Daily Episode 233 - Collapse and the US Military

0:00Hey, Cory here. We've had an influx of new listeners, and so I just want to make sure that if you are new to the podcast, you don't just jump in and start listening to these daily episodes which we've been doing. Please go back and listen to the first at least eight episodes. So you have an idea of what collapses, what it is that Cory is talking about. Also if you've been with us for a while and you're enjoying the content, please join us on Patreon. We would love to see you there. There's a link, as always, in the description. This is Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad. Opil is the first over the counter daily birth control pill available in the US. Let's be real, getting a birth control. Prescription is not always easy, and it's so much admin. In fact, about a third of women face barriers to access prescription birth control between scheduling appointments, missing work class, or just trying to exist. It's a lot. But now Opil is putting birth control in our control. Opil is a daily birth control that's FDA-approved, full prescription strength, and estrogen-free,

1:02and 98% effective when used as directed. Grab it online, or at most major retailers, no prescription or doctor's appointment needed. So if you're thinking about birth control, check out Opil to see if it's right for you. Use code Giggly for 25% off your first month of Opil at opil.com. That's code Giggly at opil.com, birth control in your control. We love to see it. Getting way can feel like a roller coaster, full of ups, downs, and being thrown for loops, like when someone brings donuts into the office, or your kids' dino nuggets start giving you that look again. That's why there's noom. They combine GLP ones to quiet the food noise, with healthy habits that help you keep it quiet, even if you get off the meds. Their program is designed to make weight loss a smooth ride, helping you understand what drives you. So you can build better habits to not just lose weight, but keep it off. Noom, lose for keeps. Get started at noom.com. Not all customers will clinically qualify for medications.

2:03Individual results may vary. I'm Jake Stauk, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working, while employees wait for help their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked, and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50% of all tickets, and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to Serval.com slash tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.

3:07I don't know about you, but I'm having more and more days lately where I just lack the motivation to get the stuff done that I need to get done. I'm still doing it, but after being so motivated all summer to be productive and efficient and work hard and get so much done, and I don't know, this month, these last couple weeks, I've just been so blah. But that's okay. We keep pushing. We get through it, and maybe that motivation will come back. I'll tell you what, if you're not motivated to do something, reading about how the US military contributes to societal collapse really just gets the juices flow and really just gets the blood pumping. Now, in all reality, this topic is very intriguing to me. No doubt there are militaries all across the world, causing problems in various ways and across different points on the scale. Few of them, however, are causing problems at the scale that the US military is. Now, yes, you can say, well, there are other nations actively at war.

4:11The havoc that Israel is committing in Gaza, for example, or Russia and Ukraine and the knock-on effects of these things. But the US military, with its immense size and power, its resources, its spending and what it's spending on, add up to be a truly destructive force. Of course, from a combat perspective right now, with actions in Iran, the support of Israel incursions into Venezuela with continued pressure there, the bombing of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. But there's so much more that goes on behind the scenes that I think is important to talk about. So, we're going to jump around a little bit and just talk about some of the ways in which the military is a problem, is exacerbating collapse. Know that this is not an all-inclusive episode, right? We've done a full episode on the military in the past and a little more rounded around

5:15the resources being used and that type of thing. This is more based off of recent articles and updates, describing the status of these things today. So, this article from the 27th of August says, and from the Guardian, West Point's only climate scientist fired after insisting on human causes of climate change. This is the only climate scientist teaching at West Point, the US Army's military academy, was fired after he argued against an order to stop teaching about the human causes of the climate emergency according to a lawsuit. Dr. Adam Calcstein, a civilian professor of geography at the New York institution, was terminated after the spring semester this year, six months after a testy meeting with Brigh-Gen Shane Reeves, then Dean of West Point's Academic Board, the court filing said. According to Calcstein who taught Army cadets there for 17 years, he told the dean at a November 2025 meeting that an order to cut from the curriculum content about the human causes of climate change, which he had reluctantly complied with, was immoral and potentially illegal.

6:15It would be like trying to teach the law without being able to even mention the constitution, he said. Reeves responded by storming out of the meeting after telling Calcstein that Donald Trump was commander in chief and set the agenda for West Point. The developments were reported on Wednesday by stars and stripes in the New York Times. Calcstein's lawsuit is the second legal action over the stifling of academic freedoms filed by an educator at West Point. Tim Bacon or Becken, the academy's longest serving law professor, had a similarly fiery meeting with a uniformed colonel, John Gregory, last year, after standing up to a new Trump administration policy, ordering civilian colleagues to seek approval before publishing papers or giving speeches. Going to Becken's lawsuit, Gregory ordered him to stop talking and sit down during the meeting of dozens of faculty members, where a military institution we follow orders. Now the fact that this professor was fired for wanting to continue teaching about the human causes of climate change is fascinating. Seeing as how the military takes a very serious stance on climate change itself.

7:19Based from the US Department of War website back in June 15th of 2022, back before it was known as the Department of War, it was the Department of Defense at this time, this announcement was titled, DOD preparing for climate change impacts official says. Joe Bryan joined a panel discussion yesterday on US climate security investments changing plans into actions at a virtual center for climate and security event. He said climate change is dramatically increasing the demand for military operations and at the same time, impacting our readiness and our ability to meet those demands while imposing unsustainable costs on the department. Among the global effects of climate change are a warmer climate, changing precipitation patterns and more frequent, intense and unpredictable extreme weather. Besides climate impacts on the physical environment, climate change is altering technology and markets as the world adjusts to the reality and a rapidly advancing energy transition. Climate change also affects the militaries of allies and partners as well as competitors and adversaries.

8:20The nations that are most resilient and best able to manage the effects of climate change will secure an advantage. For the US military to maintain its advantage, he said it will need to continue investing in items that mitigate the effects of climate change. So while this announcement still wasn't necessarily admitting that climate change is human caused, it did recognize the severity of it and the level to which the military needs to adjust its investments and preparation. There are other resources I believe, Kalin and I shared one of these back in our actual early episode on the topics of Feel free to search that out there in which the military really lays out the future concerns the war games associated with rapidly advancing climate change. Well, this is the bulletin.org. It's the bulletin of the atomic scientists. This article by Netacee Crawford from August 27 says, the US military's fatal stance on climate change. The US military has a long complicated relationship with climate change. Beginning in the mid-1950s, it paid for research into greenhouse gases and the many ways global

9:24warming could make operations more difficult and less predictable. As early as the 1990s, the Navy began raising peers to protect its ports and working to make the facilities more resilient to frequent flooding. In 2007, Sherry Goodman, the Pentagon's first chief environment officer, coined the phrase, Threat Multiplier, to convey the idea that climate change could exacerbate geopolitical instability and other security risks. All branches of the military are currently preparing for more humanitarian rescue relief work as environmental emergencies multiply. But even while it's adapting for this hot new world, with its emergencies and imminent threats, the military has largely sidesteped its role in creating the climate crisis. For decades, the military has been a significant contributor to global warming. But there is no full accounting of military and war-related emissions. Military industrial emissions are also high, and the global volume and value of arms transfers has grown rapidly over the past half decade. And then of course, by destroying infrastructure and the environment, war itself contributes to global warming. The argument that climate change is a threat multiplier short circuits the causal chain.

10:27War and military buildups are climate change multipliers, and while it is true that the climate is warming at an accelerating rate, and that the window for preventing the worst outcomes is closing, the national security establishment's impulse to focus on national security threats that may or may not be caused by climate change may make us less secure because it increases military emissions and siphons resources from emissions reduction, the energy transition and adaptation. The article has a lengthy section here then describing the military's involvement in climate change since the 1950s, testimony from one gentleman about the impacts of climate change in the future. The following section is titled, climate change as threat multiplier? Not so fast. While environmental stress can increase tension, academic analyses have not shown a strong or direct causal link between climate change and armed conflict. Nevertheless, the threat multiplier frame remains dominant and essentially unquestioned. In 2021, the Department of Homeland Security argued that climate change was reshaping the risk landscape and predicted a global increase in natural disasters will drive up the number

11:33and severity of humanitarian crises, with what it called sweeping implications for regional and border security and core national security interests. More ominously, the Department also predicted that revisionist nations will seek to exploit climate change and dost instability to erode the rules based order that is central to the security and prosperity of the United States and its allies. NATO and the UN Security Council have also adopted the framing of climate change as a threat multiplier. I think from our perspective, it's quite clear that they are correct in this. Climate change will definitely be a threat multiplier, not just for threats facing the United States of America, but threats facing everyone. Not mentioned here, but obviously extremely pertinent is the threat of mass migration and the destabilizing effect that will have on economies, on cultures, on governments around the world. Later on down the article, it says, while adaptation is prudent, an ounce of prevention in the form of military and military industrial emissions reduction is essential to the cure.

12:34Justifying more military spending because climate change might cause insecurity is potentially counterproductive. For decades, the United States is advocated for increasing the military spending and procurement of NATO nations. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute documented a 41% increase in global military spending. From 2016 through 2025, Germany's military spending alone grew 118% between 2016 and 2025. Of course, since 2022, Russia's aggression against Ukraine has also been an important driver of NATO military mobilization. And just stepping outside of this article for a moment, just today I was reading up about increases in aggression from Russia towards NATO. A power station was potentially targeted in an attack inside of Germany. There have been other threats, other drone incursions. And so the threat of whether or not you want to adjudicate and say whether or not we're already in World War III, if we're not, it seems that it could be on the way if these

13:35aggressions don't stop. All right. I want to talk about other nations and their increase in military spending. More recently it says military spending has boosted greenhouse gas emissions in the civilian sector by its demand for AI and quantum computing and energy hungry sector of the economy. Like the internet, AI has been both paid for and then used by the US military. The Defense Department announced in May 2026 that its use of AI had increased 1,775% over the past calendar year. The Defense Department, which says that it will be an AI first fighting force, has forged agreements with SpaceX, open AI, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and reflection to use their capabilities for war fighting and other applications. But this military funding for AI has also shaped the research and the demand for artificial intelligence in the larger economy, boosting AI energy use overall. And to end the article, there's this. When governments focus on climate change as a threat multiplier or militaries stress operational challenges due to climate change, their actions tend to increase emissions if

14:38they continue their emissions as usual or even invest more in military preparedness. The US National Security establishment is certainly not focused on climate change. Rather it is focused on projecting US power in the Middle East and Asia at its core and no matter the administration, a national security strategy that seeks American preeminence risks much more than US global status. Accepting American preeminence is not functional if it ever was. Significant military emissions reductions can only come from reducing the overall size of the military, which is only possible if the US changes its military doctrine and force structure. Both and thinking, where the US and its allies continue to rely on military force, will not work to keep America on top. In fact, it is increasingly clear that the US pursuit of military preeminence directly and indirectly sacrifices environmental security and is part of the behavior that risks the survival of everyone on the planet. When NATO marches to the US tune, increasing its military spending, armed forces and armed industries, its members also sacrifice their own security.

15:44This is Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad. O-Pill is the first over the counter daily birth control pill available in the US. That's be real, getting a birth control prescription is not always easy and it's so much admin. In fact, about a third of women face barriers to access prescription birth control between scheduling appointments, missing work class or just trying to exist, it's a lot. But now O-Pill is putting birth control in our control. O-Pill is a daily birth control that's FDA-approved, full prescription strength and estrogen-free and 98% effective when used as directed. But online or at most major retailers, no prescription or doctor's appointment needed. So if you're thinking about birth control, check out O-Pill to see if it's right for you. Use code Giggly for 25% off your first month of O-Pill at O-P-I-L-L.com. That's code Giggly at O-P-I-L-L.com birth control in your control. We love to see it. Losing weight can feel like a roller coaster, full of ups, downs and being thrown for loops,

16:44like when someone brings donuts into the office or your kids' dino nuggets start giving you that look again. That's why there's noom. They combine GLP ones to quiet the food noise with healthy habits that help you keep it quiet, even if you get off the meds. Their program is designed to make weight loss a smooth ride, helping you understand what drives you. So you can build better habits to not just lose weight, but keep it off. Noom. Lose for keeps. Get started at noom.com. But all customers will clinically qualify for medications. Individual results may vary. So a good lengthy article. I only read probably about half of it through there. I skipped a bunch, so feel free to read through it. But the essence of it is, the military knows that climate change is real. It believes that it needs to increase its preparation to remain preeminent in a world of climate change, but in so doing, it is accelerating climate change itself. Another article from this same organization, Bolton of the Atomic Scientist, has an article

17:47here. I'm not going to read through this one. I'm just going to post it and tell you here a little bit about what it's about so that you can go find it if you're interested. Titled Mission Impossible Quantifying Military Emissions. Military and wartime emissions are difficult to track, but too important to ignore. This one's about the same length as the one that I just read from. It goes through details of how many metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are being spent in different wars through different exercises, trainings, drills, what comes from military emissions around the globe, what comes from the US specifically, how much of this is from military industrial emissions. So anyway, very interesting numbers based article. Feel free to check it out if that is something that is interesting to you. All right. So these four articles so far have sort of addressed. The US military's engagement and relationship to climate change. For the last few minutes, I want to just talk through a couple of articles. These are all brand new. Just from the last day or so, talking more about the news from within the Pentagon right

18:51now. And what I'd like to show with this is just simply that the US military is a mess under the new leadership under this expansionist saber rattling imperialist approach, which yes, the US has always been that way, but it's no doubt so much worse under president Trump. He came in, he threatened a dozen different countries in a hundred different ways. He destabilized global security. He pissed off dozens of nations with his tariffs, with his threats, with his dehumanizing speech. He is isolationist in that he is alienating the US from its allies, making the US a nation that cannot be trusted. And unfortunately, this will not likely be fixed quickly if at all once he's gone. He's gotten himself into a war with Iran that he cannot back himself out of. And so he just continues to entrench himself further. And this in a world on the brink of other wars already. This in a world where China is preparing for and threatening to take Taiwan, where Russia

19:58has invaded Ukraine and is threatening further incursion into NATO territories, where Israel has attacked Gaza, committing a genocide against Palestinians. Meanwhile, cross-border wars and civil wars rage across different parts of Africa and tensions rise in places throughout Europe, South America, and so on. So it's no surprise, according to MSNOW, that experts raise concerns of army readiness amid Pentagon changes under Hegseth. Sources tell MSNOW that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is resigning after months of tensions with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. This link is a video, so feel free to watch through the video from MSNOW kind of talking about the different concerns, but there are plenty of articles about this as well. There's one from the Atlantic titled, Dan Driscoll's parting shot. The Army Secretary told Trump about problems in the army and his friction with Hegseth then resigned. During a White House meeting last week, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll brought his concerns about the future of the army under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directly to President

21:00Trump, a sign of how far tensions between the two Pentagon leaders had escalated, and of the dysfunction inside the building, four people familiar with the conversation told us. Trump was surprised when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officials had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth. Driscoll argued that the army could not transform itself the way it needs to because of the departure of so many leaders, adding that Trump expressed concern about the deep cuts to the army's senior leadership. Driscoll informed the President of his intention to resign, and by today, Driscoll was on his way out. And from the Washington Post, military leaders warn Hegseth against extending Iran war operations. A recent classified assessment advised that prolonged large-scale operations in the Middle East risk-weakening US capabilities elsewhere. Several US military leaders have advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable, and risks-weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the US homeland, according to people familiar with a recent assessment prepared for the Pentagon chief.

22:02The warnings detailed for Hegseth by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the four star commanders overseeing US operations throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America appear in the August 14th edition of the Secretary of Defense Order's book. He described the assessment to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because the document is classified. The SDOB typically produced twice-monthly outlines the worldwide availability of US warships, aircraft, personnel, and weapons systems. It reflects the President's priorities for the force which are carried out by the Defense Secretary, and includes insights from the military's top generals and admirals that inform the directives of the Pentagon issues. As President Donald Trump has pressured Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and accept several US provisions for ending the stalemate conflict, he has been adamant that all options remain available to him, including further military action. Consequently, US Central Command, the headquarters responsible for prosecuting the Iran War, has kept a force of more than 50,000 troops on alert for months, in the case the President orders additional attacks. The August 14th Order's book directs some troops deployed in the Middle East to remain

23:05there through September and some others into 2027. The prospect of extending those forces further compelled military leaders to voice their concern. The geographic combatant commands overseeing US operations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America have had their ships, aircraft, and other equipment pulled away to support the Iran conflict. This has limited their ability to conduct missions and ensure proper training, those familiar with the assessment said. The Navy, in particular, has had to stretch its capacity to keep up with wartime demands. Army and Air Force leadership concurred with Hegseth desire to extend their deployed forces, but each emphasized that doing so would come with significant risk. Overall, the tenor from the military leadership is that the ongoing Iran operation, having reached the six-month mark, has been too much for too long. The military is warning to Hegseth, which has not been previously reported, offers new insight into the administration's dilemma as Trump seeks to end the conflict on terms favorable to the United States, while Iran, cognizant of the war's unpopularity with most Americans and its mounting toll on the US arsenal, refuses to capitulate.

24:05And from the hill on this same topic, an article titled Pentagon erupts over classified leak of Iran war dissent. The Pentagon is seething over a Washington Post report, the one we just read, that top military leaders recently warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against extending large-scale Iran war operations. Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell lambasted the report in a post on the social platform X, publishing highly classified assessments from the Secretary's order books is a crime. It's a betrayal of the force, he said, and much of what they're publishing is inaccurate. Washington Post Military Affairs reporter Don Lemoth defended his colleague's work with a response to Parnell saying, fact check, independent journalism is not a crime. It's also especially important at a time when government officials are withholding key details and concerns about a war being fought on behalf of the American people with their taxpayer dollars. Okay, the point here is that all of this is just going on in the last couple of days. If you've been paying attention at all to the goings-on of the Pentagon, it has been

25:09in turmoil for quite some time. So many of the policies that Hegseth is implementing are assinine, so many of the actions that they're taking militarily are dangerous, risky, costly, let alone in many cases, war crimes, illegal, unethical. Hegseth, who was formerly a Fox News host, is not qualified for the job. He comes off as more of one of those instructors at an overpriced alpha testosterone camp than someone qualified even remotely to lead the world's largest military responsibly. These issues seem to be culminating now. The pressure is mounting, but the problems are global. The destabilization, and this is really where I see the biggest problem coming from, is now sort of locked in place. I believe the world order, or I should say things being done in an orderly way throughout the world, is fragile, and it's all power dynamics. And the US has shifted those power dynamics greatly by taking power away from itself, by overextending

26:13itself into these wars, tying up its resources, using up all of its ammunition, creating somewhat of a large vacuum, or a weakness, or an opportunity, for other nations to fill. China has been simply sitting and watching, biting their time as the US eats itself alive, and the moment may not be now, but the moment is likely coming soon, in which China sees that it can carefully, strategically, take more power, solidify itself, both militarily and economically as the world's powerhouse. China has problems of its own, so I'm not saying that's going to be a walk in the park, but that's the whole point. The big question mark, the destabilization, what comes next, what are the conflicts that come out of this? And in a world already suffering through the consequences of collapse, how might this speed up accelerate that process? We'll pay close attention to it, talk about it more as it plays out in the coming weeks, months, and years.

27:14Thanks for joining me on the episode today. We'll see you tomorrow. This is Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad. Opel is the first over the counter daily birth control pill available in the US. Let's be real, getting a birth control prescription is not always easy, and it's so much admin. In fact, about a third of women face barriers to access prescription birth control, between scheduling appointments, missing work, class, or just trying to exist, it's a lot. But now Opel is putting birth control in our control. Opel is a daily birth control that's FDA-approved, full prescription strength, and estrogen-free, and 98% effective when used as directed. Grab it online, or at most major retailers, no prescription or doctor's appointment needed. So if you're thinking about birth control, check out Opel to see if it's right for you. Use code Giggly for 25% off your first month of Opel at O-P-I-L-L.com. That's code Giggly at O-P-I-L-L.com, birth control in your control. We love to see it.

28:14I'm Jake Stauk, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working, while employees wait for help their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. These get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50% of all tickets, and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to Serval.com slash tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets. Who says Halloween only lasts one day?

29:16With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger than life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair dot com. That's w-a-y-f-a-i-r dot com. Wayfair every style every home. Hey, Corey here. If you are listening to the back catalog of Breaking Down Collapse, thank you. Those episodes are so vital. They're so important. But I also wanted to let you know that I am now doing daily episodes. Yes, that's right. Here on the podcast, daily episodes. So if you are enjoying the back catalog, great. Please also feel free to zoom forward to the most recent episodes. Catch us daily. They are quick little episodes. And I think you'll enjoy them. Thanks.