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Envisioning the Scenario

Now, before I get into a few of the Army’s weapons systems, I want you to envision the following scenario. This is not fiction. It actually happened and it had our firm and me in particular, on a level of extreme focus and attention, and let’s just say, a lot of time was spent on preparing to rapidly adjust equity portfolios in the event of what I will tell you about, being the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

The news recently carried reports of U.S. Navy assets — including the aircraft carrier Nimitz, her destroyer escorts, and submarines — operating in the Pacific while confronting aggressive Chinese maneuvers. The Chinese have been shadowing our carriers, running mock attack drills, and buzzing aircraft dangerously close. Nothing catastrophic has happened yet, but the world has inched closer to that edge where a single mistake can change history.

Let us imagine things going badly. A Chinese fighter, instead of buzzing a U.S. destroyer, fires upon it. Or worse, a submarine lurking beneath the waves launches a missile at the Nimitz itself. If that happened, all hell would have broken loose. Escalation would be immediate, not gradual. That single event would trigger a chain reaction across the Pacific, and possibly the globe.

And here is the central question: where is the rational mind to stop things?

During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, calm, disciplined leadership pulled us back from the brink. During the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, when nuclear stockpiles were at risk of theft or misuse by rogue nations, it was steady hands and quiet negotiations that prevented catastrophe. But today, we must ask ourselves — in an age of instant communications, cyber warfare, and political posturing — do we still have leaders capable of remaining calm, cool, and collected under fire?

Hollywood, in its own way, has foreshadowed these fears. If you remember the movie The Peacemaker, the story revolved around nuclear weapons slipping into dangerous hands after the Soviet collapse. While that was fiction, it underscored a very real truth: technology moves faster than politics, and destructive power can outpace rational control.

For a retiree listening today, the lesson is not about becoming frightened. It is about cultivating steel willpower — both in your personal finances and in your influence on younger generations. Most of today’s Americans have never lived through a total war environment. World War I and II touched nearly every household. Korea did to a lesser degree. Vietnam affected many but not all. Since then, conflicts have been limited to professional soldiers and volunteers. The home front, for the most part, has remained untouched. That is no longer guaranteed.

The reality is simple: it is almost ludicrous to assume that nothing big or catastrophic will happen in the next five to twenty years. Global competition, supply chain interdependency, and the sheer scale of modern weapons make the risk too great to dismiss. This is not a prediction born of fear; it is a forecast based on unemotional calculations.

Let us think in practical terms. If open war broke out with China, the first targets would not just be military bases. They would be infrastructure, economic chokepoints, and power generation. Consider Hoover Dam in the United States. Now, consider the massive Three Gorges Dam in China. If either of those structures were destroyed, the immediate human cost would be in the millions. The environmental and economic devastation would ripple across the globe. Entire cities would be wiped out by flooding. Crops would be destroyed. Supply chains would collapse overnight.

At sea, every container ship moving between the United States and Asia would be a target. Without imports, economies would grind to a halt. China, in particular, would face riots, uprisings, and social breakdown far faster than most people realize. And here at home, we would not need organized, foreign-funded protests to create chaos. Criminal organizations, extremist groups, and opportunistic bad actors would seize the moment. If you doubt that, look no further than our porous southern border. That is why labeling Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations is more than political rhetoric; it is a recognition that they will exploit global chaos to their own advantage.

The danger today is that escalation would be instantaneous. In past wars, mobilization took weeks, months, sometimes years. In the 21st century, with satellites, drones, hypersonic missiles, and cyber tools, we would go from zero to one hundred in days, perhaps hours. That means weapons stockpiles could be exhausted quickly. It means we could find ourselves in a resource-draining war without the luxury of time to re-arm at leisure.

For investors, and especially retirees thinking about the future, the lesson is clear. Strength is not optional. Military strength, fiscal strength, and personal strength — each is necessary. That is why our Military Procurement Portfolio exists: to provide long-term ownership in the companies that make the weapons, the systems, and the technologies that ensure America remains strong enough to deter conflict — and, if necessary, to win decisively.