This is the thing. It's like the polite people thing, right? So long as you have the facade,

so long as you pretend that you're like being cautious about it, or even that you feel bad about it,

then there's a lot of leeway built into that system for that. And I think the thing, the alarming thing,

the thing that's like really making liberals feel like, you know, Christian scientists with appendicitis,

is that this seems to be like out of fashion now. And that whether you are, whether you're Putin or whether you're Netanyahu or anyone else, you can just be like, no, it's fine. We actually

love this shit, cope and seeth about it. And so then, and so now it's like, if you're a, I don't know, if you're like Saab and you're making a new,

you know, gripen jet, you know, you're having, and maybe Israel wants to buy a few,

you're looking at all the compliance required to sell them, and you're like, hang on a second.

Is this actually worth it?

It's not good news for Saab. We're going to have to go back to making the 9-3 turbo, which, to be

honest, was a lot more sick than some of the stuff we're making now.

Right? But if you're in that situation, and then you have to think, okay, well, how do we get

all of these, how do we get this stuff to our ally who are going to be continuing to unconditionally

support? Because this whole system of laws that we set up was just to support us doing this,

but it was to support us doing this in ways that were deniable and sellable.

Riley, would you say that there's a sort of contradiction in the way these things are operating that's heightening?

I would say that.

And if you want to talk more about contradictions and these systems falling apart, all you have to do is look again at what is happening to stuff the U.S. is supposed to protect in the region.

Like the Red Sea now, the Houthis are striking U.S. flag ships, right?

Yeah, it seems like the airstrikes have not worked.

Yeah. Huh, crazy.

They've worked everywhere else they've been tried.

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