Free Zone Communiqué, Ep. 23 - Hegseth, Walz and Signal

Party Pooper Podcast

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Free Zone Communiqué, Ep. 23 - Hegseth, Walz and Signal

My last word on the leak, tariff talk AND updates.

Matt Jordan

May 07, 2025

Transcript

Tip Jar. Thanks.

I don’t want Pete Hegseth fired. The troops love him. And I knew the moment he was picked there would be some frat boy kinks that would have to be worked out of his system. And I wish Mike Walz hadn’t been demoted. But a very public ass chewing for both would have been appropriate. My problem with the Signal debacle runs deeper than the sloppy use of a commercial communications app.

So here’s the pickle. The alternative to using Signal would be to use the slow, clunky, often compromised Department of Defense SIPRnet or another classified network. Not only is the use of it inefficient (nobody is running around with a cellular device that can make good use of those nets - not whole teams anyway), but the Chinese, Koreans, Ukrainians, Russians have set up shop on those nets many times before.

I heard a report a few years back that a Chinese hack had been discovered at DoD, probably through a contractor’s computer, and no one knew how to get the bug off the network! They believed it may have been there for up to two years! It was just Xi shopping for military weapons designs. Nothing to worry about.

So when people got the vapors over the use of Signal, which until last month came pre-installed in devices issued to some federal employees, which the previous administration instructed their people to use for secure point to point communications, which is far more secure than SIPR, I didn’t go all wide-eyed and spit out my coffee. But I did smirk and shake my head.

Here’s why.

For all the money we piss away at the Pentagon, our tech is still ham-handed and amateurish. That’s because it is all design-by-committee, each member wanting to have their fingerprints obvious on the product. And these people are not the crem de la crem of the IT world. For an unclassified example, go to a government website and navigate it. It is NOT intuitive, it is NOT user friendly and the cover pages are crammed with representations of lists of every organization in that space. Some have improved over the years, slowly and far behind private sector products. Even the stuff designed by contractors is weighted down by MILSPEC and credit hounds.

So I get no comfort that people are using “secure” systems, which run on the internet, over encripted point to point apps. But there ARE problems with the apps.

The first is the obvious problem Pete had in March. There is no mechanism that defines a user, no restrictions. “Need-to-know” is replaced with “Hey, check this out!” Walz’s deputy threw together a distro for the Yemen group. How HE would have ACCIDENTLY included a NYT reporter is beyond fishy. But I am not here to deal with that right now. No matter the medium, such lists should not be wide. They should be very narrow and carefully considered.

This was extra embarrassing and harder to explain when another sensitive Signal thread was reported to include Pete’s wife and brother, and a number of people without clearance. The attitude in these threads, at least prior to the leak, seems to be a bit too chatty, chummy and extraneous. So not only do we have a communications hardware problem, we need to tighten up on chatter.

The second and REAL problem with this form of communications is historical preservation. Unless you leak the shit to a reporter, there is no historical record of what was said and done. I know there are people who read that last sentence and said so what! Who cares if there is no history. They can make notes on the side. For people who don’t understand history, that’s why we keep real time records of comunications.

Without those comms, we have no near term lessons learned for an exercise. We have no legal record in the event actions are challenged and we have no long term record for historians to piece together an accurate record of events. Requiring records also makes potential shadow government operations more difficult. It isn’t too difficult to operate in the shadows, but the gaps leave a trail almost as well as messages might.

So where does that leave us. I think the key take-away is we need a closed, stand-alone network that works like Signal. Quick, agile and encrypted end to end. It should be capable of dropping a copy of all comms in an archive. (See, right there, the storage creates a vulnerability - a point of failure.)

I’ve spoken to people who really don’t care about the use of Signal in official comms. And I know people who are livid about it. I see why both feel that way. But the choices versus efficiency and real security suck.

Update 1

We had the annual rich bitches version of Nerd Prom last night. The theme for the Met Gala was a now-outdated, race obsessed pander to empty-headed rick black people and their guilty white liberal pals. The red carpet was a mix of amazing clothes and idiots who looked like the threw a granade into a thrift shop and wore whatever landed on them.

Honorabel mentions: Kendell Jenner, Serena Williams, Tyla and Diana Ross looked amazing. And there were others who looked really amazing. Kamala and Doug looked like rich whities crashing a Motown party. Lauryn Hill, Demi Moore and Walton Goggin took nice clothing ideas and made them stupid [Look at me! Look at me!]. Madonna achieved a look Elton wishes he could have pulled of, but he was a pudgy little guy.

There were a few people who took the theme, which droned on about the black diaspora and how fashion was a form of resistance (I swear you can’t make this stuff up) and turned in on its ear. These folks were plainly trying to portray themselves as the worst self-parody you can imaging. They were trying to be goofy stereotypes. These included Jenelle Monae, Tramell Tillman, Andre 3000, Rege-Jean Page, Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz.

As it has been for some years now, the gala was just another gathering of conceited, rich, mostly showfolk. They strutted their conspicuous consumption while telling the world they are apalled by income inequality. And as a bonus this year, the really, really, REALLY cared about black people. I can just see the absurdly rich blue blood, Anna Wintour planning this years theme…Those blacks like to play dress-up. Let’s do something with that. And, ya know, talk about poor people too.

Update 2

We’re still working the Wisconsin thing. And just so you know, there are probably Wisconsin people subscribed. But they would have come over from my Wordpress days. They wouldn’t show up on my Substack subscription heat map. Only newbies would. AND I WANT TO SEE WISCONSIN TURN ORANGE!

Update 3

Friday’s show will be an interesting conversation with CIA whistle-blower Susan Lindauer. It may end up being an episode with a sequel later as I have a lot of material to research in support of an extensive interview. I broke my own rule by letting her name out of the hat before the interview is in the can. But she’s flogging a book, so hopefully, all will go smoothly.

Update 4

The Navy and the Army are celebrating their 250th birthdays this year. Get onboard with the festivities. DC and Philly are gearing up for some serious events. More no those events later.

You can get some Army and Navy gear at Po River. Enjoy the year.

More things you MUST think about with Trump’s tariff policies

I am not a tariff supporter. I don’t blindly oppose the tariffs. At THIS MOMENT I am a tariff agnostic. That’s because I don’t know how serious Trump is about tariffs to begin with, or what he intends to accomplish with them.

Generally, tariffs are a stupid idea. All trade barriers are. They cost citizens, in the countries with the barriers in place, more for anything they want to buy from the targetted nation. The more ciritcal the item, the more unethical the placement of tariffs are. They are unethical because they help absolutely NO ONE but the companies protected by the barrier.

Here’s a counterintuitive example. Subsidies. They are a trade barrier too. Just like tariffs. Any time a government interferes in the price of a product or service it is an insult to free trade and a sop for one crony or another.

In the case of the American sugar industry, you pay a slighly cut rate for you sugar. The price is kept artificially low to keep foreign sugar from being conpetitive. We destroyed the British Honduras’ (Belize) economy this way. What you don’t feel is the billions of your tax dollars go directly to sugar producers on top of what you already paid them.

When countries legitimately make thing cheaper than we do and ship them here, we howl about how unfair it is. When governments use tariffs or subsidies to thwart our products, we howl. But it’s okay for us to wreck small economies to keep rich cronies rich on our tax dollars.

That’s a the general argument about these schemes. But they exist across the globe, governments everywhere lick the toes of the cronies that own them and interfere with free trade all day long. We just have the lightest touch at this time. So if tariffs are a reality, what is the Donald’s plan for them?

Right now, he appears to be flailing and pissing ideas all over the wall without a reasoned approach. That may be because he is keeping his views close to his vest in an effort to fool his neogtiating partners into favorable agreements. (The most beautiful agreements. So beautiful. Agreements like you’ve nobody has ever seen.).

OR he’s pissing all over the wall without a reasoned approach.

We can’t know what is true because he has offered two diametrically opposed versions of what the end game is. With one, he wants a big beautiful income for the United States government from a permanent tariff scheme, so much so that he can cut or eliminate the income tax. This is the most stupid of the two outcomes. What you don’t pay in income tax, you’ll pay in tariffs. And if you avoid foreign goods, or buy used to avoid the tariffs, they have to raise you taxes again. Thanks, Don.

The other option is to force countries to remove their tariffs and practice free trade. At that point we’d remove our tariffs. BOOM! We have free trade where you pay for what you want and don’t pay for anyone else.

BUT…

He’s talking about imposing a permanent 10% tariff against foreign goods. Let’s say that works. Everybody agrees. Their cronies got a 10% bump. US cronies get a 10% bump. And it’s not enought to offset the income tax - ALL OF WHICH YOU WILL PAY ANYWAY!!!!!!

So what the fuck is the end game? The markets, and to some extent the economy, went batshit at the disorganized announcement of the tariff schemes. Then they calmed down when a 90 day hold was announced. They’ll go batshit again at the end of the 90 days if the whole issue hasn’t been buttoned up.

That’s because we don’t know what the hell these knuckleheads advising Trump wish to accomplish. We don’t know what the point is. If it is anything other than free trade (And it won’t be free trade. I’ll explain in a second.), the markets will take another giant dump on about 50 days from now.

So how do I know free trade is not the intent of this nonsense?

To establish a true free trade we need OUR political whores to stop licking the toes of cronies in this country. They need to be told that no barriers will be set up on either end to support them. If you want to make widgets, but can’t compete on the foreign markets, you can’t export you widgets - downsize!

Unions need to become what they were intended to be; a safe work environment and a living wage. If a worker wants to stay on the line and not move up, he won’t make $80k with full benefits. The company will hire a young guy. You move up or out.

Welcome to the realities of free markets and free trade. If you settle for anything else, you’d be stupid to bitch about the cost of goods or the governement being too involved in your life.

There are people who call themselves conservatives cheering the Donald pursuing the big government, central planning option. Who wants to be the first to tell them?

Blind followers will support anything Trump does, no matter how poorly executed - no matter how poorly communicated. People suffering from TDS will oppose it because ORANGE MAN BAD! But thinking people don’t have a position because of all the flailing. We have no evidence to support it. We have no evidence to oppose it. We have no evidence at all. We just see numbers being tossed around. Even Treasury Secretary Bessent didn’t give us a sense of an end game in front of Congress today.

Without at least an outline of what trade will look like after the dust settles (they don’t have to tell us exactly how they intend to get there), reasonable people have no basis on which to debate the value of the idea.

Here is a short education in free trade with extra links. I highly recommend you read it.