you had a situation after 9/11

where you had a political leadership

that was largely dominated by chicken hawks,

people who had never served themselves

and viewed people like me

and others as pieces on a chessboard or a video game.

In my view, it's the ultimate disrespect to our country.

Our military is supposed to be used as a last resort

and it's not supposed to be abused.

-And the war on terror becomes a new justification

for the same old process,

which is shoveling vast amounts of money towards the military,

towards the spy agencies.

And that's great for Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing,

all those firms.

There was one famous conference call a couple of years ago

where a military contractor said,

you know, war is not good for people,

but man, it's really been great for business.

-Since 9/11, defense contractors

have seen their profits quadruple.

-The war on terror is basically a welfare program

for the military industrial complex,

the companies that provide the planes and the bombs

because it's incredibly profitable

for weapons manufacturers.

Just between 2016 and 2018,

military spending went up 10 percent.

-But many of the weapons systems that defense contractors supply

or have little practical use

to soldiers on the front lines in most conflicts.

-We continue to dump billions of dollars

in weapons systems like the F-35

that the military says they don't really need or don't want,

yet the defense contractors continue to push.

-Each F-35 fighter jet costs over $100 million.

And with the entire program estimated to cost U.S.

taxpayers over a trillion dollars,

it's the most expensive defense program ever.

-It continues to fail to meet its objectives,

it's delayed, it's over budget.

If a human being was as bad at their job as the F-35 was,

that person would be kicked out of the military a long time ago.

♪♪

-The infrastructure, the education, the health care,

all of the things that we are failing in,

they suddenly become disposable

because we started asking Americans

to sacrifice their well-being in the face of an opponent.

-But who is that opponent and why does it keep changing

and why are we still fighting?

-The national emergency that was declared after 9/11

is still in place almost 20 years later

and is being used for purposes

that have nothing to do with 9/11.

-Osama bin Laden wanted to draw us into a protracted war,

to bleed us out, and George Bush fell for it.

And we're still being bled out today.

Osama bin Laden is long gone,

but his objectives have been accomplished.

His objectives continue to be furthered

because we're still bleeding our blood,

our treasure, our fabric of our country every single day.

It's what brings down empires,

and it's what could bring down America if we're not vigilant.

[ Gunfire ]

♪♪

-The idea behind these military bases

is that they're there for security.

But you have to ask the question,

do they render the United States more secure?

I think you can see some reasons why hundreds of military bases

might actually be counterproductive.

♪♪

♪♪

-The major sin of war is that the United States

has been involved in the 21st century

are under the rubric of the global war on terrorism.

And how did that global war on terrorism start?

The start of it, you usually say, is 9/11,

when Al Qaeda flew planes into the World Trade Center

and into the Pentagon.

-Can't know where the explosion.

We heard there was a plane down here.

-I'm frustrated with the country as a whole.

As long as we're going to let people off the hook

in the Mid East, Iraq, Iran and places like that,

if we don't take a strong stand, this is going to continue.

-This provoked a lot of short rending in the United States.

Why do they hate us

is the question that a lot of people ask,

and the answer usually given,

including given by President Bush,

was they hate our freedoms, they hate our ideology.

But that way of narrating it misses

something really important,

which is Osama bin Laden's reason.

-Bin Laden's stated goal was clear and so was his rally cry.

He was able to use our presence in the Middle East

as a way to motivate people around the world to fight us.

It's something that most Americans can't understand.

People don't attack us because they hate our freedom.

They don't attack us even because they hate our president.

They attack us because they think we're wrong

and that they're right.

They view themselves as freedom fighters

against people who are imposing their will

over their sacred land and their sacred space.

♪♪

-As part of the ongoing war on terror,

the U.S. government has put American troops

in harm's way across the globe.

[ Gunfire ]

-We talk about places like Afghanistan and Iraq often,

but we rarely talk about places like Syria or Somalia,

where there are regularly American troops in danger,

where our assets are being utilized.

What started out as the war on terror

has become the forever war,

America's never ending war with any number of enemies

in any number of places,

many of which Americans don't even know about,

can't pronounce or can't find on the map.

-There is an armed conflict that we have been in since 2001

when Congress passed the Authorization

for use of Military Force,

which authorized the president to use military force

against those who planned 9/11

and who aided and abetted the planners.

That really meant Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

-Allahu akbar!

-So it's become kind of a blank check for whatever

war making against terrorist organizations

any administration wants to engage in.

-In 2019, U.S. Special Operations Forces

were at some point in that year in more than 140 countries.

I mean, that's a majority of the countries on our planet.

[ Gunfire ]

-And so we end up in the situation

that we're in right now, where we're involved

in a seemingly endless war in countries

across the world that most Americans couldn't even name,

they wouldn't even be able to tell you all of the countries

in which we're at war right now.

♪♪

-Whoo!

-The government's decision to deploy troops

is often only revealed by tragedy.

-When American troops died in Niger,

most Americans didn't know

we had American troops in Niger.

-And the degree to which many of the operations

that are happening are so secretive

that even the American people

are not aware who the enemy is that we're fighting.

That's really a shocking state of affairs.

[ Gunfire ] - [ Panting ]

-But it's not just a forever war,

it's an everywhere war.

America is constantly at war everywhere around the globe.

The sun never sets on our military operations

because we have people in so many places around the world.

-Key to our government's ability to wage war

anywhere in the world at any time

is a vast global network of military bases.

-So, the United States has fought the global war

on terrorism with military bases.

♪♪

If you add up all the bases,

the foreign bases that the United States maintains,

we're talking about a number

roughly at 750.

So all the other countries in the world have roughly 40,

and the United States, it's 750.

-Some bases are so large, they resemble mini cities.

-Those outposts get developed to the point

where they feel like as a lot of people

call them little Americans.

You have Starbucks, you have McDonald's,

"Star Trek" fan clubs.

♪♪

-This network of overseas U.S. military bases

dates back to the early days of the Cold War

when the United States was locked in a struggle

for global supremacy with the Soviet Union.

In 1962, the Cold War almost ended in Armageddon

when Soviet nuclear missiles were discovered in Cuba.

♪♪

-I don't think the world has ever come closer

to a nuclear war than it did in the Cuban missile crisis.

The President of the United States had said

he was willing to go to war

to get the Soviet nuclear missiles out of Cuba.

♪♪

-But the installation of Soviet missiles on the island

is only half the story.

♪♪

-The part that we leave out

is that from Moscow's perspective,

the things started when the United States put missiles

in its bases in Turkey, pointed at the Soviet Union.

-The U.S. had moved nuclear missiles

into Turkey a year earlier,

allowing America to destroy major Russian cities in minutes.

♪♪

-That, from Moscow's perspective,

was the provocation and the reason that the Soviets

retaliated by putting their missiles in Cuba.

-As the American people prepared for nuclear war in 1962,

they never knew the truth that their own government's decision

to place nukes in Turkey could have killed them.

-We call it the Cuban missile crisis.

I think we might as well call it that Turkish missile crisis.

♪♪

-And while 60 years later these bases are seen as crucial

in fighting the war on terror,

they have enabled, perhaps even encouraged our leaders

to pursue a more reckless agenda that risks American lives.

-We have to talk about what these

military bases do to policy.

If you have 750 foreign military bases

spread around the world,

military solutions come really easily to hand.

-Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America

and to support terror.

The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas

and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

-It's become so easy in the United States

to slip from this country is doing things

that we in Washington don't like to

something must be done.

-States like these and their terrorist

allies constitute an axis of evil,

arming to threaten the peace of the world.

The price of indifference would be catastrophic.

♪♪

-Before it was even decided and discovered

who had carried out the attacks of September 11th,

you had members of the Bush administration

who were looking for an opportunity to get within Iraq

and exercise regime change from Saddam Hussein.

[ Explosions ]

♪♪

-My fellow citizens, at this hour,

American and coalition forces are in the early stages

of military operations to disarm Iraq,

to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

♪♪

[ Singing in native language ]

-In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq,

the Bush administration had argued Saddam Hussein

possessed some of the world's most dangerous weapons,

even hinting he had nuclear weapons,

posing an existential threat to the United States.

-Simply stated, there is no doubt

that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

♪♪

-The pretext was the potential existence of weapons

of mass destruction.

In fact, administration knew full well there was not

any realistic threat that WMD could be used in any way

that would jeopardize the United States.

[ Applause ]

-While the American people were being sold a lie,

behind the scenes, plans were being made

to reshape the balance of power in the region

with seemingly little regard for the lives that would be lost.

♪♪

-And Iraq was a country that had long been a thorn

in the side of the United States.

George W. Bush's father had led military hostilities

against Saddam Hussein after his army

invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait.

-It is not the United States against Iraq.

It is Iraq against the world.

-Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait in August 1990,

annexing the country and its vast oil reserves.

In response, the United States assembled

a massive international coalition

to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

But while Saddam's armies were decimated,

he remained in power.

-[ Speaking native language ]

-In the late 1990s,

a small group of powerful Washington insiders

from a little known think tank began to call

for regime change in Iraq.

-So the Project for a New American Century

is this brain child of a group who continually call for America

to go out and find the next crusade,

to find the next big enemy

that America can take on and define itself in an opposite to.

Because of the first Persian Gulf War,

you see America understand that Saddam Hussein

is an evil figure.

They believe that he is the type of enemy

that the American people will accept.

So during the Clinton administration,

this group are constantly lobbying Bill Clinton

to fight Iraq and they keep telling him

this is the next big move

in order to secure American security and American power.

-But while the inside has failed to convince Clinton to invade,

they found a willing partner in President George W. Bush.

♪♪

-Before it was even decided and discovered

who had carried out the attacks of September 11th,

you had members of the Bush administration

who were looking for an opportunity to get within Iraq

and exercise regime change from Saddam Hussein.

♪♪

♪♪

-Now, it's worth noting

that there is relatively little discussed

about what happened after.

-I don't know how long we're going to be here,

but we'll be here for a while.

It's going to be hard.

-You get rid of Saddam,

you get rid of his lieutenants, then what?

And the big question about how are you

going to govern this country, how are you going to rebuild it,

wasn't something that was much discussed in Washington

in the run up to the war.

But it would come to bedevil us for years to come.

-And would end up killing thousands of American troops.

♪♪

But at first, all seem to be going well for U.S. forces.

-Within three weeks, U.S. forces were in Baghdad,

Saddam Hussein's government had melted.

[ Cheers and applause ]

And in some quarters in Washington,

there was a feeling that

the mission had been accomplished.

-Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.

In the battle of Iraq,

the United States and our allies have prevailed.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-But for those of us in Baghdad,

it was clear that we had just finished the first chapter

of what was going to be a very long book.

[ Gunshots, indistinct shouting ]

And the reality is the furthest thing from mission accomplished.

-I got to the city of Baghdad at the same time

the president said the mission was accomplished.

-Paul Rieckhoff was an infantry officer in the National Guard,

stationed in one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods.

-We arrived with no body armor, with no adequate vehicles,

without water, we didn't have

enough water to go around.

The most powerful army in... The world has ever seen,

and we had to scrap for ammunition and body armor?

-But the troops were rushed into the region

without adequate equipment on the back of lies

told about weapons of mass destruction.

-Our vehicles are not armored.

We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal

to put on our vehicles to take into combat.

-As you know, you go to war with the army you have,

not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

-The Bush administration also claimed

they'd be greeted as liberators.

-Yeah.

[ Gunshots ]

-Now soldiers like Paul Rieckhoff

found themselves occupiers in an increasingly hostile land.

♪♪

-[ Shouting ] [ Gunfire ]

-Only someone who's never experienced war

thinks that it's quick and easy and simple.

War is complicated, war is messy,

war is expensive, war is painful.

-The ones that are fighting truly believe

in their cause, just as we do.

When we were fighting for our independence,

we fought like the Indians.

The man will fight with whatever he has at hand.

-As the insurgency started to pick up in intensity,

U.S. forces were totally unprepared.

And importantly, they were unprepared

in terms of equipment.

In many cases, our soldiers would drive around in Humvees,

in four wheel drive vehicles

that lacked any meaningful protection

against small arms fire or roadside bombs.

♪♪

-As anarchy and violence quickly consumed Iraq,

the political elites found sanctuary

in a fortified compound.

-So while they were in air-conditioned bunkers,

we were in the streets bleeding and dying.

♪♪

-When the months after U.S. forces arrived,

Washington realized,

hey, we actually need to send some people over

to try to govern, administer and rebuild this country.

And so the U.S. needed a headquarters in Baghdad,

and it turned pretty quickly to the large compound

that housed Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace,

right smack dab in the center of Baghdad.

This place soon got a name.

In contrast to the red zone, the dangerous Iraq

all around it, this area inside

was called the Green Zone.

♪♪

-The Green Zone quickly became a four square mile

piece of America in the heart of Baghdad.

♪♪

-You could go jogging on the streets,

you could get bacon cheeseburgers

and other such things that weren't available,

you know, in Iraqi restaurants, and you could get a drink.

-Well, I didn't know there was going to be a steaks out here.

-My unit was on the other side of the river

from the Green Zone.

So while these guys were sleeping

in palatial palaces

and walking around in suits saying there was no insurgency,

that we were winning the war,

that we were being treated as liberators,

we were facing hostility and riots

and the manifestation of what would become the insurgency.

♪♪

-And so the Green Zone was like not only a fantasy,

it became part of the problem that... that elites

could insulate themselves from the destruction

that they had wrought and they could pursue

their... their silly ideas that Iraq was going to quickly

turn into a miniature version of America.

-People who thought we were going to roll into Iraq

and make it look like New Jersey were... were dangerously

disconnected and out of touch with the reality.

Iraq is never going to look like New Jersey,

but Iraq is a place that motivated

hundreds of thousands of mostly young men

to come and fight against us.

[ Gunshot ]

-And kill Americans.

♪♪

While U.S. soldiers began to feel the brunt

of a growing insurgency,

corporations were raking in profits by the billions.

-The great American General Smedley Butler

once said war is a racket,

and Iraq was definitely a racket.

And the American troops were not in on it.

The American troops had to scrape and scrap

for everything while other guys were getting rich,

while companies like Halliburton were getting no-bid contracts.

-Private companies made an estimated $140 billion

from the conflict, securing lucrative contracts

in private security,

reconstruction and oil production.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

[ Explosion ]

-War shouldn't be about profit.

War should be a last resort,

and it should be something that we try to end

as quickly as possible.

It shouldn't be a bonanza for scumbags to come in

and get rich, and that's what we saw.

We saw scumbags and grifters come in

and get rich off Iraq while we lost our legs and our friends.

So that cuts to maybe the most outrageous part

of America's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan

is that some people gave everything and others got rich.

They want the war to go on

so they can make more money and buy champagne.

That cuts to the core of how unequal it was

and how dangerous it was for our national security

to have the profit motive introduced

on a level we'd never seen before.

♪♪

-Major American combat operations in Iraq

eventually wound down in December 2011.

The war cost taxpayers an estimated $2 trillion dollars,

but the cost to Americans went way beyond the dollars spent.

-Approximately 4,500 U.S. service members

would be killed in action.

Tens of thousands would come home injured,

some of them gravely, missing limbs,

suffering from traumatic brain injuries,

wracked by post-traumatic stress.

-We're really good at sending people to war.

We're really good at paying to send people to war.

We're really bad at bringing people home

and taking care of them once they get back.

Guys like Paul Wolfowitz and Don Rumsfeld

said you go to war with the army, you have.

That's right, and then you come home to the VA you have.

And when I went to war with the army we had,

I came home to the VA we had, which was a VA that didn't know

how to take care of women, didn't know how to treat

post-traumatic stress disorder,

didn't know about roadside bombs,

didn't know about ear injuries

and the other kinds of wounds we were facing.

And already we've lost more people to suicide

than we've lost on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And we will lose many more in the decades to come.

♪♪

-In the vacuum left by the removal of Saddam's regime

and the end of a major U.S. military presence,

extremism flourished and many more lives would be lost.

-So, you get ISIS after about 10 or 11 years of... of...

Of the crisis caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

And ISIS is... is a real threat to regional stability.

-The fight against ISIS has claimed tens of thousands

more Iraqi lives,

with millions losing their homes and way of life,

but it has done something else.

Kept the business of war going.

-This has been produced by the, supposedly,

the attempt to make the world safe

with U.S. military means,

but it produces insecurity.

And then that insecurity justifies

more of the same military intervention and spending.

♪♪

-Our government has spent trillions of dollars

over the last two decades

fighting perceived enemies across the globe.

But has it really made us safer?

-And then once you guys are out, I can take the mask off?

- Yes. - Okay.

-We've disproportionately allocated our resources,

and not just money, but really our attention.

And so for years, preparing for a global pandemic

was something that was shockingly under resourced,

not just in terms of money and equipment,

but in terms of the time

and thinking of senior policymakers.

♪♪

-February 29, 2020...

The first confirmed death from COVID-19

is reported in the United States.

-Unfortunately, one person passed away overnight.

On the very same day over 7,000 miles away,

the U.S. government signs a peace deal with the Taliban,

highlighting a grim reality.

Since American troops were first sent to Afghanistan in 2001,

that war has raged on while problems that threaten

the lives of Americans back home have been ignored.

-So, February 2020, there was supposedly

a peace agreement signed.

But there's been no peace for American soldiers for 19 years.

There's been no peace for the Afghans for 19 years,

and there's no peace in the region.

[ Gunfire ]

[ Indistinct shouting ]

-The original mission of the Afghan war

was aimed at toppling the Taliban government

so that the United States and allied forces

would be able to kill or capture the top leadership of Al Qaeda,

specifically Osama bin Laden.

-And Afghanistan has become the place

that Osama bin Laden hoped it would become.

The place that would suck in the American military,

that would suck in our blood and treasure,

that would take our eye off the ball.

And Afghanistan is in some ways part of the reason

why we can't prepare adequately for a pandemic.

If we hadn't fought the war in Afghanistan,

think about how much better prepared

we could have been for the coronavirus.

♪♪

♪♪

-For years, preparing for a global pandemic

was something that was shockingly under resourced,

not just in terms of money and equipment,

but in terms of the time and thinking of senior policymakers.

-But where is the PPE? Where are the ventilators?

♪♪

-And it's a sad reflection on this society

that we have the greatest,

most powerful military in the history of mankind,

and yet nurses have had to wear garbage bags

to protect themselves from patients in hospitals.

♪♪

-The pandemic is hurting America in ways that Osama bin Laden

could have only dreamed of, and in my view,

is the greatest modern threat

to our national security we've ever seen.

-But the pandemic isn't the only threat to national security

that the ongoing war in Afghanistan

has distracted us from.

-When you look at the most significant attack

that has been perpetrated against Americans

in recent years,

there was a cyber attack in 2016.

-Hello, hello.

-Election interference by the Russians,

a concerted campaign of misinformation,

of disinformation targeted at American voters.

-We viewed Russia as a regional power very famously.

You know, that's what President Obama called Russia,

much to Putin's chagrin.

We thought that Russia is not a threat to us.

Russia's military is not a threat to us.

Therefore, there is there's no way

that Russia can undermine the United States.

And we were too late to recognize this threat.

I think we are distracted by, for instance, the war on terror.

-We'll never know conclusively whether those attacks

resulted in President Trump's election,

but it was the most significant attack

directed against the United States

and one that we continue to be woefully unprepared to defend.

-Just recently, Twitter was hacked by a 17-year-old.

We're lucky that that hacker just used it

to get himself some Bitcoin

and not start a nuclear war.

♪♪

-I think that we've started to realize

that not only can our government not take care of us

in a way that we would expect them to,

but they can't even carry out the basic necessity

of taking care of our national security.

-Security is about the lives of Americans,

and those threats are more than just bombs

or hijacked airplanes.

It's microscopic virus particles.

It's potential cyber attacks.

For Americans to feel truly secure,

they need not just that sort of physical security,

they need to know that they have security

when it comes to their health.

-We may get to the point where more people are killed

by COVID in the United States

than were killed in the second World War.

-We're dying constantly in just really overtly incompetent ways,

and I think that it's making it obvious that this government

that has completely sold itself on its ability

to protect us has failed in every regard.

-This is what happens when there is a shadow agenda,

a shadow America that benefits one group of people

at the expense of the greater good.

All they need is for you not to pay attention.

All they need is for you not to know

where America's sons and daughters are dying

or how much money they spend on a weapons system

or where they're deploying troops.

They hope you don't pay attention

if you don't pay attention, that's how this happens.

That's how billions of dollars are spent.

That's how cities are left vulnerable.

That's how pandemics spread.

-And so it's maybe a time for us to rethink

about what makes us safe and and what really endangers us.

-We kind of had a phrase decades ago

in the prep industry called 72 hours to animal.

We don't believe that anymore.

We believe it's more like 72 seconds

or 72 minutes to animal.

Chaos is going to break out within

the first hour or hours.

Rich people in government, they take care of themselves.

But for the middle class and for lower-income folks,

you're absolutely on your own.

Government's number one priority is taking care of themselves.

Police number one priority, continuity of government,

taking care of the elected officials.

-Back up!

♪♪