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LM Louis Martinez On Start Here

“When you have a war, you're going to be using up weapons. And when you use up weapons, that means that certain stockpiles are going to be depleted. And it turns out that these Patriots and THAADs are some of the most important ones that you need, given that this has really become a long-distance war.”

Start Here · Policy · October 2026

“When you have a war, you're going to be using up weapons. And when you use up weapons, that means that certain stockpiles are going to be depleted. And it turns out that these Patriots and THAADs are some of the most important ones that you need, given that this has really become a long-distance war.” — Louis Martinez, Start Here

Context

Mielke suggested the fear is that China might read depleted US stockpiles as a window to move on Taiwan. ABC's Pentagon reporter agrees that is part of the Pentagon's concern and adds a plain point about what a war does to munitions.

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Transcript

Start Here Around 16:02 into the episode
Speaker 4

…have enough to defend itself or potentially for future use against another conflict. And I think when we talk about another conflict, it's always about, okay, how many weapons can we keep in store in case we ever have to go into a conflict with China? And I think that's really the concern. Right.

Brad Mielke

Like, that's what you don't want is China going like, maybe now is the time to attack Taiwan. It's not like the U.S. would get like, that's what you don't want happening.

Speaker 4

That's exactly right. And I think that's been part of the concern from Hexeth and his team. But again, the reality is that when you have a war, you're going to be using up weapons. And when you use up weapons, that means that certain stockpiles are going to be depleted. And it turns out that these Patriots and Thad missiles are some of the most important ones that you need, given that this has really become like a long-distance war.

Brad Mielke

Although also tough to imagine other countries aren't already aware of the munitions situation. Like they're not waiting for reporters to tell them that. But still, no response from General Sylvia yet. The Trump administration's insistent that all this will be borne out. Louis Martinez covering the…

Speaker 1

Yeah, kind of a blockbuster deal, Brad, when it comes to two major players in the food delivery space. So DoorDash says it will buy Instacart in a deal worth $17 billion. And DoorDash, in announcing this, said that this is a move to try to bring consumers more stores to choose from. They say there…

Speaker 3

Instacart makes you choose your bananas

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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