Is the U.S. Navy About to Break? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

**Dee Takos** (0:00)
Hey, everybody, welcome to a new episode of Eyes On Geopolitics. I'm here with Mick Mulroy, Marc Polymeropoulos, and Jonathan Hackett. I fired Jack Murphy.
He upstaged me last week, and I'm not happy about it at all. So he's gone and we'll never see him again on the show.

**Marc Polymeropoulos** (0:15)
You better do so all your little magic he's doing.

**Dee Takos** (0:18)
Yeah, he started sharing the screen and shit.

**Mick Mulroy** (0:20)
No, I can't do that.

**Dee Takos** (0:22)
I can't multitask like that.

**Marc Polymeropoulos** (0:23)
You usually take a nap after a while.

**Dee Takos** (0:25)
Yeah, I just let you guys go. So yeah, a lot going on. Thanks, Jack, for covering. I mean, Jack will always be on the show at points. It was a good show. It's fun to actually listen to it rather than worry about hosting it. It was good to just turn it on and listen. Pretty good podcast, I have to say. So a lot happening as usual. I mean, there's so many things happening all the time. It's ridiculous, to be honest.
Some stuff I want to cover today, definitely the USS Abraham Lincoln and the controversy happening there. There was reports early this week that up to six guys jumped off. I don't know how true that is. It wasn't confirmed. We know one guy jumped off, for sure, right? And they scooped them up.
So supposedly the conditions are terrible on there. Obviously, it probably are because they've been out 250 days. They haven't seen port in 200 They're heading back or they're waiting to get relieved by a new aircraft carrier that was already planned on coming in. This comes on the back of the Gerald Ford that was out there for some 300 days and that had a big fire in it and it's probably out of commission for 18 months. And that's our new shiny one, which is interesting. Lot of aircraft carrier news. I wish Andy was here so I could trigger him a little bit because I know it was hatred for aircraft carriers. But there was also a bit of news talking about how Trump wants to redesign the new catapult system to revert it back to the old one. That would cost probably tens of billions of dollars and probably take 20 years because we have no shipbuilding capacity. So a lot happening, obviously, the Middle East is a fucking disaster. We all know that. A little bit of like, we're like kind of like a holding pattern when it comes to Iran.
Shraddha Hormuz is not open despite what everyone's saying, like all like the administration officials are saying.
Lebanon seems to be getting really bad too. I mean, there's just videos out there of them, like basically control demolishing an entire village and stuff like that. So there's so many places to go. Also, you know, the CIA getting busy and the Galapagos, that story out of Washington Post. Let's start with Jon Hackett. Where do you want to take it? You pick whatever you like.

**Jonathan Hackett** (2:47)
Yeah, so there's two interesting things behind me here. One is my enlisted rank, which you can see on one shoulder. And then you can see there's an image up there of me standing on an aircraft carrier. When I was working at the US. Embassy in Jordan, and we were taking the US. Ambassador and the Crown Prince to go visit the flag mess on a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, just like the Abraham Lincoln. And I was there as a diplomat, but there was a problem. I was enlisted. And I think what a lot of people don't understand is on a Navy ship, things are very different than the rest of the military for the officer enlisted divide. And I think that's what's kind of missing from all these stories about the conditions on the vessel is that it was already terrible for the enlisted. It's worse now, but it's not as bad for the officers. And a lot of times, it's the officers who are the ones that get to talk. I mean, the spokesman for the Navy is an officer, right? The SecDef is a retired or former officer, not retired, but former reserve army officer, right? There's a lot of officers, Hung Kow, the secretary of the Navy officer. Where are the enlisted members being able to talk about what it's like on a vessel?
And I mentioned that because that day when I took the ambassador to the flag mess, I was stopped by a lieutenant who was about 20 years old, 22 years old.
And he pointed out a wooden sign on the wall and it said, Officer Country.