 Welcome back to War Economy and State. This is our foreign policy podcast for the Mises Institute. I'm Ryan McMakin. I'm a senior editor here at the Mises Institute and joining me as always is my co-host Zachary Yoast, our ongoing expert on foreign policy and also especially filling in all those holes of knowledge that I've got about East Asia. Because I am no expert on China and we're gonna talk a little bit about China today and Taiwan and there's some some new information that I think provides a good jumping off point to talk about this the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CIS has a new report that came out this month It's called the first battle of the next war wargaming a Chinese invasion of Taiwan The authors on that are Mark Kansy and Matthew Kansy and an Eric Higginbotham In case you're interested in case you want to look it up But I think it provides a good place to start sort of an update on what the deal is with China and Taiwan Zach and I have talked about this in the past some of the Strategic issues that China faces in terms of population in terms of dealing with all of its border disputes in terms of its budgetary limitations nevertheless It does have the ability to attempt an invasion and annexation of Taiwan the question is How easily can they pull it off and what does that even mean for the United States? There's so much discussion in the US about how the US must intervene and Prevent this horrible thing from happening the question is okay. Does that have anything to do with the defense of the United States? And we'll just kind of get into how this I guess this seems to be the new domino theory in effect Where we're incorporating now the Ukraine war into Taiwan and the United States must intervene everywhere at all times or The dominoes will just fall until the Chinese are in Monterey, Mexico next thing, you know So let's just look at how important is this and what would victory look like? for the United States in Taiwan even in the more optimistic scenarios, so Zach it's great to have you with me. Let's just look at what these war games show and Just kind of go through some of the scenarios and and on a tactical level. What does this mean for the United States? so maybe just Really start out with providing kind of a basic summary of what the report says and then maybe we go through some of the scenarios Right, so this was a very interesting report. It's very long. It's like a hundred and twenty or forty pages or something But the the basic premise is that All of the war games so far for the most part regarding a war where China tries to conquer Taiwan are basically classified government run war games and So this war game was run With all open source information that you know the public can find if they dig down hard enough and an interesting thing to note is and the report itself notes this is that While these government run war games remain classified people who have participated in them Generally all agree that the US loses in a Chinese attack on Taiwan this report Says basically that the United States would win in the most in most of the scenarios they run which they consider the base case scenarios But it's Verges on being a Pyrrhic victory There are massive massive losses in the end victory with victory being defined as Taiwan remains de facto independent is The result but the cost is astronomical and is actually it's like hard for us to actually contemplate what this war would mean and It's sort of they pull an economist move and assume a can opener. They just say nuclear weapons aren't used but Even short of nuclear weapons being used This is not this would not be something to take lightly if there would be thousands of dead Americans Tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars of destroyed equipment all within the first three to four weeks of this conflict Well, it's important to always keep in mind the United States has not been in a conflict with a peer nation since 1945 and So it's been a long time since Americans could expect something where there was any chance of quick fast deadly Military engagements that would be perceived as disastrous back home. You say well, what about the Vietnam War? What about the Korean War? Well, first of all the Vietnam War was very very long And there was a long ramp up period and it did not encompass significant amounts of naval warfare and You didn't have like whole boats full of sailors going down Thousands of people at once in a short time period and these are the sorts of things that happened in World War two Right and also in World War one to a certain extent huge huge battles and so it was yeah, clearly the Vietnam War was a terrible idea from the US perspective and the Viet Cong did benefit From foreign weapons and such and we're able to mount like some real air defense and things like that So of course even if you count that Then it's been 50 years Since that sort of thing was going on and even that doesn't compare to the to a situation where the United States is fighting a state like Germany and So what does this generation have to even consider in terms of something that would look like war? what what are we going off of the Gulf War from 1991 or What's going on now where there aren't even more than a token amount of troops in Ukraine? Who are not putting themselves in harm's way for political reasons? It's because I think they sense that large casualties that are inflicted on the US would be politically disastrous for the regime But this would be very very different and so I guess the question is How much then is the US willing to put on the line? To defend Taiwan and it looks like in most of these scenarios the US does actually get very directly involved It's it's it's got a base of operations in Japan in many cases It's it's getting involved in naval conflicts and such and so this just Anyone under 80 doesn't really have memories of this sort of thing Happening so it would be really remarkable to see some of that stuff play out But what does so what does the best case scenario look like in this case? Well, so there's sort of three different tranches of War games they run one is the base Scenarios where they fit all around with different assumptions then there is the optimistic scenario, which is where US and Japan managed to just basically blow the Chinese Fleet out of the water before they barely even reached Taiwan. So that's the best case scenario It's also unlikely and it's unlikely because of Chinese air defenses China it's I mean estimated that China can sink any vessel within 500 miles of its coastline This Report generally notes that in most scenarios 90% of US aircraft that are in theater. So this is in bases in Japan This is Guam Wake Island places like that Would be destroyed on the ground So the Chinese defensive technology is going to make it very difficult for the US to Strike in theater. So a lot of the scenarios one like one variable they change around in the base case Game is Whether or not certain very long-range standoff munitions that would be fired from aircraft Would be able the the ground attack variant if it would be able to successfully target Have an anti-ship function And there's all sorts of talk about logistics because the anti-ship variant of this missile is a very very low Stock and things like that. They also note a key variable is a success successful hit rate of different kinds of missiles, which is basically impossible to accurately predict Until I mean it's tested in combat and as you noted, we've not really had combat of this nature The key I mean the US has spent Gagellians of dollars in missile defense I mean the Patriot missile is the you know our standard missile and then there's this new missile that they're sort of bringing online at great expense during the Gulf the first unit Gulf War the Patriot missile system had like a success rate of like 8 to 15 percent. I mean it was like a national scandal and They the the military claims that during the invasion of Iraq the Patriot had like a close to perfect record yet all that information is still classified so We don't know actually how well it would work I should note by the way that for someone of my age I was in junior high school during that war and I watched a lot of CNN at the time And I remember just the the full-blown propaganda that we were being handed. We were told the Patriot Act was or the Patriot missiles We're just this miracle of technology. I remember seeing some rally on Patriot missiles that I think George HW Bush Was speaking at and I mean the crowd the throng was wild with joy and We were told it was just like a near-perfect system and it saved Israel and like nothing nothing hid any of its targets as long as you had Patriot missiles around and That's just what we were told and so of course years later then you start to get the reality and So I mean that's just get prepared for total BS about Our successes if you do get a war like this because yeah, you're not going to be told anything That's accurate about the actual situation But continue I just wanted to note that the issue that We were we were lied to in a big way That's the first time the Patriot missiles were used and I I'm sure we can expect something similar to occur in a in another Conflict right and I mean the ubiquitousness of smart smartphones Means that the government's going to have a very hard time You know covering up huge disasters and that in all of the base case scenarios which are like sort of the most realistic situations That the the gamers ran The US loses two aircraft carriers An aircraft carrier has a crew of about 5,000 people on it. The report also notes That there are basically no plans in place. I mean, it's not like the a ship just sinks and that's it A ship could be disabled and it could be potentially repaired There are still there'd be thousands of people who are still alive But they're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean within the range of Chinese missiles So how are those sailors going to be rescued? I mean, we could have a situation where an aircraft carrier is Disabled sinking there are thousands of sailors still alive But there's no way to rescue them the report notes like we really need to figure that out The Then there the run some scenarios where China does better One the basically the only scenario they have where China outright wins is where Japan and the United States do not fight in the war and the report Claims like we are not making any recommendations as to whether or not the US should defend Taiwan but they basically say if the US doesn't defend Taiwan Taiwan will be destroyed and it'll happen very rapidly and This is where I have some pushback on this report for one thing When the Taiwanese military has run war games in basically all the scenarios But they have run and are reported to us the public Via Ian Easton in his book the Chinese invasion threat China does not win even in the Like very long run like China has secured a foothold on Taiwan. It's basically this long drawn-out slug fest Taiwan is an extremely defensible island and I Talked about this at length in my report victory without battle a smarter vision for US Taiwan policy and my basically the gist of my argument in that white paper is that The United States can assist Taiwan in remaining defacto independent by deterring Chinese invasion by Supplying Taiwan selling Taiwan billions and billions and billions of dollars of weapons that would Persuade China that it's a very risky gamble to attack and that the United States I argue Does not have to participate Militarily in such a conflict in order to defeat China Now this is a controversial position the authors of this paper obviously disagree And the future is radically uncertain I mean the only way to know for sure were for it to happen which would certainly be a disaster of You know historical proportions But I think these war games are very helpful in pointing out flaws in our current strategy on a global scale and it's especially useful in identifying Why our policy regarding Ukraine is the height of foolishness For like a decade now US policymakers have talked about where we need to pivot to China China is the true threat and I Tend to view China as not likely to be a huge threat But I can certainly see the importance of hedging Against China and that China is certainly much more a threat even if it is a small threat than Russia is yet and as we discussed in our episode on the National security strategy the US government's official policy is that there is nothing beyond our capabilities yet This report makes very clear that trade-offs in fact do exist We live in a world of scarcity core fact of human existence and The More resources we Send to Ukraine the less we have to sell to Taiwan and The report notes quite accurately I would say that you cannot pull a Ukraine strategy with Taiwan if this war were to erupt It would not be possible to resupply Taiwan to send them weapons to put troops on Taiwan in one scenario They do try and send a brigade of Marines to Taiwan Two-thirds are killed in air. I mean you want to talk about a disaster I mean like two thousand people would be killed in air in like one day so I Think this report while I disagree with some of its conclusions. I think it's really helpful in Trying to get us to focus on the realities of you know material existence Well and note that when we're talking about troops being killed American troops being killed these are Costly trained combat troops in a lot of these cases who are a minority of the military Strength, right? It's not like everyone in the military is a trained combat Troop in that right mo you got boatloads of logistics people All that tooth-to-tail ratio stuff, right? You've got like at least seven people that are supporting each combat troop But once you start sending those people into a combat zone and they're killed by the thousands The United States is back to a situation where it's got to retrain a bunch of new people because The you can point to and say oh, yeah Well the military strength of the u.s. Is hundreds of thousands of people. Well, what percentage of those are trained combat people in this So you that that scarcity is real also It's not like well actually rush has been a good example of that, right? Once you start to have a bunch of combat people die Well, it takes a whole lot of time to train them to bring people in to put them into place and The u.s. Would find itself in a similar situation. It's not just Weapons that would be lost ships that would be lost But also all these human beings where even ignoring the human element of it are especially scarce in terms of people that have actual experience in terms of doing these sorts of engagements, so You run out of those people real quick when when you start sending them into situations where thousands die in a single day and So that would be just absolutely disastrous as well but yeah, as you know, we're talking about the fact that Ukraine would have run out of ammunition long long ago had the West not been giving it boatloads of arms and The same the potential is there for Taiwan and If you want Taiwan to then be able to mount any sort of sustained offense You've got to load it up with weapons before the fact Because you can just encircle the island as the Chinese Navy that the entire Western frontier of Ukraine remains Connected to Europe and they get they just keep pushing more arms in through that that Western border But that's not gonna happen with Taiwan nothing like that at all And so yeah, you can't make any comparison at all and it's easy to see how the Chinese could even see that if Russia loses in Ukraine That doesn't even preclude then a Chinese invasion I keep seeing these claims that well the United States must win in Ukraine Or that will send a message to China that they have carte blanche to invade Taiwan I don't think tactically the two have much in common at all and China isn't Russia in terms of the resources available to it and The the Chinese Navy is a lot more relevant in the situation than is the Russian Navy in the Ukraine situation and So it's just I just don't see a big comparison It's just the same old lazy sort of thing where they tried to claim that well if the commies succeed in Vietnam then they'll just they'll just succeed everywhere and And they'll never run out of resources there there won't be any local guerrilla resistance Homegrown and they'll just be free to act globally and that was I guess a key part of the domino theory then was that yeah, the commies essentially have no scarcity and We need that's always needs to be noted right is that we're talking about the our scarcity that the United States would face Which is real and would drive up costs for us significantly cost human life also Force cuts in popular political programs that require funding because you'd have to shift money to Defense spending and then just get ready for more inflation because how are they gonna make up for that gap where they need to just start Spending huge amounts of new money on the China Taiwan War They're just gonna have to print it because they they they're gonna need to either keep Interest rates low so they can just Keep churning out more debt so that requires the Fed to buy up a lot of that Or who knows what sort of scheme they might come up with where the Fed just straight up prints money Like kind of like the trillion dollar coin idea Who knows what they might come up with in that sort of situation? And I'm sure they would think they could justify anything under claims that national security required it But China faces huge scarcity problems as well. We've discussed that in previous episodes, right in terms of It's standard of living is so much lower than ours. How much can they ask of the Chinese population? Well, they can probably get away with driving down the standard living a lot more than you get away with in the United States Before you start to get real resistance because they just don't have the avenues for resistance in China that Americans have against war so That it's impossible to predict then when will the realities of scarcity slap the Chinese regime in the phase versus When will they slap the Americans in the face? Which will outlast the other? I I like the report Have a hard time seeing a situation where the Chinese succeed on a tactical level here simply because what? What have they got going for them in terms of that the United States is just so huge but just because they manage even if they did manage to lose quickly the just the amount of cost that would require the United States To expend is really just quite remarkable in that that would affect all the other theaters that the United States thinks that It it is in charge of and responsible for right. Yeah Yeah, the report now it's that they just assume the rest of the world stays the same but that that would not be the case in reality And yes, you're exactly right when it comes to Chinese scarcity I believe the report this is all wargaming in 2026 so that's pretty recent and they do a comparison between the allied amphibious landing force for D-Day and Chinese landing capabilities. I mean it is I mean the difference is Insane, I mean on D-Day the allies landed almost a hundred thousand troops on the first day They had hundreds and hundreds like thousands of landing craft China does not possess those and they won't even if they just started a mad construction program for a very long time So that's an important thing to note and I regarding China and The popular, you know popular discontent. I think this report Strengthens my argument as to why and in an attempt to invade Taiwan is so unlikely in the first place because it's such a risky gamble and the odds of success are so low and I mean as we just saw where I mean the Chinese government is In a way responsive to the Chinese people. I mean they They dropped their zero COVID policy because the country was having a breakdown people were going nuts over it I mean rightly so I mean it's crazy what they were doing But I mean in some of the scenarios the gamers ran Like 30,000 Chinese troops were captured and stranded on Taiwan I mean just like we would have like a you know a collective societal breakdown if you know Two aircraft carriers were sunk in two weeks. The Chinese population would also You know be perturbed at a disaster and even though they have all the censorship and the great great wall of firewall Word would get out. I mean you can't I mean it would not Thanks to smartphones in the internet Keeping a clamp on these disasters is I would say next to impossible But to get back to the material aspect, I think it to get to get back to sort of trade-offs There's just some realities that American planners need to face for one thing there is a 19 billion dollar backlog in Taiwanese weapons orders so Taiwan has it is all this all these orders for various weapon systems and whatnot has all been approved by Congress it's gone through everything now. They're just waiting for it to be built And yet at the same time we are rapidly Depleting our own stockpiles of weapons by sending them To Ukraine which I would argue is I mean I of course wish the people of Ukraine. Well, it's awful. What is happening? but Ukrainian independence or territorial integrity is ultimately not a A core national interest of the United States So we are I mean some by some reports We have given a third of our entire stockpile of javelin missiles to Ukraine whereas in my order of priorities, we should be selling a third of our stockpile to Taiwan I mean CSIS Actually had a very recent report looking at some of the US stockpiles And how long it would take to replace things we've sent to Ukraine Stinger missiles even if the you know military industrial complex gets to a Surge rate of production it would take six and a half years to Restore our stinger missile Stockpile yet. They note that at the current rate of production it would take 18 years a huge We've sent over a million rounds of artillery to Ukraine and the report notes I mean of course is all open source information We don't know exactly what Taiwan stockpile of artillery shells is but under their gaming scenario Taiwan ran out of artillery shells within three months of a in their in the Taiwan standalone scenario The US at Well, we could at current rates of artillery shell production It is not possible to replace the shells. We've sent to Ukraine because the entire Yearly production quota is used up in US training exercises So at a surge rate of production it would take five years To just restore the US stockpile that it has sent to Ukraine thus far as of the time this report came out Well Even if I Mean it's just sort of it seems people don't get that It's not like we can just flip a switch and all these factories spring out of nowhere to start making artillery shells those resources You know would be going to build something else And are now going to be used to make artillery shells So, I mean I would say if you have a few million dollars laying around opening artillery shell plant would be a good investment for the future because it I mean they're just Going to be in drastic demand Both in the war in Ukraine, but also in Taiwan and the report notes this this Second report that will link in the show notes Notes that the US has literally been scouring the globe trying to buy up just all these stockpiles of weapons to send to Ukraine because We you know, it takes years to get production lines up and running and everything And we literally cannot supply Ukraine with enough weapons so Say this nightmare scenario where to occur where China It becomes clear they're going to attack Taiwan Where there's not going to be any weapons left to ship them unless you know the US dramatically Alters its military industrial base, which has trade-offs, you know We can't make widgets if we're making artillery shells And I would argue we need to be making some more artillery shells And it'd be great if we're selling these artillery shells to Taiwan definitely not just handing them over for free But yeah, it just seems this reality this basic reality of scarcity of human life seems to evade most Analysts even in the 60s when you had few people on social security. You had a young population cranking out production The US under Johnson was still running huge deficits like the hugest in its history And of course they look tiny now in retrospect But at the time on the economic base at the time the US was Driving new surges in inflation which we then saw play out in the 1970s as they had to impose price controls because the inflation was So bad by the 70s that was driven by the whole guns and butter policy of the time But given the the more unpleasant economic situation we're facing now with just so much more debt So much more money from the budget. It's gonna have to go to debt service. We're facing just interest on the debt Topping 500 billion 600 billion a New report came out from the CBO say you could start to get up toward by 2030 up toward a trillion dollars A year in terms of just servicing the debt because so much of it is just premised on interest rates being at one one percent One and a half percent two percent maybe but if you're just in a world of just four percent inflation or interest rates Which isn't exactly like crazy That you're you're you that's siphoning all of that budget money away So where are you gonna get all of this money because the the current budget is what? 800 billion in defense spending or at least soon will be there if it's not already there Yeah, it's higher there because that they they don't count things right as the DoD that should be you know broadly Yes, like but yeah, the official Pentagon number is like somewhere around 800 And so what now you're that's gonna be overtaken even by payment on the debt not to mention social security And you're gonna have fewer workers So you're gonna start to hear a lot more and of course I would be favoring this just independently But it would be stupid if it were driven by a war raising the retirement age to 75 right because we got to cut back on Social security to pay for this war for more munitions. We got to start more factories. Oh the price of steel. Well, that's way way up now so Say hello to more expensive automobiles Or anything that has all of these important electronic components in it's all going to weapons now So you can just see higher prices everywhere So you've got not only more money printing that needs to take place to take care of both debt service and defense spending But it's also all of that government spending is gonna then drive up prices and all of these goods So then you get a basically a double whammy on Price inflation driven both by monetary inflation and rising government demand for all of these goods and services To handle the war. So your real wages just went down, buddy So that we can now try and make up for these huge amounts of munitions we shipped to Ukraine for a war that has zero to do with US national security and That of course all assumes that you think I agree with you, right? Like I don't even think that China poses a a huge Media threat to the United States, but certainly more so than Russia does like by orders of magnitude So just this policy of just shipping every last resource we've got to Ukraine is just insane because It what it says to the world is okay We're gonna neglect all the other parts of the globe that we say we have full capability to wage six different wars ongoing at any given time everybody knows that's BS now because For all those numbers you just quote is take years to get back to our old munitions levels And then we're just not even in a position economically to pull it off without facing rising inflation declining social benefits all these sorts of things that The domestic population isn't gonna be real keen on and that's on top of all that I mean we could speculate right how would the American population react if a couple of aircraft carriers went down I mean what would that look like? Right would would would with the media then side of the military and convinces that somehow those troops were alive somewhere I mean, I don't I don't know what they would try But I mean, I think nuke Beijing would be trending on Twitter. Is that it? I mean Back when back when the ambassador to Libya was killed in Benghazi I mean even you know quote-unquote normies for like we need to carpet bomb the country, you know I mean Like if like 10,000 Americans were killed in a few weeks not to mention, you know Hundreds of aircraft destroyed on the ground and dozens of ships destroyed I mean the people would be frothing mad I mean it would be like we would be on the escalation train with no brakes I think I mean it would be war fervor Would grip the country there'd be demands for strikes on mainland China in retaliation I mean, I think I mean like this is an issue that Japan faced actually in the lead up to World War two is I mean for various reasons after the Meiji restoration There was all this effort to cultivate nationalism among the populace And it got to the point where the populace had this sort of nationalist fervor that the Japanese leadership could not control so I think We might be in a similar situation where this to come to fruition and just to go back to the you know Long-term costs interest costs on the dead in whatever if people are interested They can see a tiny microcosm of this in I believe. It's the Watson Institute for the study of war I think it's called at Brown University They have had this long-running project calculating the costs both human and monetary of the war on terror And they've calculated it out, you know, because so much of this money was borrowed There's literally the war on tears going to cost trillions more dollars in interest alone and not only interest But you also have to factor in that you know thousands of American service personnel will be maimed and wounded and will require Medical care for the rest of their lives that will also I can't remember what the Their figure is on how much they estimate that's going to cost But it is it's astronomical and it just keeps getting bigger because all the money is borrowed in the first place so I mean I think it really drives home the importance of taking a sober look at One US grand strategy overall and are we acting with our actual national interests in minds especially in regards to Ukraine policy and to what what it means for the US to actually defend Taiwan and how this would be sort of beyond our comprehension in terms of Being a disaster even if victory is achieved and therefore that we need to You know look at ways in which Taiwan we can assist Taiwan and Japan in deterring a Chinese invasion to begin with without us getting you know Entangled in what would be a catastrophe of you know And not anything anyone living really has experienced well, and I've noticed though that I think this will be our last thing we'll discuss here where You can say all of these facts and figures right about the economic realities of the situation About the costs involved But there's still going to be that sizable portion of the population. That's gonna that's gonna treat all that with hand-waving And they're gonna virtue signal and say well me I'm not willing to sacrifice the Ukrainians or the Taiwanese to Conquest and enslavement by foreign powers. I care about humanity. So no cost is too high for me to deal with that and There's these people of course live in a fantasy land and very rarely only a teeny tiny percentage of them Do they actually ever volunteer to go pay the real cost? Involved in these sorts of conflicts, but I think we'll probably encounter a bunch of that, right? Oh, how can how can you just say that you need to abandon Ukraine and that you shouldn't of course? be putting boots on the ground in Taiwan in order to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion and there's just really no limits to these people on the moral level right and So I think you're still gonna have to deal With that of course, I guess at some point you just you just have to deal with reality So even in Washington those people die. I suppose they just have to to admit Okay, we don't even have enough planes then to keep this campaign going no matter how many thoughts and prayers We want to send to Taiwan We don't have like actual guns to send to them and So I would expect that to continue but Do you get the sense that that that moralistic humanitarian intervention side of things is still significant in the debate or Is are we at the point where it really is dominated more by just The the realistic realities of what is even possible in terms of this conflict or are we still just thinking in terms of the United States? Helps its friends no matter what everywhere on the globe and we can't let anyone be oppressed Unless of course they're in Africa or in some country we don't care about and then we don't care how many of those people die But we have decided that Taiwan and Ukraine Are we must stand with them and that those are the current thing And notice that no one's talking about invading China to free Tibet Which of course is lived under the jackboot of the Beijing regime for a long long time But for whatever reason Taiwan deserves every last dime of the Americans and so is How much should we expect of the humanitarian side to try and distract us from the more material realities I think at least the rhetoric is always going to be there and I'd sort of argue it's sort of like the The the yin yang of American foreign policy we can look historically, you know all the way to the beginning Washington's farewell address John Quincy Adams go not you know Don't go in search of monsters to destroy and all that yet at the same time from the very beginning There has also been this other side that never was winning for the first hundred or so years of America We're not just the city on the hill It is our duty to descend from our glorious Enlightened hill to liberate all the benighted, you know oppressed peoples of the world And I mean one of the first times this happened what I mean all the way back people wanted to become involved in the French Revolutionary Wars the Greek wars of independence were a huge cause of you know among You know educated people who had this romantic view which is just hilarious as a side note because so many of the Greek revolutionaries were literally like bandits, but um It's always gonna be there Robert Nisbet has this good line in his book the present age Where it's just like the basis of American foreign policy has Of been like I can't remember what year he gave but since then has been just moralism Yet people like John Meersheim are also argue that in the end Material realities probably will The policy makers at least will face material realities to some degree or another Despite Rhetoric necessarily So I think some people would argue policy makers will own up to reality yet at the same time Doesn't seem like they're really doing that yet at least All right, well, we'll have to let that be the last word on this episode of war economy in state Thank you Zach for joining me and we'll be back next month with another episode and until then have a great month