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

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.

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.

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

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.

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. Link to the full video:

https://twitter.com/camhigby/status/2015577597288091940

And the Top 4 priorities of the new Department of War National defense strategy are…. 🧵 #1 Defend the Homeland

DR has been doing an excellent job, but some context is missing, specifically around the three real purposes of Davos.

Collusion
Proof of life
Narrative testing

Let me explain 🧵

https://twitter.com/datarepublican/status/2014405606187073649

Note: I’ve never attended, but I have close friends who do, and I’ve reported for decades from similar off-the-record gatherings hosted by billionaires in the shipping and industrial sectors. Davos isn’t unique. It’s just the most visible version.

Can we pause the Greenland noise for one second and admit the obvious?

Denmark isn’t sovereign anymore it’s in lockstep with @Maersk.

The UN @IMOHQ is run by NGOs.

Maersk and the UN @IMOHQ are in lockstep with China.

Here’s the history 🧵

https://twitter.com/datarepublican/status/2009953358581485759

In practice, its government moves in near-lockstep with @Maersk—the world’s largest logistics empire.

Not officially.
Not on paper.
But in outcomes, incentives, and red lines.

Here’s how we got here.

Oh Drew, I’m thrilled you asked.

If any of my followers want to explain this to him directly, please jump in. I’ve officially run out of crayons.

Otherwise, I’m happy to walk through exactly how ya’ll at WaPo engineer hit pieces🧵

https://twitter.com/drewharwell/status/2009070183797936402

Foe those unfamiliar here’s the hir piece Drew Wrote about me, a licenses ship captain and MARITIME journalist , who was invited to go with @SecWar on a shipyard tour

washingtonpost.com/business/2026/…

I like this a lot. Some sections are demanding, you have to reread them, but that’s not a flaw. It forces the reader to slow down. And sometimes hard is not only good, it’s necessary.

What many people miss is that linear systems are incredibly efficient but only under very specific conditions: rule-based order, geopolitical stability, and a high degree of trust and safety.

Linear systems excel at things like this: start a business, raise X capital, optimize for Y, expand into Z markets. Capital flows easily because there are few externalities. You don’t worry much about supply-chain collapse, interest-rate shocks, reputational risk from social media swings, or geopolitical sabotage. The system absorbs those risks for you.

For decades, the job of government was to simplify everything:
•One monetary system (the dollar)
•One diplomatic framework (the UN)
•Fewer barriers to trade
•Low interest rates
•Free trade
•Colorblind governance (no DEI sorting)
•Outsourcing complexity to NGOs

This was a very good thing.

The ultimate expression of this logic is a one-world, highly integrated system. From a pure efficiency standpoint, that is also a very good thing.

The catch is simple but fatal: everyone has to agree and act with some degree of honesty.

The reason we ended up with a “uniparty” consensus is that a global linear system made business extraordinarily efficient and reduced many traditional security risks. Conservatives liked it because it boosted growth and stability. Liberals liked it because it freed up capital and cognitive bandwidth for social priorities.

That alignment wasn’t sinister, it was rational.

To make it work, however, you need powerful international institutions capable of managing complexity. Organizations like the IMO, alongside dozens of NGOs, effectively regulate 90% of global trade. For a long time, that worked and it worked well.

“But John, I thought you were MAGA?”

Yes and what I just described is the system we had in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We came remarkably close to a near-optimal arrangement.

But a perfect system depends on trust. And trust broke.

Russia and China refused to play by the rules. Both became aggressively extractive. China hollowed out global manufacturing for themselves. Russia stripped natural resources. And NGOs, operating inside a high-trust, low-scrutiny environment, captured everything else.

Consolidated power plus high trust is an open invitation to fraud.

So now we’re stuck in the worst possible configuration: a system optimized for efficiency, but hemorrhaging value through corruption. The most honest, rule-following participants are being drained to subsidize the least honest ones.

That brings us to the present bifurcation.

We have two choices:
1.Double down on consolidation and linearization, squeezing out even more efficiency so we can do better despite the fraud (liberals)
2.Accept complexity, abandon false simplicity, and actively intervene to repair what’s broken (MAGA)

But this isn’t just MAGA vs liberals.

It’s linear thinkers vs non-linear thinkers.

The skill set required to streamline a functioning system is completely different from the skill set required to diagnose and repair a failing one.

And at the root of all of this is education.

Our education system has spent decades selecting for linear thinkers—because that’s what worked. The formula was clear: honors track, X hours of study, Y tutors, Z credentials. Choose the right majors, follow the prescribed career ladder, earn the right degrees. The path wasn’t easy, but it was linear—and it rewarded intelligence and discipline.

In a well-managed linear system, you don’t need to think broadly. If something matters, the system tells you. If CNN isn’t talking about it, keep your head down and stay on the track.

That model no longer works. 1/2

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2009009090820030475

Today, we need people who can hold multiple competing ideas in their heads at once—people who can reason across systems, not just within them, so they can repair the system and end fraud while it’s still running. Those people were liabilities in a smoothly operating machine, so we sidelined them.

That’s why a single-lens worldview, what DR describes, became dominant. The people elevated into leadership across NGOs, international institutions, and finance are highly linear thinkers who need everything reduced to BLUFs and flowcharts.

But here’s the contradiction: we no longer have a linear system.

It’s impossible to go back without repairing the system. The fraud is too great.

And since roughly 2015, instead of adapting to the fraud, liberals pushed harder for linearity—forcing more people into increasingly brittle efficiency tracks—while parallel ideologies (DEI, ESG, Marxist frameworks) taught others how to exploit the growing fraud inside the system.

The result isn’t progress or equity.

It’s systemic failure hiding behind the language of efficiency.

And now the people with the power under a linear system (like the person at CNN who is intelligent and put in the hard work to go to x school, follow y career path, and follow z type stories) are pissed off because they did everything they were told to do and they achieved the pinnacle of the system but they have zero power.

While those who were tossed out of the system (I had to leave the navy and follow a very non-traditional career to succeed) are running circles around them because we think nonlinearly and can jump around with a wrench fixing problems.

And here’s the reason why they are getting SO ANGRY at us. Because they cannot see what we see.

It’s not that they are dumb, it’s that they have been trained and selected for a very tunnel vision worldview.

And we are angry because we have no credentials or traditional power combined with a very wide field of view.

We can see all the problems very clearly and multitask…. While they can only focus on one problem in predefined buckets: in this case, that bucket is Maduro.

This hit piece on me by @oliverdarcy wasn’t a mistake.

It wasn’t sloppy reporting.

It wasn’t “concerned journalism.”
It was a coordinated hit by the old Pentagon press corps to kneecap @PeteHegseth and to punish anyone they don’t control.

And this time, they overplayed their hand.

The first hit piece is already live, written by Oliver Darcy. I’m reliably told the second is queued up at @wapo. Same framing. Same tone. Same anonymous whispers. Same goal.

This isn’t journalism.
It’s a pile-on.

Before I tear this apart, let’s establish the inconvenient truth they couldn’t avoid.

I’ve spent over twenty years reporting on the collapse of the U.S. Merchant Marine. My wife sailed a rusting ammunition ship through known minefields during the Iraq War. I’ve fought, publicly and relentlessly, for American shipbuilding, industrial capacity, and a fleet that can actually fight a war.

So yes, I’m 💯 thrilled that a president is finally serious about shipbuilding.

And yes, as one of 🇺🇸’s few remaining licensed ship captains, I was in awe reporting from USS John F. Kennedy.

That’s called expertise.
The legacy press treats it like a crime.
Now the rot.

Instead of reporting on the most advanced aircraft carrier and attack submarine ever built, one reporter, @halbritz, who has made zero effort to hide her contempt for Hegseth spent the tour watching me. Writing about me. Whispering about me. Feeding her impressions to friends embedded in legacy newsrooms.

I’ve done more press tours than I can count. This was the first time I witnessed a reporter actively hostile not to the administration but to other journalists.

She didn’t knowI spent years sailing falling apart rust bucket ships through massive storms and years more in hard shipyards. She didn’t bother to ask, her contempt was plane as she shared stories about being invited to royal palaces overseas by previous administrations. She refused to write articles about our ships being left defenseless under attack under Biden.

That’s not competition.
That’s enforcement.

Now, the lies—because there are many.

Lie #1: “The Pentagon is icing out journalists in favor of sycophants.”

This collapses instantly. Five minutes on gCaptain shows years of hard criticism of both Trump administrations. My own X account shows me being publicly smacked down by the White House press secretary.

Yes, I’m pro-Trump.

No, that does not mean obedience.
That assumption says more about them than me.

Lie #2: “A collection of right-wing outlets.”

They didn’t check. They didn’t care. Independent bias tools rate @gCaptain near dead center. Facts are optional when the target is preselected. The majority of our employees did not vote for Trump.

Lie #3: “Niche media site gCaptain.”
This one is pure contempt. gCaptain is the largest and most-read maritime news site on the planet, covering defense, shipping, energy, labor, and national security. Calling it “niche” is what powerful institutions say when they want to make it socially acceptable to crush someone smaller.

Lie #4: “A very different cast of media figures.”

Blatantly false. Invited to the tour was:
•Two people from CNN
•Fox News—home to @JenGriffinFN, Hegseth’s loudest critic
•A reporter from Bloomberg, a news organization owned by a billionaire who openly hates Trump

That’s diversity of viewpoint.
The old press corps only supports that idea when they control it.

Lie #5: “According to people familiar with the matter.”
This is where the mask slips.

Darcy emailed me warning me about the hit piece while I was still on the Secretary’s plane. I didn’t see it until we landed at Andrews Air Force Base. Walking through the terminal, I asked the other journalists, the only ones who heard my request “Oliver Darcy” was.

No one knew.

Then @halbritz panicked. Grabbed her CNN colleague. Vanished back into the terminal to avoid questions.

So let’s stop pretending.

Where did Oliver Darcy work?

CNN. 1/2 I haven’t read the full article—Darcy refused to send it but I’m told it sneers at something trivial.

What I did was asking Hegseth to sign a book.

Real journalists like Hegseth and I understand book exchanges. We’ve been doing it for centuries. There are literal stacks of books from reporters and officials inside the Pentagon press office where Britzky worked for years before self deporting over new rules meant to seal leaks.

New rules that proved wildly effective during the Maduro Raid. Rules I am proud to follow

Unlike Pete and I, neither Britzky or Darcy are real journalists with books that have been taught in some of the world’s best colleges.

This wasn’t reporting.
It was a warning shot.
Not even against me but against every “niche” journalist who tries to challenge the uni-media’s monopoly over piblic opinion

And now, right on schedule, the rest of the mainstream media, armed with billion-dollar budgets, floors of lawyers and collapsing credibility, are circling like vultures to hammer a journalist from a much smaller outlet.

Power punching down.
Always brave.
And then there’s Brixey.

The “journalist” who showed up to a heavy-industrial shipyard tour dressed for a lifestyle shoot… leather pants, designer accessories, waxed Barbour jacket… regaling is about the royal palaces the Biden Administration flew her too while cowardly attacking fellow journalists from organizations a fraction of her size.

Being a political enforcer while sneering at smaller reporters must pay well.

Shame on CNN for hiring her.
This wasn’t journalism.
It was discipline.

And the reason they’re panicking is simple:

They’re losing control and they know it.

Losing control to people who have sailed into harms way.

Let me be crystal clear…

Darcy you are lazy and careless.

Haley: YOU ARE A SNAKE SUFFOCATING AMERICA - FUCK YOU

LONG POST WARNING: How did this Somali fraud happen?

I have a close relative who works inside this system. She processes medicalcare claims for a large provider, we’ll call it SMH, in a deep-blue state (not Minnesota).

What people miss is that the biggest fraud isn’t the checks written to individuals. It’s the staggering cost of administering the programs.

My relative isn’t some paper-pusher. She’s a nurse with multiple degrees, managing a full team. Her entire day is spent chained to a computer: nonstop paperwork, Zoom calls, audits. There’s a fingerprint scanner and a camera on her desk. Family emergency? Too bad. Break down in tears from abuse? Still too bad.

Now, start with a real medical event: heart attack, cancer, stroke. The hospital treats you, then pushes you home quickly because long stays are crazy expensive and the hospital doesn’t have enough beds. Fine.

But home recovery requires ramps, grab bars, equipment. The state cuts checks to upgrade homes. Many recipients simply pocket the money. The state knows this, but doesn’t have enough inspectors, so it forces SMH to do “due diligence.”

That means more paperwork. More subcontractors. More verification. More zoom meetings for my relative. One claim can consume hundreds of man-hours.

Then there’s a shortage of visiting nurses. So patients must travel for bloodwork and follow-ups. Transportation services exist, but they’re heavily regulated and audited. That’s expensive.

Cheaper solution? Pay family members. Give them money to add a ramp to a minivan and drive the patient themselves.

Have an uncle who already has a van (because he’s scamming the system too), great we pay him monthly and you have to do nothing.

Now the real games begin.

How much help you get depends entirely on how you answer Zoom questions. Normal Americans say things like, “My son can help” or “A neighbor can drive me.” That caps benefits.

But there are cheat codes.

Say instead:
“I care for my autistic grandson.”
“I provide childcare for my niece.”

Now SMH must either support those dependents or move the patient into a full-service facility which is vastly more expensive than any other option. So they pay for childcare.

Because my relative is a mandatory reporter and children are involved m, every meeting now includes medical care teams, child-safety teams, housing teams, transportation teams. The clock is running. These are highly paid professionals.

Except there doesn’t even need to be children involved because privacy laws prevent basic verification. No birth certificates. No DNA tests. So SMH provides a list of approved childcare facilities.

You can just borrow someone else’s child for the paperwork and give them a new name because things like ID and birth certificates are “anti-immigrant” so they can’t be checked.

Now if the child supposedly has autism, costs explode: specialized care, transportation, services.

Ironically, local public schools often have excellent autism programs but school administrators won’t jump through SMH’s audit hoops. And when a child doesn’t actually have autism, schools quietly disenroll them without paperwork to avoid lawsuits. SMH is left holding the bag so better just to contract with a center.

If anyone complains you can just say the school doesn’t meet your religious needs.

Those are just patient meetings.

There are thred more meeting categories that devour time:

State audits:
Auditors expect problems and won’t leave without finding them. Missing paperwork means more meetings.

Legal:
Endless lawyers. Enough said.

Efficiency
Then come the “efficiency experts.” SMH needs to turn a profit so my relative’s boss is an Ivy League MBA. The solution is always the same: push more work onto families because it’s cheaper than more hospital time. That’s the cheapest option.

And to republicans (the only ones demanding accountability) it makes sense to support families over facilities

Except that if you’re a normal American, you’re screwed. 1/2 The forms are overwhelming. The documentation is insane. You don’t know what photos to take or how to claim modifications on someone else’s house. You don’t understand “the system”.

So you give up and sign a waiver and move in with family who are already exhausted by their jobs but are willing to care for you.

Or SMH is forced to put you in the cheapest facility possible which is crazy expensive and probably sucks.

But if you’re part of a tight-knit tribal group that knows the system, you know exactly how to answer every question on the forms to maximize payouts.

And if SMH pushes back? There’s a nuclear option: state hotlines.

A single complaint alleging elder abuse triggers audits. Audits cost SMH enormous money. So managers pressure staff to just write checks and move on.

Now imagine someone wants to scam the system but they don’t have a real medical condition.

It’s hard to lie to a doctor but easy to import sick relatives from overseas. SMH actually prefers this: no long records, no criminal history, no paperwork, no previous medical conditions they have to worry about. For SMH these patients are a clean slate.

And most importantly non-citizens can’t easily sue.

Now anyone saying MSM is hiding all this is wrong. Occasionally, the media DOES notice and hard working taxpayers are outraged.

People demand action!

A few arrests and deportations (sometimes people who wanted to go back to Somalia anyway) are made and learing center close

But… they just reopen in a few weeks or months under a new name.

A Republican senator demands accountability. He proposes a bill that will “eliminate loopholes” and “hire more auditors” and “eliminate $5 billion in fraud”.

Democrats agree on one condition: they get to spend half that “savings” on new social services for the immigrant communities.

The bill passes but now an additional $2.5B is being spent on the new programs and costs aren’t cut but instead skyrocket.

The bill results in more paperwork and rules. Lawyers get richer. Americans get buried under more red tape. The system gamers adapt instantly.

And nobody gets put in jail.

Why? Because the SMH lawyers drop gigabytes of paperwork and zoom meeting footage on the DA who can’t possibly manage it all.

Which brings us to the truth of rhe matter:

POSIWID — The purpose of a system is what it does.

P.S. and when a real emergency hits, like COVID, people die, because the whole thing is a brittle, over-engineered house of cards. There are no “transportation providers” or “learning centers” or medical care equipment in the home.

NOTE: I’m not in the medical profession, I probably got some of this wrong, It’s just what I’ve pieced together from years of hearing my relative rant.

I just felt the need to share this because she can’t talk about any of this online… if she did she would lose her license for violating patient privacy laws.

First, yes—this post is anti-American, Pyotr. Second, it’s wrong.

The argument that Europe should unite to compete with the United States and undermine the dollar’s reserve-currency status fails for two basic reasons:

First: that’s exactly why the EU and the euro were created—and they failed to achieve that goal.
Second: the United States built enormous political, economic, and security leverage into the post-WWII system—and we haven’t even begun to fully pull those levers.

I backpacked through Europe in the late ’90s. Pro-American sentiment was real and widespread. But what many people miss is why.

A lot of that “pro-America” feeling was actually anti-EU. Ordinary Europeans understood, intuitively, that the EU wouldn’t work. American culture appealed because it offered an alternative to claustrophobic national systems and an emerging EU globalist blob.

Then reality intervened.

The EU and euro turned out to be both disastrous and convenient. Currency exchanges and border checks were a pain; the EU solved that. That convenience made it popular on a personal level.

But the downsides—work-visa chaos, rigid monetary policy, endless bureaucracy, repeated fiscal crises, and job displacement—were real. They just faded into the background. Functionally, Europeans went from a two-layer government system to a three-layer one.

After WWII, there was serious discussion about folding everything under an American umbrella.

Europe didn’t want that.
France clung to national pride.
The UK wanted to retain remnants of its empire.
And the U.S. didn’t want the hassle of direct control.

But Europe was also too weak to stand on its own.

So we built institutions and systems—NATO, free trade, freedom of navigation, the dollar reserve system—as an umbrella over weak nations.

The EU was supposed to replace that umbrella. But it was designed as direct competition to the U.S. system, which is why we resisted it quietly. And the same national pride that kept Europe from accepting American control also prevented the EU from replacing national governments.

The truth is: the U.S. should have fought harder against the EU. But we didn’t—because as long as Europe didn’t start another war, we didn’t really care.

The EU was sold as “the United States of Europe”—states replaced by nations. That analogy was always nonsense.

The single overriding priority for Americans and the U.S. elite has been simple: no more European wars. Full stop.

We had zero interest in micromanaging Europe’s economy or governance. So we tolerated the EU and the euro—even knowing they’d fail—because they helped our primary objective: stability.

If we’d believed the EU would actually succeed as a true rival system, we would have stopped it. We didn’t, because it never replaced the checks, balances, overrides, and leverage we built after WWII.

It didn’t replace the U.S. political, economic, or security umbrella. It just added another bureaucratic layer beneath it.

Then three things happened:
1.People’s daily lives improved due to easy travel.
2.The EU became a fiscal, security, migration, and bureaucratic nightmare—especially for operating inside a U.S.-led system.
3.The U.S. began quietly pulling the hidden levers.

And then came the Iraq War.

People think Iraq was George W. Bush’s personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t.

It was a vendetta against Europe.

Conflicts happen constantly around the world. We don’t build coalitions for most of them. We did for Kuwait because Europe—especially the UK—asked us to.

Remember: George H.W. Bush was UN ambassador and CIA director before becoming president. And what did he do in office? He invaded Panama.

Then, in 2016, the Panama Papers exposed what had been happening all along: European elites were undermining the U.S.-led world order with dark money, political favors, and back-channel finance.

That’s the part this argument conveniently ignores. 1/3

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2004657253199057355

HW Bush wanted to strengthen the American world order

He didn’t want to do this to strengthen his grip on Europe… he wanted to do it because the world order worked: it brought peace and prosperity to billions.

His plan to strengthen that was called 1000 points of light but to accomplish it he first had to regain control of a the grift and dark money he found while he was CIA.

Hence panama.

But Europe (especially the UK) was building that dark network as their own leverage against America…. And they were doing it right in our backyard… not just in Panama but CIA shell companies registered in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Bahamas… and even Canada

So they got us in a war to distract us from Panama and to take down HW Bush.

Why did he agree to it? IDK. But he did.

And the war was a success to everyone except him and his 1000 points of light.

Europe, with the help of the dark money, backed Clinton and big business (which wanted to retain global dominance) backed Ross Perot. And the vote was split and Clinton won.

Not just because of the money but also because European media pushed the narrative that Bush was there just to control the oil (which makes no sense but that’s another rabbit hole)

And in exchange for winning Clinton made a deal:

Throttle back on the dark money networks and make it legitimate with the Euro/EU

And he made a special consession to the brits: NAFTA will give you free access to the USA via the commonwealth of canada

Now nobody in America really like the EU and there was a lot of pushback against NAFTA but Clinton gave them top cover

The new @USNavyCNO reading list is out—and #1 is about the US Merchant Marine pioneering containerization 🇺🇸🙌

Seapower. Logistics. American innovation.

Outstanding list, Admiral. Links in 🧵 The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

One of my all time favorites!

amzn.to/4qoefOz

Everyone knows that so called “double tap” strikes on land are legal, Obama did it all the time, but CNN keeps inviting land lawyers on to say narco terrorists have special privileges at sea.

Let’s look at the admiralty law: 🧵 Source: International law studies @NavalWarCollege

“Rudderless and Adrift: States’
Unwarranted Timidity Respecting
Stateless Vessels
Andrew Norris”

digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewconten…

Why was the old pentagon press corps so bad?

Why are subject matter experts in the new press corps getting attacked?

David absolutely nails it. Must-watch.

What’s most troubling is this: 🧵

https://twitter.com/thechiefnerd/status/1997134342200463361

yes, @DavidSacks has conservative views, yes he’s outspoken but he’s also chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology.

Even the far-left in Silicon Valley doesn’t deny his technical credibility.

The fact he’s getting attacked should worry everyone.

I disagree completely — and that’s strange, because I think the reason Thomas Massie is getting flak is the same reason Mamdani won.

I’m a New Yorker. I’ve seen every layer of this city — the grit of the Bronx and the glass towers of Midtown, the preachers and the traders, the liberals and the cops. My wife and I logged more than ten years in New York’s colleges; I even attended the same ultra-progressive gifted high school as Lina Khan. At one point, debates couldn’t even happen unless I showed up — because without me, there was no one to take the conservative side.

I’ve lived among the poorest in the Bronx, where my mother worked as a nurse in the projects — and I’ve sailed with Manhattan’s elite.

My grandfather was a Methodist minister. My father, a devout Catholic. My godfather is Jewish. I worked for an all-Hindu company in India and an all-Muslim one in Boston. I’ve read every sacred text — not because I wanted to prove any of them right, but because I wanted to understand why so many people are willing to die for an idea.

And I learned early what ideas can cost.
My father died from Agent Orange when I was a kid — a casualty of both Communism and our own government’s incompetence. Since then, I’ve spent a lifetime studying how nations rise and rot. I’ve worked with people from every end of the spectrum — from one of the most liberal senators in America, Mark Kelly, to the Heritage 2025 team — all trying to rebuild the same sinking ship.

So enough about me. Let’s get to the heart of it. 1/4

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/1986120515472228783

The Real Divide Isn’t Left vs. Right — It’s Chaos vs. Order

Trump won in 2016 — and again in 2024 — for the same reason he lost in 2020.

It’s the same reason de Blasio failed where Bloomberg thrived.

The same reason Rudy Giuliani could command a city, and Mamdani could win one.

This isn’t about Epstein, or Israel, or inflation. It’s about order and following a systemic plan.

Giuliani tore corruption out of New York. Bloomberg tore sloth out of its bureaucracy.

Trump in 2016 promised to bring in the “best and brightest” to drain the swamp — but by 2020 those “best and brightest” had revealed themselves as the swamp itself.

Chaos killed him. He was fighting an internal battle and didn’t have a plan for the next four years.

Americans want a plan, preferably an extreme plan because we all know centrist plans won’t work today

Trump came back in 2024 not with slogans, but with Project 2025 (and several other great plans) — a blueprint to re-engineer the American machine. Ruthlessly. Without taking prisoners.

De Blasio and Biden failed not because of ideology — but because of entropy. No plan. No structure. Just drift.

Mamdani won because he has a plan — to dismantle capitalism and replace it with Communism.
And he’s backed by sharp minds like Lina Khan, who see not markets or morals, but systems. Systems to be broken and rebuilt. 2/4

Yesterday, for the first time, I turned my back on a liberal neighbor and walked away. For Charlie.

I get asked daily by conservatives how I can possibly live in the most liberal town of the most liberal state.

Truth is, I’ve always been fascinated by how they think. I usually just laugh at the irrational takes.

But a single gunshot drained all curiosity and humor out of me.

He simply asked how I was. I said I was sad. He asked why.

“It’s 9/11. My dad was FDNY. And yesterday I lost a friend.”

His face softened. “I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t want to cry, so I backpedaled. “It’s ok, we weren’t close. Just spoke a few times but he felt like a good friend.”

“Who was it?” he asked.

“Charlie Kirk.”

Empathy turned to anger. Like I’d tricked him.

“Well, I don’t know him, and I don’t care what happens to him.”

“But he was my friend. I’m your friend. Isn’t that enough to care?”

He pivoted to politics. Gun violence. Assault weapon bans. “You people.”

I said it was a bolt-action rifle. He didn’t care. He said he didn’t care about Charlie.

Even though Charlie was a father? A friend? A believer?

“No,” he said. But his body language betrayed him. He did care.

Then: “I don’t want to talk politics.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I lost a friend. A friend with a wife and two beautiful daughters.”

Again: “I don’t care.”

So I turned and walked away.

He could have changed the subject, asked me about my Dad and 9/11 instead. But he was fixated on political drama not true empathy.

Some Republicans will say I should’ve stood my ground, yelled, fought back, told him off.

Some Democrat friends will say I should’ve leaned in harder with empathy and spent time getting him to understand my point of view.

But here’s the truth: I’m done.
Done debating. Done convincing. Done trying to “win” them over.

Charlie lived that. He spoke truth with compassion, even behind “enemy lines.” He never saw Democrats as the enemy. He saw Americans missing key pieces of the truth. He gave empathy and respect coupled with hard truths until his last dying breath.

He was a better man than me. Better than most of us.

And now he’s gone.

I’m not a great men Charlie, I’m a Captain in the U.S. Merchant Marine. We don’t talk, or seek glory & fame, don’t ask for thanks or forgiveness. We just move cargo. LOTS of cargo.

Our motto is simple: Acta Non Verba.

Actions, not words.

So why don’t I fight harder in my own neighborhood? Why do I let it go when a neighbors took down my flag on “no kings day”? Why do I remove the Trump magnet on my tesla when I get home.

Because the consequences are real. They don’t just punish me my kids will suffer for the sins of the father. But as the man said, he doesn’t care. That’s the line I won’t let them cross.

And because I do not have the courage of Charlie.

But gratitude for Charlie demands something more. Something bigger than my town which isn’t going to change. Debate is over. Tears are over. The time for action is here.

Not violence. Not riots. Not theatrics.

Political action.

Votes. Campaign cash. Pink slips across DC. Crowds of conservatives in every GOP office in congress demanding they stop doing TV appearances and start playing hardball.

Laws flipped at local, state & federal levels.

A dozen Scott Preslers in every California & Vermont farm town & every NYC church, rising Christians to vote out Sanders, Newsom, AOC & Mamdani.

An army of white hats exposing criminal NGOs, with Mike Benz, Data Republican, and a phalanx of lawyers volunteering for Will Chamberlain to get convictions.

Mass action against every Marxist policy.

We will not out-scream them. We will out-organize them. You can literally debate them until your last dying breath and nothing will change.

They don’t care and there is no way to change the mind of an apathetic man.

The time for debate is over.

We must speak softly and start carrying a big stick.

Acta non verba.

For Charlie. tldr

They have the best theater kids. They have top Ivy league debaters. They have most MSM pundits.

What do we have in abundance?

Protestant Work Ethic

We can’t replace Charlie. But you can couple your individual talent with the work ethic of Charlie Kirk.

This ship wasn't a tanker carrying gasoline or a RoRo with EV cars. It was a simple bulker carrying coal for export.

Did you know that coal has been one of the most dangerous cargoes ever transported at sea? A history 🧵

https://twitter.com/AZ_Intel_/status/1957590461075660940

The danger isn’t new. As early as September 1753, near the end of a 2-month voyage to Virginia, Captain Thomas Francis warned of smoke in the hold of the Pearl, identifying sulfur-rich coal as the culprit. It was a harbinger of disaster to come.

Sal has confirmed the explosion of a ship in Baltimore. This is a bulk carrier.

We don’t know the cargo but Baltimore is a major exporter of coal & Mauritius is a coal importer.

Coal can create methane and is subject to self-heating and liquefication. Bulkers can explode… 1/4

https://twitter.com/mercoglianos/status/1957586721899704520

Even a ship “just carrying grain” can become a floating bomb.

A dust explosion happens when fine particles ignite in the air. One spark in the hold and the rapid combustion can blow steel apart.

Grain and coal dust can be as dangerous as dynamite when concentrated. 2/4