Go to ground.news/Ryan to stay fully informed. Subscribe through my link for 50% the Vantage plan for unlimited access only for the holiday season. This is their biggest sale of the year! Go to www.aeromedlab.com/ if you want to learn more about how we are saving soldiers lives. Watch my "Exposing the Military Industrial Complex" video here: ua-cam.com/video/C2gIId1dpDs/v-deo.html What the Original Johnny Harris video here: ua-cam.com/video/iqJ0kg9xvLs/v-deo.html In this video, I examine journalist Johnny Harris' claims in "Why the U.S. Military Spends So Much Money" and reveal 9 significant inaccuracies or oversights. Many of you asked me to respond, and after reviewing the video, I found substantial misinformation and missing context in Harris's narrative. From misconceptions about the F-35 and defense spending to misleading ideas about consolidation, lobbying, and the "military-industrial complex," Harris paints a one-sided picture without consulting experts with actual military or defense industry experience. All proof can be found for free at RyanMcBeth.Substack.com For uncensored video, check out my substack at: ryanmcbeth.substack.com Like my shirts? Get your own at: www.bunkerbranding.com/pages/ryan-mcbeth Want a personalized greeting: www.cameo.com/ryanmcbeth Watch all of my long form videos: ua-cam.com/play/PLt670_P7pOGmLWZG78JlM-rG2ZrpPziOy.html Twitter: @ryanmcbeth Instagram: @therealryanmcbeth BlueSky @ryanmcbeth Reddit: /r/ryanmcbeth Join the conversation: discord.gg/pKuGDHZHrz Want to send me something? Ryan McBeth Productions LLC 8705 Colesville Rd. Suite 249 Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA
Hi Ryan...I wanted to bring to your attention that Johnny Harris and many others have also lied repeatedly about how many overseas bases the USA has. They claim we have 800 of them, but they hugely padded the number by counting large bases as multiple segments. For instance, Diego Garcia is a single huge base, but Harris et al count it as 12 or 15 different bases just because there are 12 or 15 different administrative segments. They do this with Rammstein, Thule, Guantanamo, and every other US military base...they count the adminstravice sections of every base, instead of counting a whole base as 1 installation. People need to know how they are being lied to.
Hi ikvetch Are they really “lying” as you imply or are they just misinforming? Ryan uses irrelevant metaphors constantly but I don’t see you complaining about that form of misinformation. Just saying if you going to be a useless bægël Ëater at least be consistent.
Johnny Harris has gotten the anger of 1) Ukraine War experts. 2) Economists (PhD) 3) Historians. 4) Globalism experts. It's rare for one man to get the anger of so many types of people independently.
@@shadicianBut once your integrity has been questioned on one video, then everything else needs to also be taken into question. Everyone makes mistakes, but the thing is - he almost NEVER acknowledges them, and instead doubles down on his erroneous material. It's been shown for many of his videos that he either has faulty sources, or a severe lack of them in the first place, and he lets his political bias heavily cloud his conclusions. He's really not worth watching
“ It's rare for one man to get the anger of so many types of people independently.” Not when they are all the same entity 🫠. ps you forgot the Military Industrial Complex and Global Media control.
"The problem with Johnny Harris is that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about until he talks about something you know about”…truer words have never been spoken
This generally applies to all situations where experts in a field know more about a situation than journalists do. On the other hand, generalists such as journalists don't have an axe in the fire, there is no selfish motivation to want one side to prevail. Journalists on the other hand have motivation to make their video more entertaining, which often aims to provoke intense feeling. There's no easier way to do that than to present a one sided argument.
I'm glad someone is calling out Johnny Harris. He used to work for Vox, who make highly polished videos on a variety of subjects. He quit Vox and started his own UA-cam channel doing the same thing. He is insufferable. People are lured in by his fancy looking graphics and are tricked into thinking the man knows what he's talking about.
So I'm a mostly left-leaning person, with a right-leaning view when it comes to cops and military. I saw the Johnny Harris video, and I was shaking my head. I have my own personal gripes about the right AND the left. I think everyone should call out their own side when they do something wrong. That's integrity. Johnny Harris, is in my opinion just as bad as someone like Tucker Carlson. They lie to your face about things and also don't take a moment to understand to other side of the political aisle. They don't talk to the other side, instead opting to only talk within their circle. This is the issue I have with both sides of the political spectrum. Just too extreme and non-factual, and unwilling to listen to dissenting opinions, and Johnny Harris is a contributor to that.
Thinking for yourself is not what you’re supposed to be doing dummy. Why aren’t you thinking exactly what you’re supposed to? Hate the “other” because that’s what I’m telling you to do. Why don’t you trust me blindly?
Your “mostly left leaning but right leaning on cops and military. Maybe you are describing yourself as antifa? You should both incoherent and inconsistent
Your “mostly left leaning but right leaning on cops and military. Maybe you are describing yourself as antifa? You should both incoherent and inconsistent
This stuff is all about clicks, engagement and money. Truth rarely factors in. Its all about telling people what they want to hear, doesn't matter if its true or not. Sometimes you see someone like Johnny starting out kind of neutral politically, because they're testing out the audience and seeing where the easiest route to cash exists. Then once they fund that target audience, that is who they focus on, truth be damned. Ryan seems to be about as straight a shooter as it gets. He's in this for the right reasons.
Like "Mexico will pay for the wall" "Tariffs are things that other countries pay" "Our economy is in the toilet" "Gangs are taking over apartment buildings, regardless of what the local police say" "Haitians are eating pets" "the Left is making illegal immigrants vote 18 times" etc etc etc. And then you get elected POTUS.
On a recent channel 5 video, which I do like channel 5 btw, someone said that 50 percent of the US budget is going to military and the video made it seem like it was true. I looked it up and it was wrong and it only took a quick Google search, real bruh why can't you check this moment. It's like 13 percent btw.
Listening on this video, I don't see any clear lies, Ryan is more confirming that what Jonny Harris is kind of true. Content angled in different ways but not clear lies. And Ryan is also not objective and this time got more emotional than analytical. Hearing stuff like the military R.D. is as much as the Morocco GDP, sounds lower than I thought. Stuff like that an diaper company have bigger earnings than big weapons company sounds reasonable. I think it's more important that baby buts keeps dry than killing more people. The countries with higher % military budgets is crazy ones with dictators or in war situations, with the exception of Poland that is doing an big spending because of the obvious increased threat levels and the spending is not supposed to be permanent.
Military industrial complex is real and to say it’s not real make no sense there are companies that make weapons and to say they control all wars is probably wrong but they likely do have influence in business of war so say it’s not real inaccurate
@@Unknown-r2p2o What is the market cap of Lockheed Martin? Raytheon? Boeing? What's the market cap of Apple, McDonalds, Amazon, and WalMart? War is bad for trade. Military contractors do not have nearly enough money to do what you're suggesting.
Importantly, it's not. He actually _is_ a journalist. But he's a journalist whose gone rogue, offleash, he's his own editor, and that's bad because there clearly isn't someone to soberly and critically review the work before it goes out. That's why news orgs. the reputable ones, have editorial boards. And That's why it's important to give him shit. He's an actual journalist by training and profession and working background, but now he doesn't have any sort of senior editorial board and his channel needs cash, they're under time pressure to push out content.
@@seacucumberable couldn’t agree more. Like Ryan said about human errors, I don’t think he is pushing lies to intentionally mislead people. I understand it as a lack of peer review and perhaps a problematic environment inside the company.
I served from 1980 to 1999, U.S. Army Reserves. I was a medic. My unit slowly diminshed to nothing and the GOA had calculated that too many Reservists were going to collect pensions. They ratcheted up the PT standards, seniority points systems, height weight profiling and performance reviews until they had gotten rid of many units and enough people who wouldn't get pensions. "Thank you for your service." often doesn't cut it when I realize I will not be getting a pension, that I wasn't allowed to get back in after 9/11, and many of the benefits I wouldn't have collected until I was 65 are now closed to me. People like Johnny Harris make me sick. Both the military and people like Harris fail to remember what is often attributed to Orwell: "You sleep safely at night because rough men with guns stand ready to do violence upon those who would disturb your slumber." I hope Mr. Harris sleeps well.
Reading your story almost brought tears to my eyes.. We ALL owe you and people like Ryan and yourself a giant thank you! I pay my taxes in hope that some part of it would go towards helping you to live decent life after the sacrifices you’ve made. This Johnny guy is a dishonest sleaze ball. Sincerely, Thank you for your service from the bottom of my LEGAL immigrant’s heart!
@@thelordofnuggets629 Whether they do or don't doesn't matter. I was there to do my duty. The difference between a civilian and a citizen is that a citizen makes it their personal responsibility to protect their people. It isn't just a Robert Heinlein quote. Its a lifestyle. That said. I did my job. That's what counts.
@@aljohnson3717 America enjoys its freedom, and they get to do so on the cheap. The amount of money spent on defense, while commendable compared to other nations who are closer to the threat than we are here, is the small price we pay because our enemy isn't within artillery range. I worry more about the vets coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq who struggle with all of the mental anguish and the lack of response from the military and the VA. We lose more soldiers to suicide than we did to twenty years of war. There needs to be a much more concerted effort in the mental healthcare field for these guys. I have what I need to get by in life, but I don't know how to translate that for others. I had help. Many are less fortunate. Help them. And.... You're welcome. Glad to do my part.
The Stinger missile segment is a good analogy to why the SR-71 Blackbird wasn't brought back from retirement when the GWOT kicked off. You can't just fire up a shut down assembly line from the 1960's to make specialty parts, and even if you could, the costs would be extremely prohibitive.
its a good example of what most people don't understand on these government budgets, sometimes cutting to 'save' ends up costing way more later on. some things will be lost forever.
It’s called obsolescence, we run into it so much because Uncle Sam doesn’t want to buy more or think they can save. Then they blow millions just to find a replacement part because they didn’t buy enough or ignored a recommendation for last time buy. It’s not even the people in the defenses fault many times when their budget is leveraged a million ways,and the funds have been allocated and it takes a helluva lot of work to get funds reallocated or find more funds to plus up the effort. Many times it’s rob peter to pay Paul. Or decide to just ignore Paul all together and decide to only feed Paul because someone somewhere felt that was the most cost effective thing, or pure personnel opinion and self interest. People seem to forget politicians do call the shots on certain discretionary spending based on information or real world situation and geopolitics. It no lie to say congress decided that or the senate defense oversight committee. Big budget programs live or die at the capitol building.
@@egondro9157 this isn't just a government problem, my dad did procurement for a major O&G company. On projects he often bought an extra container of parts, bolts, spares, etc. The reason, the project was $200 million, spending $40k on spares was a rounding error and when a certified bold is missing and holds up a whole crew for two days while DHL is overnighting the part from halfway around the world at an ungodly cost, having the parts you need is key. The contractors in the millitary love change, change is money, change is profits.
Johnny Harris - Agenda Contributor The World Economic Forum There i exposed everything he does and stand for. In a two-liner, copied from the official WEF website.
@@shawn576I think it was a year ago or something that a bunch of UA-camrs jumped on criticizing Johnny Harris in which he actually made some corrections to his videos. I wonder what will happen now
Johnny is piece of work. I stopped taking him seriously after his "North Korea is not a serious threat" video. He is just another mouth on the internet that cherrypicks information that fits his crap narrative about the world.
I mean he's not entirely wrong there, the NK threat is not directly from the state of North Korea but from its much more powerful/capable allies China and Russia. Not even a Nuke from North Korea is a threat to the US, we'd see it launch and shoot it down with the 7 different anti-air/missile platforms we've been designing since the 70s for this exact purpose. But if North Korea invaded South Korea or vice versa, it can spiral out of control extremely quickly and that resulting spiral is where the threat is.
@@TheDreadPirateRoberts-jr2fk ryan is so dumb on this point. makes some vague point about profit and how tech companies make more profit. the name of the game in governmetn contracts is to make costs as high as possible and limit profit (on paper) - this allows you to charge more for contracts. really simple stuff that ryan misses.
Is it a "serious threat"? Is it imaginable that it won't get flattened by South Korea in minutes flat if they were to try to pull some shit? Though i have little doubt that they might try to pull some shit regardless, and that holding them back from doing that is not something one should just stop.
I have a Master's Degree in political science, and when I was working on my Ph.D one of my professors proposed to the University to establish a course to educate journalists in political science, since he was baffled about all the miss-information on the news all the time. The program never got off the ground because there was no interest from journalists in actually taking that class.
Former Poli Sci major here turned journalism major! I couldn’t agree more! OMG, the people who covered the election in my college newsroom have ZERO clue how the electoral college even worked. They had no idea what the swing states were nor how the process of our government or other comparative governments work. It’s insane to me. These are the people that we are supposed to “trust” with disseminating information.
Also Poli Sci graduate here. One of my main research topics was the weakness of Polisci when it came to talking to other disciplines, especially technology. It's why I love this channel specifically. A lot of Poli Sci theory pulls from economics but is lacking input from other disciplines. How often have we heard politician trying to explain complex technological concepts or security concerns during a congressional hearing and failing? And I'm not even completely faulting them for it, on the other side, someone in who works in software development might create something unaware of the security, political and normative impact it could unleash, which is exactly what we're seeing with AI and social media. Also it makes me laugh at Ryan tangent about the term global hegemon. That term was beaten into my head from professors with different political beliefs. Someone didn't read Enders Game.
I remember the journalism students in college. That's where you went when virtually every other door, even the "soft sciences," were closed to you. The field is not taken nearly as seriously as its role in democracy demands.
I work for pratt and whitney, we don't make any money on selling engines, we make money on parts and service.. that is 100% across the board, from commercial to military engines.
70% on average of any military major acquisition is lifecycle sustainment costs, not the actual purchase. Think about the parts and maintenance it takes on a new car over its lifetime.
I worked in the aerospace and defense industry for over 35 years. These people are always blaming the defense companies for their high prices, $10,000 hammer, $100k toilet etc etc. But try getting a specification for building some widget from the government and you will see really quickly why it costs so much. We built components for satellites and often the paperwork required to be sent with the component weighed much more than the component itself. There are so many requirements for material certifications, quality assurance, supply chain restrictions and so on that you usually had to have a dedicated staff to just verify we were compliant with the specification.
So in other words, The paper trail, red tape, and other CHOICES the government made caused us to send orders of magnitude more money to build defense implements than they actually cost
Lol, you were the first person that came to mind, when I saw Johnny's video! And I was waiting for your response (because, what do _I_ know about this stuff??). Boy, did you NOT disappoint!
@@tommcfadden5232 I follow his channel and he has made some howlers of errors, I would say his stuff if full of errors that I can see, so how many do I not see since I am not an expert in each field. he is entertaining and interesting enough to make me sometimes go research and find out more, which is not a bad thing. But I would advise anyone to take him with at least a large dose of salt if not several and treat him as an entertainment rather than education. We all have agendas from our personal history and upbringing and to make factual content our logic and reason has to overrule our emotions.
“What did Johnny Harris get wrong in his video” needs to accompany every one of his videos. It’s incredibly generous to call him a journalist, he’s a story-teller.
@@iOSAT storyteller would be neutral. he would lie for personal gain and fame at worst. he is doing active propaganda for an organisation. it's sooo much worse than just telling a lie. it's telling a lie on purpose to misinform you for the gain of others.
@@texasranger24 storyteller noun sto·ry·tell·er ˈstȯr-ē-ˌte-lər : a teller of stories: such as a: a relater of anecdotes b: a reciter of tales (as in a children's library) c: LIAR, FIBBER d: a writer of stories
I'm honestly really starting to dislike all those big "information/education" UA-camrs who put a huge amount of effort into producing videos with really slick graphics etc (Johnny Harris, Real Life Lore, Kurzgesagt and so on to name a few). Always feel like it's a con to distract dummies like me from questioning whatever they're saying.
@@WeyounSix After finding errors or misinformation hidden in videos with high visual production quality/entertainment elements previously, I'm now suspicious of all such videos and content creators. It makes me wonder if the entertaining elements are being used to hide flaws elsewhere in the factual or analytical content.
One additional reason comparing military spending in US dollars doesn't always make sense is that many countries can buy a lot more for a dollar than we can in the US, known as the price parity index. Something I learned from Perun's videos.
Yeah, it gets really tiring to see people from the West... particularly the US...act like "oh my gosh, it's so cheap to live in such and such country?!?!!???" and not seem to realize that it's cheap for US, but not for THEM because the economy of countries outside of the West (and a handful of the 1st world countries that exist outside of the West) are often vastly lesser with lesser purchasing power and drastically reduced wages of the average populace. So yeah, that $3 lunch you had in Russia doesn't mean that Russia is some amazing utopia where greedy capitalists haven't taken over...when you consider the average Russian only makes on average about $350 a month, that $3 starts looking a LOT more expensive than you would have thought
They don't adjust for that? They should. Like how everyone adjusts for inflation if they're talking about housing in the 40s or the stock market crash of 1929. There's a lot of context missing if you say your grandparents bought their home after the war for $11,000.
"US spends too much on military" >US 3,5% GDP >Poland 5% GDP And if anything, Poland is the only sane NATO member right now. So you better double those F-35 acquisitions, dear americans, those are some rookie numbers right now 😅
Poland never ever did spend 5% of GDP. Not even close. And let's not forget that Poland didn't even spend 2% before 2022/23, despite their geographical location. So, there obviously is some catching up to do for them.
Prior to 2022, Poland’s military spending was consistently around 2% of GDP, aligning with NATO guidelines. This reflected its strategic focus on regional security, particularly in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine since 2014.
The problem with a lot of UA-cam "journalists" is that they got their credibility from basically being a travel blogger and people somehow morphed that into "this guy knows what he is talking about."
Johnny Harris complaining about the consolidation of the US defense industry to cut DoD costs and using that as an example of why the military spends too much money is... something. Not sure I would call that a good argument though.
Yeah. there are significantly easier arguments to reveal millitary spending waste where contractors kinda scam the government. one example is arbitrary nonsensical limits on repairs that don't improve safety and only serve to profit contractors. the issue is that doesn't fit his narrative and only leads to the military improving it's practices rather than encourage people to be anti-military which is his actual goal.
The viewer that had the comment "he knows what he's talking about until he talks about what you know about" is so much more correct than they know. My chemistry degree is the main reason I have no faith in basically any media outlet any more. The amount of confident incorrectness by everyone is astonishing.
This is Ryan’s channel when he talks about international relations. Or really anything outside of specific anti-tank platforms. His channel was decent when he only dealt in his area of expertise.
@@theodorekorehonen Ryan’s Project 2025 video. A lot of commenters noted he was just doing a word search and didn’t read the actual texts. He was noticeably more critical about Project 2025’s military policies.
I never heard of Johnny Harris and thought about skipping this because it's half an hour. Now I wish you'd do the whole 90 minutes. Great fact-filled commentary, thank you.
He'll probably show up here and thank you for the critique and point out how he tries to keep his videos running time in check and has to sacrifice things like context to do that. He does that a lot.
Ryan dropping the line "And of course I can find his personal email and number because... y'know *shows a video of a MQ drone launching a hellfire missile* I'm Ryan" Is such a badass line that only someone like Ryan can use
Thank you for putting this video together. It provides much-needed context on these topics and has significantly impacted my trust in Johnny Harris. I do have a couple of comments: 1) I find the comparison of dollar amounts to Morocco's GDP unhelpful-it feels sensationalist and lacks context-but it isn’t technically a lie. 2) You rightly examine military spending as a percentage of GDP, but I think you missed an important point: compared to other advanced economies not engaged in active wars, the U.S. spends about 1.5x. The UK and France are the most relevant comparisons here. U.S. military spending is naturally higher because, unlike most countries, it supports a global military presence to defend allies and project power-an inherently costly endeavor. Thanks again!
I will never understand why people feel the need to lie about the US. There is enough factual stuff to criticize without having to lie about it. It must be exhausting.
Agree. I'm sure there is plenty wrong with military procurement and overall defense policy but a fair look would compare it with other government activities and other countries. Even asking what the quantum is would need comparison with others. Harris says USA outspend all other countries ignoring that list includes China Russia Iran north Korea who have all made public statements threatening the USA and the USA might have to fight all four at once...hence the need to outspend them
Because coming to a more nuanced perspective takes a whole lot of effort. At least when compared to rattling off intellectually dishonest talking points which you know 99% of your audience won't bother to fact check because they already want to believe in a certain conclusion.
the whole point is that the more units you buy the cheaper the price. Getting everyone to buy F-35s has made it an affordable stealth combat aircraft. The biggest problem within the military industrial complex is the desire for proprietary systems. If European navys standardized on a single ASW patrol Frigate, a single Air Defense Destroyer and a single Corvette type and then bought them in bulk the cost of the ships would shrink while the potential for improvements would go up.
@@MrChickennugget360 The problem with getting different countries to standardize on a single design is that each country has different requirements. Thats why international partnerships to develop things like fighters and tanks typically don't work out.
Also, on the topic of manufacturing: Let's assume that today the most amazing piece of military equipment is developed, and we produce every part of it from the same manufacturing plant, even sourcing the raw materials from that plant's backyard. Now, tomorrow we go to war. Guess what becomes a target? Nobody said just one plant, you say? Okay, 50 plants in the same state. If you can reach one plant, you can likely reach them all-or at least enough to significantly affect production. Strategically, it is a bad idea not to diversify manufacturing.
I believe this is more of a vibe situation. We are always told we can't afford better health care and schools, but there is always money to increase the military budget. There is always billions to send to other counties, but we can't afford to increase SNAP benefits. This leads to the big number bad feeling. I always appreciate your reporting Ryan. There defiantly needs to be more military reporters on the online news networks.
I don't think it's entirely his fault if he's like that, he grew up in a mormon family so lies always been around him since he was a baby. In this community they basically don't have too much choice but to lie regularly or they'll quickly get in trouble. (BTW I know it because he made a video about this. I mean about being a Mormon, not about being a liar... lol)
@@texasranger24 Exactly, he’s literally a talking head for the globalist agenda and just regurgitates their accepted opinions and views. And all videos come back to way they want
Johnny Harris has always been a fishy guy. Heard a lot about him getting information wrong on his videos so that’s why I don’t watch him. Glad you made a video on this guy.
Just want to say that I Love the graphic you showed for the "Hegemon" in every way. Also, love the rest of the video. Glad you're clearing a lot of this up. I just hope most of the viewers of his video also manage to see this one, or see through the crap on their own.
Thanks Ryan, Johnny Harris’ videos are entertaining and engaging. Like many pundits I also enjoy them until they talk about something I have expertise in. Thanks for the straight talk.
As a former defense lobbyist (we like to call it government relations) the truth is somewhere in-between the situations Ryan and Johnny present. Like all complex things, they are more grey than black or white.
Ryan is full of s*** Comparing with diaper companies is stupid There's only a couple companies and they have a Monopoly on the market So yeah diaper companies make a fortune make a fortune and these politicians they know when to invest in these military tech companies. When to get in once I get out and make a fortune just more cherry picking from Ryan Macbeth and I am very pro-military but I smell this guy's BS a mile away he's a profiteer of War if soldiers don't bleed he doesn't make any money
@@romanstingler435 I can give you one example from current events although I'm not a former lobbyist... I don't have the time to give a list of citations so you'll have to fact check... Some politically and financially motivated pundits and politicians have created a narrative that Chinese consumer and enterprise drones are a threatto US national security. Why would they do that? There's been no substantiating evidence presented and to the contrary there have been several independent audits that show no threat. As far as I can tell the narrative started from so-called experts trying to make a name for themselves. Over in the last 10 years a few American companies tried to produce drones and they were total failures as drones and as companies. During that time some MIT students created a company called Skydio which dabbled in this and that, mainly focused on trying to come up with a drone for deliveries. Then they decided to take a shot where all the others had failed and released a consumer drone in 2018. It totally failed. Skydio realized that the consumer market was too hard so they shifted to enterprise first responder and military markets. They struggled there as well and while they have now finally come out with a drone that somewhat usable it's still half as capable as the Chinese equivalent and cost 5 times more. So about to fail again Skydio decided to get political and have the competition banned from the US market. Recently Skydio has been spending tons of money to sway politicians like Stephanik and Texter, to perpetuate the false narrative of a national security threat and to higher people with ties to politicians. Skydio can't produce drones that compete with DJI so they're trying to have DJI banned. Not just from the military market, they also want it banned from consumers, hobbyist and small businesses. Skydio has one drone model that is not suitable for 99% of the American market. They're not trying to build in American drone industry they're trying to destroy it, making themselves the only option. Some corrupt American politicians are happy to take the money. If you want more specific information leave a comment and I can try to come up with a reading list for you. There's a channel called steel city drones that has been covering the latest attempts to get Skydio banned through the NDAA and other legislation. DJI imports are currently being held at customs because because somebody in the government alleges that they used slave labor to produce the drones. Our government doesn't have a problem with Chinese labor for hundreds of billions of dollars of products, but 10 million worth of drones is all a sudden a problem?
The F-35 is a target because all cutting edge military technology looks like a haphazard mess if you look at it over it’s development period. Most of the time these developments start with requirements that are vague or impossible. Then as time goes on and what can be executed is narrowed down the roles and capabilities are refined. Then as other nations react and technology changes the requirements also change. Each of these stages rehash the project over and over again. When you’re building something that no one has ever done before, with capabilities that no one ever imagined, and completion that no one could quantify it’s bound to seem like an utter waste. Now wait 30-60 years and all of a sudden we’ll forget all that and say how well it’s served its role and how it’s a shame we need to replace it. Look back at the F-15, B-52, A-10 and people called those projects a disaster at the time. Now we call them some of the finest aircraft produced. In fact he F-15 (correction F-14) was labeled as bloated and a waste until all of a sudden this movie called “Top Gun” came out and then everyone said it was amazing and iconic.
It’s hilarious how people keep trying to dunk on the F-35, the latest Sandbox News video points this out, and makes the point how the F-35 literally has a better accident rate than the F-16 does, and its availability rate isn’t much worse, and is mostly related to software upgrades. It’s bonkers that people still keep complaining about it as some shining example of corruption or US incompetence or something.
@@phishphood423now yep there is corruption. It exists in government and non-government. There is waste, fraud, abuse, etc. there is also a lot of politics in government (go figure). There is a lot of politics in large businesses too. I’ve been an insider, a contractor, a consultant, in the fully public sector, private sector, startup and global multinational. The game changes but a lot of it is the same. There are time when the rules are followed, times when they are not. Sometimes that works out well, sometimes not. But almost every example I’ve seen it’s always a lot of people working with what they got and trying. Which is more than what happens in a lot of other places where corruption is just the way 75% of the time.
It’s hilarious how people keep trying to dunk on the F-35, the latest Sandbox News video points this out, and makes the point how the F-35 literally has a better accident rate than the F-16 does, and its availability rate isn’t much worse, and is mostly related to software upgrades. It’s bonkers that people still keep complaining about it as some shining example of corruption or US incompetence or something.
Only enemies of the US want our military defunded. However the way military budgets are done does need to be modernized. We shouldn't punish divisions and units for not spending all of their budget each year.
I worked putting together and running what were probably the first autonomous vehicles, US army tanks, as target vehicles for weapons testing for the US military back in 1979. I drove tanks with no brakes. I climbed into a burning tank to shut off the engines. I chased on foot a runaway tank with a berserk computer, in total darkness in a snowstorm at Ft. Riley, KS. I had a secret clearance and I was paid $7.50 an hour, an average tech wage in the town I worked at the time. I've worked at other Mil contracting jobs. They paid me the going tech rate. What costs so much for military stuff wasn't my pay. It is ensuring that military gear works under all conditions, hot, cold, wet dry, day, night, in dust, in snow, after it's been dropped, after it's been run over, under every scenario. I saw certification paperwork verifying a 24 hour burn-in of each individual 5 cent resistors for a flight circuit bd for a spy satellite. The testing costs far more than the resistors. But it's necessary. You don't replace a resistor in a spy satellite in orbit. The costs of military supplies is what it is because it needs to be. Having said that, I'm very much in favor of close supervision of every military contract. It's a whole lot of money, and wherever there is a whole lot of money there are always a whole lot of people looking to get some for themselves. BTW, Project 2025 is not something that reasonable Americans want, but it IS what they have voted for, so they will get it. They voted for donald trump, and what happens from now on isn't what they will want, but what they voted for. Yes, people can vote to be self-destructive, and so they did. It's a Darwin Award kinda thing.
My understanding is that Project 2025 did not come from Trump, it came from a think tank with no affiliation with Trump. He may well do some of it, but it is not his baby.
I had to laugh during the F-35 section. If you compare the F-35 to almost any aircraft the military has fielded since before WW2 you'd find that it has one of the best records out there. Hell, more than a few of the airframes developed during WW2 had a 50% or worse safety record and an operational record that wasn't much better. And just so we're clear, when I say safety record, I'm talking about crashes and deaths not in combat.
The fact that the five major defense contractors make less than proctor and gamble does not mean there isn’t a military industrial complex. The two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Talk about the MIC makes it look like something overwhelming, overpowering, that effectively runs the US from the shadows. Showing that it's smaller than P&G puts that into perspective and makes it clear, that it doesn't.
IMO Johnny Harris's videos are all this poorly researched and oriented around proving a specific political point for which he cherry picks info, talks to one or two biased parties, and then fills air with speculative commentary. He often preferences facts/statements that superficially 'blow your mind' but are generally not very insightful or informed. Like I just watched the first half of one of his videos where he REPEATEDLY emphasized that countries and their governments... ARE MADE UP by humans. It turns out things like President and lines on maps don't occur naturally without humans making them. MIND BLOWN.
I have been waiting for this video. He uses music and tone to make it seem like he knows a lot more than you, and making things sound way more important or true.
Ryan, love the content and your idea with AeroMedlab would be an awesome addition to the modern medical services on the frontline, so I wondered the other day - would drone delivery of defibrillator be a viable option for civilian use?
Johnny Harris is a character who only sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and he usually talks plain nonsense. He is trying to be Veritasium without investigative journalism, that is, his sources are "reddit, I told you so bro, trust me" and the big media like buzufeed articles 😅
True, but the point still stands. If you’re an investor, military investment is not a good way optimize your returns. That said, I don’t think Ryan’s point was a clear rebuttal of Harris’s insinuation of greed on the part of defense personnel. I mean, they could just be incompetent or lazy at investing.
Yeah that felt like such a weird point to emphasize, like yeah it is a decent comparison but P&G has its hands in so many consumer products more than diapers
Ukraine gets weapons Bit then the us makes more of the same or most likely better weapons to keep their stocks from going down And becose of scale they become cheaper
@@uku4171 the fact that you were criticized for questioning how this 30 minute video is 90 minutes long to Harris’ 28 minute video is an important reminder of why you can never have a debate on the internet in good faith when people are busy changing basic facts like how long a video is. You can inform people about how and why military spending is done but you can’t ever win in a comment thread occupied by people looking for ways to call you a liar for wondering how 30 minutes is 90 minutes in some sort of silly 1984 scenario.
You can buy lots of different 8-bit chips. There's the NXP (formerly Motorola) HCS08, 8051-compatibles from dozens of different vendors, Microchip PIC and AVR, ST8, Zilog Z8, etc.
AHH YES! FINALLY! Here it goes 😎 This is gonna be a good one. Edit: Man this was way more salty than expected 🤣🤣 But some great examples here! Love how Ryan incorporated context, analogies and examples instead of just laying out the facts. Makes the video a bit better suited for first time watchers of the channel and adds credibility. Although maybe he was even too humble in his own introduction at the start tbh.
I stopped watching Johnny Harris videos quite a while ago, because they all started to sound more like propaganda than journalism. He's pushing emotion over information. It drives engagement, which powers the algorithm and increases viewership, which is why he's got so many subscribers. People love it because it's really entertainment, but they can pretend they're also learning something useful. As a result, he definitely works backwards from a conclusion to find causes that fit his chosen narrative, and any data that does not comport with that narrative and conclusion is just tossed aside.
Johnny Harris’s videos to be fair are meant for people who don’t know much. He is a real journalist but McDonald’s is also food. And funny enough the best journalists generally cater to the select few like fine dining as where McDonald’s appeals to the masses who eat frozen food from Walmart alone to them McDonald’s is “gourmet” special meal. And you know what even I sometimes enjoy McDonald’s and Johnny Harris videos. Especially when it’s something I know about Like politics or the military. It’s honestly laughable the way he and many journalists mess things up. And McDonald’s hey I just enjoy a dirty salty quarter pounder after a night out. Just cheese and ketchup it’s so salty it gets your brain excited almost anytime.
Doubt it’s on purpose. He’s a brand of youtuber that covers a wide variety of subjects. It makes it really hard to be accurate and deep dive when you’ve made a deadline for yourself so you can move onto something else. Irresponsible and arrogant of your world view regardless.
@@GenkiGoLucky I do think its on purpose. There seems to be a pattern of fearmongering western audiences against their own governments. Hes a sensationalist that realises he gets more clicks from drumming up ragebait.
Waste and misspending is the problem. My unit still used the ARC-114 radio. We had several down due to lack of a spare part (a transistor). The supply system did not have any and it was going to take about 6 months for the DLA to let a contract for them. We had all sorts of data books and found the exact transistor available at Radio Shack. A bag of 100 cost ten dollars. The current price in the supply system was ten dollars each and the projected new contract cost per item was going to be fifty dollars each.
Not specific to the defence industry. Most (all vendors) will have this effect. Buying components directly is usually cheaper than buying from the equipment vendor. For small, cheap, generic components this is a large difference. The excuse would be that now someone in the vendor's plant is repackaging, ordering, sourcing. It might be less obvious in the military, but in private industry paying you $50/hour to save $9.90 on one transistor (and arguably not even that, since the extra 99 will probably just get lost or forgotten in a drawer) might not be worth it. Or it might. Point being that sourcing components directly really only pays off some of the time.
This is common across all government contracts. There is a tendency to underprice the top-line items and allow the vendors to recover margin by overcharging for the spare parts. The fear is that taxpayers will revolt to see the true price of these items, from fighter planes to open heart surgery for your grandma, so you bury the cost elsewhere.
Do you think that perhaps those transistors for the military were made to higher specs due to their use case and also made through a well documented and trusted supply chain? I can buy some transistors that claim to be high quality brands on aliexpress for a tenth of what they cost on digikey. But the aliexpress ones are actually fakes that have their serials removed and new ones added back
Defense spending as a % of GDP is the ONLY measure that has any value and/or context. We are woefully behind considering the threats of the day. This number needs to get up to 6% again. I wish it weren't true - but that's the world we live in. So again, if anything, we actually should be spending more. The problem is that's going to be difficult considering the deficits we're running and that interest on debt just passed $1 trillion a year - thus squeezing other budgets like non-discretionary spending and wiggle room for entitlements. We're in a real budget crunch... which doesn't bode well for America standing up to global threats like China and Russia/Iran
I think I had a drink with you at Dulles years ago at the B-gate near the smoking section used to be. Not a 100%, but like 80% sure. I remember you were really nice, I work on the railroad.
22:30 Hegemon is often referred to as an OP Pokémon by the fandom due to its bountiful amounts of democratic liberty and freedom. It's why it's banned in official tournaments.
Small point you might want to consider: defense stocks don't need to go up for congresspeople to make money off of them. At least, if they're eligible to hold short positions. Any amount of knowledge about where the company is going, good or bad, gives you an edge against everyone who doesn't have that knowledge.
Not sure that adds anything. Corruption is Corruption and the USA is Corrupt. Ryan tries to point out that defense Corruption would not be atypically large. Harris seems to be saying "military bad.. let me count the ways" in a way that seems to absolve China or Russia of the same conclusion. How many Chinese politicians are corrupt or how many Chinese people would be better fed without unnecessary military build up. But I suspect Harris really doesn't want to go there.
Have you seen his video on nationalism? Claiming only 2.5% of Italians spoke Italian in 1950? What's with all the Italian speaking Italian Americans, then? It took me 3 videos to figure out that he is a moron.
Most Italians didn't speak Italian, but another language such as Piedmontese, Furlan, Veneto, Sardu, and of course what most Italian Americans spoke, Sicilianu or Calabrese. Some would call them dialects, but that would be incorrect. They are Italian languages, but not (Standard) Italian or dialects thereof.
Thank you for one of the most valuable videos I have ever seen on UA-cam. After some follow-up fact checking and research, my mindset about US defense spending has been permanently altered. Thanks again. I’m a big fan.
Though random, I have been subscribed to your channel since you had like around 15k Subscribers, it is only today that I checked out your subscriber count again. Man, your close to a million, I appreciate your good work for providing sources to your information and fact checking also the claims of others. Keep doing God's work my man.
Buying a F35 is a way to be really good pal with the US (a bit more than just be member of NATO), then you often have US staff coming on your bases for maintenance/training: that's another deterent for a foreign entity to attack that base (attacking it would be attacking American staff)
Ryan, I am both appreciative and a bit sad that you've developed catchphrases. Johnny Harris is doing the Peter Zeihan thing: getting paid to seem smart to people who don't know anything, but people who know much about can quickly disprove.
_Very_ well done. I especially liked the last part -- defense spending as a percentage of GDP. That's a much more useful comparison. TL;DR The nations we might consider near-peers in military terms are China and Russia, of course. Both of them tend to treat domestic GDP numbers, transparency of monetary policy, even down to the amount of foreign country currency holdings _including_ mil spending numbers as a national security issue. IOW they may not be completely truthful and it might "behoove" them to lie on the low side.
Even if the point about spreading out manufacturing was valid, it’s also just as likely to be reverse causation. Maybe politicians are forcing defense contractors to spread out their manufacturing to bring jobs to more areas before they will approve the budget while the companies would actually prefer to consolidate supply lines.
One thing I'll say is some of the issues that guy points out are real issue... Just not with the Armed Forces. The stock thing for example. That isn't an example of the military being fucked up. That's an example of the government being fucked up. People in positions like a Congress seat or a judge seat or a high level posting in an executive department should not be allowed to own stocks. Enforcement of this should be ruthless, and it should result in at the very least, immediate dismissal from that position and probably long jail times and also fines excessively greater than any possible gain. Then again, we have things like a Supreme Court where most of the members said ethics guidelines (not even rules, guidelines) weren't necessary while they collect bribes and laugh at the public got being poor shitheads, the Speaker of the House has declared that ethics investigation into human trafficking allegations against a Congress member who might be the next AG shouldn't be made public because it's unimportant, and some dude whose wife was constantly telling him to give Egypt more shit because the Egyptians were giving her gold fucking bars as a totally normal "thank you" to her husband (Bob Menendez), so yeah that seems like a Congress problem more than a procurement problem to me but wtf do I know? I'm just a poor bastard with no billionaire friends.
The worst part is that in the past when he has been called out like this, he has responded positively, pledging to do better. Yet every new video is the same level of very basic surface level knowledge and common misconception.
Harris' video on Georgia tries to discuss the occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia without naming those territories or explaining when, why or how they broke away from Georgia in the first place. He never mentions the civil war in the 90s or anything. Really bizarre writing and editing on his part.
He also takes sponsorships from companies and makes videos that support them, which is very similar to lobbying ironically. Like when the gates foundation sponsored him and he spent 40 minutes talking about how good the world economic forum is. His journalism used to be independent and without a big production many many years ago, now he has an entire team. He's heavily biased, is a huge grifter, NOT a journalist, and can be bought out by the highest bidder. And you're right about how he seems like he knows what he's talking about till you know the subject he's talking about. This happens whenever I watch one of his history or geopolitics videos.
On the military industrial complex: the issue isn’t how big a company or its revenue is. The issue is how much it spends on lobbying and how well positioned it is to wield influence. These are all different issues.
Johnny's email is screened by United Talent Agency. They are based out of Beverly Hills, California and employ 1,400 people. It's literally the largest "Talent" agency in the world. He's working for "The Hollywood Swamp" while claiming to be independent.
Go to ground.news/Ryan to stay fully informed. Subscribe through my link for 50% the Vantage plan for unlimited access only for the holiday season. This is their biggest sale of the year!
Go to www.aeromedlab.com/ if you want to learn more about how we are saving soldiers lives.
Watch my "Exposing the Military Industrial Complex" video here:
ua-cam.com/video/C2gIId1dpDs/v-deo.html
What the Original Johnny Harris video here:
ua-cam.com/video/iqJ0kg9xvLs/v-deo.html
In this video, I examine journalist Johnny Harris' claims in "Why the U.S. Military Spends So Much Money" and reveal 9 significant inaccuracies or oversights. Many of you asked me to respond, and after reviewing the video, I found substantial misinformation and missing context in Harris's narrative. From misconceptions about the F-35 and defense spending to misleading ideas about consolidation, lobbying, and the "military-industrial complex," Harris paints a one-sided picture without consulting experts with actual military or defense industry experience.
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He is kind of famous with his spins
Hi Ryan...I wanted to bring to your attention that Johnny Harris and many others have also lied repeatedly about how many overseas bases the USA has. They claim we have 800 of them, but they hugely padded the number by counting large bases as multiple segments. For instance, Diego Garcia is a single huge base, but Harris et al count it as 12 or 15 different bases just because there are 12 or 15 different administrative segments. They do this with Rammstein, Thule, Guantanamo, and every other US military base...they count the adminstravice sections of every base, instead of counting a whole base as 1 installation.
People need to know how they are being lied to.
Please make a video addressing some disinformation that I see at lease 10 times per day on Twitter -- that Ukraine is about money laundering.
Does bunker branding offer and whiskey tumblers per chance?
Hi ikvetch
Are they really “lying” as you imply or are they just misinforming?
Ryan uses irrelevant metaphors constantly but I don’t see you complaining about that form of misinformation.
Just saying if you going to be a useless bægël Ëater at least be consistent.
Johnny Harris has gotten the anger of
1) Ukraine War experts.
2) Economists (PhD)
3) Historians.
4) Globalism experts.
It's rare for one man to get the anger of so many types of people independently.
Don’t forget Christians!
His videos also have a massive reach. Just because people are annoyed doesn't mean they are right, or that all of his stuff is wrong.
@@shadician It’s not that people don’t agree with his viewpoints. It’s that he often trivializes or blatantly lies about his content.
@@shadicianBut once your integrity has been questioned on one video, then everything else needs to also be taken into question. Everyone makes mistakes, but the thing is - he almost NEVER acknowledges them, and instead doubles down on his erroneous material. It's been shown for many of his videos that he either has faulty sources, or a severe lack of them in the first place, and he lets his political bias heavily cloud his conclusions. He's really not worth watching
“ It's rare for one man to get the anger of so many types of people independently.”
Not when they are all the same entity 🫠.
ps you forgot the Military Industrial Complex and Global Media control.
"The problem with Johnny Harris is that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about until he talks about something you know about”…truer words have never been spoken
I remember my friends and I had the same realization about Elon Musk after he took over Twitter and started talking about why it was so inefficient.
A young Peter Z
@@Sturmjager weird that twitter is still running for over a year with ‘skeleton’ staff hey?
This generally applies to all situations where experts in a field know more about a situation than journalists do. On the other hand, generalists such as journalists don't have an axe in the fire, there is no selfish motivation to want one side to prevail. Journalists on the other hand have motivation to make their video more entertaining, which often aims to provoke intense feeling. There's no easier way to do that than to present a one sided argument.
I'm glad someone is calling out Johnny Harris. He used to work for Vox, who make highly polished videos on a variety of subjects. He quit Vox and started his own UA-cam channel doing the same thing. He is insufferable. People are lured in by his fancy looking graphics and are tricked into thinking the man knows what he's talking about.
Johnny lies about a LOT of shit.
cause he's saying stuff people wanna hear.. which alot of them are lies.
It's part of his elder hipster personality, He can't help it.
his Israel/Palestine video is TERRIBLE .
@@arreca09The guy omits important ass context which would completely change the BS pro-Palestine narrative…
Script writers in his 11 person team
So I'm a mostly left-leaning person, with a right-leaning view when it comes to cops and military. I saw the Johnny Harris video, and I was shaking my head. I have my own personal gripes about the right AND the left. I think everyone should call out their own side when they do something wrong. That's integrity. Johnny Harris, is in my opinion just as bad as someone like Tucker Carlson. They lie to your face about things and also don't take a moment to understand to other side of the political aisle. They don't talk to the other side, instead opting to only talk within their circle. This is the issue I have with both sides of the political spectrum. Just too extreme and non-factual, and unwilling to listen to dissenting opinions, and Johnny Harris is a contributor to that.
Thinking for yourself is not what you’re supposed to be doing dummy. Why aren’t you thinking exactly what you’re supposed to? Hate the “other” because that’s what I’m telling you to do.
Why don’t you trust me blindly?
Your “mostly left leaning but right leaning on cops and military. Maybe you are describing yourself as antifa? You should both incoherent and inconsistent
Your “mostly left leaning but right leaning on cops and military. Maybe you are describing yourself as antifa? You should both incoherent and inconsistent
This stuff is all about clicks, engagement and money. Truth rarely factors in.
Its all about telling people what they want to hear, doesn't matter if its true or not.
Sometimes you see someone like Johnny starting out kind of neutral politically, because they're testing out the audience and seeing where the easiest route to cash exists. Then once they fund that target audience, that is who they focus on, truth be damned.
Ryan seems to be about as straight a shooter as it gets. He's in this for the right reasons.
What were you testing? Looks like you were taste testing lead paint by the looks of it.
Been waiting for this one Ryan, love it !
How can a regular civ combat propagand like this?
👍👍👍
Hi 👋
Worst part about people lying is that it takes seconds to do. And then it can take hours to expose.
A lie travels half way around the world before the truth can put its shoes on
Like "Mexico will pay for the wall" "Tariffs are things that other countries pay" "Our economy is in the toilet" "Gangs are taking over apartment buildings, regardless of what the local police say" "Haitians are eating pets" "the Left is making illegal immigrants vote 18 times" etc etc etc.
And then you get elected POTUS.
On a recent channel 5 video, which I do like channel 5 btw, someone said that 50 percent of the US budget is going to military and the video made it seem like it was true. I looked it up and it was wrong and it only took a quick Google search, real bruh why can't you check this moment. It's like 13 percent btw.
Listening on this video, I don't see any clear lies, Ryan is more confirming that what Jonny Harris is kind of true. Content angled in different ways but not clear lies. And Ryan is also not objective and this time got more emotional than analytical. Hearing stuff like the military R.D. is as much as the Morocco GDP, sounds lower than I thought. Stuff like that an diaper company have bigger earnings than big weapons company sounds reasonable. I think it's more important that baby buts keeps dry than killing more people.
The countries with higher % military budgets is crazy ones with dictators or in war situations, with the exception of Poland that is doing an big spending because of the obvious increased threat levels and the spending is not supposed to be permanent.
A lie can also get into the white house before the truth is out of bed.
I unsubscribed from Johnny Harris channel due to inaccurate information in his videos.
too much budget in edition, not so much in information value
Military industrial complex is real and to say it’s not real make no sense there are companies that make weapons and to say they control all wars is probably wrong but they likely do have influence in business of war so say it’s not real inaccurate
@@Unknown-r2p2o What is the market cap of Lockheed Martin? Raytheon? Boeing?
What's the market cap of Apple, McDonalds, Amazon, and WalMart?
War is bad for trade. Military contractors do not have nearly enough money to do what you're suggesting.
Literally every video of his is extremely biased or filled with miss-information
As did I, he once said humans make their own vitamin C…
Calling Johnny Harris a journalist is a real streeeeeetch.
I'd call him a Propagandist.
Importantly, it's not. He actually _is_ a journalist. But he's a journalist whose gone rogue, offleash, he's his own editor, and that's bad because there clearly isn't someone to soberly and critically review the work before it goes out. That's why news orgs. the reputable ones, have editorial boards. And That's why it's important to give him shit. He's an actual journalist by training and profession and working background, but now he doesn't have any sort of senior editorial board and his channel needs cash, they're under time pressure to push out content.
Just watch his "UFO" video and laugh... its so bad.
His “journalism” is his Truth.
And indeed there is plenty to disagree with.
@@seacucumberable couldn’t agree more.
Like Ryan said about human errors, I don’t think he is pushing lies to intentionally mislead people. I understand it as a lack of peer review and perhaps a problematic environment inside the company.
I served from 1980 to 1999, U.S. Army Reserves. I was a medic. My unit slowly diminshed to nothing and the GOA had calculated that too many Reservists were going to collect pensions. They ratcheted up the PT standards, seniority points systems, height weight profiling and performance reviews until they had gotten rid of many units and enough people who wouldn't get pensions. "Thank you for your service." often doesn't cut it when I realize I will not be getting a pension, that I wasn't allowed to get back in after 9/11, and many of the benefits I wouldn't have collected until I was 65 are now closed to me. People like Johnny Harris make me sick. Both the military and people like Harris fail to remember what is often attributed to Orwell:
"You sleep safely at night because rough men with guns stand ready to do violence upon those who would disturb your slumber."
I hope Mr. Harris sleeps well.
Damn, that sucks. Maybe the people you fight for may not care about you, at all?
@@thelordofnuggets629 The Russians do care about their people. For 3 weeks before they are sent to the front barelybknwoing how to operate a rifle
Reading your story almost brought tears to my eyes.. We ALL owe you and people like Ryan and yourself a giant thank you! I pay my taxes in hope that some part of it would go towards helping you to live decent life after the sacrifices you’ve made. This Johnny guy is a dishonest sleaze ball. Sincerely, Thank you for your service from the bottom of my LEGAL immigrant’s heart!
@@thelordofnuggets629 Whether they do or don't doesn't matter. I was there to do my duty. The difference between a civilian and a citizen is that a citizen makes it their personal responsibility to protect their people. It isn't just a Robert Heinlein quote. Its a lifestyle. That said. I did my job. That's what counts.
@@aljohnson3717 America enjoys its freedom, and they get to do so on the cheap. The amount of money spent on defense, while commendable compared to other nations who are closer to the threat than we are here, is the small price we pay because our enemy isn't within artillery range.
I worry more about the vets coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq who struggle with all of the mental anguish and the lack of response from the military and the VA. We lose more soldiers to suicide than we did to twenty years of war. There needs to be a much more concerted effort in the mental healthcare field for these guys. I have what I need to get by in life, but I don't know how to translate that for others. I had help. Many are less fortunate. Help them.
And.... You're welcome. Glad to do my part.
The Stinger missile segment is a good analogy to why the SR-71 Blackbird wasn't brought back from retirement when the GWOT kicked off. You can't just fire up a shut down assembly line from the 1960's to make specialty parts, and even if you could, the costs would be extremely prohibitive.
I've found that the left and the "educated classes" don't understand manufacturing and logistics
It's the same reason we can't just start building the Saturn 5 to go back to the moon
its a good example of what most people don't understand on these government budgets, sometimes cutting to 'save' ends up costing way more later on. some things will be lost forever.
It’s called obsolescence, we run into it so much because Uncle Sam doesn’t want to buy more or think they can save. Then they blow millions just to find a replacement part because they didn’t buy enough or ignored a recommendation for last time buy. It’s not even the people in the defenses fault many times when their budget is leveraged a million ways,and the funds have been allocated and it takes a helluva lot of work to get funds reallocated or find more funds to plus up the effort. Many times it’s rob peter to pay Paul. Or decide to just ignore Paul all together and decide to only feed Paul because someone somewhere felt that was the most cost effective thing, or pure personnel opinion and self interest. People seem to forget politicians do call the shots on certain discretionary spending based on information or real world situation and geopolitics. It no lie to say congress decided that or the senate defense oversight committee. Big budget programs live or die at the capitol building.
@@egondro9157 this isn't just a government problem, my dad did procurement for a major O&G company. On projects he often bought an extra container of parts, bolts, spares, etc. The reason, the project was $200 million, spending $40k on spares was a rounding error and when a certified bold is missing and holds up a whole crew for two days while DHL is overnighting the part from halfway around the world at an ungodly cost, having the parts you need is key.
The contractors in the millitary love change, change is money, change is profits.
Babe wake up! Ryan Mcbeth dropped his Johnny Harris diss track!
🍿
Babe: Hold Ya FARD Before Diddy 🤯👀
Johnny Harris - Agenda Contributor
The World Economic Forum
There i exposed everything he does and stand for. In a two-liner, copied from the official WEF website.
Now I start the rabbit hole of other people trashing Johnny Harris. I've never even heard of Johnny until now
@@shawn576I think it was a year ago or something that a bunch of UA-camrs jumped on criticizing Johnny Harris in which he actually made some corrections to his videos. I wonder what will happen now
Johnny is piece of work. I stopped taking him seriously after his "North Korea is not a serious threat" video.
He is just another mouth on the internet that cherrypicks information that fits his crap narrative about the world.
I mean he's not entirely wrong there, the NK threat is not directly from the state of North Korea but from its much more powerful/capable allies China and Russia.
Not even a Nuke from North Korea is a threat to the US, we'd see it launch and shoot it down with the 7 different anti-air/missile platforms we've been designing since the 70s for this exact purpose.
But if North Korea invaded South Korea or vice versa, it can spiral out of control extremely quickly and that resulting spiral is where the threat is.
His worst takes never even come close to the blatant stpdty of claiming the military industrial complex doesn’t exist.
@@TheDreadPirateRoberts-jr2fk ryan is so dumb on this point. makes some vague point about profit and how tech companies make more profit. the name of the game in governmetn contracts is to make costs as high as possible and limit profit (on paper) - this allows you to charge more for contracts. really simple stuff that ryan misses.
Is it a "serious threat"? Is it imaginable that it won't get flattened by South Korea in minutes flat if they were to try to pull some shit?
Though i have little doubt that they might try to pull some shit regardless, and that holding them back from doing that is not something one should just stop.
Gotta Have REAL Eyes To Realize Real Lies 👀💯
I have a Master's Degree in political science, and when I was working on my Ph.D one of my professors proposed to the University to establish a course to educate journalists in political science, since he was baffled about all the miss-information on the news all the time. The program never got off the ground because there was no interest from journalists in actually taking that class.
Same thing happened when a course was proposed that would teach constitutional rights to the cops... 🤔
Former Poli Sci major here turned journalism major! I couldn’t agree more! OMG, the people who covered the election in my college newsroom have ZERO clue how the electoral college even worked. They had no idea what the swing states were nor how the process of our government or other comparative governments work. It’s insane to me. These are the people that we are supposed to “trust” with disseminating information.
@@ethancohen12no knowledge of the workings of the electoral college? Not even swing states… I think your college might be the problem on that one 😂
Also Poli Sci graduate here. One of my main research topics was the weakness of Polisci when it came to talking to other disciplines, especially technology. It's why I love this channel specifically. A lot of Poli Sci theory pulls from economics but is lacking input from other disciplines. How often have we heard politician trying to explain complex technological concepts or security concerns during a congressional hearing and failing? And I'm not even completely faulting them for it, on the other side, someone in who works in software development might create something unaware of the security, political and normative impact it could unleash, which is exactly what we're seeing with AI and social media.
Also it makes me laugh at Ryan tangent about the term global hegemon. That term was beaten into my head from professors with different political beliefs. Someone didn't read Enders Game.
I remember the journalism students in college. That's where you went when virtually every other door, even the "soft sciences," were closed to you. The field is not taken nearly as seriously as its role in democracy demands.
I work for pratt and whitney, we don't make any money on selling engines, we make money on parts and service.. that is 100% across the board, from commercial to military engines.
70% on average of any military major acquisition is lifecycle sustainment costs, not the actual purchase. Think about the parts and maintenance it takes on a new car over its lifetime.
I worked in the aerospace and defense industry for over 35 years. These people are always blaming the defense companies for their high prices, $10,000 hammer, $100k toilet etc etc. But try getting a specification for building some widget from the government and you will see really quickly why it costs so much. We built components for satellites and often the paperwork required to be sent with the component weighed much more than the component itself. There are so many requirements for material certifications, quality assurance, supply chain restrictions and so on that you usually had to have a dedicated staff to just verify we were compliant with the specification.
So in other words,
The paper trail, red tape, and other CHOICES the government made caused us to send orders of magnitude more money to build defense implements than they actually cost
Lol, you were the first person that came to mind, when I saw Johnny's video! And I was waiting for your response (because, what do _I_ know about this stuff??). Boy, did you NOT disappoint!
Interviewing a peace activist for a supposedly unbiased perspective of military spending just shows he had an agenda from the start.
Everyone has an agenda.
I mean if he had some other perspectives it would be reasonable, but everyone he had was anti-military
@@tommcfadden5232 I follow his channel and he has made some howlers of errors, I would say his stuff if full of errors that I can see, so how many do I not see since I am not an expert in each field. he is entertaining and interesting enough to make me sometimes go research and find out more, which is not a bad thing. But I would advise anyone to take him with at least a large dose of salt if not several and treat him as an entertainment rather than education. We all have agendas from our personal history and upbringing and to make factual content our logic and reason has to overrule our emotions.
Say that to Andrew Bustamente 😮
Sure, but on the other hand, interviewing someone from the pentagon would indicate an agenda too.
“What did Johnny Harris get wrong in his video” needs to accompany every one of his videos.
It’s incredibly generous to call him a journalist, he’s a story-teller.
no. He is a storyteller that is partnered and paid by the WEF. so that agenda makes it propaganda, not just any story.
@ So, no, he’s not a storyteller… but yes, he is a storyteller?
@@iOSAT storyteller would be neutral. he would lie for personal gain and fame at worst. he is doing active propaganda for an organisation. it's sooo much worse than just telling a lie. it's telling a lie on purpose to misinform you for the gain of others.
@@texasranger24
storyteller
noun
sto·ry·tell·er ˈstȯr-ē-ˌte-lər
: a teller of stories: such as
a: a relater of anecdotes
b: a reciter of tales (as in a children's library)
c: LIAR, FIBBER
d: a writer of stories
Saying Procter & Gamble is a diaper company is like calling Nestle a chocolate milk company. Titans in their respective industries is all Im saying
And Johnson and Johnson is lubricant company 👍
I'm honestly really starting to dislike all those big "information/education" UA-camrs who put a huge amount of effort into producing videos with really slick graphics etc (Johnny Harris, Real Life Lore, Kurzgesagt and so on to name a few). Always feel like it's a con to distract dummies like me from questioning whatever they're saying.
woah whats wrong with kurzgesagt
I dropped RLL after his GIUK gap video
@@WeyounSix While I haven't watched in a while...I dunno either, I'm just as curious.
@@WeyounSix After finding errors or misinformation hidden in videos with high visual production quality/entertainment elements previously, I'm now suspicious of all such videos and content creators. It makes me wonder if the entertaining elements are being used to hide flaws elsewhere in the factual or analytical content.
One additional reason comparing military spending in US dollars doesn't always make sense is that many countries can buy a lot more for a dollar than we can in the US, known as the price parity index. Something I learned from Perun's videos.
Yeah, it gets really tiring to see people from the West... particularly the US...act like "oh my gosh, it's so cheap to live in such and such country?!?!!???" and not seem to realize that it's cheap for US, but not for THEM because the economy of countries outside of the West (and a handful of the 1st world countries that exist outside of the West) are often vastly lesser with lesser purchasing power and drastically reduced wages of the average populace. So yeah, that $3 lunch you had in Russia doesn't mean that Russia is some amazing utopia where greedy capitalists haven't taken over...when you consider the average Russian only makes on average about $350 a month, that $3 starts looking a LOT more expensive than you would have thought
Also why Poland's (and the Baltic countries) armament expenditures are doubly effective.
They don't adjust for that? They should. Like how everyone adjusts for inflation if they're talking about housing in the 40s or the stock market crash of 1929. There's a lot of context missing if you say your grandparents bought their home after the war for $11,000.
"US spends too much on military"
>US 3,5% GDP
>Poland 5% GDP
And if anything, Poland is the only sane NATO member right now. So you better double those F-35 acquisitions, dear americans, those are some rookie numbers right now 😅
Poland is in the middle of a massive military modernization, so it won't last.
US still spends more than CHINA while we have mediocre education & unaffordable healthcare.
Ukraine can count only Poland and the Baltic countries as its only truly authentic allies.
Poland never ever did spend 5% of GDP. Not even close. And let's not forget that Poland didn't even spend 2% before 2022/23, despite their geographical location. So, there obviously is some catching up to do for them.
Prior to 2022, Poland’s military spending was consistently around 2% of GDP, aligning with NATO guidelines. This reflected its strategic focus on regional security, particularly in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine since 2014.
“That’s the GDP of the Congo! See how that doesn’t make any sense.”
Had me rolling. Perfect example.
The problem with a lot of UA-cam "journalists" is that they got their credibility from basically being a travel blogger and people somehow morphed that into "this guy knows what he is talking about."
I would have guessed lobbying costs would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
A couple million is almost breathtakingly tiny.
Johnny Harris complaining about the consolidation of the US defense industry to cut DoD costs and using that as an example of why the military spends too much money is... something. Not sure I would call that a good argument though.
He started with a conclusion and found anything he perceived as proof to confirm his bias.
Yeah. there are significantly easier arguments to reveal millitary spending waste where contractors kinda scam the government. one example is arbitrary nonsensical limits on repairs that don't improve safety and only serve to profit contractors. the issue is that doesn't fit his narrative and only leads to the military improving it's practices rather than encourage people to be anti-military which is his actual goal.
The viewer that had the comment "he knows what he's talking about until he talks about what you know about" is so much more correct than they know.
My chemistry degree is the main reason I have no faith in basically any media outlet any more. The amount of confident incorrectness by everyone is astonishing.
That’s similar to what happened when I watched CSI, and they showed droplets of blood freezing in mid air at 20 degrees F.
This is Ryan’s channel when he talks about international relations.
Or really anything outside of specific anti-tank platforms.
His channel was decent when he only dealt in his area of expertise.
@TheDreadPirateRoberts-jr2fk
For example...? Like do you have any specific examples or just vague... whatevers?
My degree in finance screams out the same.
@@theodorekorehonen Ryan’s Project 2025 video. A lot of commenters noted he was just doing a word search and didn’t read the actual texts. He was noticeably more critical about Project 2025’s military policies.
The GDP of Morocco is like... 2% the GDP of California.
So you’re saying California can become a military superstate.
@@raiderdare7462 Cali can't keep the sheets off the streets
@@raiderdare7462 Economy of Cali would make 5th biggest in the world, bigger than Canada, India or France.
@@door1479 and now include how a lot of their tax money goes to other "poorer" states
I never heard of Johnny Harris and thought about skipping this because it's half an hour. Now I wish you'd do the whole 90 minutes. Great fact-filled commentary, thank you.
I finally did it, I got the Christmas sweater.
Thank-you for the none nonsense programing Ryan McBeth.
From Ottawa Canada, cheers mate.
Thank you!
He'll probably show up here and thank you for the critique and point out how he tries to keep his videos running time in check and has to sacrifice things like context to do that. He does that a lot.
*a member of his staff
@@theodorekorehonenlies take less time
Ryan dropping the line "And of course I can find his personal email and number because... y'know *shows a video of a MQ drone launching a hellfire missile* I'm Ryan"
Is such a badass line that only someone like Ryan can use
yawn
Did we watch the same video? Lol
The worst part is that he's on Nebula which just puts a stain on the whole platform.
Don’t forget Second Thought was on there too before he said… what he said lol
@@sethivaltas619 I've never heard of second thought. I'm much newer to Nebula so please do tell.
@@bob38028 "settler babies" in Israel. That's all ya gotta know
@@sethivaltas619 Jesus. And to think he said that right after Oct. 7th.
What an impudent stain on the pro-Palestinian movement.
@@bob38028 true that
Thank you for putting this video together. It provides much-needed context on these topics and has significantly impacted my trust in Johnny Harris. I do have a couple of comments: 1) I find the comparison of dollar amounts to Morocco's GDP unhelpful-it feels sensationalist and lacks context-but it isn’t technically a lie. 2) You rightly examine military spending as a percentage of GDP, but I think you missed an important point: compared to other advanced economies not engaged in active wars, the U.S. spends about 1.5x. The UK and France are the most relevant comparisons here. U.S. military spending is naturally higher because, unlike most countries, it supports a global military presence to defend allies and project power-an inherently costly endeavor. Thanks again!
"The problem with Johnny Harris is that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about until he talks about something you know about"
3:00 You cant deny that there is not a childcare industrial complex.
The human race
I will never understand why people feel the need to lie about the US. There is enough factual stuff to criticize without having to lie about it. It must be exhausting.
Agree. I'm sure there is plenty wrong with military procurement and overall defense policy but a fair look would compare it with other government activities and other countries.
Even asking what the quantum is would need comparison with others. Harris says USA outspend all other countries ignoring that list includes China Russia Iran north Korea who have all made public statements threatening the USA and the USA might have to fight all four at once...hence the need to outspend them
Because coming to a more nuanced perspective takes a whole lot of effort. At least when compared to rattling off intellectually dishonest talking points which you know 99% of your audience won't bother to fact check because they already want to believe in a certain conclusion.
@@Fyr35555 ". . .because they already want to believe in a certain conclusion." Ouch. That truth bomb hurts. Well said.
The first f35 was like 250 million, they are down to about 75 million each now
It's kind of the opposite of the situation where a politician tries to save money by cutting purchases, only to discover the unit cost skyrocketed.
the whole point is that the more units you buy the cheaper the price. Getting everyone to buy F-35s has made it an affordable stealth combat aircraft. The biggest problem within the military industrial complex is the desire for proprietary systems. If European navys standardized on a single ASW patrol Frigate, a single Air Defense Destroyer and a single Corvette type and then bought them in bulk the cost of the ships would shrink while the potential for improvements would go up.
@@MrChickennugget360 The problem with getting different countries to standardize on a single design is that each country has different requirements. Thats why international partnerships to develop things like fighters and tanks typically don't work out.
You are without a doubt, the most intelligent and funny goofy guy I ever listened to! Keep up the great work.
Also, on the topic of manufacturing:
Let's assume that today the most amazing piece of military equipment is developed, and we produce every part of it from the same manufacturing plant, even sourcing the raw materials from that plant's backyard.
Now, tomorrow we go to war. Guess what becomes a target?
Nobody said just one plant, you say? Okay, 50 plants in the same state. If you can reach one plant, you can likely reach them all-or at least enough to significantly affect production.
Strategically, it is a bad idea not to diversify manufacturing.
I believe this is more of a vibe situation. We are always told we can't afford better health care and schools, but there is always money to increase the military budget. There is always billions to send to other counties, but we can't afford to increase SNAP benefits. This leads to the big number bad feeling. I always appreciate your reporting Ryan. There defiantly needs to be more military reporters on the online news networks.
But as he has shown in the video, we spend way less % of our gdp then most of the last 50 years. Spending on militairy is going down not up
Johnny Harris continuously lies in almost all of his videos**
I don't think it's entirely his fault if he's like that, he grew up in a mormon family so lies always been around him since he was a baby. In this community they basically don't have too much choice but to lie regularly or they'll quickly get in trouble.
(BTW I know it because he made a video about this. I mean about being a Mormon, not about being a liar... lol)
@@Alfred-Neuman Well without Lies Mormonism dies. Their whole cult is based around lies so you’re 100% right
@@Alfred-NeumanI mean, you could make the same argument about Ryan and Catholicism.
Truth is, both choose to lie.
Johnny Harris - Agenda Contributor
The World Economic Forum
Any more questions? No? Good.
@@texasranger24 Exactly, he’s literally a talking head for the globalist agenda and just regurgitates their accepted opinions and views. And all videos come back to way they want
Johnny Harris has always been a fishy guy. Heard a lot about him getting information wrong on his videos so that’s why I don’t watch him. Glad you made a video on this guy.
He definitely leaves a lot of major details out of events. It always seemed like bias recounting rather than being straight forward
You Gotta Have REAL Eyes To Realize Real Lies 💯👀
Same here … always feel that there is something fishy about him …
@KamBar2020
I'm assuming you're a bot since you're spamming this nonsensical comment?
Just want to say that I Love the graphic you showed for the "Hegemon" in every way.
Also, love the rest of the video. Glad you're clearing a lot of this up. I just hope most of the viewers of his video also manage to see this one, or see through the crap on their own.
Thank you Ryan for protecting the jobs of our brave men and women at Raytheon ❤
Thanks Ryan, Johnny Harris’ videos are entertaining and engaging. Like many pundits I also enjoy them until they talk about something I have expertise in. Thanks for the straight talk.
As a former defense lobbyist (we like to call it government relations) the truth is somewhere in-between the situations Ryan and Johnny present. Like all complex things, they are more grey than black or white.
tell us more
Ryan is full of s*** Comparing with diaper companies is stupid There's only a couple companies and they have a Monopoly on the market So yeah diaper companies make a fortune make a fortune and these politicians they know when to invest in these military tech companies. When to get in once I get out and make a fortune just more cherry picking from Ryan Macbeth and I am very pro-military but I smell this guy's BS a mile away he's a profiteer of War if soldiers don't bleed he doesn't make any money
@@romanstingler435
I can give you one example from current events although I'm not a former lobbyist...
I don't have the time to give a list of citations so you'll have to fact check...
Some politically and financially motivated pundits and politicians have created a narrative that Chinese consumer and enterprise drones are a threatto US national security.
Why would they do that? There's been no substantiating evidence presented and to the contrary there have been several independent audits that show no threat. As far as I can tell the narrative started from so-called experts trying to make a name for themselves.
Over in the last 10 years a few American companies tried to produce drones and they were total failures as drones and as companies.
During that time some MIT students created a company called Skydio which dabbled in this and that, mainly focused on trying to come up with a drone for deliveries. Then they decided to take a shot where all the others had failed and released a consumer drone in 2018. It totally failed.
Skydio realized that the consumer market was too hard so they shifted to enterprise first responder and military markets. They struggled there as well and while they have now finally come out with a drone that somewhat usable it's still half as capable as the Chinese equivalent and cost 5 times more. So about to fail again Skydio decided to get political and have the competition banned from the US market.
Recently Skydio has been spending tons of money to sway politicians like Stephanik and Texter, to perpetuate the false narrative of a national security threat and to higher people with ties to politicians.
Skydio can't produce drones that compete with DJI so they're trying to have DJI banned. Not just from the military market, they also want it banned from consumers, hobbyist and small businesses. Skydio has one drone model that is not suitable for 99% of the American market. They're not trying to build in American drone industry they're trying to destroy it, making themselves the only option. Some corrupt American politicians are happy to take the money.
If you want more specific information leave a comment and I can try to come up with a reading list for you. There's a channel called steel city drones that has been covering the latest attempts to get Skydio banned through the NDAA and other legislation.
DJI imports are currently being held at customs because because somebody in the government alleges that they used slave labor to produce the drones. Our government doesn't have a problem with Chinese labor for hundreds of billions of dollars of products, but 10 million worth of drones is all a sudden a problem?
THANK YOU!!!
I needed to hear a sane voice!
Gotta Have REAL Eyes To Realize Real Lies 👀
The F-35 is a target because all cutting edge military technology looks like a haphazard mess if you look at it over it’s development period. Most of the time these developments start with requirements that are vague or impossible. Then as time goes on and what can be executed is narrowed down the roles and capabilities are refined. Then as other nations react and technology changes the requirements also change. Each of these stages rehash the project over and over again. When you’re building something that no one has ever done before, with capabilities that no one ever imagined, and completion that no one could quantify it’s bound to seem like an utter waste. Now wait 30-60 years and all of a sudden we’ll forget all that and say how well it’s served its role and how it’s a shame we need to replace it.
Look back at the F-15, B-52, A-10 and people called those projects a disaster at the time. Now we call them some of the finest aircraft produced. In fact he F-15 (correction F-14) was labeled as bloated and a waste until all of a sudden this movie called “Top Gun” came out and then everyone said it was amazing and iconic.
It’s hilarious how people keep trying to dunk on the F-35, the latest Sandbox News video points this out, and makes the point how the F-35 literally has a better accident rate than the F-16 does, and its availability rate isn’t much worse, and is mostly related to software upgrades. It’s bonkers that people still keep complaining about it as some shining example of corruption or US incompetence or something.
DDG-51 was also a mess. Now it's the mainstay of the surface force.
@@phishphood423now yep there is corruption. It exists in government and non-government. There is waste, fraud, abuse, etc. there is also a lot of politics in government (go figure). There is a lot of politics in large businesses too.
I’ve been an insider, a contractor, a consultant, in the fully public sector, private sector, startup and global multinational. The game changes but a lot of it is the same.
There are time when the rules are followed, times when they are not. Sometimes that works out well, sometimes not. But almost every example I’ve seen it’s always a lot of people working with what they got and trying. Which is more than what happens in a lot of other places where corruption is just the way 75% of the time.
It’s hilarious how people keep trying to dunk on the F-35, the latest Sandbox News video points this out, and makes the point how the F-35 literally has a better accident rate than the F-16 does, and its availability rate isn’t much worse, and is mostly related to software upgrades. It’s bonkers that people still keep complaining about it as some shining example of corruption or US incompetence or something.
Top gun was the F-14, but yes.
Only enemies of the US want our military defunded. However the way military budgets are done does need to be modernized. We shouldn't punish divisions and units for not spending all of their budget each year.
Correct, only peacenik and/or Russian/Chinese asset want the democratic camp to have a weak or no military so they can do whatever they want.
I worked putting together and running what were probably the first autonomous vehicles, US army tanks, as target vehicles for weapons testing for the US military back in 1979. I drove tanks with no brakes. I climbed into a burning tank to shut off the engines. I chased on foot a runaway tank with a berserk computer, in total darkness in a snowstorm at Ft. Riley, KS. I had a secret clearance and I was paid $7.50 an hour, an average tech wage in the town I worked at the time. I've worked at other Mil contracting jobs. They paid me the going tech rate. What costs so much for military stuff wasn't my pay. It is ensuring that military gear works under all conditions, hot, cold, wet dry, day, night, in dust, in snow, after it's been dropped, after it's been run over, under every scenario. I saw certification paperwork verifying a 24 hour burn-in of each individual 5 cent resistors for a flight circuit bd for a spy satellite. The testing costs far more than the resistors. But it's necessary. You don't replace a resistor in a spy satellite in orbit. The costs of military supplies is what it is because it needs to be. Having said that, I'm very much in favor of close supervision of every military contract. It's a whole lot of money, and wherever there is a whole lot of money there are always a whole lot of people looking to get some for themselves.
BTW, Project 2025 is not something that reasonable Americans want, but it IS what they have voted for, so they will get it. They voted for donald trump, and what happens from now on isn't what they will want, but what they voted for. Yes, people can vote to be self-destructive, and so they did. It's a Darwin Award kinda thing.
Let’s hope the future shows your dedication to service was worth it, I respect what you have done
My understanding is that Project 2025 did not come from Trump, it came from a think tank with no affiliation with Trump. He may well do some of it, but it is not his baby.
I had to laugh during the F-35 section. If you compare the F-35 to almost any aircraft the military has fielded since before WW2 you'd find that it has one of the best records out there. Hell, more than a few of the airframes developed during WW2 had a 50% or worse safety record and an operational record that wasn't much better. And just so we're clear, when I say safety record, I'm talking about crashes and deaths not in combat.
Hell just look at the USAF loss rate in the 1950’s
@@aepilotjim has anyone ever figured out why some P-51’s would break up in midair without being in combat?
@@aepilotjim mind you the plane just start rolling out and building off faces of safety data. I like to see the stats after a decade.
The fact that the five major defense contractors make less than proctor and gamble does not mean there isn’t a military industrial complex. The two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Agreed.
Talk about the MIC makes it look like something overwhelming, overpowering, that effectively runs the US from the shadows. Showing that it's smaller than P&G puts that into perspective and makes it clear, that it doesn't.
IMO Johnny Harris's videos are all this poorly researched and oriented around proving a specific political point for which he cherry picks info, talks to one or two biased parties, and then fills air with speculative commentary. He often preferences facts/statements that superficially 'blow your mind' but are generally not very insightful or informed. Like I just watched the first half of one of his videos where he REPEATEDLY emphasized that countries and their governments... ARE MADE UP by humans. It turns out things like President and lines on maps don't occur naturally without humans making them. MIND BLOWN.
I have been waiting for this video. He uses music and tone to make it seem like he knows a lot more than you, and making things sound way more important or true.
Ryan, love the content and your idea with AeroMedlab would be an awesome addition to the modern medical services on the frontline, so I wondered the other day - would drone delivery of defibrillator be a viable option for civilian use?
Johnny Harris is a character who only sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and he usually talks plain nonsense. He is trying to be Veritasium without investigative journalism, that is, his sources are "reddit, I told you so bro, trust me" and the big media like buzufeed articles 😅
Yup
Proctor & Gamble does a LOT more than diapers. That’s not a great comparison.
Agreed, he is doing the same thing with that point as he is exposing Harris for doing.
True, but the point still stands. If you’re an investor, military investment is not a good way optimize your returns. That said, I don’t think Ryan’s point was a clear rebuttal of Harris’s insinuation of greed on the part of defense personnel. I mean, they could just be incompetent or lazy at investing.
Yeah that felt like such a weird point to emphasize, like yeah it is a decent comparison but P&G has its hands in so many consumer products more than diapers
@@sulblazerare there any errors in his MIC video
Took a lot of his points away with that comparison
I would be hesitant to call Johnny Harris a "journalist". Propagandist is a more apt name.
Please explain to everyone how Ukraine funding goes to our factories to produce weapons and ammunition. How this government spending helps our nation
Ukraine gets weapons
Bit then the us makes more of the same or most likely better weapons to keep their stocks from going down
And becose of scale they become cheaper
A more fair measure of defense spending would be % of the annual budget. Which is around 13%.
Exactly, measuring it against GDP only shows you part of the picture. Which is ironically what Ryan is accusing Johny of doing.
Measuring as percent of GDP is the accepted way to compare global military spending.
Your 90 minute video to explain a 30 minute video of lies perfectly encapsulates why it's so much harder to correct BS than it is say it.
What 90 minute video?
@tacobruisedays the post you are responding to is not in good faith. He knows perfectly well that there is 90 minute video and why that is.
@@radicallyrethinkingrailwaysina Huh? I have literally no idea what you guys mean? Am I missing something?
@@uku4171 the fact that you were criticized for questioning how this 30 minute video is 90 minutes long to Harris’ 28 minute video is an important reminder of why you can never have a debate on the internet in good faith when people are busy changing basic facts like how long a video is. You can inform people about how and why military spending is done but you can’t ever win in a comment thread occupied by people looking for ways to call you a liar for wondering how 30 minutes is 90 minutes in some sort of silly 1984 scenario.
Dude, are trying to gaslight? Ryan's video is 30 minutes, not 90. Where's the missing 60 minutes? Is it for patrons only?
you can't buy components that were available 20 years ago. It's ridiculous. You can't buy an 8-bit chip. Everything is 16-bit or 32-bit. Ridiculous
yes. i cant play my 20 year old computer games because the OS is 64 bit now. note: i am too smoothed brain to figure out how to use an emulator.
You can buy lots of different 8-bit chips. There's the NXP (formerly Motorola) HCS08, 8051-compatibles from dozens of different vendors, Microchip PIC and AVR, ST8, Zilog Z8, etc.
AHH YES! FINALLY! Here it goes 😎 This is gonna be a good one.
Edit: Man this was way more salty than expected 🤣🤣 But some great examples here! Love how Ryan incorporated context, analogies and examples instead of just laying out the facts. Makes the video a bit better suited for first time watchers of the channel and adds credibility. Although maybe he was even too humble in his own introduction at the start tbh.
I stopped watching Johnny Harris videos quite a while ago, because they all started to sound more like propaganda than journalism. He's pushing emotion over information. It drives engagement, which powers the algorithm and increases viewership, which is why he's got so many subscribers. People love it because it's really entertainment, but they can pretend they're also learning something useful. As a result, he definitely works backwards from a conclusion to find causes that fit his chosen narrative, and any data that does not comport with that narrative and conclusion is just tossed aside.
Johnny Harris’s videos to be fair are meant for people who don’t know much. He is a real journalist but McDonald’s is also food. And funny enough the best journalists generally cater to the select few like fine dining as where McDonald’s appeals to the masses who eat frozen food from Walmart alone to them McDonald’s is “gourmet” special meal. And you know what even I sometimes enjoy McDonald’s and Johnny Harris videos.
Especially when it’s something I know about
Like politics or the military. It’s honestly laughable the way he and many journalists mess things up. And McDonald’s hey I just enjoy a dirty salty quarter pounder after a night out. Just cheese and ketchup it’s so salty it gets your brain excited almost anytime.
Ryan, I don't know why the DoD doesn't just hire you instead of them saying, "We're un-auditable; we don't know where the money goes."
Consolidation has happened in nearly every American Industry. To the detriment of citizens and workers in my opinion.
He is usually too shallow in his videos. I don't know if he does this on purpose I hope he doesn't.
Doubt it’s on purpose. He’s a brand of youtuber that covers a wide variety of subjects. It makes it really hard to be accurate and deep dive when you’ve made a deadline for yourself so you can move onto something else. Irresponsible and arrogant of your world view regardless.
@@GenkiGoLucky I do think its on purpose. There seems to be a pattern of fearmongering western audiences against their own governments. Hes a sensationalist that realises he gets more clicks from drumming up ragebait.
Thank You again Ryan for a well-done informational video. When I need to laugh and get the truth I watch you. God Bless.
Hey this one is monetized! Watched the whole ad for ya Ryan.
-Semper Gumbi
Waste and misspending is the problem. My unit still used the ARC-114 radio. We had several down due to lack of a spare part (a transistor). The supply system did not have any and it was going to take about 6 months for the DLA to let a contract for them. We had all sorts of data books and found the exact transistor available at Radio Shack. A bag of 100 cost ten dollars. The current price in the supply system was ten dollars each and the projected new contract cost per item was going to be fifty dollars each.
Agreed.
Not specific to the defence industry. Most (all vendors) will have this effect. Buying components directly is usually cheaper than buying from the equipment vendor. For small, cheap, generic components this is a large difference.
The excuse would be that now someone in the vendor's plant is repackaging, ordering, sourcing. It might be less obvious in the military, but in private industry paying you $50/hour to save $9.90 on one transistor (and arguably not even that, since the extra 99 will probably just get lost or forgotten in a drawer) might not be worth it.
Or it might.
Point being that sourcing components directly really only pays off some of the time.
This is common across all government contracts. There is a tendency to underprice the top-line items and allow the vendors to recover margin by overcharging for the spare parts. The fear is that taxpayers will revolt to see the true price of these items, from fighter planes to open heart surgery for your grandma, so you bury the cost elsewhere.
@@jeffrey.p.thorntonso MIC exists
Do you think that perhaps those transistors for the military were made to higher specs due to their use case and also made through a well documented and trusted supply chain?
I can buy some transistors that claim to be high quality brands on aliexpress for a tenth of what they cost on digikey. But the aliexpress ones are actually fakes that have their serials removed and new ones added back
Defense spending as a % of GDP is the ONLY measure that has any value and/or context. We are woefully behind considering the threats of the day. This number needs to get up to 6% again. I wish it weren't true - but that's the world we live in.
So again, if anything, we actually should be spending more. The problem is that's going to be difficult considering the deficits we're running and that interest on debt just passed $1 trillion a year - thus squeezing other budgets like non-discretionary spending and wiggle room for entitlements. We're in a real budget crunch... which doesn't bode well for America standing up to global threats like China and Russia/Iran
I think I had a drink with you at Dulles years ago at the B-gate near the smoking section used to be. Not a 100%, but like 80% sure. I remember you were really nice, I work on the railroad.
The pokemon analogy was the best. The characters you chose to represent spot on!
22:30 Hegemon is often referred to as an OP Pokémon by the fandom due to its bountiful amounts of democratic liberty and freedom. It's why it's banned in official tournaments.
Small point you might want to consider: defense stocks don't need to go up for congresspeople to make money off of them. At least, if they're eligible to hold short positions. Any amount of knowledge about where the company is going, good or bad, gives you an edge against everyone who doesn't have that knowledge.
Not sure that adds anything. Corruption is Corruption and the USA is Corrupt. Ryan tries to point out that defense Corruption would not be atypically large.
Harris seems to be saying "military bad.. let me count the ways" in a way that seems to absolve China or Russia of the same conclusion. How many Chinese politicians are corrupt or how many Chinese people would be better fed without unnecessary military build up.
But I suspect Harris really doesn't want to go there.
isnt it illegal to act upon any such knowledge? Insider trading and that?
Have you seen his video on nationalism? Claiming only 2.5% of Italians spoke Italian in 1950? What's with all the Italian speaking Italian Americans, then? It took me 3 videos to figure out that he is a moron.
😮
Most Italians didn't speak Italian, but another language such as Piedmontese, Furlan, Veneto, Sardu, and of course what most Italian Americans spoke, Sicilianu or Calabrese. Some would call them dialects, but that would be incorrect. They are Italian languages, but not (Standard) Italian or dialects thereof.
@@igorjeeHey now, we deal in dunks here, not facts. To an American it’s all Italian, and the American perspective is infallible.
I wanna see your cigar budget... that should be considered "essential"
Thank you for one of the most valuable videos I have ever seen on UA-cam. After some follow-up fact checking and research, my mindset about US defense spending has been permanently altered. Thanks again. I’m a big fan.
Though random, I have been subscribed to your channel since you had like around 15k Subscribers, it is only today that I checked out your subscriber count again. Man, your close to a million, I appreciate your good work for providing sources to your information and fact checking also the claims of others. Keep doing God's work my man.
Next story: Why can't journalists tell the truth?
Buying a F35 is a way to be really good pal with the US (a bit more than just be member of NATO), then you often have US staff coming on your bases for maintenance/training: that's another deterent for a foreign entity to attack that base (attacking it would be attacking American staff)
People who think they are smart watch Johnny Harris. Poeple who are actually smart watch Ryan Mcbeth
We love you, Ryan. Please never stop being yourself and never stop fighting for the truth and what’s right.
New Sheriff in town and his name is McBeth. No more disinformation,, deceptive imagery or misinformation.
His most recent video has made me question my subscription to his channel.
Johnny Harris comes off like he was always a mid tier student trying to be smarter than he actually is lol
Ryan, I am both appreciative and a bit sad that you've developed catchphrases.
Johnny Harris is doing the Peter Zeihan thing: getting paid to seem smart to people who don't know anything, but people who know much about can quickly disprove.
_Very_ well done. I especially liked the last part -- defense spending as a percentage of GDP. That's a much more useful comparison.
TL;DR
The nations we might consider near-peers in military terms are China and Russia, of course. Both of them tend to treat domestic GDP numbers, transparency of monetary policy, even down to the amount of foreign country currency holdings _including_ mil spending numbers as a national security issue. IOW they may not be completely truthful and it might "behoove" them to lie on the low side.
Never heard of Johnny Harris until this video.
Even if the point about spreading out manufacturing was valid, it’s also just as likely to be reverse causation. Maybe politicians are forcing defense contractors to spread out their manufacturing to bring jobs to more areas before they will approve the budget while the companies would actually prefer to consolidate supply lines.
One thing I'll say is some of the issues that guy points out are real issue...
Just not with the Armed Forces. The stock thing for example. That isn't an example of the military being fucked up. That's an example of the government being fucked up. People in positions like a Congress seat or a judge seat or a high level posting in an executive department should not be allowed to own stocks. Enforcement of this should be ruthless, and it should result in at the very least, immediate dismissal from that position and probably long jail times and also fines excessively greater than any possible gain. Then again, we have things like a Supreme Court where most of the members said ethics guidelines (not even rules, guidelines) weren't necessary while they collect bribes and laugh at the public got being poor shitheads, the Speaker of the House has declared that ethics investigation into human trafficking allegations against a Congress member who might be the next AG shouldn't be made public because it's unimportant, and some dude whose wife was constantly telling him to give Egypt more shit because the Egyptians were giving her gold fucking bars as a totally normal "thank you" to her husband (Bob Menendez), so yeah that seems like a Congress problem more than a procurement problem to me but wtf do I know? I'm just a poor bastard with no billionaire friends.
Why don't you have a 82nd patch in the background?? Unsubscribed...
Guessing you’re in the 82nd 😂.
⛩⛩⛩
Don't forget to take a DVMP 🤯
No 5th ID Red Diamond patch either. Triggered, offended, and unsubscribed!
The worst part is that in the past when he has been called out like this, he has responded positively, pledging to do better. Yet every new video is the same level of very basic surface level knowledge and common misconception.
Basic corpo BS. Whenever you get called out for being shitty, just make vague appeasing noises and don't change anything
Harris' video on Georgia tries to discuss the occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia without naming those territories or explaining when, why or how they broke away from Georgia in the first place. He never mentions the civil war in the 90s or anything. Really bizarre writing and editing on his part.
He also takes sponsorships from companies and makes videos that support them, which is very similar to lobbying ironically. Like when the gates foundation sponsored him and he spent 40 minutes talking about how good the world economic forum is. His journalism used to be independent and without a big production many many years ago, now he has an entire team. He's heavily biased, is a huge grifter, NOT a journalist, and can be bought out by the highest bidder. And you're right about how he seems like he knows what he's talking about till you know the subject he's talking about. This happens whenever I watch one of his history or geopolitics videos.
On the military industrial complex: the issue isn’t how big a company or its revenue is. The issue is how much it spends on lobbying and how well positioned it is to wield influence. These are all different issues.
In the video he proves with the numbers that tech companies have far more influence.
I get it, but it doesn’t mean the defense companies do not wield a lot of influence.
@@cadennorris960 The video just shows the disclosed spending on lobbying. Would you be surprised if the real number is much larger?
Ryan, you are a smart man. This video is on point.
Johnny's email is screened by United Talent Agency. They are based out of Beverly Hills, California and employ 1,400 people. It's literally the largest "Talent" agency in the world. He's working for "The Hollywood Swamp" while claiming to be independent.