Video summary
Senator Mike Lee has proposed a new Senate bill designed to treat drug cartels like pirates, effectively reviving an 18th-century legal mechanism known as letters of marque. This constitutional tool was last utilized during the War of 1812 and historically authorized private actors, or "privateers," to engage in warfare against designated enemies with official government sanction. Under Lee's proposal, cartel members would be classified as pirates under international law, allowing for the deployment of private security contractors rather than traditional military forces. This approach aims to bypass current congressional war declarations and executive orders by creating a specific legal framework that permits private entities to target narco boats legally, seize their vessels, confiscate bounties, and even shoot at them if they fit the defined criteria. The discussion highlights how this strategy mirrors historical methods used during the "Golden Age of Piracy" and the expansion of the American West. In both eras, governments found it difficult to track down illicit actors using only official military resources, leading them to empower private militias that could operate with greater flexibility than standing armies or naval fleets. The transcript draws parallels between these historical strategies and modern insurgent tactics, noting that relying on a massive standing military for every conflict can be inefficient compared to decentralized efforts by citizen groups amassing their own forces. Proponents argue this method allows for a more agile response to threats in regions like Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela, where cartels operate from land or sea outside U.S. jurisdiction but are subject to the new legal definitions provided by Washington. However, significant concerns arise regarding the potential chaos of unleashing private citizens without rigorous oversight. The dialogue emphasizes that while there would be a set of rules defining what constitutes a valid "narco boat" and establishing engagement protocols, the risk of error remains high. If a privateer mistakenly identifies an innocent vessel or kills an American citizen in retaliation for cartel actions, they could face severe legal consequences, including imprisonment. Critics worry about scenarios where a drone strike ordered by officials like Pete Hegseth results in collateral damage involving civilians commandeered by cartels, potentially sparking international diplomatic crises with nations that have not consented to U.S. jurisdiction over their territories. Ultimately, the conversation concludes with skepticism regarding whether this revival of privateering is a viable or safe solution for modern counter-narcotics efforts. While historical contexts allowed for such measures due to limited policing capabilities and high mortality rates among pirates, today's geopolitical landscape presents different risks that could lead to unintended escalation. The summary suggests that while the idea appeals to those who view history as cyclical, it represents a dangerous regression toward "half-cocked" militia actions rather than maintaining professional military standards. Without clear international cooperation from neighboring countries and strict adherence to legal boundaries, this policy shift threatens to create instability rather than resolve the issue of transnational drug trafficking networks.
Read the full video transcript
This is coming out of the segment Mike
Lee's proposal to make Pirates of the
Caribbean
legal again.
I can read this but I feel like you have
this like cute up so I'm going to pass
the mic to you Tom. Like walk us through
this. What did this mean exactly? So all
right, here's what's going on. Senator
Mike Lee wants to treat cartels like
pirates so you got to respect that. A
new Senate bill would let the president
issue letters of marque officially
treating cartel members as pirates.
Letters of marque are a constitutional
tool that are used to authorize private
actors in warfare. The bill would
classify cartel members as pirates under
international law. This allows private
security or contractors to target
cartels legally. It bypasses traditional
military deployment and congressional
war declarations which is turning out to
be something that Trump is very good at
finding like those things like the old
laws that like oh, I can just use my EO
powers to get this across the line.
Okay, now I got a new law. Wild.
[laughter]
The last US letters of marque were
issued during the war of 1812 to give
you an idea on this. So yeah, this quite
literally brings us back to the age of
piracy where what we realized was okay,
this is way too hard for the British
Empire to track down all this stuff so
we're going to start writing these
letters of marque so that privateers as
they were known had official sanction to
go and like
shoot cannons at these pirates and take
stuff back, confiscate their ships,
confiscate their bounty. I mean it is
this this one is wild to me. Like I
really saw in some ways that history
moves in like this linear fashion
and now I'm realizing man, this stuff
really just loops on itself like
endlessly.
>> feel like this is the start of your One
Piece journey now. We get we get a crew.
We can we can get a round. We just need
a Nami and we'll be good. Like we just
we can just start going around and just
looking for You're saying it to be funny
but that's what this That's that's the
actual law. There there is a guy if you
look in the I can't remember if it's on
the White House one but somebody posted
about this. There's a guy who I guess is
part of he says in his Twitter bio part
of P Marquez which is Mark Andreessen
part of his like tech in group and he
makes military weapons and he was like
hey to any of you privateers that are
going to do this. So all you Luffy's,
all you Nami's, all you Zoro's out
there, we've got the weaponry that you
need and we're ready to supply you. And
I was like oh my god. Okay, jokes aside,
what this is saying is
it's almost kind of like the like a
citizen's arrest but like in the in the
Caribbean Sea. So that way if you see a
narco boat or anything that seems I
guess
under the definitions that Trump
outlined, you can not you can seize from
them, you can shoot at them, you can
take their boat and
>> we would have to look. We'll do some
>> seize it.
research into the actual specifics of
what's legal and what's not. I don't
want to give people a legal opinion here
>> but yes, there would be a set of known
yeses and nos. So things you can do,
things you can't do, rules of
engagement, all of that stuff and as
long as you file them, then it would be
considered a good seizure. I don't know
what percentage they're allowed to keep
of the stuff that they get. I that we'd
have to look into but this is one of the
ways that the Golden Age of Piracy was
ended was privateers just like came out
of the woodwork. This is also by the way
how the West was won. You had all of
these militias that the most famous
would morph into the Texas Rangers but
it started as these groups realizing oh,
the way that the government is
officially going about fighting the
Native Americans is nonsensical. Native
Americans, they'll always exploit a
moment of weakness and the second that
the odds are matched, they bail. It's
actually quite brilliant. It's very the
kinds of strategies that we would use
during the Revolutionary War, the kind
of strategies that insurgents use. It's
like you don't fight in a headlong
trench warfare kind of battle and so all
of this allows for that sort of mono e
mono type thing where it's going to be
what start as private citizens amassing
what will look like militias going out
and stopping these narco boats but like
how they qualify, like how do you prove
that this is a narco boat? What happens
to you if it's a not a narco boat and
you blow it up and you kill somebody?
Like that's going to happen. This is one
of those things that like the writer in
me is like I can't believe this is real.
This is incredible and then the like
real world version of me is like this is
psychotic and this is going like this is
the kind of thing I wanted to believe
that we moved away from. This is why we
have the military. Like you
both having a big country where you
pay for everything and you have
this gigantic standing military and
unleashing private citizens to build
their own militia and and go off half
cocked is like guys, let's pick a lane
here. Either we're going to pay for
everything and we're going to be a
military that's going to police the seas
or defund to a reasonable extent a lot
of this stuff and say, 'Cool,
privateers, have at it. Here are the
laws. Keep in mind, you can go to
prison, so be careful if you do this
wrong.'" So,
this one is I will be I I will reserve
my judgment to see how this plays out,
but I cannot see this playing out any
way but badly. The real like domino to
fall will be when Pete Hegseth
drops a drone
on a narco boat, but it was a narco boat
commandeered by a privateer and ends up
killing an American citizen who just
killed the narco person.
>> Yes. And that's the kind of chaos that
we're talking Yeah. Yeah. That's the
thing that like will really kind of
sober a lot of people about this law, so
it's interesting. And going through it,
there's a part that we skip over yet I'm
making all the pirate jokes, but it does
say to seize cartel property and persons
on land or sea outside the US. Yeah. So,
this is very interesting to see what
happens in Mexico and Colombia and
Venezuela and some of these other places
where there's a hub.
>> They will be subject to those
jurisdictions, so let's be very clear.
This is just the US saying, "Don't
worry, we won't prosecute you." Until I
hear Mexico or Venezuela or whoever say,
"No, no, no, we're good." I will assume
that we're going to have an
international problem here. Now, back in
the day of piracy, I imagine people were
way more on board with this because you
really couldn't police the seas. And so,
the only way to do this was to finally
say, "Listen, every ship now that's out
in the sea might be coming for you, so
you might want to rethink your piraty
ways." At one point, the average life
expectancy of a pirate was something
like 3 years. Like, you were just toast.
Once you became a pirate, that was game
over. You were going to get killed. And
this is one of the reasons that now
piracy is only something that happens
like off of third world countries
because, bro, that that is just for so
long it was just a one-way path to an
early grave.