Kenneth R. Rosen - Polar War

30:53In other words, like there's like kind of like how are we going to regulate the ice-breaking ships? And part of me thought, well, you regulate them by figuring out which one goes through the ice. Is that just crazy? Well, I mean, it's I use that example. They weren't debating that that year or any recent year, this year, last year. OK. You know, these were codes written to determine the ice worthiness of a ship. Right. But I paint a picture, as you note, of like six or seven or eight different codes that determine different levels of ice worthiness and using different metrics to determine that.

31:29And that disassociation or that crossover or that lack of consensus is probably better to say really defined what I felt was happening at the Arctic Circus, at the Arctic Circle Assembly. that, you know, you have all these people who are serious about the region, who really want to help the region, who are focused on ostensibly bettering the region, but then can't come to decide what, what is that? How do you define single year sea ice or first year sea ice or second year sea ice? And you can't decide what ship is rated for that type of ice, but not this type of ice. And then you have transatlantic shipments, and they're all used in different codes.

32:12But we'll focus on, you know, whether or not Russia sending spies into northern Norway instead and ignore the indigenous issues of losing their villages and not paying reparations for colonizing them in the first place. Sure. When I think you mentioned like your point on Arctic circus, which is what you referred to it in that chapter at one point, your picture of the Arctic circus, I think, finished up with the UAE giving like the opening talk, who obviously is nowhere near the Arctic, and whose main product is obviously producing carbon for the world to consume. And it's kind of funny. So in 91, there were quite a few NATO members that get together, including the Soviet Union, that joined in this to deal with search and rescue operations.

33:00What was the idea for something like that then? Was that just to your point? It's just survival. We need to help each other because we're not everywhere. What is that now? Are you talking about the Arctic Circle Assembly or the Arctic Council or? I think you talked about the group coming together to just do search and rescue. Right. So where it's like, you know, they partner together. And I'm trying to remember what part it was right after the Arctic Circle, to your point, or the Arctic Assembly. But like where they were just partnering just to do search and rescue, because obviously, you know, it could be an American team that needs help.

33:30It might not be a Norwegian team. It might be a Danish team. It could be a Russian. And just trying to, to your point, be able to survive the Arctic when things go awry. I think a longstanding truth about the Arctic is that in that region, you rely on your neighbors and your neighbors rely on you. Sure. And what nations saw after the collapse of the Soviet Union was this need for continuing that legacy across the Arctic and to cooperate and not make it a region of militarization and of war. And that really changed with the first Trump administration when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo started to talk about militarization in these forums, in these forums that were reserved for, you know, Coast Guard cooperation or search and rescue cooperation or shared fisheries agreements and introducing that to a place that that wasn't meant to be.

34:31And so I think there's been a slow decline ever since then of that cooperation, but that truth still remains. When I was in Fairbanks, if I pulled over the side of the road to check my text messages, within a minute, someone would come over, pull over and ask me if I needed help, if I was all right, if I needed a spare tire, if I needed a lift somewhere. And that happened all over the Arctic. I mean, I guess that's also, you know, I, I tarry to say that, tell that story because that happens also in small town America too, but in the Arctic, it's a, it's a fact of life and people are just aware that you can certainly die even in a metropolitan area like, um, uh, Anchorage.

35:10Yeah. And to your point, I mean, I'll use Alaska as a picture. I'm from Seattle originally. And I remember one time I was going to see, uh, some investors up there in Alaska and we did the milk run, which we went from, we were going from Anchorage down to Juneau. And so we stopped in Yakutat and Cordova. And the gentleman I ended up sitting next to on the plane is like the director of public supervision in Alaska, which oversees, you know, like the police officers and the state troopers and things like that. And I remember it hitting me at that moment, like, wow, Alaska is just a giant small town.

35:44I mean, that's all the whole state is. And to your point, it is a picture of a really small town, not USA, but small town in the world. Is Russia, you mentioned this, and I thought a lot about this after reading your book, is Russia's real goal in many places, not just the Arctic, but I think the Arctic does a good job of showing this, is their real goal just discombobulation? I think discombobulation and destabilization. I've reported from Moldova and Transynistria, uh, on the border with Ukraine and, um, these other Russian territories up in, up in Svalbard, Spitsbergen, um, um, and Barentsburg.

36:26And it seems to me that if they can, if the way they want to win is by letting us tear each other apart, uh, by turning us against our, our allies and our, our friends. Um, we see that domestically, but rather than getting into domestic politics, we see it now between Denmark and Greenland, right? I mean, longstanding allies, long-standing defense cooperation agreements that are now all of a sudden near the axe um so i think you know in some respects that's the plan um that russia is hoping that will just they'll outlast us as a as a western force and a western collective sure um you say that the u.s has a long way to go for a conflict that began years ago.

37:14How early, I guess, would you say, you talk a lot about the changes that can't happen post-World War II. You also talk about Seward's, what used to be known as Seward's Folly, what we now call Alaska. Maybe tell that story of, you know, how that transaction came about with Russia during Lincoln. And, you know, what were the thoughts at the time versus what we know to be true for Alaska today. Yeah, Secretary of State Seward wanted to buy what many people in the Congress thought was an icebox. It was once Russia, America, this spit of land that we now know as Alaska, and the Russians weren't making money for trading and fishing and operating out there with their trading companies.

38:03They were also facing domestic conflicts that were draining the state coffers and they needed they needed a way out. How how Seward would about convincing Congress to buy Alaska is one story. I think the story today is that Russia really regrets having have sold that to to America. And this was in a time when, you know, colonial powers were raining in their their reigns across the across the globe. the UK was giving up Canada, trying to downsize and consolidate their empires. And the US was thinking, well, if we can avoid conflicts with Russia, with the UK, then maybe we can just buy some of these territories that we want.

38:48And we do see later in 1916, we purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark and things like this. I think one interesting note that I don't think made it into the book was that so disturbed by the purchase of the sale of Alaska was Russia that even during the Cold War, in order to form a more perfect union between the Soviet Union and the U.S., there were discussions about building a tunnel from Eastern Russia to Alaska, an underwater tunnel, in order to reconnect that land. And God knows where that would leave us today were that to have come to fruition. We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at Smead Capital Management.

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40:13Let's see. So then you also talk about, I mean, more than half the people in the Arctic are Russian. the interesting part to that is even russia has trouble keeping people there yeah i mean i was unfortunately unable to get to russia proper um sure for a number of reasons logistical but also personal security wise and um i would have loved to go on and i still extend an offer to um the the russian federation if they'd like to invite me out on an official capacity But there's just simply no work and infrastructure in the Russian Arctic for the layperson to sustain themselves. I mean, there are the Nenet populations that are a roving indigenous population that can exist outside of government frameworks.

41:05But most of the infrastructure in the Russian Arctic is predicated on energy, on the energy sector and the military defense sector. who gets paid are the people who work for the military or for the construction of military bases and liquid natural gas facilities. There's no real opportunities outside that. To say nothing of, just like Greenland with only 100 miles of road, there's just no way to connect it to the rest of the country. And when you try to have a family or have opportunities, the only place to really do that is in the city. So you've seen more and more people leaving the north and this is sort of a trend elsewhere too in Norway as well and in Alaska as well people coming south to find work and then find more more comfort more amenities how do you look at Canada's interest and role in the Arctic in comparison I mean the one thing I take away from your book is if I need to do ice breaking I'm gonna call the Canadians cuz that's what they're really good at I think a lot of countries are really good at it it was Certainly a lot.

42:09Certainly all are better than America. You know, President Trump had a lot to say about wanting to turn Canada into another state, an American state. And that was really unfortunate in part because it negates the reality that they control this large swath of land to our north. And we don't need to make enemies with people who are controlling the defenses of our overall horizon defense apparatus. But what we should be doing is working more closely with them. So the Canadians interest is really the global interest of the Arctic is the best of the homeland, but also working side by side with partners.

42:51Um, they've long tried to establish, um, a program to, to, uh, what is it revamp or, um, to, to, to modernize, remodern, to modernize the equipment that are up, that is up there. That was once the dew line that covered the Northern part of, uh, the North America with, um, an early warning system against intercontinental ballistic missiles. But that project is really slow. And I think going back to my comments about wanting to find a way to work together as perhaps left leaning as that sounds, it's really important because in order to protect our interests, we need to work with the interests of other people who have ours in mind as well.

43:37So how do Greenlanders look at foreign investment versus how do they look at the EU? Because obviously they're kind of Danish, but kind of not too. Yeah, well, as they move towards self-determination and full independence from Denmark, and to give your listeners a little bit of a background, in 2008, there was a Home Rule Act that returned judicial and educational powers to and civil powers to the Greenlanders for them to administer themselves and what remained with Denmark was defense and foreign policy. So it opened the door to allow Greenlanders to make some trade decisions on their own and to open up commerce on their own, whether it be through fisheries or tourism, for instance.

44:22I mean, they sort of give up on mining and critical mineral extraction because it's been such a disaster. The Greenlanders that I spoke to are mostly in consensus. They want to be able to open up their doors to foreign investment. And they're open to Russian investment. They're open to Chinese investment. They're considering returning to the EU market to be able to benefit their people and to become self-sustaining apart from Denmark, which pays them about half a trillion American dollars a year as a block grant to sustain the economy, about$10 ,000 per Greenlander. So they're open to it, but when there has been investment, the Kingdom of Denmark has stepped in in part to prevent what they saw as foreign incursions, whether it be China looking to invest in building out the airport and nuke or other projects in mining, though there is an American mine in Greenland that is active right now.

45:21So they're open to it. They want it. It's not for sale, but they want to engage with the global community and become this place of prosperity for them and for their Inuit culture and heritage. It's partially very difficult right now for them to do so, given that the only direct flights to Greenland are through Copenhagen. Sure. I loved this part of the book that I'll ask a question on here in a second. As a 42-year-old male that's grown up in the United States, Team America, World Police was a very funny movie. And I think there's this personification, especially nowadays, think of Venezuela here recently, is like, we can just kind of do whatever we want, American exceptionalism, back to our prior discussion.

46:08But then you talk about, okay, let's say we're gonna go to the Arctic and have a presence. And so you tell the story of Marines showing up to train. And I think they're being trained by the Swedes, if I remember correctly from your story at the time. Or Norwegian. Swedish, Swedish, Swedish. And it was Special Operations Forces out of Germany. Correct. And so they're trying to teach them how to be ready for this climate, this situation, how they need to move, what they need to wear. Can you kind of teach us a little bit of that story? Because, I mean, there's just real implications for being in that cold of weather.

46:40Yeah. I mean, the story that I'll share is one of extreme arrogance. And I think, you know, wholly American. This was relayed to me secondhand and confirmed through a third party. Okay. was that the americans were training with the swedish armed forces up above the arctic circle in a base outside of karuna and uh we decided to go on a ski patrol one day um and arrogantly thought that well it's cold but we'll be exercising and the sun's out um so we could we'll take off our shirts and we'll go shirtless through the snow uh what harm can that do um so they trek through the i the snow and ice on their skis and come back only to find themselves sunburned you and I wouldn't consider going out without a shirt on in the cold.

47:27But of course, we also wouldn't consider to their to their in their defense, we wouldn't consider getting a sunburn in the cold. But the sun was there and it burned him. I think I think an even more illustrative story. And I harp on the Americans a lot. I mean, I'm an American myself. Yeah. I harp on them a lot, in part because I didn't want to do. I didn't want to show one story and say and have have the peanut gallery say, oh, well, that's an aberration. That's a one off that, you know, I try to show a series of miscalculations on the part of American forces. And the one that I found most interesting was when the Navy SEALs were training out out in Alaska off of the Seward Peninsula, they knew that there was a typhoon coming.

48:11They nevertheless launched helicopters to go airdrop some of the troops on the St. Lawrence Island. the typhoon hit and they were woefully underprepared they had to they set up tents that were ripped away within seconds and had to go shack up with locals which of course special operations forces do all the time but to think that they were going to be able to do it despite the warnings the in the cut to the contrary is really sort of discouraging and I'm hoping that And if people in Washington, if our leaders in Washington read the book, they'll see that there's some real considerations and calculations that aren't being made when operating in the far north.

48:54And that we need to be able to do that without the arrogance of the American exceptionalism, like you noted, no longer exists. Yeah. Yeah, to your point, if you're Pete Hegseth and you're reading this book, you're like, we are prepared in a lot of things and we continue to want to be, but this is a place that we haven't necessarily been prepared or trained or well thought in our processes, if you will, to address this climate. Because to your point, the lower 48 doesn't touch this and neither does Hawaii. So this is a very unique space. Here's an argument that Pete Hegseth might make is that we train in the Arctic all the time.

49:29We have exercises there all the time. That's great. We only have one full-time Army company, the 11th Airborne, out in Alaska full-time. That's it. That's all we've got. And even they have a quick turnover, which I mentioned in the book, as far as staying there and keeping the knowledge that exists from having lived and survived in the Arctic for an extended period of time. But we don't have the force capabilities and the force posturing of having troops dedicated to the cold weather. Of course, the contrary argument would be, well, we have more of a threat in the Pacific and that's where we're focusing our energies now.

50:06Fair enough. But the Pacific also connects to Alaska. Yeah. I want to put up a slide here because after you talked about this in the book, so you talk about the Healy, right? The US Coast Guard ship, which I got here on the screen. What do you think? Does the picture bear out the way I wrote it? By the way, perfectly. You said it's all 90 degree angles. and I looked at this as like, he's right. It's ugly as heck. I mean, just, it's an ugly ship. It carries purpose. And so like, just to explain - It's utilitarian. It's very utilitarian. Yeah, yeah. It would look like my college dorm room in a way.

50:47You don't have a picture of the KV Svalbard to pull up to give other people - I don't, no, but this Svalbard, you talk a lot about those two ships, you know, in a particular chapter. So can you teach our listeners, looking at this boat, what's the purpose of it? What does it do? How long has it been in service? And do we have a lot of these? So the Healy itself has been in service for more than 30 years. We had, up until very recently, three full-time icebreakers that were capable of going into the far north and Antarctica. But one was primarily dedicated to the Arctic, and that was the Healy.

51:25There are two other boats. One was dedicated to Antarctica, and the third was more or less used as a cannibalized for parts for the heli, which often broke down and continues to break down. It was heading out on a mission one or two years ago, and there was an engine fire just as it was leaving your hometown port of Seattle and had to return and cancel the mission. There was another time when it had to cancel a mission and the Norwegians had to come all the way across the Northwest Passage to retrieve scientific buoys in order to save the data that was being collected over two years within those those buoys.

51:58So the ship is primarily a research vessel. That's how it was built. That's what it's for. It doesn't have defensive capabilities per se. It's not a military vessel and it wasn't designed that way, but it is wholly woefully outdated. It is incapable of carrying out missions continuously like many of the other nations icebreakers can. But we did. The Americans did purchase another icebreaker from Finland, I believe, in December of last year and added that to the fleet and are hoping to bolster the fleet with more and more icebreakers and security cutters that are that are ice capable. I used to rate it to some spec or another, depending on which one you're choosing.

52:45But yeah, I mean, the Healy, it's a big ship. And it was the pride and joy. And when I looked at it after spending two weeks aboard the KB Svalbard, I felt a little ashamed to be American. Again, it's a big ship. It's much bigger than a KB Svalbard. But man, was it not taken care of. One last example of how unprepared the crew was as compared to the Svalbard. I mean, when they launched their small boat to come pick up people that were coming off, the seamen that were coming off of the Norwegian vessel, they had a tough time dislodging the hook that was connecting it to the pulley that would lower it into the water.

53:25It had frozen. It was an icebreaker and they were having problems with frozen mechanisms. Did the Svalbard have that problem? No. Because the ship was designed differently and they were also prepared for things that happened in the Arctic and had slurries and other chemicals mixed up in case that were to happen. Sure. So it was just really disheartening. And again, as an American, I don't mean to beat up on American troops or American forces or American posture, but I just thought we could do better. Yeah. I'm trying to remind myself, you know, I think you even mentioned that the interior of the ship on the Svalbard was like so much more enjoyable and livable.

54:04versus obviously the Healy. I wanna jump forward. We don't have to spend a lot of time on this, but you talk about being in Sor Varenger, which is in Norway, Northern Norway. You talk about this friend Zoran. Is everyone suspect in some places like that? Could they all potentially be spies or people that are interloping for counterintelligence reasons? It wasn't a friend, it was a drinking buddy for a moment, you know, sidled up to me while I was at the bar one night. I don't think everyone's suspect in the North, but certainly in the last few years, there have been defectors from Russia who've been coming across the Norwegian border with Russia.

54:47And there's been question about whether or not those were actually, you know, KGB officials who were trying to, excuse me, or FSB officials who were trying to get into the Western states, into Europe. more broadly. Um, I think if you look for a spy, you'll find one. I think oftentimes, whenever I travel around the world to conflict zones, I'm considered a spy and, and by, by good measure. I mean, I, I, I ask people a lot of questions. I try to find out things that are happening. The only difference between me and a spy is I publish all my work and let everyone know about it. Yeah. Um, I, I love this.

55:23So I've been fishing in places like June before in the Northwest. um yeah i mean you talk about like back to the ecological effects um you talk about how russia brought pink salmon uh to places that didn't have pink salmon and i think of in the northwest you you you you uh fish you can fish and you catch things like chum or pink salmon or kings or or silvers as they call them um why are pink salmon so damaging to the ecology of atlantic salmon They can't spawn the way they could in their home waters. And that has been a fight between the pink salmon and the native population of salmon in northern Norway.

56:02I think it was an interesting case study in how the lack of cooperation with Russia meant that the only way that these scientists in this chapter that you're referencing could learn about the impacts of the broader of the broader ecology was to like take these water samples on the border with Russia and try to figure out what was going on upstream rather than being able to communicate the sort of devastating effects that those fish were having on the population there. the scientists that I was traveling with during that reporting trip had noted that there once were commercials on Norwegian television about how clean the Norwegian water was, how drinkable it was.

56:40But now that was just no longer the case. Another example of how the changing north is affecting more than just more than just security. Sure. The other story that caught me was that you talk about the river at Holmfoss. You know, it sits this river sits right between Norway and Russia. and I think it's got, I think you said it's got kind of like channel markers or buoys that delineate which side of the border you're on and these have like their own Instagram accounts. Yeah. Yeah. They have these big border posts that are colored to delineate the international borders between Russia and Norway and Finland has them as well.

57:17And yeah, they became sort of comical after the war. I mean, there used to be a way to transit these countries and commerce could be shared across the border. I mean, Finland, I think, was much more impacted by the closure of their border with Russia than perhaps Norway, given that Finland's is longer. But there is a continual jest that permeates life in the Arctic, right? I mean, sometimes in the darkness, the only way to find light is through joy and jovility and making light of things. When Ukraine was invaded by Russia, how did that affect migrant flow to Norway in the north? I think this goes back to saying that Russia is testing the vulnerabilities of these nation states that border them and also that oppose them.

58:10After Russia launched this invasion of Ukraine, migrants were being sent by Russia to these border crossings with Finland and Norway, primarily in the book I focus on Norway, but sending thousands of these individuals over in the hopes of striking up what I imagine is a conversation over immigration, illegal immigration, and alienating a new population of rivals to the country, thus sparking more internal debate about something that perhaps doesn't need to be discussed while one sovereign nation is invading another sovereign nation a couple of thousand miles away. Sure. What I think the other thing you point out is if someone comes up and talks to you about that, are they saying that because they have free speech or are they saying that just because someone told them to say it?

59:02Or what are you referencing? The fact that - The idea that Russians don't really have free speech. And so if they're telling you something, someone probably told them to say that. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that goes back to the spy question too, right? Like there's there's this real wartime feeling, at least in the Nordic Arctic states of question everything. Trust no one. You know, believing that, you know, your enemy might not be beneficial in all cases, but it's better to be cautious than wholly welcoming. Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on this show.

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1:00:08Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by Smead funds distributors, LLC, not affiliated. You mentioned, you know, back to your point about kind of like spy stuff, uh and this is probably not that big of a secret uh but you said there's a secret submarine base in alaska um what are other things like that that you learned in this process or things that you think are lesser known but are not secret i point to the weather balloons that china sent over um back in 2022 or 23 that drifted over alaska i think it was 2022 that drifted over alaska and were shot down by F-16 fighter jets.

1:00:56Still unclear whether or not they were research, whether research balloons or whether they were surveillance balloons. One thing I found interesting and one thing I want readers of the book to appreciate is that according to officials at NORAD, they had known about the launch of the balloon from the get-go. And so that the capabilities that I shied in the book are those that are visible. And it's not always clear what capabilities we do have. And there's a good reason for that. And, and yeah, I mean, you know, what we're capable of might not be exactly what we know we're capable of, as far as, you know, the layperson goes.

1:01:39So you were in a Dodge truck, you're rolling down the Dalton highway, I think you're explaining the gentleman driving is doing 80 miles an hour. And he's got a CB radio, like everyone would have up there to communicate. and you hear something that's hard to figure out over the CB radio, and then you come over a plateau to find a tractor trailer jackknifed in the road. How exhilarating was it to rip past that at 80 miles an hour while missing it? Being a writer and a journalist, I was exhilarated by the fact that that was in the book. I thought it was a great detail. I was like, wow, dude, that should be like a ride at Disneyland.

1:02:19is like, are you ready to rip the Dalton Highway? And then everybody says, yeah, let's go. You know, and I'm a little bit on a bender here about like some of the early criticisms, which I'm happy to address. And I want to address because I think a lot of them are valid. And this scene in particular sticks out to me as like perhaps one of the things that people would call more of a travelogue, right? And certainly it's written in such a way. And I meant to do that in part because I wanted people to, you can't write a book about the Arctic and not put people in the Arctic and have them experience what it's like to live in this place.

1:02:54But also it underscored something perhaps more subtle and perhaps something I could have highlighted more thoroughly is that, you know, assuming you understood what someone said can lead to your death in the Arctic, right? So this miscooperation and this miscommunication is detrimental, both to me and my friend in the truck, but also to the political sphere and the the rule of law that we now find ourselves in jeopardy of losing. Yeah. So I loved this. So you're, I think it was Dutch Harbor late in the book. You're talking about being in Dutch Harbor and you go to a place called rats for drinks.

1:03:32Okay. I just got to know, like, I mean, there's the scene. This is a hole in the wall. It's a bar. And I mean, you know, as I'm listening to this and reading this, it's like, I'm just like small tiny town in Alaska and you're at this hole in the wall bar and it's like, everyone's going to let it hang out. Everything goes, no one cares. Is that a good way of kind of synthesizing what Rats was like? Because when you explain that a guy, you know, pounds his pear beer and then proceeds to vomit back into the pitcher, I thought this place is a total frat house waiting to happen. These were Coast Guard members.

1:04:12Remember, I mean, these weren't just You know, the community members of Dutch Harbor. These were people getting straight off the boat and going to town. And I, you know, and I spent time out with with the Norwegian officials to at similar places in Norway. And I could tell you, I didn't see them act that way. and they both both parties knew i'm a journalist and i'm a writer and i was there to observe so whether or not one was conscious of it and the other wasn't i i can't say but it it it felt to me again like this was indicative of the way america was approaching the arctic with this blase casual you know indifference and you know it's just it's a forgotten place and i can be forgotten here too um and i just don't think that's the case in reality well yeah and i'll I'll just say to our listeners, if you can send me a picture of you at RATS in honor of obviously Ken's book, I will send you tchotchke because I got to see this place from the inside.

1:05:11And so I'd love our listeners to go either there or show us a picture, you know, being there. The last couple of things. Teach us about the Arctic Angels, right? This force that, you know, I think is lesser known. Yeah, I mentioned them earlier. They're the 11th Airborne Division. and they're based out of Fort Wainwright in central Alaska. And they, for years, had operated out of the Middle East striker unit, which is a type of vehicle that is mainly for mainland use and desert warfare and places where there's a lack of snow. But more recently, they were rebranded to be the Arctic Angels or the Arctic wolves as a move toward branding a part of the army as a dedicated force to the Arctic region.

1:06:01They also wanted to do that because a lot of people who were, a lot of the soldiers who were stationed in the high north in Alaska were taking their own lives and committing suicide, whether it be because of the conditions or the NCO's treatment of those enlisted soldiers is up for debate. But they wanted to give this force, this group of soldiers, an identity that meant you belong here. Your role is important. You're the premier Arctic force living and operating in these very difficult, very trying climates, and no one can put a put a, you know, put a light to you. Um, that's only a recent initiative to rebrand them in that way, to reflag them, to use the term of art.

1:06:48Um, and so it's not clear whether or not that's like sunk in to, to teach the soldiers within that, within that unit that they are a part of something bigger that, you know, the Arctic isn't something that people are just thinking is up there and forgettable um but they they they are the ones who would be responding in um in the event of an actual arctic war sure um last thing uh you know just introduce our listeners to the transit atlanta pardon me trans alaska pipeline um when did it come about and then you talk a lot about the last spruce tree uh north uh for the pipeline yeah the um the trains alaska pipeline was built in the 50s along with the Dawn Highway.

1:07:33The Dawn Highway was primarily built to service that pipeline, which runs from Purdue Bay all the way down to Valdez and is slowly rolling back its capacity and its production. But that cuts through a huge swath of Alaskan wilderness, and it's a total blight on the Alaskan wilderness, but of course it's done well for the economy. I think a lot of the jokes when I was living in Juneau were revolving around the fact that we had to pay so much for gas when we were an oil rich state. But the reality is, is that it gets shipped out to Texas, gets refined and then sent back. So it just costs more. Yeah, it doesn't really benefit the people of Alaska as everyone had hoped it would.

1:08:18The last spruce tree, you know, as you get farther up toward the tundra, the tree line disappears because things aren't growing in the permafrost. And there was a placard on the last spruce tree along the Dalton Highway for many years to as a tourist spot, as a picture op place. And some years ago, somebody came down and hacked at it so badly that it ended up dying and falling and no longer was the last spruce tree on the Dalton Highway. And I wanted to use that story to show that we've sort of taken the region for granted and have mistreated it and misused it and taken from it without giving back and sustaining it so that it can sustain us the way it has for the indigenous communities for so long.

1:09:07And there's that story at the end. I'll leave it for your listeners to read about, you know, the Greenlandic folklore about what happens when you when you mistreat the land that you come to rely on. Sure. It's funny you mentioned when you talk about Prudhoe Bay, there's a long old security out there called BP Prudhoe Bay. It's a royalty trust off the oil revenues. And it's funny, it's almost worth nothing because to your point, when prices are high in oil, we push a lot of oil across that pipeline. And when prices are low, it's not a very economic place to get oil. And so to your point, like a lot of these things still follow the curve of prices and what's important.

1:09:44And like the refinery, if you can't refine it there, it means your end product is still going to be really expensive.

1:09:52Ken, where can people follow you going forward? Obviously, you write a lot for publications. Can they find you somewhere regular? Are you pretty active on social media, things of that nature? I do not participate in social media at all. And I'm so much more happier because of it. But listeners can find me at KennethRRosen.com where I post all my recent articles and also have contact information for tips if listeners have ideas for stories or things that I should look into. Have you come up with your next book idea then? Yes. You want to tip your hand? Nope. Okay. I love it. I love it. Well, I just want you to know, like I said earlier, as a kid from Seattle who's been to Alaska and there's just so much about this.

1:10:38To your point, and this is what I think you did right in your book, and I'm just going to throw this out there as – like you mentioned this just a second ago. I literally in my mind, I was like, gosh, I want to go visit some of these places. I do want to go to Dutch Harbor. I want to go have a beer at Rats. Like that just sounds like interesting and fun. Go responsibly. Don't take a big cruise ship. Try to limit your carbon footprint. But yeah, otherwise I say go for it and ride a bicycle or electric scooter around if you can. Okay. If I take my wife, she probably won't go along with that, but my buddies might.

1:11:13Kenneth, your book reminds me that second-level thinking is required. Direct intentions, as we talk about these global powers, are often indirect intentions. It's not really about the Arctic. I think of all the news headlines of the last few weeks, it's like, I think back, like tariffs and Venezuela and many things. They're not really about those things on their face. They might be about other things indirectly. The Arctic is often a recipient of proxy ideas and dreams. Our listeners should go out and buy a copy of Polar War to understand the history of these ideas and how they have been collected over time to get us where they are.

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