Fighting the Last War (Badly)

America's Military Readiness Problem

Hi, it’s Beth. It’s Saturday night, February 28. Sarah is on a plane heading to Texas, where we will be speaking to faith leaders and communities on Sunday and Monday. I fly out tomorrow morning.

I don’t know what the world will look like by the time this episode reaches you. I know it looks different right now than it did when we recorded this episode a few days ago.

Today, the United States and Israel attacked Iran. President Trump has announced that the attacks killed Iran’s supreme leader. Both President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have said that regime change is an explicit goal of this operation. Iran has already begun a campaign of retaliatory attacks.

Today’s episode is about war. We knew, as you’ll hear, when we recorded that the US going to war with Iran was possible and perhaps likely. We felt and feel that this episode reflecting on four years of war in Ukraine is important. War is changing. The contours of what it can and can’t create are different all the time. We need to be aware of that as we process these strikes and what follows them.

I spent the day today reading questions for elementary school academic team students. A few times during the day, I felt a little guilty. This news is huge; shouldn’t I be doing something else? But…what? Scrolling X? Posting on Instagram? The more I considered it, the more I realized that I was right where I can and should be—connected to my community, helping kids see the world in as big a context as possible, watching families work hard for their goals, and celebrating their accomplishments. I know many of you feel intense emotions and are compelled to do something to help. I guarantee that in your ways, you already are.

Sarah and I will be back with you here on Friday, and we’ll know so much more then than we do now. Until then, we wish for peace, in and around you and throughout the world.

Topics Discussed

• Four Years into Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

• The Changing Nature of War

• Outside of Politics: Listener Question: High Heels?

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Episode Resources

• Opinion | Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself (The New York Times)

• The Looming Taiwan Chip Disaster That Silicon Valley Has Long Ignored (The New York Times)

• The New Rules of War by Sean McFate

• The Militarization of Silicon Valley (The New York Times)

Episode Transcript

Beth [00:00:00] Hi, it’s Beth. It’s Saturday night, February 28th. Sarah is on a plane heading to Texas where we’ll be speaking to faith leaders and communities on Sunday and Monday. I fly out tomorrow morning. I don’t know what the world will look like by the time this episode reaches you. I know it looks really different right now than it did when we recorded this episode just a few days ago. Today, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. President Trump announced that the attacks killed Iran’s supreme leader. Both President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have said that regime change is an explicit goal of this operation. Iran has already begun a campaign of retaliatory attacks. Today’s episode is about war. We knew, as you’ll hear when we recorded, that the U.S. going to war with Iran was possible, maybe even likely. We felt and feel that this episode, reflecting on four years of war in Ukraine, is important. War is changing. The contours of what it can and can’t create are different all the time. We need to be aware of that as we process these strikes and what follows them. I spent the day today reading questions for elementary school academic team students. A few times during the day, I felt a little guilty. This news is so big. Shouldn’t I be doing something else? But what is that something else? Scrolling X, posting on Instagram? The more I considered it, the more I realized I was right where I can and should be, connected to my community. Helping kids see the world in as big a context as possible, watching families work hard for their goals and celebrating their accomplishments. I know many of you feel intense emotions and are compelled to do something to help. I promise that in your ways, you are already helping. Sarah and I will be back with you here on Friday. We’ll know much more then than we do right now. And until then we wish for peace in and around you and throughout the world.

Sarah [00:01:52] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:01:54] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:01:56] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we are marking the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by talking about where the war is, what’s going on with Russia, what is going on with Ukraine, and the ways in which that war has changed war. We’re going to pivot into a conversation about whether or not America is prepared to meet any type of real military challenge. And then we’re going to take a really, really hard turn Outside of Politics and answer Norma’s question, what is our philosophy on high heels?

Beth [00:02:33] We are recording this episode on Tuesday, February 24th because we are currently in Houston as you’re listening. And we are very aware as we’re recording that we sit on a little bit of a knife’s edge with Iran and that situation could have changed dramatically by the time you hear this. If it has, we will be back with you on Friday to talk about it. We are excited though to be together in person and with listeners in person in Texas. And we’re excited about coming to Minneapolis to do that again at the end of August. Tickets for our one and only live show this year and all the surrounding events go on sale next week. They’ll open to premium members on Tuesday, March 10th, everyone else on Thursday, March 12th. So check out our show notes for more information on that. And we really hope that you’ll come spend time with us in a truly great city with lots of truly great other listeners. Up next, let’s talk about Russia and Ukraine.

Sarah [00:03:33] As of last week, the war in Ukraine has officially entered its fifth year. Beth, I don’t remember what I was reading but I was sitting with my family and I said how many people do you think have died from Russia alone in this war? I think Nicholas guessed 80,000, I think one of the boys guessed like 120,000. And I said 1.2. Million people. And it caught me because I did not realize it was that high. That’s why I read it out loud to them. I had no idea the casualties on the Russian side were that high. And, listen, the Ukrainian casualties are anywhere from like 500,000 to 600,000. It’s just an enormous amount of death.

Beth [00:04:34] And I wonder how they factor in deaths of people who are fighting for those sides, but are not of those nationalities. It’s one thing that’s really been striking to me lately. And I feel like I’m seeing more and more coverage of this. That there are North Korean soldiers there. There are Kenyan soldiers there.

Sarah [00:04:53] And some of them are tricked.

Beth [00:04:54] Right. Some of them were tricked. There are prisoners there from all over the world. There are Americans who’ve gone to fight with Ukraine. There are a lot of people. We haven’t talked about it as a world war, but at some point it’s a different version of that, isn’t it? Because there’s so much interest in so many people involved in sacrificing their lives for this.

Sarah [00:05:16] Well, and it’s just grinding, especially on the Russian side. They’re thinking they’re losing about 40,000 casualties a month since November. 40,00 people a month, and they’re only recruiting-- and I the word recruiting is doing a lot of work there-- up to 35,000. Did you see the statistic that it was like 125 people for over 1.6 kilometers? I mean, they’re just grinding it out. They’re not even making really any big advances. It’s 15 to 70 meters per day in key sectors that Russia’s trying to gain. So I do feel like for a while people were like, oh, well Russia’s got Trump and Russia survived and they’re exacting such a cost on Ukraine and they were definitely weaponizing the seasons and winter in particular. And I’m not saying they haven’t expanded the territory they’ve claimed, and definitely exacted a lot of civilian loss recently, but there’s no universe in which you would describe what they’re doing as winning.

Beth [00:06:27] It’s hard to think about this going into its fifth year because as you were saying that for a while this is our mentality. I was trying to go through that whole journey preparing for this episode. That Russia began with the mentality that this was going to be over fast. They were going to swoop in and take Kiev. The rest of the world had that attitude too, that Ukraine was dramatically outmatched here. And then for both sides there have been moments of what feels like momentum as you’re observing war. But when you put these numbers to it, that seems like a horrible way to analyze it. And five years later, I think answering for what in Russia feels really complicated, and answering for Ukraine feels really complicated and like a true indictment of the United States in the West to me. I was reading some reflections from reporters and diplomats, people who have been with this conflict the whole time, and almost every one of them said something like, at this point, Europe needs Ukraine as much as Ukraine needs Europe.

Sarah [00:07:30] Yeah, with regards to Russia, it’s it’s so interesting to me that I think militarily they were seen as so strong and economically the sanctions would weaken them and really it turned out to be the opposite. Militarily, they got their ass handed to them in the invasion and economically they soared for a bit, despite all these sanctions. That’s not even true anymore. I can’t really look at a place of strength. I don’t even think Trump has turned out the way that Vladimir Putin thought he would. They have not given them what they wanted. They have not basically just pushed Ukraine to give in to all the territorial demands of Russia. They’ve talked about security guarantees. Would I have done it this way? No, but has the cessation of American support forced Europe to step up? Yeah. A lot of what’s coming to Ukraine now is European. And so I think that that is a success as well. And economically, Russia’s in a terrible position. They have just poured and restructured their entire economy (and by ‘they’ I mean Putin) into the war. Nearly 40% of Russia’s federal budget is now devoted to the military and security, 9% goes to interest payments on the debt to finance the war. Their wealth fund is down from 113 billion to 55 billion. Oil and gas profits are down. Foreign direct investment has cratered. Divestment investment is crippled by high interest rates aimed at taming inflation, which is high because they poured such money into the war. Their economy is dangerous. They’ve lost all these people. They were already looking at demographic struggles population-wise. Whatever happens, Russia has lost. He has decimated their economy and their population. They’ve had a brain drain where people flee. Like it’s really, really terrible. It’s really terrible

Beth [00:09:31] And it’s hard to say that Ukraine has won, even though Ukraine has certainly on the world stage attracted so much admiration, inconsistent support, but support. I would imagine that the national spirit there has been altered significantly several times over since this began. But still, so many dead Ukrainians, so much infrastructure hobbled. You’ve got people right now in the winter struggling because Russia has been so effective at taking out infrastructure electricity heat. I look at this situation constantly and think, there is no winning a war. Maybe there never was, but there definitely isn’t now.

Sarah [00:10:13] At the end of the day they know what they’re fighting for, and that’s just a very different position to be in. They are fighting for literal territory and sovereignty. I think what’s so exhausting, I can only imagine, is it’s a multi-front war. They can’t just fight Russia with the support of the U.S. And Europe. Zelensky spends so much of his time trying to prop up his allies. That’s what’s exhausting, I can’t only imagine like. I feel like if we’d all poured in from the beginning what they needed, this would be over. Now I think the way they have innovated with drones, I mean, they’ve crippled Russia’s refining capacity. They have taken drones and they’ve assassinated people inside Russia. Like they’ve done everything they possibly could with what they have been given. It’s just the stop and start of the giving that has to be so exhausting. And I think that after so much time, it starts to cripple-- not even cripple, there’s nothing left to give to your civic infrastructure. So you see these corruption trials and they need an election. And it’s just like all of that is on the back burner. And as we enter the fifth year, it’s hard not to ask for how long.

Beth [00:11:34] I remember us talking to Sean McFaith years ago now about his book, The New Rules of War. And when we talked with him and read that book, we talked so much about how public opinion is necessary to war. I read a great piece by a military analyst this morning that talked about legitimacy and how difficult it is to sustain legitimacy in war because no one is immune from committing war crimes. War is so violent and that violence will spread to everyone. You cannot isolate the violence in the theater of war. And so everybody, all sides, will commit atrocities that chip away at their legitimacy. And this analyst was saying it’s critical for joint forces to really stress ethics, to monitor ethics, to have a process to deal with it when people breach those ethics. But I was thinking about that with exactly what you were saying, that Zelensky has had to mount the PR campaign of our lifetimes to establish and maintain Ukraine’s legitimacy in the minds of people like you and me so that we pressure our government to continue to support this effort. And to do that in this media landscape with social media, the technology, I don’t know how you game that out as a military analyst if you’re thinking about the future. But it certainly seems like he has had to fight on more fronts than anyone ever has.

Sarah [00:13:10] I think that so much of this happened certainly during other wars like World War II, and it’s just this private. And there’s still a lot private diplomatically that’s going on that we don’t know about. It’s just so crazy to see with this conflict in particular how much of it has happened publicly. And that if it seems exhausting by what we can see publicly, I can only imagine what it feels like privately with whatever he’s constantly navigating and dealing with. There is no doubt, and that’s what we’re going to get into next, that the way Ukraine has fought back has permanently changed war. I have read so many reports from the front line and what they are doing with unmanned drones, with basically like kamikaze drones and just the way that how cheaply they can put together something that can inflict an enormous amount of damage. Even Russia has started to adapt to the changing use of weapons and technology. And I think we’re just beginning to understand how that will spread and change the way any future conflict is fought. The conversation around Ukraine and Russia has forced to the forefront a long-running critique of our military that we are overmatched. Beth, I know this came up a great deal when you were doing your comprehensive review of Project 2025.

Beth [00:15:03] As I’ve said many times, the defense section of Project 2025 was to me, the most thoughtful, interesting, useful starting point for conversation in the whole document. And I know there are people who hear Project 2025 and turn their brains off, but the defense session is worth discussing. And I heard that from people who work in military procurement, who are in the service, who are married to service members, that there is stuff here worth paying attention to. We’re not going to agree on every point of it, but there is a lot in Project 2025 that I think somewhat courageously and surprisingly, given all of the sort of America first, American greatness ethos of the movement that produced Project 2025, there is a real critique of what we have allowed to harden and fortify around the defense complex. And it says the world has moved on. We have doubled down on old things while the world had been moving on. And what we do here is too expensive. It’s too slow. We are not prepared for a world in which we need to fight on multiple fronts at one time.

Sarah [00:16:17] And this was recently confirmed by a classified Pentagon assessment, the overmatch brief, which was reported on by the New York Times late last year. And war games are not always right and war analysts are not right, but the conclusion of these people whose job it is to be as right as humanly possible because it’s a very high stakes prediction they’re making. Is that for example, if there was some sort of US-China war over Taiwan, as we’re recording the New York Times, there’s a big piece on how if the Chinese blockaded Taiwan and the chips that the entire technology sector relies on, it would cause like 11% loss in our economy. Like, it would just be massive. And when you play out that scenario, we lose. We lose every time. The Chinese have an enormous trade surplus that they have been pouring in to military modernization. They have a larger Navy than we do. Our fleet is down 45% since the 90s, theirs is much larger. They have spent enormous manpower, money, technological prowess into understanding how to cripple our communications networks. And I think what’s frustrating as we get into the reasons we’re overmatched is that not just because of Project 2025, but because of some of their statements and seeming policy priorities, Trump and Pete has seemed to understand this. They have said pretty clearly that they have problems, that we have problems. Now, I don’t know why they’re going after the Boy Scouts as a way to answer this problem. I feel like the problem is so big you would have to just keep your head down, stay off Fox News and focus on it for your entire four years if you were just going to even get close. He’s too busy making people take lie detector tests and purging the top ranks of the Pentagon, but they do seem to accept on the premise that we are overmatched.

Beth [00:18:23] I think they find it useful, but they don’t understand it. I think understanding implies a depth and a level of experience that they do not have and are not interested in having. I think that Pete Hegseth is a good match for Trump because they both care a lot about branding. And most of what Hegseth has done, at least publicly at the Pentagon, has just been a lot about a very surface level brand. And I worry that while there are people within the conservative movement who actually understand this and care about it and are willing to put work in, that those are not the people steering the ship right now.

Sarah [00:19:05] Well, let’s break down why people conclude we’re overmatched. One of the issues is exactly what we were just talking about with Ukraine. Ukraine has survived and even broken out ahead during different moments of this conflict because of the use of drones. Meanwhile, we just spent 13 billion on the Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier. We tried to build a constellation class of warships that cost $3.5 billion and produced zero ships. So we’re still doubling down on the most expensive, technologically complex, hard to build pieces of weaponry while what Ukraine has shown is that the future, at least a big part of the future, of modern warcraft is going to be drones. And we’re out here talking about the Golden Fleet. And I don’t understand. I think it’s so frustrating. It’s not surprising this happens over and over again. People fight the last war. There’s a reason we have that phrase at the ready. And the last war has been so long ago. That’s the other thing. Technology has accelerated so quickly that I think this emphasis-- I was reading in the New York Times about this new plane and the pilot’s helmet alone cost $400,000. Do you know how many drones Ukraine could make for $400,000? Probably quite a few.

Beth [00:20:38] I think there is something in the American mindset because of advancements that we made after World War I and World War II that we’re going to always be great at war and we’re going to always prosper on the other side of war. And I just don’t think that’s true anymore. And I think that the multi-billion dollar shipbuilding mindset is still in that mode of like somebody’s going to get rich because of this and isn’t that wonderful? I think a lot about my friend, Eric, who talks to me about guns sometimes. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chat about guns, but Eric really believes in protecting yourself. And he really liked for me to purchase a gun to have for self-protection. And what he always says is that guns are an equalizer. So if I’m being attacked, it doesn’t matter if someone’s a lot stronger than I am if I have a gun, right? It equalizes the field with us. And I do not find that persuasive enough to arm myself. But if I think about it, that’s really true of technology now. It’s a great equalizer. The advantages that a country like ours used to have because we were able to spend $13 billion on an aircraft carrier are eroded when there is a lot of cheap, easily available technology that anyone can Google how to turn into something that is deadly, that is smart, that collects an incredible amount of data. We used to watch movies about people sneaking in little microphones to listen to conversations. And we live in a world now where every single person carries the capacity to record on them and would look weird if they were trying to hide it. You’d look more suspicious if you don’t pull a phone out in a social circumstance than if you do. And so everything about that landscape has changed. I recognize I’m out of my depth when we start talking about weaponry. But I think what I do understand is that might is a different concept today than even what I hear Trump and Hegseth talking about.

Sarah [00:22:43] We are not even fighting the last war well. We’re not even building the big aircraft carriers. And we tried to build the constellation class and it failed. Our industrial decline is real. We don’t have the capacity to even build the last wars weapons the way that we used to. It’s a massive amount of wasteful spending. The procurement process, which I know project 2025 spends a lot of time on is just out of control. We’ve gone from like 51-- what they call primes, these military industrial corporations that provide a lot of the parts, supplies, weapons for the United States military. We’ve gotten from 51 in the 90s to five. So the same consolidation that’s enshitified everything else in our lives has happened within the United States’ military. And we just keep throwing money at it. There’s this crazy moment where I was reading an article and they were like, well, the military doesn’t have any way to inventory parts. So they just buy more and more parts because they don’t know where the parts they bought are. And I’m like is this a joke? Like, are your kidding me? Like, that’s not worth it? It’s mind blowing. Congress doesn’t help because Congress is out there pouring pork into the military budget that they didn’t ask for. Last year’s budget had $52 billion the Pentagon did not ask for, weapons, buildings, stuff they didn’t even want. These budgetary lapses make it incredibly hard on the military. We have bases we should have closed decades ago, but congressmen protect them. Like, it’s a mess. Again, if we were fighting the old war efficiently, maybe this wouldn’t be the absolute worst case scenario. But not only are we fighting the old war, we’re fighting it badly.

Beth [00:24:27] And it’s impossible to just say, okay, we’re going to stop for a big team meeting now. We’re going to put everything on hold while we have a strategy session because we have service members all over the world, bases everywhere that depend on things continuing to happen. You can see why the status quo gets baked in because we have spread ourselves really thin. And I’m not saying that those people aren’t out doing good and that some of that hasn’t protected us and had real benefits for countries other than ours too. I believe that it has, but it has come at a cost of real stagnation.

Sarah [00:25:03] I think my frustration with Trump and Hegseth is at the beginning of this term, they did have a moment to dramatically disrupt the status quo and the Department of Defense. They had a Congress that was representing anything they wanted. I think they could have closed bases. They did go after the procurement process. They did make some changes and they have put these military contractors on alert to say if you don’t produce what you’re supposed to by your deadline. But again, it’s just swagger. Are there any processes backing this up. And I do want to give them credit where credit is due. I think procurement is some of the stuff that’s bubbled up the most that they seem to be paying attention to. And that’s definitely something I know you talked a lot about with Project 2025, that this process is such a mess. And I just think that they could have instead of just swagger and what was in their control within the Department of Defense, they could’ve pressured Congress to do actual legislative changes that would have stuck around long after Pete Hegseth is gone.

Beth [00:26:02] And what we don’t know in terms of those procurement changes are the effect yet. That they’ve made efforts, but were they good efforts? Were they efforts directed in a productive way? Are they efforts that will outlast this administration? I just don’t know that yet. It takes a long time to see the effects of changes in the military. I mean, recruitment is an example of that. Trump and Hegseth love to take credit for recruitment increasing in 2025, but the truth is those numbers started going up before the election, even before the presidential election in 2024, because of efforts that were in the works for a very long time to spend a lot more money on marketing. It costs a lot to convince people that they want to sign up for the military. It costs more to convince someone to sign-up for the military than it costs to take someone who fails some qualifications and get them to qualified. So it took a long time to see some of the fruits of those efforts. And Trump gets to come in and say, well, it’s because we’ve decided everybody’s a manly man now and they want to be part of this force. And that’s not it. It’s a lot of careful changes that created the conditions for success there. And so I’m just skeptical when talking about procurement that what they’ve done is going to work in the long term. Maybe it will, but I think you got to have a couple years to see evidence of those changes.

Sarah [00:27:25] I’m willing to give them some of the credit for the recruitment. I’m willing to say they were so vocal. It really was a PR push. I think there were people who joined because Hegseth was out there doing pull-ups. Like I do, I hate it, but I think it’s probably right. What I think is so annoying and undercuts any perhaps credit they deserve is that this whole warrior mentality, like we need warriors, I guess but also what we just talked about is war is going to be fought behind a desk. Like you’re going to be out there sending out unmanned drones and deciding like what sort of protections to put in place with regards to the ethics of AI. And there’s been some effort to start recruiting because people are interested in this new technology. In Palantir’s role there was a great piece about recruitment in Silicon Valley and how more and more the tech industry is not a sexy recruiter like it used to be. And so people are looking around to use their skills and education in a different way to serve their country, but they’re not articulating any of that. They’re going after these research institutions that in theory should be a place we would be recruiting for the United States military, like Stanford, like MIT, and instead they’re like going after them because of some woke ideological bullshit.

Beth [00:28:53] Those recruiting numbers as they started to come up again were built around women. And I think that Trump and Hegseth are really setting us back in that regard. You need women, you need immigrants. You need people who are willing to serve their country and be part of a difficult institution for trans people. Like they have made the tent smaller as they’ve said that it needs to get a lot bigger. They’ve been very successful in recruiting for ICE except how do you measure success in recruitment. Is it just bodies or is it competency, capacity, credibility, ethics? So, again, I just don’t know. I think that a lot more study is needed to understand what they’ve done and what the impact of it has been. I am worried and probably the darkest space I get into is when I think about organizations like Palantir and the relationship between technology and war. I don’t quite know how to think about this because it’s hard for me to imagine a war that doesn’t at some point still become mud and violence and blood. The idea that war will be fought from behind a desk I think is right and still incomplete in some ways. And I worry about how sanitized those images are. I saw that video of the Palantir CEO on an investment call talking gleefully about how they help kill people. And I thought, “I don’t feel better about this than what’s going on in Ukraine.” So when you talk about how much this is evolving, I feel like I’m still behind that too.

Sarah [00:30:29] Well, the dramatic difference is that in the past this acceleration came from the public sector, not the private sector. We’re in a new wilderness here where the acceleration is coming from the private sector and the public sector’s trying to catch up. That’s very different from the past. What I have tried to accept-- and maybe it’s just the inevitable march of age that makes you more conservative and security-oriented. I’m willing to accept that as well. But in the same way I try to take seriously people’s concerns about crime and law and order. I think the purpose of a state is the security of its citizens That is one of the primary purposes of the state from both domestic crime and foreign intervention. If we can’t get this right, we already have such distrust in our institutions. You get to a place where people start to ask, what is the point of government if you can’t do the most basic things? I am not looking for conflict, but I am looking for a United States military that can not only end conflict that comes knocking at our door, but prevent it. I was reading a piece preparing for this episode and they were saying like we say Cold War mentality and it’s taken on such like a cynical tone. You think about McCarthyism and all these negative aspects of the Cold War. But the Cold War was won pretty bloodlessly.

[00:32:03] We won the Cold War by out researching, by using technology, by accelerating and innovating and getting the upper hand. And I think that that’s what we have to do with regards to AI, with regards to China. That we have to acknowledge, like, this might be a Cold War, but we have win it just like we won the last one. We’re not perfect, but the world entered an era of unheard of prosperity and safety. And it would have looked very, very different if Russia, the USSR, had won the Cold War. I think it’s hard to just take if you’re not a person who grew up in a military household or just have that sort of competitive orientation to the world. But an authoritarian government like China winning this race and having command of the most powerful weapons in the world would be very bad. It would be, very, very bad. I don’t like Palantir either, but I like it a hell of a lot better than Bite Dance. And I think it feels like a deal with the devil as so many things in war do. But I think putting us on a platform or foundation in which we can succeed, in which we-- I don’t think it’ll be all on our own. We’re not going to be able to reach the manufacturing capacity we need just here in the United States, ever. It’s going to have to be with regards to allies, which is another place that the Trump administration has failed tremendously. But I don’t want to waste billions of dollars in military procurement. I do want the most technologically advanced weapons. And I think that that should be the priority of the administration, of Congress and it just doesn’t feel like it is.

Beth [00:33:59] I understood the direction when we had this bipartisan consensus in DC that we had to win against China. I feel like we were adopting that Cold War mentality for a while and I understood it. I didn’t feel enthusiastic about it. I had a lot of questions, but I understood. I don’t understand where we are today because if we still accept the premise that America must invest in AI and must be ahead of China and must the most technologically advanced nation on earth, it is confusing to me that we have simultaneously allowed some of our most sophisticated chips to be sold in China, that we’ve walked back from that positioning of Cold War into just how can everybody make the most money possible? I don’t understand that. I’m not trying to be critical of it because I do believe there’s an aspect of tying everyone’s fortunes together that can also lead to peace. You see that in a lot of different contexts and I do think trade is part of this. I understand a little bit of the motivation with the tariffs even. It’s just the way that it’s all deployed ends up feeling really random to me in a way that makes me cynical about the motivation. It doesn’t feel like we’re trying to do what you’re articulating. It feels like we say some of what you are articulating when it helps people that we want to get rich, get richer. And we walk away from it when it’s an impediment to that.

Sarah [00:35:31] Yeah. I’m not I’m not encouraged that the Trump administration is going to pick up this mantle anytime soon, but I do think that I want to hear some articulation of this around anybody’s asking for my vote 2028.

Beth [00:35:45] Agreed. For sure.

Sarah [00:35:46] And I want to see consistent articulation of this with some depth, with some acknowledgement that like if you elect me, I’ll fix it all. I’m not looking for that. I’m looking for like we got a long journey and I think it will, unfortunately, most likely require some sort of outside force to motivate people to build the things we need to build, stop building things we don’t need to build anymore. And that’s hard to think about. It’s hard think about the outside forces when you’re talking about security and conflict that could force our hands. But I think that that’s probably the reality. That’s a dark note. I don’t want to end on that because I do think the fact that so much of this analysis and critique is out in the public square being written about, being talked about. It’s important, I think, that the people in the military understand the stakes, even if they feel hamstrung by the processes. And I think the positive note to me too is that we have so many more Congress people with military experience who have been on the inside, who aren’t just going into the military industrial complex to be lobbyists for Boeing, but are running for Congress. Are saying like, no, I have experience that is relevant to these congressional negotiations and decisions. And I think that’s really, really encouraging too. And, listen, I’m even encouraged by the recruitment numbers rising. I am. I think that’s important. I think people wanting to serve their country is encouraging and important. And I think there’s a lot of ways to serve.

[00:37:34] And, hopefully, this Pete Hegseth warrior mentality will be a blip and not a long-term strategy. And hopefully some of the procurement changes they’ve made will have impact and will continue down this road. And we will learn and improve either because people find some sort of source of internal motivation or because the time has come. I read something the other day that made me feel a lot better about this entire conversation. It was called the sleepwalk bias. And it’s predictions that humanity is doomed usually assume future generations will be less aware and less active in fighting for their survival. But historical prophecies of doom, such as the Malthusian trap, ozone layer depletion, and Y2K show this is false. Posterity are not idle passengers headed off cliffs, but problem solvers building bridges across them. And I think that’s 100% true of this conversation we have. No one’s sleepwalking. Or some people might be, but some people aren’t in military and in military leadership and in Congress and that gives me a lot of hope. All right, we’re making a really hard turn here. We’re going from guns to heels.

Beth [00:38:51] We need to.

Sarah [00:38:52] We need too. We have to. Norma asked us, what is our philosophy on high heels? Beth, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you in a pair of high heels. Have I ever seen you in a pair of high heels

Beth [00:39:01] You have. Because my philosophy on high heels has changed in the past couple of years. I went through a long period of no high heels, flats only. I wore Rothy’s for everything, always, for several years. And I got older and I realized that I was going to need some more support than that. And I found like a new place in my heart for heels. Now, not high, high heels. And not think heels

Sarah [00:39:31] I was going to say, we need to define high heels.

Beth [00:39:33] Right, but like a nice responsible one or two inch sturdy naturalizer, that kind of situation. That’s where I am now.

Sarah [00:39:43] Yeah. I mean, this is really hard. I totally agree I wore flats a lot, including tennis shoes with no support. And when we were in Paris recently I brought my Vejas, which are just flat sneakers. And it hurt my back so bad, I moved to these old lady boots I bought with a little bit of a heel and some support, and it made such a difference. I find boots the most comfortable shoes to wear when I’m walking an enormous amount, even some with like a little bit more of a heel. Because, to me, sometimes the thing to remember about heels, high heels in particular, is what hurts your foot is the grasping you don’t realize you’re doing when your foot is not covered. Do you see what I’m saying? Like you’re gripping. I also went on a no high heel tangent. I was never wearing three to four inch heels.

Beth [00:40:42] Me either. I’m too tall for that.

Sarah [00:40:43] Well, I have a a couple pairs that I have worn, but I was not wearing them regularly. Even when I worked in the Senate and you wore heels, I had a couple of really comfortable mid-range, one to two inch-- not one inch, that’s a kitten heel and I don’t do those, but two inches. Then I had a pair of Manolo Blahniks that I bought when I was in law school and they were insanely comfortable. But I pulled them out, got them re-dyed and they hurt my feet so bad. They were not high and they were so light. But still it hurts the ball of my foot to wear them. I did buy a pair just recently of red patent leather, like three inch heels to go with my red tights.

Beth [00:41:30] Nice.

Sarah [00:41:31] And that’s super cute. But I have to strategize. You know what I mean? Like I have worn them the bare minimal amount necessary. Yeah. This is not a walking situation.

Beth [00:41:42] I’m going to a place. I’m sitting down in the place. I’m getting up. I’m going to my car.

Sarah [00:41:46] Yeah, correct

Sarah [00:41:47] Now, I do have a pair of like black patent leather, they might be neutralizers, they’re block heels. I do like a block heel.

Beth [00:41:54] That’s where I’m living. I’m living in the block heel space now.

Sarah [00:41:56] I like a two inch, two and a half inch block heel. I can go pretty high on a block hill. Look, sometimes they’re just pretty. They make an outfit. That’s the long and short of it. I don’t want it to be true, but it is. But I agree, I just think we also overlook that flats are also not the best for your feet and can also wear your back out. Maybe not as quickly.

Beth [00:42:19] I don’t want to wear my back out for high heels. Like for the prettiness, I was a hard no on that. That’s why I got so devoted to flats. But now I just realized that the flats aren’t doing me any biological favors either.

Sarah [00:42:30] They hurt my lower back after a while. I have really high arches. Like if you get my foot scanned, there’s like the bottom of my foot and the heel. They are two separate land masses. There is no connective tissue, you know what I’m saying? But really, really high arches. And so wearing like Rothy’s and the stuff that-- listen, I still like Rothy’s. I still wear Rothy’s. If Rothy’s wanted to do another ad campaign for us, I would love that. I would like to get another free pair of Rothy’s. Also because they don’t just have flats anymore either for what it’s worth. But I agree, you need a little support and sometimes a little heel will do that. So, I’m open. Also like a platform heel.

Beth [00:43:07] I like a platform heel.

Sarah [00:43:08] Big fan of that.

Beth [00:43:10] In the summer, especially. That feels like summer to me

Sarah [00:43:13] So, my philosophy has evolved. I just think you’re 30s, you’re like, I’m done with all these things. And then by the time... I thought that about makeup. I was like I’m not going to wear makeup. What a hoot. And then you just come back around. I think heels is probably another example of that.

Beth [00:43:32] It’s good to go in and out of trends for yourself. It keeps you on your toes. No pun intended. I loved kitten heels. Like when I was in college, I wore a lot of kitten heels, but then I started working downtown and getting caught in grates all the time. And that’s when I really made my turn away from any form of heel. I decided I need to be comfortable. I need a walk a long way. I need a very practical shoe and I need to not get stuck. It’s the most embarrassing thing in the world to be like in the middle of a business conversation with a client and then your heel gets stuck in a grate. It’s awful.

Sarah [00:44:09] I’ve never loved a kitten heel. It feels noncommittal to me. You know what I mean? Like just pick one or the other. But I remember the very first-- do you remember the first time you ever wore a pair of heels?

Beth [00:44:20] No, I don’t think so.

Sarah [00:44:22] I do, because they were a little mule. They’re probably a little bit taller than a kitten. They had a thicker heel. God, I wish I still had them. I bought them in Italy, my summer after my freshman year of college. I mean, I guess I wore-- that’s not true. I probably wore heels to prom. I’m sure I did. I think I kept those for a long time. But this memory is so visceral and vivid because I put these on and I’d worn like strapped heels that strapped to my ankle and these were like mule, like heels, like you just slide into them, they were open-toed, they were so cute, they were so soft and I could not walk in them. I bet I looked like a baby deer. I love to see a young girl who’s like clearly wearing them for the first time and they’re walking on their toes basically, which is absolutely what I was doing because it takes some confidence. I mean, you have to trust the heel, you have to trust your hips, you have the trust your ankles. And the older you get, the trust is just not there, man.

Beth [00:45:21] No, you need less trust and more form. I had a real desire around the kitten heels for a while to kind of cultivate like a vintage esthetic for myself. I’ve never been very good at cultivating a strong esthetic for myself. I think my hair is a big part of that, but I really wanted that.

Sarah [00:45:38] The hair is an esthetic. Built in.

Beth [00:45:39] Yeah, and that’s just the one I’ve got. So I really wanted the kitten heels to kind of set me down that path. But, man, they embarrassed me so many times on downtown grates.

Sarah [00:45:51] Well, I want to hear everybody else’s thoughts on heels. And I absolutely want to hear if you found heels that are very comfortable.

Beth [00:45:59] Yes, please.

Sarah [00:46:00] For sure. And thank you for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we went through a tough topic. Forward your comments on that as well. We will be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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