Tulsi Gabbard: War, Politics, and the Military Industrial Complex | Lex Fridman Podcast #423

Lex Fridman talks with Tulsi Gabbard about her combat-deployment experiences and the human and taxpayer costs of war she witnessed firsthand. She lays out her philosophy on when war is justified, critiques US regime-change wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and argues for diplomacy in Ukraine and Gaza. A central thread is the power of the military-industrial complex and the 'national security state' to smear voices of peace, exemplified by accusations that she is a Putin asset. They also discuss the dangers of nuclear war, the anti-TikTok bill as a free-speech threat, and her reasons for leaving the Democratic Party, before closing on her Hindu faith.

• Gabbard says KBR/Halliburton charged taxpayers roughly $35 per head per meal four times a day in Iraq while importing workers from Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines who were paid about $500 a month.
  00:04:39
• She describes how soldiers from Hawaii, Samoa, and Guam built human relationships with local Iraqis (pointing muzzles skyward, sharing tea, throwing shakas), which her medical unit saw lead to a downward shift in casualties.
  00:11:54
• Gabbard claims peace efforts that began weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine were thwarted by the Biden-Harris administration and other Western powers, costing many lives.
  00:27:01
• She traces the 'Putin asset' narrative to an NBC News hit piece published the hour she announced her 2019 candidacy, later escalated when Hillary Clinton said on a podcast 'the Russians are grooming her.'
  00:41:22
• She argues the anti-TikTok bill does not name TikTok and instead gives the executive branch unilateral power to designate foreign adversaries and ban platforms, potentially targeting figures like Elon Musk and X.
  01:05:33
• Gabbard warns the bill includes a provision where using a VPN to access a banned platform could create legal problems, implying a surveillance component she calls a 'toxic onion.'
  01:16:11
• She explains she resigned as DNC vice chair in 2016 because chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was tilting the primary toward Hillary Clinton, and endorsed Bernie Sanders as a non-interventionist alternative.
  01:21:51
• Gabbard says she left the Democratic Party because it has become 'opposed to freedom,' controlled by an 'elitist cabal of war mongers' pushing a 'woke agenda.'
  01:22:23

• Gabbard's first daily task during her 2005 Iraq deployment was reading a list, name by name, of every combat-related injury across the US military to check on her ~3,000 Hawaii National Guard soldiers.
  00:01:33
• She notes traumatic brain injury was barely discussed at the time, so many soldiers had 'invisible wounds' that went unrecognized.
  00:13:25
• She supported the initial post-9/11 mission targeting Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan but says focus was diverted to the Iraq regime-change war waged on false pretenses.
  00:17:35
• Gabbard's most recent deployment was in 2021 to East Africa and Somalia, where she encountered the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab.
  00:20:12
• She cites the Cuban Missile Crisis, where JFK secretly communicated with Khrushchev around military commanders urging action, as a model for leader-to-leader diplomacy.
  00:31:46
• She criticizes a New York City emergency-management nuclear-attack PSA whose advice was essentially 'get inside, stay inside, stay tuned,' ending with 'we've got this.'
  00:52:28
• She references the documentary 'The Man Who Saved the World' about a mid-level Soviet officer who declined to launch nuclear missiles during a false radar reading.
  00:55:36
• Gabbard notes the US president gets roughly six minutes after an early-warning alert to decide whether to launch a nuclear counterstrike.
  00:56:09
• She explains Hinduism is monotheistic, one God known by many names, and non-sectarian, and that she grew up with bedtime stories from both the Bhagavad Gita and the New Testament.
  01:44:34
• The episode closes with Lex reading from Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address warning against the military-industrial complex.
  01:49:17