Building a coffee business, serving the best Americano in town is up to you. But winning back time and growing your business, leave that to sum up. Take orders and payments anywhere with the new SumUp terminal. Turn occasional customers into regulars with a free loyalty program. And with the SumUp point of sale system, you'll always know when you're running low on your best selling blends. Visit sumup.com.com.com to learn more. Hi, Bill Crystal here. Editor at large

of the bulwark. Very pleased to be joined by General Mark Hurtling, a frequent contributor to the

bulwark and also to our podcasts and really a wonderful voice of experience and good judgment on

not just on military things, foreign policy and life in general, but especially, of course, military

things, given your experience. So thanks, Mark, for joining me this afternoon. It's a pleasure, Bill.

Thanks. Interesting times we find ourselves in. Yeah, so I thought of you. I wanted to do this because

I read just like yesterday about the early retirement, apparently, of Admiral Albert Hosey, the four-star flag officer in charge of

Southern Command, and very unusual. I think, well, you'll tell me that, you know, we're leaving,

announcing that his resignation less than a year into what's normally a three-year posting, I believe,

and certainly a position that's the very height of

the military ladder of being a combatant commander. So say a little bit about what the position

is and how struck you are by that news. Yeah, well, he's, I don't know, Admiral Halsey. I've

heard many good things about him from people that do know him. And obviously,

he's been promoted to four stars or been assigned as a four star slot. But he's one of the serving

combatant commanders. And those are commanders, four stars, who are responsible for certain parts

of the globe. There's European command, there's Indo-Pacific command,

there's Central Command, which has the Middle East, and Admiral Holsey is responsible for Southern

Command, which is all of Latin and South America. Pretty big area of operation. It's one of the smaller

and some might say more neglected combatant commands because

there's not a whole lot of forces down there until recently. And we've seen, you know,

a lot of naval forces move into the area, indicators by the administration that they're putting

more emphasis on Latin America and the South, especially Venezuela and some of the

...