Is Amazon deliberately trying to destroy beloved franchises?

The latest evidence for the prosecution: “Blade Runner 2099,” arriving November 25.

‘I just had bottom surgery … and I love it so much.’

Bottoming out

Amazon’s tagline for the new series — the latest entry in the decades-old sci-fi franchise — is “Humanity has fallen.”

So has Hollywood, according to viewers outraged by the streamer’s decision to cast transgender actor Hunter Schafer in a starring role.

The show serves as a sequel to Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 “Blade Runner 2049,” itself a follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 “Blade Runner.” It taps actor Hunter Schafer for a lead role alongside Michelle Yeoh.

While the Malaysia-born Yeoh has an impressive résumé of action films and Hollywood blockbusters, she is also 64.

Schafer is a prominent transgender activist who achieved fame — and, eventually, a spot on HBO’s debauched drama “Euphoria” — after helping repeal a North Carolina bill that would have required people to use bathrooms corresponding with their sex.

Not exactly your father’s “Blade Runner.”

Just days before Amazon Prime started promoting the series, Elle magazine published an interview with Schafer where he revealed the joy and thrill of having his penis removed.

“I just had bottom surgery in December, which was amazing, and I love it so much,” Schafer told the magazine.

RELATED: FALLING STARS: Hollywood woke-erati on the outs as Skydance soars

Cindy Ord/Getty Images

Repli-can’t

Schafer said that he had previously thought there was something “cool” about posing as a woman, but eventually felt the desire to attempt to shape his body to his beliefs.

“For a long time I’ve embraced the gender-expansive part of myself, and I really wanted to try to make that previous body work, because I thought there was something really cool and badass about it,” he continued.

However, living in a “theoretical queer utopia,” as Elle described it, “didn’t match up with the world [Schafer] encountered every day, and the way she personally wanted to show up in it.”

Schafer went on to describe this change as the “magical thing about queerness.”

“On an ideological level, it’s about possibility and expansion and growth, and being on that journey and finding yourself,” the actor added.

“I’m a woman. I’m a girl,” he said.

In a 2019 interview, Schafer also credited the internet with helping him transition.

“The internet saved me — being able to go to YouTube and watch people’s transition timelines and see myself on a screen,” he told Variety.

RELATED: 50 Cent exposes Hollywood’s dirty little secret about ‘diversity’

Faulty franchises

Fans online are already declaring the franchise ruined, with some dismissing the new series as a “parody” or a “DEI checklist.”

Viewers have long criticized Amazon for the way it handles popular franchises, often updating familiar characters and worlds to appeal to the dreaded “modern audience.”

For example, in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” the studio introduced black elves and dwarves into Tolkien’s Middle-earth and gave monstrous orcs surprisingly human emotions.

Amazon is hardly alone. Disney’s “Star Wars: The Acolyte” took similar liberties with another beloved franchise, introducing a coven of witches whose supernatural powers allowed them to conceive children without a father.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Amazon, Blade runner, Lord of the rings, Star wars, Transgenderism, Entertainment 

Democrat Mary Peltola was trying to stay ahead of her Republican opponent in the U.S. Senate race in Alaska. Now she’ll have to stay ahead of a corruption probe.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) has ordered a criminal investigation into a scheme allegedly committed by Peltola’s campaign against Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. President Donald Trump, too, has weighed in, calling for Peltola to be removed from the ballot.

‘Ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process.’

The Peltola campaign has been credibly accused of engaging in a ballot-stacking campaign — allegedly seeking out individuals with the same name as the Republican senator and recruiting at least one, Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg, to run for the Alaskan Senate seat.

The New York Times blew up the campaign’s long-standing denial of wrongdoing with a bombshell report on Wednesday that advanced damning allegations from Peltola’s former campaign manager Elisa Rios.

Rios, who retroactively attempted to retract all of the statements she made to the Times, alleged that: Peltola’s campaign spearheaded the ballot-stacking scheme; top campaign aides, lowly staffers, campaign lawyers, and aides from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee were involved in the scheme; and Peltola was “definitely aware” of the scheme though not directly involved.

The DSCC has denied involvement with the other Dan Sullivan’s campaign, and a spokesperson for the Peltola campaign told Blaze News that “the Alaskans for Mary campaign has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.”

When asked on Wednesday about the damning report from the Times, Peltola suggested it was a “distraction, another diversion” from Sen. Sullivan’s votes on the Iran conflict as well as an opportunity “to sell newspapers.”

RELATED: NY Times exposes Alaska Democrat’s alleged hunt for another Dan Sullivan to run against Republican

President Donald Trump and Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan (R). Kent NISHIMURA/AFP/Getty Images

Sen. Sullivan isn’t buying it.

Nate Adams, a spokesman for Sen. Sullivan, told Blaze News on Wednesday, “Mary Peltola and her campaign have spent months gaslighting Alaskans, denying a scheme they were running all along. We always knew this was a concerted effort to deceive voters, and Mary Peltola was hoping it would stay hidden until after the election.”

Nick Puglia, National Republican Senatorial Committee regional press secretary, said in a statement to Blaze News, “As we have said from the start, Decoy Dan was recruited by Mary Peltola and her Lower 48 cronies to deceive Alaskans. Peltola must be held accountable for her scheme and will be rejected again.”

The new revelations about the alleged scheme evidently captured the attention of the Alaskan governor.

Gov. Dunleavy stated, “Today’s New York Times reporting reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates — including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator — to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes.”

“The Alaska Division of Elections investigated these very concerns in June of this year. The new reporting substantially supports the Division’s findings,” said Dunleavy.

The Alaska Division of Elections ruled in June that Dan J. Sullivan was ineligible as a candidate and would be removed from the ballot.

Carol Beecher, the elections division director, said in a June 15 letter that J. Sullivan had not filed “an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator,” but instead intended “to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”

Beecher found J. Sullivan’s candidacy particularly questionable because he allegedly:

had never before registered to vote or sought ballot access under the name “Dan Sullivan”;had never been affiliated with the Republican Party yet filed to run as a Republican;had a campaign website using a similar format, color scheme, and overall theme to Sen. Sullivan’s campaign website; andworked with a political consultant who is “a known longtime supporter of Democratic candidates including the primary Democratic challenger to Senator Sullivan.”

Although J. Sullivan was removed from the ballot on June 15, a state Superior Court and finally the Alaska Supreme Court reinstated him.

Gov. Dunleavy said in his statement that he is “directing the Department of Public Safety to investigate whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted.”

“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” he continued.

“Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”

Blaze News has reached out to the Peltola, S. Sullivan, and J. Sullivan campaigns for comment. The DSCC did not immediately respond.

President Donald Trump sounded off on the alleged Democratic scheme and called for Peltola to be removed from the ballot.

“It was just determined that the Dumocrats in Alaska, despite their sworn statements to the contrary, put a man named Dan Sullivan on the Ballot in order to confuse the Public with respect to Highly Esteemed Senator Dan Sullivan,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday evening. “This is Voter Fraud at the Highest Level.”

The president said that “the Dumocrat Candidate, who was involved in the scheme, Mary Peltola, should be removed from the Ballot and prosecuted — So should the FAKE Dan Sullivan. Nothing else will do! This behavior in our Elections cannot be allowed to continue.”

Peltola is apparently now too radioactive even for anti-Trump Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R).

Murkowski, who endorsed a Democratic candidate in the Alaska gubernatorial race this week and has previously endorsed Peltola, said in a statement on Wednesday, “While some may try to write this off as just how politics works now, ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process.”

“Recruiting candidates to manipulate the field and influence voting outcomes is simply wrong,” said Murkowski. “Alaskans deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign — what has been revealed is a pattern of lies and coverups and a culture of deception that belongs nowhere in our elections or among our elected officials.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Alaska, Dan sullivan, Donald trump, Election, Lisa murkowski, Mary peltola, Senate, Politics 

Artificial intelligence has quickly evolved from an interesting novelty to an economic driver and a cybersecurity threat. But while the United States tries to rein in its domestic models, foreign-owned AI could pose an even bigger danger, which is why one of China’s most popular models is now banned from the U.S. government.

DeepSeek, a Chinese-owned and operated artificial intelligence company, develops several popular AI models, both in the frontier and in open-weight categories. DeepSeek V4 and V4 Pro are the company’s flagship options that are most comparable to GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.7, and Gemini 3.1, while DeepSeek-R1 is the open-source alternative that can run on local hardware.

DeepSeek doesn’t belong anywhere near the American people, much less federal civilian executive branch agencies.

It’s no secret that China wants U.S. companies to choose open-weight platforms like DeepSeek over American-made frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

After all, they’re cheaper with no recurring subscription fees, data is isolated to local hardware instead of sharing it with the Big AI companies in the cloud, and with enough support, it could supplant U.S. dominance in the AI sector.

Some companies took the bait, too, with big names like Microsoft looking into ways to integrate DeepSeek into a subset of its products. So far, the Redmond giant hasn’t actually followed through, though, so no harm, no foul.

Corporations aside, DeepSeek also apparently had some kind of unofficial integration with U.S. government agencies. This was made apparent when the Department of Homeland Security issued a partial ban on the use of DeepSeek in federal civilian executive branch agencies. These include groups like the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Energy, and many more.

As part of the ban, affected agencies must remove any trace of DeepSeek from their frontend and backend systems. Agencies must also remove any third-party software that utilizes or connects to DeepSeek in any way, including but not limited to products that use DeepSeek as part of their feature set or were developed by DeepSeek.

In the official order, DHS cited several clear reasons for the ban, all relating to national security:

Data access: User prompts and interactions with DeepSeek — including classified or sensitive data — can potentially be sent back to servers in the People’s Republic of China, where it can be accessed by the Chinese government. This would potentially reveal U.S. government secrets and other intelligence to China.Cybersecurity: The DHS noted that DeepSeek’s “models themselves may contain malware or other security vulnerabilities.” Just as AI has been an effective ally in uncovering software security holes that were previously unknown, hackers have also used AI to spread viruses and commit crimes. So far, the DeepSeek app for iOS contains several critical flaws dating back to 2025, making it a security risk.Availability: Since DeepSeek hosts both frontier and open-source models, at least some version of the company’s AI is freely accessible, easy to implement, and virtually unregulated, presenting potential threats to the U.S. government.

Following the DHS’ lead, the Department of Defense and the director of National Intelligence issued their own DeepSeek bans to kick the AI out of U.S. military agencies, ensuring that the platform can’t gobble up important information about our national security and foreign operations.

RELATED: How to protect yourself and your data during the PHP web meltdown

amgun/Getty Images

It’s important to note that the ban only affects government agencies. DeepSeek is not blocked from public use by civilians or enterprise integrations via private businesses. These groups can still access DeepSeek without restrictions and, by affiliation, are still subject to DeepSeek’s influence.

That said, considering the platform’s deep ties to the People’s Republic of China, you may want to think twice before you install DeepSeek or use it on any of your devices.

So far, DeepSeek’s AI has been caught censoring itself regarding responses that paint China in a negative light. Back when the model made headlines in 2025, users noted that it would begin to respond to problematic questions involving controversial figures like Genghis Khan and Mao Zedong, only for the answer to disappear in real time.

In September 2026, DeepSeek was caught routing queries through Anthropic’s Claude in a large-scale distillation plot. Distillation is when an AI company uses query outputs provided by a larger, better AI model to train their smaller model to produce similar results for less. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then DeepSeek must love Claude for copying off of its models.

Lastly, DeepSeek has the power to serve as a propaganda machine for the People’s Republic of China, swaying opinions on everything from U.S. politics to the overall perception of China and more. It doesn’t belong anywhere near the American people, much less federal civilian executive branch agencies. For now, though, the ban only covers the latter.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Deepseek ai, Artificial intelligence, Ai models, Government, China, People’s republic of china, Tech 

Stephanie Strock was in her seventh month of pregnancy when she was found dead, according to one of her friends.

The Heavener Police Department said officers responded to a residence in the 500 block of West D. Ave. on Monday on a welfare check.

‘I do believe that she may have been able to have a chance to be a mother to both her children if we would have paid attention sooner.’

They found the body belonging to 20-year-old Stephanie Strock.

Strock’s body exhibited injuries consistent with homicide, according to investigators.

Police said they found her boyfriend, 28-year-old Austin Morrison, walking nearby.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said that evidence gathered at the scene indicated that Morrison had been with Strock that night and had assaulted her.

He was arrested for two counts of murder, one for the child and another for Strock.

Morrison was booked into the LeFlore County Jail.

Strock’s friend Cathy Ritter told KFSM-TV that Strock was in an abusive relationship and led a hard life.

“I think Stephanie should have been somewhere before all this tragedy happened, and I think it would have been avoided, and I think her baby would still be alive,” Ritter said.

RELATED: Police make gruesome discovery in freezer of abandoned home in Dallas

“I do believe that she may have been able to have a chance to be a mother to both her children if we would have paid attention sooner,” Ritter added.

She added that she was heartbroken that no one was there to help Strock.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Murder charges, Oklahoma, Pregnant woman, Crime 

On November 3, California voters will find 37 candidates for local office on their ballots endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. That’s more than half of the 69 DSA-endorsed local candidates nationwide, according to Ballotpedia. Minnesota, the distant runner-up, has six.

California, it seems, has become fertile ground for politicians promising to cure the failures of big government with still more government.

Californians have paid for big promises long enough. Before funding the next experiment, they should demand the receipts.

This is quite a reversal for the once Golden State. The Gold Rush, the transcontinental railroad, agriculture, manufacturing, and Silicon Valley transformed California into a magnet for Americans who wanted to build businesses and fortunes. Opportunity was its calling card.

Today, millions of Californians find it increasingly difficult even to afford the place.

The socialist candidates did not create all these problems. California’s governing establishment spent decades laying the groundwork. Nor is every progressive regulation a socialist policy; California remains a powerhouse of private enterprise. But that only sharpens the question facing the newcomers: Why should voters trust a more expansive government to repair what government has helped break?

Consider housing. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the typical home was worth roughly $776,000 in the first seven months of 2026. The national figure was $372,000. California has under-built for decades, leaving a housing shortage that estimates put at more than 1 million units.

Land and construction costs are high, and people still want to live in California. Those realities do not absolve lawmakers who imposed layers of local restrictions and cumbersome approval procedures. The obstacles became so obvious that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation in 2025 to streamline environmental reviews and speed construction. Sacramento finally acknowledged that its rules had become part of the problem.

A state that spends years making homes harder to build should not act astonished when workers cannot afford them.

Then there is electricity. In July, California’s average residential price reached 33.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with 18.3 cents nationally, according to federal energy data. Families do not experience those figures as an abstract dispute over climate policy. They experience them when the utility bill arrives.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office identified greenhouse-gas policies as one contributor to California’s soaring rates. Wildfire costs and the utilities’ operating structures also play a role. The explanation is complicated; the price is unmistakable. Politicians pursuing ambitious mandates owe residents an honest accounting of what those mandates cost.

And what has California received for its vast spending on homelessness?

RELATED: Gavin Newsom makes damning admission about socialist takeover on undercover camera

JP Yim/Getty Images for Clinton Global Initiative

The state allocated nearly $24 billion for homelessness and housing programs during the five fiscal years ending in 2022-23. Yet in 2024, the state auditor reported that California lacked enough outcome data to assess the cost-effectiveness of three of the five programs examined. Two appeared cost-effective. The other three could not be properly judged because officials had failed to collect sufficient information.

That is not proof that every dollar was wasted. It is an indictment of a government that spends billions before establishing whether key programs deliver results. Taxpayers are entitled to more than another appropriation and another promise.

Yet California’s budget offers no reassurance. The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects roughly $29 billion in outstanding budgetary borrowing by the end of the 2026-27 fiscal year. It also identifies a structural imbalance: The enacted budget is balanced, but ongoing expenses exceed ongoing revenues.

California is not bankrupt — yet. Its economy remains enormous and productive. Indeed, that makes the recurring fiscal trouble harder to excuse. A state blessed with extraordinary wealth should be able to account for its spending and live within its means.

Now consider what some of the socialists propose. On Election Day, voters will decide Proposition 40, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires who were California residents on January 1. Naturally, the DSA supports it. Most of the proceeds would go toward health care, with smaller shares for education and food assistance.

RELATED: California says ‘trust us’ on voter eligibility. Why?

John Tully/Getty Images

Supporters say the money would help protect health care from largely overhyped federal funding cuts. The state projects the tax could raise tens of billions of dollars. But a one-time windfall is no cure for permanent spending commitments. California’s Legislative Analyst warns that wealthy taxpayers could respond in ways that reduce future income-tax revenue. Once the windfall is spent, what comes next?

This is the argument socialists should have to confront. California already taxes heavily, regulates extensively, and devotes staggering sums to public programs. Yet housing is scarce, electricity is expensive, homelessness persists, and Sacramento borrows against tomorrow to meet today’s obligations. Expanding the government’s reach without repairing its failures offers no guarantee of better results.

Many Californians recognize this. There are also plenty who may conclude that the existing political establishment has failed them so badly that an avowed socialist deserves a chance. Their frustration is understandable if misplaced.

California once drew the ambitious from across America with a promise that hard work could pay off. Before voters give Sacramento and city halls still more power, they should demand evidence that the power already granted has been used wisely.

Californians have paid for big promises long enough. Before funding the next experiment, they should demand the receipts.

​Climate policy, Government spending, Housing affordability, Silicon valley, State budget, Home prices, Gavin newsom, Karen bass, Dsa, Opinion & analysis, California 

An Iranian strike in February destroyed an American missile-defense radar worth about $300 million at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. In the war with Iran, the U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones. And intercepting relatively cheap Iranian drones can require missiles costing millions of dollars.

That is the arithmetic Pete Hegseth must confront as he builds FORTRESS America, the Department of War initiative to secure the capabilities and supply chains on which the military depends.

FORTRESS America should mean more than stockpiling. It should mean American resilience through American scale.

Hegseth is right to pursue resilience. But without a reality check, the initiative risks becoming another bumper sticker in a $1 trillion defense budget.

FORTRESS America identifies five pillars: energy independence; supply chain and defense industrial base resilience; a strategic defense reserve; installation hardening and cyber resilience; and resilience in space and spectrum. Each serves a genuine need. But resilience should not mean putting everything in a government silo. The Iran war offers a warning about how easily technological overmatch can become economic mismatch.

The Pentagon has long pursued technological overmatch: the most sophisticated aircraft, sensors, missiles, and networks. Yet expensive, highly specialized systems can be difficult to replace, while an adversary can keep sending cheaper weapons into the fight.

The losses in Iran do not erase America’s military superiority. They do expose a costly imbalance: A nation can possess superior technology and still face an economic contest in which its enemies impose disproportionate costs.

Build for scale

The same lesson applies to the broader FORTRESS America agenda. An energy strategy cannot depend on a single vulnerable source. Supply chains cannot hinge on components easily disrupted or cut off. Defense systems cannot be so bespoke, expensive, and difficult to manufacture that the United States struggles to produce them at scale.

Palmer Luckey’s Anduril offers a useful model. Its Arsenal-1 factory in Ohio is designed to manufacture autonomous military systems in volume for the United States and its allies. Commercial manufacturing methods and components help make that scale possible.

Space offers another example. American entrepreneurs have made rockets, satellites, and launches more efficient. The government should create conditions for American companies to compete, invest, and scale — rather than replicate the commercial industrial base inside the Pentagon.

RELATED: Can you hear him now? Elon Musk is on the brink of revolutionizing yet another global industry

yucelyilmaz/Getty Images

A spectrum arsenal, not a spectrum hoard

The logic extends to wireless spectrum. Federal agencies retain extensive access to frequencies that commercial providers want for wireless networks. Congress has protected the heavily used 3.1-3.45 GHz band from commercial auction, reflecting the military’s radar and other defense requirements. But treating spectrum chiefly as a resource to hold can also foreclose commercial capacity and innovation.

The goal should not be to privilege one particular frequency, but to strike a balance: federal agencies currently control or share access to substantial portions of the most valuable spectrum, much of which could support commercial wireless networks if policy better balanced national security needs with the public benefits of commercial use.

The military does not necessarily need to control every frequency; it needs reliable access to the capabilities those frequencies enable. In Ukraine, commercial low-Earth-orbit satellite networks have supported the fight against Russia. Such networks can provide military utility at enormous scale without requiring the Pentagon to build all the underlying infrastructure itself.

Even if spectrum were weighted toward commercial use, U.S. law gives the president significant authority over communications in wartime and emergencies. Military-grade satellite services, such as those procured for Ukraine, operate under Pentagon contracts and negotiated terms designed for national security needs. Retail satellite internet, by contrast, operates under commercial licensing and ordinary terms of service.

RELATED: Most of the internet is suddenly melting down, and there’s only one fix

Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The Pentagon already recognizes the value of commercial technology. Its October acquisition guidance makes commercial products and services the default for procurement. Spectrum policy should draw on the same principle: Buy and secure the capability where commercial networks can deliver it.

America needs a spectrum arsenal that draws on the strength of its wireless and technology industries: competing network providers, satellite constellations, sensors, communications systems, and infrastructure built with American investment, technology, and workers. The military can buy or reserve capacity, with priority and assured-access arrangements for crises and war.

The fortress is the industrial base

The best fortress is not one in which the government owns everything behind the walls. It is one in which American companies have already built the networks, factories, and technologies Americans use every day — and the military can draw on that industrial strength when the nation needs it.

FORTRESS America should mean more than stockpiling. It should mean American resilience through American scale.

Iran is giving us the reality check now. We can use it to rethink spectrum policy, defense manufacturing, and military procurement — or discover the same mismatch in the next conflict, when the stakes may be much higher.

​American companies, Department of war, Energy independence, Federal agencies, National security, Palmer luckey, Pete hegseth, Supply chains, Ukraine conflict, Us military, Air base, Iran war, Drones, Missile defense, Fortress america, Opinion & analysis 

Right now, the U.S. government is putting military pressure on Iran, but that pressure is likely to let up if Democrats sweep the midterm elections, as they are predicted to do, and cut the money for continued military operations.

BlazeTV host Nick Freitas and Hillsdale military historian Mark Moyar are concerned that Iran is just biding its time — waiting for American politics to shut down the military pressure.

Freitas wants to know how the administration can continue to thwart Iran even if that military pressure ends.

“So if we acknowledge that Iran does pose a threat, that they do have aggressive goals … what do you think would be a good long-term strategy for mitigating the threat?” Freitas asks Moyer.

Given that Democrats will almost certainly push to “defund the war,” Moyer believes America will have to “depend more on countries in the region.”

“For Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, the other Gulf states, this is really more of an existential threat for them than it is for us,” he says, recommending that we “[build] the conditions for allowing them to to take more of the kinetic action.”

Freitas proposes the idea of “coming up with some sort of alternative to the Strait of Hormuz with respect to the export of oil.”

“How viable a strategy do you think that is, and what do you think some alternatives could actually look like?” he asks Moyer.

Moyer looks favorably on this idea. “I think using the alternative roads, we’re already getting back close to prewar levels of oil. So I think that’s very important — certainly going to reduce the ability of Iran to try to blackmail us with the Strait of Hormuz, which seems to be their current method of operation,” he says.

As for alternatives, Moyer says “it’s not that hard” to “circumvent Iran,” but doing so “is not going to make the Iranian threat go away.”

“Realistically speaking, we should assume that at some point the Democrats and the Europeans are going to ease up on them, and so, you know, [Iran] will get back to doing the things they want to be doing,” he explains.

“How much leverage do you think the United States has in offering a stick or a carrot to the Chinese in order to lean on the ayatollah?” Freitas asks.

“In theory it sounds good,” says Moyer. However, “the Chinese probably like what’s going on because we are their main adversary and we’re losing lots of money and having lots of trouble.”

“They want to surpass us as the world’s most powerful country, and so for us to be bogged down in this mess, I think, serves their interest, so I don’t see them probably wanting to change Iran too much,” he theorizes.

Freitas then presents a third potential strategy: Instead of fighting Iran directly, the U.S. quietly helps groups inside Iran fight the Iranian government themselves.

“You see opposition to the ayatollah coming from the overwhelming majority, which is Persian, but you also see it from Arab populations. You see it from Kurdish populations, and you certainly see it from the Azerbaijani populations, all within Iran,” he says.

“Do you think investing in a long-term strategy, which essentially supports and uplifts dissident groups to be able to potentially mount an effective insurgency … do you look at that as a viable strategy?” he asks.

Moyer says it’s “certainly one worth considering” but ultimately “a tough call.”

“We have as a country mixed experience with supporting insurgencies in other countries, and sometimes it works,” he says.

But sometimes it doesn’t work.

“If you recall when we supported the Syrian insurgency, I think we spent a hundred billion dollars to train five guys or something before we canceled the program,” he notes.

It’s also a deadly gamble.

“I also think of the Iraq experience where we try to encourage these people to rise up and then Saddam Hussein ends up slaughtering huge numbers of people,” Moyer says, “so I do think we have to kind of think about are we going to simply be consigning people to their death.”

“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms. Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com, and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Nick freitas, Strait of hormuz, Iran, Blazetv show