This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

Welcome to Tech Stuff.

Our guest today is Ben C. Solomon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker who reports on combat zones and international crises.

His work has appeared at the New York Times, on Vice and in the Wall Street Journal, and a recent Instagram video of Benz really caught my attention.

The way that the Iranians have designed current status of this war, it won't be about who

has the biggest guns. It'll be about who can afford to keep pulling the trigger.

It had the following caption, Just Follow the Money.

In the first few days of this conflict, the US has fired over 800

Patriot missiles. They cost about $4 million per missile. An Iranian Shahed drone costs about $30,000 to make.

So how's this going to work? How indeed? Ben, welcome. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

So, you asked the question. What's the answer?

You know, I don't think there's still a clear guideline for the Americans.

I think that when the fighting started, it was pretty obvious that the American military thought that this was going to be a pretty fast process.

Ever heard that one before?

Yeah, it's kind of played out to a lot of complicated ways for the way that the military works.

I think that a lot of the advisors in the Pentagon had been advising against this.

And a lot of the mechanisms that

they have for defending against the attacks that they probably expected are in fact ready. But

the attacks they didn't expect are the ones that are coming now. And that's really drones. And

because of that, it's become a really financially imbalanced fight. And that's

where their problems are now. Now, how is it they didn't expect drones? Because the Iranians

...