Welcome back, America. I'm here with former US Air Force Brigadier General. I love the sound of Brigadier General. Rob Spalding, also Hudson Institute senior fellow, Semper dot AI CEO and founder general. I'm very concerned about the state of our national security and military, particularly with this commander-in-chief. I watched what he's doing to the Israelis in the entire Middle East, where he's basically lit a fire over there and he's rearming the enemy. I watched him meet with G. I am extremely concerned about what they were discussing and how they were discussing it for obvious reasons. I look at Ukraine and Russia. I'm not one of those Republicans who feel we ought to cut and run with Ukraine, but I am one of those people who thinks that Joe Biden doesn't want him to win. I am very concerned about what's happening to the Ukrainian citizens and the country over there as this grinds on and grinds on and grinds on. He seems to try to want to, his reengineering, he and his Poison Ivy League eggheads, reengineer the world and so forth. But now my question. I'm worried about our security, and I'm worried about our military, given what's exploding all over the world.

What do you say?

Well, if you go back to World War II, remember, we chose a priority, and that priority was Europe. Until Europe was done, Japan had to wait, and the Pacific forces fought a campaign, but they still were not the priority in terms of resources. What we have now is we have this rise of great power, authoritarian competition, led by the Chinese Communist Party, supported by Russia, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That was the first shoe to drop for this second Cold War. Then Hamas's invasion of Israel, supported by Iran. We've got a global Cold War going on, and we're trying to prioritize everything. Meanwhile, our Southern borders open. Everybody knows that. I think between great power, authoritarianism, competition, conflict, Cold War, whatever you want to call it, the rise of global Islamism, which we're getting the second wave now, and woke ideology in the free world, we face three threats. This is something that I began to recognize when I was in the Air Force, and it's just gotten worse since I left. You're right, we have a horrible strategy. We don't have a policy that's focused on Americans and national security. I, quite frankly, have been frustrated by the whole episode.

The big battle with the Department of Defense right now and the administration is over them paying for transportation for abortions. They can't meet their enlistment numbers in an all-voluntary military. That is a disaster. I'm very concerned that we're actually being outgunned now. We have a Navy that's under 300 ships, under Reagan, it was 600 ships. They are further advanced on hypersonic missiles than we are. The Chinese are modernizing, excuse me, the Russians are modernizing their nuclear missiles. The Chinese are building them as fast as they possibly can. We're doing none of these things. He's got a 19 % increase for the EPA budget, a 3 % for the defense budget, when it ought to be reversed in so many ways. I just feel like we're hollowing out our ability to defend ourselves. Psychologically, we don't have a president or administration that is explaining the real dangers that this country faces.

Well, I think they don't understand that our supply chain starts and ends in China. If you're going to fight a war with China, for example, where are you going to get all the parts and pieces to support that war machine? That's the challenge we face. We have to go back to Eisenhower's strategy after World War II for the Cold War. That was really to muster our resources to build our industrial base, focus on science and technology and manufacturing, building our economic capacity here at home while we basically use nuclear weapons as a deterrent. We're going to have to pull out the same strategy. Back then, we could not meet the conventional power in Europe of the Soviet Union. We can't meet it here with China. We're going to have to focus on nuclear weapons, and we're going to have to go back to a lot of the same Cold War strategies we had before.

How about Reagan's strategy for defeating the Soviet Union? It sounds a little bit like what you're talking about. That is build the strongest kick-ass economy on the face of the Earth with the most cutting-edge technology possible. Yes, building up our military as well, but it all starts with the economy. That's your point.

That's correct. Don't forget that Reagan had the benefit of a number of administrations that were pursuing this very limited conventional military budget, focusing on nuclear weapons, and then using most of the money to build our industrial base, our productivity, our ability to then he could turn to that big industrial base and the big science and technology investment that they'd made over several decades and say, Let's basically end it now. What's going on? The Chinese have basically learned from that and are basically repeating the same strategy, except now we're on the other side. They own the industrial base. They're using our investment against us, our ability to help them in terms of technology, talent, and capital. We have to stop that. We have to bring that back home, and we have to guard ourselves. This is going to take a long time. It's not going to be over in a couple of years. It's going to be decades. Hey, Sean Hannity here. Hey, click here to subscribe to Fox News YouTube page and catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis. You will not get it anywhere else.