From the K-P-F-K Studios in Southern California,

it's the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

Stand up, stand up.

You've been sitting great to long.

Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan along with the man of the hour Ralph Nader. Hello Ralph. Hello. This is a great program to our listeners.

It is. I just want to mention that David Feldman, our co-host is off again this week.

So security is the theme for today's show. We're going to talk about in the context of the military and also about

potential cyber warfare against our energy grid. First up we welcome award-winning journalist

Andrew Coburn who writes about defense and national security issues.

In fact, in the Reagan era, he uncovered the holiness of the so-called Soviet threat and finds that today's threat inflators have equally little regard for the truth.

This has become significant in the last few weeks with the renewed tensions between

the US and Iran.

The article in Harpers, though, that attracted Ralph's attention is entitled,

The Military Industrial Virus, how bloated defense budgets gut our armed forces.

Now, personally, I'm always struck by how presidential candidates every four years talk about rebuilding our military

Which makes me curious about when it actually fell apart

Especially since we spend more money on it than the next 10 or 12 countries combined.

And regular listeners know that Ralph is always pointing out how the Pentagon budget never

gets audited.

Well, Mr. Coburn makes the counterintuitive case that the more we spend on the military the weaker we actually get.

So we'll find out what's behind that paradox in the first half of the show.

In the second half of the program, we turn our attention to cybersecurity.

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