Palmer Luckey tells Joe about the deadliest weapon he’s ever seen

00:00I work in the weapons industry and I've seen a lot of cool stuff. I've seen stuff that the US is making, that I'm making. I'm familiar with a lot of the weapon systems that Russia and China have in fielding or in progress. Some of the stuff that China and Russia are doing, I mean it's as sci-fi as what the United States is doing. But I've come to the conclusion that their most powerful weapon is not any bomb or missile or drone, it's their ability to control people's minds through the media, through propaganda, through kind of state pressure. They convince them to believe things about the world that weren't true, that aren't true. And then they're they're basically making people willing to fight

00:38for causes that don't really exist. Like good example of this is Ukraine. A lot of the Russians who went to fight in Ukraine in the early days. I think the truth is out now. But when they were first invading, they were told that the people of Ukraine want to be liberated. You're going to be a hero. You're going to go over there like they desperately want Russia to save them and reunify them. And it's it's just this, you know, Kiev-led, you know, cabal funded by the West that has a that's barely holding on to the country and and keeping and staying in power. Um and people in Russia really believe that. Like the guys who are fighting on the front lines, the guys who are flying tanks and helicopters, they believed it. When when

01:15I went to when I went to Ukraine during the war, one of the things that I got to see was there was this helicopter wreck. It was an attack helicopter that was trying to seize an airfield of a of a private aerospace company. And the guys actually shot it down themselves. Like I did show me videos of them wearing polo shirts shooting down the helicopter in their parking lot. I mean it's like So the the the pilots the pilots kind of go bag, you know, this bag with all of his emergency and survival gear in it. It had three or four days of water, three or four days of food, another flight uniform, his dress uniform with dress shoes because he they were told they were going to be they said this is going to be a five-day

01:54military operation. There's going to be parades. I was having So dress uniform and then 50 condoms. This guy thought that he was going to be he thought the women were going to be all over him. They were going to he was going to need 50 condoms for the post-war celebration. Wow. >> And to me that speaks to how brainwashed this guy was. And remember helicopter pilots aren't like the dumb grunt Right. >> dragging I mean he's probably one of the more highly educated people. >> Right. And they convinced him that the people of Ukraine wanted him to liberate them and that they were going to be so happy to see him that he was going to need his dress uniform and 50 condoms. Wow. >> And there were similar 50 is a lot. 50

02:31is a lot. Yeah. Kind of a storm. That's crazy. >> I I will give him a little credit. You know, it 50 condoms doesn't take up that much space in your bag. But but it's but it's a lot. It's a lot. >> Yeah. And the this wasn't like the Well, this wasn't the only guy. Like this was actually pretty common. >> Everybody had 50 condoms? I don't know if everybody had 50, They all brought condoms. >> Well, a lot of guys had condoms and a lot of people brought their dress uniforms. They thought that they were they were going to roll into Kiev, take over, the people wanted them to be in power and that they were going to be marching around town and people would say, "Look, it's our liberators, our saviors."

03:03Now of course, that's totally divorced from reality. Like whatever you however you feel about the politics of Ukraine and Russia and the and America cuz they're all tightly intermingled. >> Right. That's clearly not reality. And so what I worry about is like the easy one is if China invades Taiwan, they're going to come up with a similar story. They're going to trick their people into thinking, "Oh, Taiwan wants to be reunified. You're fighting for the better cause." But then the really spooky thing is what happens when our media pulls the same stunt? I would argue that what we did in the Middle East was driven by really not that different, right? I mean a lot of the justification for going over there and

03:39doing this nation-building. I mean we were told all these stories. "Oh, they want they don't want they they want to get out from under the Taliban. They don't want to have these, you know, tribal rule. They do want democracy." And in reality, we were kind of sold a bill of goods just wasn't true. So it's easy to make fun of the Russian with his 50 condoms, but we're not really that much better.