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John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

May 20

I bear partial responsibility for the entire Naval Woke College debate. I’ve been hammering them for years.

Let me tell you why…. 🧵

Strap in, it’s a LONG story.

Go all the way back to the start of the Trump 1.0 administration.

Actually, go back further. Go back to Obama.

The Navy is NOT in charge of shipbuilding. They are in charge of ship buying.

The DOT is in charge of shipyards. Specifically @DOTMARAD. And USCG handles shipyard regulations.

Internationally, the United Nations @IMOHQ is in charge. But MARAD is the only major agency in the United States chartered to promote an American industry. So Obama had to subvert it.

Obama went out of his way to play dumb on all maritime matters. But here’s the thing: he grew up in Hawaii. It is impossible to grow up on an island and not understand shipping.

He wanted to turn the oceans into a collectivist wonderland run by Marxists.
Here is how he did it.

First, he installed the failed governor of Mississippi, Ray Mabus, as Secretary of the Navy.

Then he installed the worst USCG Commandant the nation has ever seen: Admiral Papp, who promoted Senior Executive Service officers aligned with UN globalists.

Papp’s SES pushed the UN to further adopt climate change and DEI. He landed his top USCG JAG a job leading the IMO and made sure the elected Secretary General was little more than a figurehead.

The problem: the UN has zero authority to regulate warships. So Papp had Mabus simply order the Navy to accept USCG shipbuilding rules that were, in fact, UN standards.

Then Mabus pushed hard on projects he knew would fail: LCS, Zumwalt, and a massive initiative to convert every Navy ship to run on used French fry oil.

He also forced thousands of change orders onto new aircraft carriers.

Doubling down on failed designs while welcoming UN-approved inspectors into American shipyards was a one-two punch.

Bad ships, plus crushing red tape, would cripple the most powerful Navy in the world.

But the UN one-world-government scheme requires more than weakening the strongest. You also have to elevate the weakest.

Chinese shipbuilding was growing, but their workmanship was a disgrace. They could only build simple vessels: coal bulkers and the like.

So Obama dispatched an American NGO to Chinese shipyards to teach them everything we know. Not just any NGO. The most profitable nonprofit in America.

(For legal reasons, I can’t name them.)
That NGO pulled the best naval architects, marine engineers, and inspectors out of American yards and sent them to China.

They are still there today.

But what about MARAD? It is mandated, by law, to advance American maritime interests.

He simply didn’t appoint anyone for years. He installed a junior congressional aide with a history of poor performance as acting administrator for most of his first term.

(In his second term, when Navy shipbuilding efforts started crashing and burning, Mabus put a submarine O5 in the job.)

Ships and shipyards are heavily unionized, so the AFL-CIO Marxists made sure no one complained.

And Obama figured out that the GOP hates the Jones Act so every time a based mariner or shipbuilder complained just remind them how the Republicans want to steal their jobs.

Simultaneously you get Democrat friends in the Senate to support the number one JA and Merchant Marine hater: John McCain

If anyone complains about Navy shipbuilding you point them to all the ways Dems are cooperating with McCain

McCain who was undermining the shipyards and commercial maritime base.

Now, how do you keep the Navy itself from screaming bloody murder?

First, you double down on submarines, which cannot police the oceans the way surface ships can. UN rules were kept out of Electric Boat.

Second, you push hard on joint warfare. You send your best and brightest officers not to sea, but to the desert, to serve as support elements for the Army.

You pull in reservists like @PeteButtigieg and @RepGoodlander.

1/5

You do everything you can to land book deals, podcasts, and movie roles for Navy SEALs fighting on dry land.

Dial up every Navy activity ashore. Dial down everything at sea.

The final blow: commercial fishermen were not happy. And they are a loud constituency.

Kneecapping them was easy. All Obama had to do was designate 553 million acres of ocean as National Monuments and watch the industry collapse.

You also had to divide and conquer. Alaska has the most powerful commercial fishing lobby by far, so you don’t “protect” those fisheries, and you get McCain to make their governor his running mate.

This was the easiest part of the whole operation. He styled himself a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt, and the GOP signed off without a fight.
So what does any of this have to do with War Colleges?

I was naive to most of this when Trump was elected. All I knew was that the Naval War College had become incredibly powerful in steering naval policy under Mabus.

War colleges train future admirals and generals. They plant ideas and policies in officers’ heads before those officers ever pin on Rear Admiral.

I knew they were going woke. I knew Tom Nichols was off the rails. I did not know how deep the corruption ran.

All I knew at the time was how powerful they had become.
So Trump gets elected in 2016, and we finally have a chance to reform MARAD. But the Navy admirals won’t let go.

The narrative: the Navy was locked in a zero-sum fight for shipbuilding funding against the US Merchant Marine (run by MARAD at DOT) and the USCG.

The Navy saw the US Merchant Marine as a threat, not an ally. They refused to let us run our own agency. A Navy guy had to be in charge.

But DOT Secretary Elaine Chao wanted to save shipyards. So she cut a compromise: the Navy could pick the Merchant Marine Commandant to run MARAD, but he had to be a Merchant Marine Academy grad.

Elaine was married to Mitch McConnell. The Navy couldn’t say no.

They settled on Rear Admiral Mark Buzby.

Buz came in swinging. He reorganized the Merchant Marine Reserve. He funded a fleet of new training ships. He recruited top talent to run each academy. He saved Philly Shipyard.

I did a lot of work behind the scenes to help Buz.

Buz’s next big project was to restore our maritime highways: the rivers and waterways we need to reindustrialize.

Trucks are great for an import economy. They cannot carry enough weight to rebuild steel mills, shipyards, and the rest of heavy manufacturing. You need rail. You need barges.

I launched a startup at Buzby’s request and poured my personal time and money into the problem.
Then the New York Times ran a hit piece on Elaine Chao’s ties to Chinese maritime interests.

I won’t get into the details. I’m not here to defend or trash the McConnell-Chao family.

They are a complicated bunch, and I could write a book on the great and terrible things they have done.
The point is this: the Dems all follow the New York Times. So the unions and the rest of the maritime coalition had to back away from Chao’s maritime initiative.

The article did even more damage to McConnell, who already had a rocky relationship with Trump. MAGA turned on Mitch, sparking a war still raging today, with Mitch blocking the SAVE Act and Thune retaliating by blocking the SHIPS Act.

At the same time, the so-called West Point Mafia (WPN) was taking over the Trump administration. The Army Corps of Engineers controls the marine highways, and the Army would have to pay for Buz’s plan.
Pompeo, Esper, Milley (Princeton, but loyal to the club), and the rest of the WPA wanted that money flowing to defense contractors and consultants. Not to reindustrialization that would have strengthened the Navy.

2/5

By the midterms, the Trump administration, under the WPM, was tearing itself apart and lost Congress.

Another powerful West Point graduate, Jack Reed, took McCain’s old gavel at the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The WPA didn’t just block Chao and Buz. They sold off most of the Army’s watercraft fleet at auction and turned the Army Corps of Engineers into paperwork pushers who now subcontract almost everything to whichever private firm spends the most on lobbyists.

Certain shipyards complained. They were handed more submarine contracts as a consolation prize and told to build out consulting businesses and digital products instead of ships.

The only person who put up a fight was Trump himself. He tasked his most loyal advisor, along with the NSC and NEC, to find solutions the White House could drive on its own.
O’Brien at the NSC pushed hard. He was cornered at every turn by Milley’s Joint Chiefs and SECDEF Esper.

Esper had already engineered a coup to force the Secretary of the Navy to resign, replacing him with a string of feckless acting secretaries.
The NEC and Navarro both worked hard to save shipbuilding. They had very different ideas.

Navarro was a China hawk. He wanted to unite the core maritime constituents to fight the CCP together. To do that, he had to win over the Jones Act lobby.

Kevin Hassett at NEC wanted to pull internal levers to give heavy industry a boost. In his view, that meant suspending the Jones Act.

There is more to this story, of course. Both men are patriots who tried to do the right thing. Both were aligned on saving shipyards.

But the WPM used the Jones Act to drive a wedge between Hassett and Navarro.

It didn’t ultimately work. Both men are back together in Trump 2.0. At the time, though, it made anything maritime they tried to do agonizing.

Then 2020 happened.

Retired Navy admirals wanted a Navy guy running DOT. The WPM wanted a land war veteran. The Obama crowd wanted a Marxist aligned with the UN.

They settled on a Navy Intelligence reservist: Pete Buttigieg.

Pete is politically savvy. He knew the maritime issues, especially the Jones Act, were political kryptonite.
And everyone was at each other’s throats, demanding action as shipbuilding, the Navy, the USCG, and the Merchant Marine all started collapsing in readiness.

But Obama gave him the playbook: do nothing.

Ignore MARAD.
Ignore the Navy.
Ignore the USCG.

When Congress hands you $1.1 trillion to fix infrastructure, just don’t do any maritime projects.
Let the UN take over and quietly build out a massive UN Carbon Tax that will fund UN DEI, climate programs, and Marxism for decades.

Don’t even help the White House.

When they ask for Merchant Marine ships to support the Gaza Pier, send one that’ll catch fire. When the Baltimore Bridge collapses and Biden puts you in charge, pass it off to the broken Army Corps of Engineers. When the Houthis fire on US Merchant Marine ships, don’t say a word. Not even a tweet.

But this thread isn’t about that criminal neglect by Mayor Pete.

It’s about the Naval Woke College.

3/5

Read 9 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

May 9

Y’all don’t know the half of it.

I met with the recently fired Secretary of the Navy before his confirmation, and I had repeated contact with his staff. The reforms they planned were revolutionary.

The day before he was fired, he held a press conference. I was deliberately excluded.

The owner of the most-read maritime and Navy website in the world, and his most vocal supporter, frozen out. And not just from his remarks. His staff pushed me out of everything.

People who left naval journalism years ago were invited to host panels at the conference. I’m honestly surprised my press pass wasn’t canceled.

My Pentagon press pass has been rendered nearly worthless. The NYT lawsuit forced SECWAR to kick every reporter out of the press corridor.

When the pass was issued, we were told the whole point was to get reporters out of the building and onto the bases, talking to actual sailors and troops.

How many ship visits have I been able to arrange since? One. And only because I was traveling with the SECWAR himself.

I’m working on another project I can’t discuss publicly. A simple advisory gig.

I was asked in early February. It is now May, and I am still in administrative hold.

In the last few weeks I’ve spoken with Tata, Elbridge Colby, Hegseth, and the SecNav team about it. Nobody can budge “the process.”

The other people I’m supposed to be working with have been sworn to secrecy, so we can’t even compare notes.

A few months ago, I helped an active duty senior officer work through an assignment. The bureaucratic sludge got so bad he gave up. Last week, that same officer was asked to serve as assistant secretary under a different cabinet member. That was handled in days.

He has the straight up approval from the White House but, of course, his chain of command won’t approve a TDY, so he needs personal signatures from both SECWAR & SECNAV.

I am nobody. But this officer is absolutely vital to our shipbuilding effort: active duty, in good standing, top eval reports.

Times were dark for me under Biden. NCIS opened a full investigation on me. I was literally pushed off the stage at the big Navy conference.

They watched me closely. But I could still get things done. I could still help Democratic friends land appointments & push bipartisan agendas across the line.

Every corner I turn now is blocked.
I have traveled with @PeteHegseth. I have friends in very senior positions throughout the Navy & the Pentagon. Everyone takes my calls. Everyone wants to help.

There’s no shortage of admirals willing to help either, which genuinely surprised me.

But there is always “a process.” And everything I have worked on has stalled inside it.

Just entering the building or scheduling a meeting has become its own ordeal.
Meanwhile, the literal worst reporter at CNN just filed from an active exercise.

And the worst part? I can’t even complain, because the transformation is real. Hegseth, Tata, Colby, Michaels, Doge & Hung Cao are doing excellent work.

They are working their asses off to get the warfighters what they need.
The operational & procurement reforms are real. But the more I praise them for it, the more “partisan” I get labeled & the bigger the pushback from the blob.

I have been reporting on the Navy for almost twenty years. I have never seen anything like it.

It is simultaneously the most ambitious operational reform I have ever witnessed & the worst bureaucratic obstruction I have ever encountered on structural change.

And Hegseth’s team should prioritize the people on the front line. My concerns are secondary.

All I’m saying is Dort is right. The blob has been suppressing everything.

That’s their trick. They don’t say no. They don’t block you. They just take days to respond to simple requests. Someone loses your paperwork. The process eats you.

I’m dying to share more details but anything negative I say will be used against Hegseth and Cao even though they are fighting tooth & nail to solve these problems.

The problem is the blob is smart.

They know what @PeteHegseth cares about. They know he puts the warfighter first and demands operational excellence.

So they let him have that, unencumbered, while quietly strangling his secondary and tertiary priorities.

What goes unspoken is the threat underneath: push those secondary and tertiary priorities too hard, and they will start throwing wrenches into the primary ones and the warfighters will suffer.

And anyone who thinks the blob won’t screw over the warfighters to get what they want hasn’t studied the Afghanistan withdrawal or Gaza pier.

The other BIG problem is this administration follows the rules

The last one didn’t.

All these MSM reports of war crimes is total bullshit. Hegseth has JAGs review everything. Senior Trump appointees don’t leak secrets to pressure the blob. They honor NDAs and legal process.

These guys are Boy Scouts fighting a rear action war against Marxists who don’t mind shooting their own and are outright happy to destroy us.

Which is why the majority of the MSM phsyop campaign is to paint them as criminals.

The Marxists always accuse the opposition of their own most deadly sins.

Read 4 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Mar 18

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2034251231334457819

Let's unpack this..

What if the White House has no intention of reopening the Strait of Hormuz?

What if this war is really about ships & tariffs?

I had a long discussion with senior DOE official yesterday on background. I can’t share any details but it’s clear everyone’s Strait of Hormuz calculus is wrong.

We need to go back to the drawing boards.

That's it. That's the tweet. Now a hypothetical 🧵 with my personal thoughts.

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2034251231334457819

Background on the Hormuz Crisis

You can skip this long section but know this: THIS IS ALL ABOUT SHIPS, SHIPS, SHIPS... and the US Navy giving them permission to pass.

The Strait of Hormuz is twenty-one miles wide. Two shipping channels, each two miles across, separated by a two-mile buffer. The normal traffic separation scheme runs through Iranian territorial waters, past the islands of Qeshm and Larak, where the IRGC has radar stations, missile batteries, and fast-attack craft bases overlooking every transit.

Twenty million barrels of oil and petroleum products flow through this gap every day. One-fifth of global consumption. There is no alternative. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline to Yanbu and the UAE’s pipeline to Fujairah can handle maybe 5 million barrels combined. The math doesn’t work. The bottleneck is not political. It’s geological and hydrographic.

When those seven P&I clubs belonging to the International Group issued 72-hour cancellation notices for war risk coverage in the Persian Gulf, they didn’t just raise costs. They made transit impossible.

Here’s why.

P&I clubs insure roughly 90% of the world’s ocean-going tonnage. Without their coverage, ships can’t sail. Port authorities won’t let them dock. Banks won’t finance the cargo. Charterers won’t book the vessel. The entire system, from loading berth to discharge terminal, is underwritten by a chain of contracts that begins with a club in London, Oslo, or Tokyo.

When the clubs pulled war risk extensions on March 5, that chain broke. Not for a few ships. For the global fleet.

War risk premiums jumped from 0.25% to 1% of hull value, renewable every seven days. VLCC charter rates quadrupled to nearly $800,000 per day. Over 1,000 vessels are now trapped in the Persian Gulf, burning charter costs with nowhere to go. By March 3, only four ships crossed the Strait, down from a seven-day average of seventy-seven.

This is the part almost nobody in the media understands. Every TV analyst is talking about minesweepers and carrier strike groups. The binding constraint on Hormuz in the first week was not a minefield. It was spreadsheet in London.

Then Trump did something remarkable.

He ordered the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to create a $20 billion maritime reinsurance facility, with Chubb as lead underwriter, making the United States government the insurer of last resort for Gulf shipping.

A sovereign nation has positioned itself as the backstop for war risk insurance on the world’s most critical maritime chokepoint. The DFC facility, coordinated with CENTCOM and Treasury, offers hull, machinery, and cargo coverage on a rolling basis to eligible vessels.

The United States now controls the on/off switch for the Strait of Hormuz. Not through naval firepower. Through insurance.

But here’s the tell.

The DFC facility covers hull, machinery, and cargo. It does not cover P&I liability: pollution, crew injury, third-party claims. Moody’s flagged this immediately. Without liability cover, most shipowners still won’t sail. The facility is deliberately incomplete.

If the White House wanted the Strait fully open tomorrow, it could expand the DFC facility to cover P&I liability with one directive. It hasn’t.

That gap is not an oversight. It’s a strike price on an option the administration is choosing not to exercise. Yet.

But now that insurance is mostly settled the ships still aren't sailing. Why?

That insurance isn't backed by the DFC, it's backed by a green light from the US Navy. A green light that hasn't appeared.

Read the latest @DOTMARAD Navy warning carefully: U.S.-flagged, owned, or crewed commercial vessels that are operating in these areas should maintain a minimum standoff of 30 nautical miles from U.S. military vessels to reduce the risk of being mistaken as a threat

They can't pass without Naval ships stepping aside to let them through.

What was clear from the DOE conversation: Europe is going to have to figure this out themselves. And the White House is not sprinting to help.

I was hesitant to post this earlier today but the latest truth social posts confirms some of my suspisions.

so here goes...

Read 22 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Mar 3

X is producing excellent Iran coverage but also lots of slop. Ninety percent of what passes for “analysis” on the platform is recycled footage, unverified claims, and engagement-farming slop. Most of mainstream media is too focused on political theater to cover the military and economic dimensions that actually matter.

As founder of the most visited naval and maritime website on earth, @gCaptain, here's who I'm tracking on X

A 🧵

OFFICIAL PENTAGON & GOVERNMENT

Primary sources. When CENTCOM or 5th Fleet posts, that's ground truth. Start here.

@RapidResponse47 @DOWResponse @WhiteHouse

★ @CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) — The combatant command running Gulf operations. Every strike, every statement starts here.
★ @US5thFleet (U.S. Naval Forces Central Command / 5th Fleet) — Headquartered in Bahrain. Daily Gulf naval operations, carrier movements, task force actions.
★ @DeptofWar (Department of Defense) — Official DoD announcements. Slower than CENTCOM but carries full institutional weight.
★ @thejointstaff (The Joint Staff / CJCS Gen. Dan Caine) — 22nd Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. First non-4-star nominee. Advising POTUS on Iran escalation risks. When CJCS speaks publicly, maximum signal.
★ @USSOCOM (U.S. Special Operations Command) — SOF strategic messaging. When SOCOM goes public on Gulf ops, signal is maximum.
@USAFCENT (U.S. Air Forces Central) — Air operations in the CENTCOM AOR. Strike packages, sortie counts, BDA.
@aircombatcmd (Air Combat Command) — All active duty fighter/bomber operations funnel through ACC.
★ @DOTMARAD (U.S. Maritime Administration) — MARAD advisories on Gulf transit safety. Official U.S. government maritime safety voice.
@US_TRANSCOM - Logisitics wins wars

OFFICIAL PENTAGON & GOVERNMENT PEOPLE

@SecWar @PeteHegseth (Secretary of Defense) — High-level policy and strategy.

@PressSecDOW (Pentagon Press Secretary) — Official DoD spokesperson. Press briefing clips and statements.

@SeanParnellASW - assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs

@USAmbUN (Mike Waltz) UN Ambassador

@USNavyCNO (CNO Adm. Daryl Caudle) — 34th Chief of Naval Operations. Took over Aug 2025 after Franchetti removal. Gulf naval operations go through CNO.

Service Secretraries - @SECNAV @SecArmy @SecAFOfficial

USCG (unofficial) Secretary - @SeanPlankey

US Merchant MArine Secretary - @SecDuffy

@DNI_GOV (Director of National Intelligence) — Strategic intelligence assessments. Rare posts but maximum signal.

@PressSec - White House Press Secretary

@StevenCheung47 - White House Director of Communications.

@JerryHendrixII - Navy Vet. White House shipbuilding

@maphumanintent - Commerce

@Kristinawong - Department of War

Read 26 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Feb 20

BREAKING: A security company run by a Navy SEAL and EOD was fired from a BAE Systems shipyard after refusing to use untested EV patrol boats to guard U.S. warships.

The replacement? A mall cop company.

Their electric boat sank two days ago. They pulled it out. It smoked all day. Then it exploded into a major conflagration.

And as I've been screaming about for five years, there's STILL no proper fireboat in San Diego. 🧵👇

After the USS Bonhomme Richard burned for FOUR DAYS in San Diego — destroying a $1.2 billion warship I wrote directly to Vice Admiral Kitchener demanding the Navy buy fireboats.

They ignored me. They ignored Congress. They ignored Dr. @mercoglianos . They ignored every maritime professional who told them the obvious.

San Diego, homeport to hundreds of billions in warships STILL doesn't have a proper fireboat. gcaptain.com/us-navy-lied-c…

Read 18 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Jan 26

Here’s the ICE watch training video @camhigby found. Let’s deconstruct the first few minutes.

Lead by Eric Ward, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left NGO with nearly a billion-dollar endowment.

His academic work is in “Stochastic terrorism,” which is “using hostile public rhetoric, repeated and amplified across media and communication platforms.”

Literally, his expertise is manipulating minds.

He’s not an expert on peaceful protests. He’s not an operational guy. His background is in psychological warfare.

Participants were told “for their safety” they must “have training,” but this training isn’t about situational awareness, first aid, or practical defense against pepper spray.

It’s, in fact, teaching you how to mentally prepare to escalate violence.

Let’s look at his tactic.

First, a meditation session. Why? To get you “out of your brain” and in “touch with feelings.”

He then explicitly tells everyone to tune out everything but their feelings.

Next… the four thousand people here are being asked to confront armed federal agents.

What is the natural reaction for anyone confronting armed men?

Nervousness. I love the police; my father-in-law was an NYPD officer, but my heart beats faster when I’m pulled over by my local PD.

He’s telling them to listen to that “heat behind the eyes, tremble in your hands,” which is fine, but then he is lying.

He’s telling you to interpret that natural panic when facing authority as moral superiority and your “conscious.”

Next, he has to dehumanize opponents and set the stage for “us vs. them,” but this is tricky because almost every American knows a Republican.

So he says “I want to be clear who they are,” and he gets very specific so the picture of your MAGA uncle or priest doesn’t enter your mind.

Then he states the obvious, which everyone (even MAGA) will agree on:

“Renee Good should be alive.
Alex Pretti should be alive.”

I agree with that statement, but the question is who’s responsible for their deaths.

IMHO, the person most responsible is Eric Ward, but of course, he’s not going to blame himself.

Then he says, “The people who died at the hands of ICE snd border patrol should be alive.”

What people?

He doesn’t say. It’s not about the people; it’s about drawing a straight line from Renee and Alex to ICE.

Then he says,

“Let’s tell the truth.”

Which any kindergartener knows is followed by lies, but his listeners are in a trance from the breathing exercise.

Listen to the sing-song nature of how he speaks. It’s literally hypnosis. Hypnosis for the BIG whopper lie:

“Federal law enforcement is not here to keep us safe.”

Really, Eric? Maybe you can make an argument that some federal law enforcement isn’t here to keep us safe… but you didn’t specify.

You didn’t exclude organizations like the US Coast Guard, which is federal immigration law enforcement and does keep us safe.

Why? Because he needs to paint with broad strokes in case other agencies are called in.

Nad now the stage is set to dehumanize: “Federal law enforcement is killing people, beating people…”

And the worst lie: “Detaining people like disposable objects.”

Once you are hypnotized. Once you trust your feelings over facts. Once you know those feelings make you morally superior. Once you know ICE thinks you are “disposable garbage,” then you are prepared to act with violence!

Just trust your feelings and don’t look at the massive endowment the Southern Poverty Law Center has to fund physiological operatives trained in Marxist theory like Eric Ward.