Darren Farber on Iran, China, and the Rise of Neoprimes - [Invest Like the Best, EP.474]
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My guest today is Darren Farber, and this is his second appearance on the show. Darren's the managing partner of Albion River, a defense focused investment firm, and he previously served as a special adviser to the deputy undersecretary of defense. We recorded this conversation in the middle of the Iranian contingency, and we spend most of our time on what winning actually means in a theater like Iran. We discuss why magazine depth matters for the American industrial base, lessons from Ukraine, and what the rise of neoprime defense companies will require from Congress. Please enjoy my second c
So winning is politically defined. The Strait Of Hormuz was open before this contingency at the end of the day. And so if all we get is the Strait Of Hormuz back open, strategically, maybe, was the juice worth the squeeze, for lack of a better term? I would argue that you've degraded an enormous amount of Iranian military capability, which is what the department's internal frago, their order was to do. And so you have degraded that, but the Strait Of Hormuz as an economic choke point has to open back up in order for commerce to work. But we're sitting here today, the strait's functionally clos
What kind of assets?
Homes in London, villas, billions of dollars that they've exfiltrated from the country, and Abbas Milani has documented this in voluminous detail. He's a wonderful scholar on the topic. But really, think of the average Iranian, the limit of the ATM is $7. That's how much you can pull out. You had the second largest bank fail about two months before this recent contingency. Melani calls it a mafia style regime, and it's true. The quantum of corruption is absolutely enormous. Dictators are enormously strong and enormously weak at the same time. This is actually like a good frame for our entire c
Marketing.
It's marketing. It's your political worldview. Israel has just not spent the calories on it. And so the question is, should they? I believe the answer is yes. In a fine egg pie, how much of the pie should they spend on it? It's not immaterial. Their adversaries are spending enormously on it because it's working. But also the martyrdom culture has because it's hybridized with religion to create a higher form of fanaticism, it allows you to run for so long. The design to co opt American universities can be traced to a single hotel room in Philadelphia by the FBI listening with laser microphones
What do you think will happen in the strait? How would you describe the state of things today and the options that the rest of the world has or we have goi
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