Hey everybody, how's it going? Hope
you're having a lovely day. I didn't
start working in repair from just fixing
MacBook motherboards or working on data
recovery in Apple products. I actually
started in the recording studio industry
in that world in the mid-200s. I worked
at Progressive Music, which was a small
35 room facility in the film center
building. And I also worked at Avatar
Studios, which used to be called Power
Station back in the day. It was a
gigantic studio, one of the few places
that you could actually record a
symphony orchestra in New York City. It
was one of the best studios in the
world. I got to work there as an intern
at first, not paid because I was a
teenager who didn't know what I was
doing. And eventually after enough of
cleaning up other musicians puke when
they would get high or drunk, I was
trusted enough to be able to get the
falafel order at a Zuri Cafe for people
like Rich Costi or Nickadilla. And once
I had gotten enough falafel orders right
and hadn't gotten anything wrong, they
then finally trusted me to use a
soldering iron and work on some of the
equipment there. One of the things that
I learned while I was working with the
great technicians there is that a lot of
the stuff that I was working on were
downstream from the military. So the
gear that we have when you look at the
knobs and the circuit design and even
some of the components, I didn't really
understand that a lot of this would not
have existed the way it did if not for
the fact that a lot of it was downstream
from the military. So I'll give you a
couple of examples. Take this. This is
an LA2A. This is a very, very popular
compressor. If you're not an audio
engineer recording music, you probably
don't know why this is so impressive,
but you put a voice through it and it
just sounds awesome. This was not
something that was just randomly
invented on its own. This has a piece in
it. It has an optical compressor unit
that makes it sound amazing. And this
actually came from a missile system. Jim
Lawrence was asked to join Caltech Jet
Propulsion Laboratory where he was
assigned the task of developing optical
sensors for the Titan missile program.
And that optical sensor is actually the
thing that is inside of this audio
compressor that's being used 50 to 70
years later by people if not in hardware
with plugins that are emulating the
sound of it. Rert Neve, he made all
these amazing consoles and he had
started as a member of the Royal Corps
of Signals in the British Army dealing
with communications. He made a bunch of
amazing consoles. something like the
Ptech equalizer. If you've ever seen one
of these at a recording studio before,
the person who worked on Ptech
equalizers actually worked at RCA and
was given a bunch of responsibilities by
the US government for designing secret
and topsecret equipment for
communications and radar for the
military. The reason I bring this up is
that when I talk about military right to
repair on this channel, which I have
before, it's not simply because Rossman
Repair Group has some sort of personal
interest in fixing the Titan version 3
missile system. That's not something
that's going to happen anytime soon. But
rather, it's because my first experience
in technology as a job came from
servicing devices where it was hammered
into my head every day that everything
we were working on is downstream from
what was going on in the military. Not
just the items and the switches and the
VU meters and the styling of the casing
and the buttons, but more importantly,
the culture of it. The fact that all
this gear that we got came with
schematics and diagrams and manuals and
it was never imagined in a million years
that you would try to hide this stuff
from people. That was also from the
military culture of that time. In that
era when you sold a piece of radar
equipment, you also got books that were
this large with every unit that said
exactly how to rebuild this thing from
scratch because if you are fighting a
war in Japan or Germany, you're going to
call the manufacturers's rep and say,
"Can I connect to your cloud system to
figure out how to make this work?" One
of the videos I did earlier this year,
the US military might as well be dealing
with the genius bar. I was playing a
clip of the Secretary of the Army saying
as follows. When we tour bases, you see
pieces of equipment that can be upwards
of two $3 million that will be unused
for a year at a time because it's
something that we can 3D print for a
cost of $2 to $20. The American soldiers
see that and they're not able to use it
and that is incredibly demoralizing. I
did a bunch of interviews after this
video speaking to a number of different
members of the military. There is a
provision that was going to be put into
the NDAA. This came from Secretary of
Defense himself. It says as follows.
Identify and propose contract
modifications for right to repair
provisions where intellectual property
constraints limit the Army's ability to
conduct maintenance and assess the
appropriate maintenance tools, software,
and technical data while preserving the
intellectual capital of American
industry. Seek to include right to
repair provisions in all existing
contracts and also ensure these
provisions are included in all new
contracts. After this happened, there
was a bipartisan bill that was proposed
by Senators Tim Shehy and Elizabeth
Warren. Two people that it's very if you
don't understand American politics very
much, you're not going to find them
agreeing on a lot. Uh but this this was
something that they managed to both
agree on and I thought it was a pretty
interesting step forward. The White
House agreed on this. Uh Secretary of
Defense Pete Hexath agreed with this.
Secretary of the Navy agreed with this.
Secretary of the Army agreed with this.
They were all on board after touring
ships where most of the burners were
dead because they weren't able to fix
basic stuff for the kitchen for the
stove on the ship that has to feed
thousands of people.
>> What we do makes no sense to me. Okay.
And so I am a huge supporter of right to
repair. I went on the Ford carrier. They
had eight ovens. This is a ship that
serves 15,300 meals a day. Only two were
working.
>> Six were out. They And I said, "You've
got 5,300 people on the ship.
>> You're telling me someone can't fix an
oven. We got a lot of engineers. We can,
but we need to wait for the contractor
to get out." I asked the question about
our elevators. If an elevator go out,
what happens?
>> We've got to call Huntington. They've
got to call the four other people.
>> All this work that was done seems to be
getting undone. And I want to explain in
my opinion why I think it's being undone
and explain what you can do about it and
why you should care. Why should you
care? I I come out here and I talk about
ownership every single day and you guys
are losing ownership every single day.
We're losing ownership and the ability
to fix what we bought and paid for every
single day. So when you take a look and
see that one of the largest customers of
the largest paymoth in the in the United
States is going to be signing something
where they are trying to do things as a
service. Uh this really does kind of
ring that death nail home that you're
not getting repair back. And it's
something that that while I have failed
consistently for a very long period of
time to obtain real right to repair
doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying.
See to include right to repair
provisions in all existing contracts and
also ensure these provisions are
included in all new contracts. This was
making its way through. I did several
videos earlier this year where I spoke
with military service members that were
having issues when they were in the
field and had to fix things and we had a
bunch of interviews posted in the
channel. Senators Tim Shehy and
Elizabeth Warren had proposed a
bipartisan bill. The Secretary of the
Army, the Secretary of the Navy, the
president, the Secretary of Defense, all
these people were all on board on the
same page, which is that if you're going
to have a trillion dollar military to
budget, you should be able to fix what
you bought and paid for. And one of the
problems recently, this appears to be
getting sabotaged. And some of the
people that are involved in sabotaging
it are not just the names that you're
used to. There's some other names like
Palanteer, companies that I'm I'm just
I'm not going to really litter this
video with a lot of it are just
companies that I'm just not the biggest
fan of for a number of different reasons
that you can likely guess. There are
channels that their entire channel is
essentially going over why they don't
like this one company. I I'll just leave
it at that for this video. A look at the
news. Uh defense contractors fight back
against NDA repair language. What's
going on right now is they would like to
take the right to repair language that
is in this most recent contract and they
would like to essentially strike it all
out, just do a giant X and replace it
with something called data as a service.
Now, before I explain what data as a
service is or what this means,
what do you think it means?
Give you some hints. Just I'm just throw
some things out there. Remember heated
seats as a service, a baby monitor as a
service. There are enough things that
are turning into services. And what they
want to do here is because it has the
word service, it sounds like, oh, look,
you want repair service, we're going to
offer service here. You're fine. Data as
a service means that rather than
actually be able to do the work in house
easily, you are now going to have to
contact the manufacturer and go, please,
sir, we're the Department of Defense,
but would you mind giving us access to
the repair tool so I can replace the
broken part on our system? Do you have
an active subscription?
>> Maybe.
Go away. But I'm in the South China Sea
and Zein Ping is saying mean things
about America. Please
no.
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little
bit there, but that's what this is. Data
as a service means the Department of
Defense has to ask major contractors for
permission every time the Department of
Defense needs repair tools or data. This
is going to cause more delays and
contested logistics environments with
service members having to get onetime
access to data that they need to repair
broken equipment from somebody who knows
it better than me. Data as a service is
a meme. Data as a service is heated
seats as a service. As a service is
exactly what you think it is. It's
taking something that used to be
something that you got when you bought
the product and figuring out a way to
charge you a recurring fee and to milk
you for the rest of your life. And one
of the problems that I have with that
coming to the military is that once that
comes to the military, whatever hope
that we have to fight back against that
in the consumer space is gone. A lot of
items and things that we use in the
consumer space come downstream from the
military. And more importantly, when you
hear people say that this is going to
hurt innovation, many of the devices
that are still in use today come from
innovations that were created during a
time when the military created products
that came with full service manuals,
full diagnostic information. The Titan
missile system didn't have data
as a service. They gave the military
what they needed to be able to service
it. The LA2A, when you bought that, you
could get schematics, diagrams,
everything from Yuri so that down to the
nuts and bolts, you get the
exact same items to recreate that entire
item from scratch. And innovation
continued. The idea that innovation is
going to go away as a result of this
passing is insane. So, let's take a look
at why some of this stuff is is coming
to be, and I'll give you just some of my
opinions on it as I scroll through.
There was something that was proposed
called the Speed Act, and this is where
you'll find data as a service. This was
proposed by Mike Rogers and Adam Smith.
They are on the Armed Services
Subcommittee in the House. So, if I were
to take a look and walk over to Mr. Adam
Smith, who bruters their bread? We have
General Atomics, Palanteer, General
Dynamics. Uh go to a different year and
we have Palanteer, Lidos, Loheed Martin,
General Atomics, General Dynamics,
Lidos, and of course more than coming in
at more than all of them combined. Apac,
which again, that's a topic for a
different video. We're not going to get
into that in this one. And then we go to
Mike Rogers. Mike Rogers, Lheed Martin,
Lidos, General Dynamics, L3, Harris
Technology, General Atomics. This these
two gentlemen's care entire campaign is
funded by military contractors including
Palunteer. Let's just take a look at
some of the people that work for these
kind gentlemen. If Tyler Jensen Tyler
Jensen US House of Representatives, four
years legislative assistant, office of
congressman Adam Smith. Now he works at
anchor and arrow strategies full-time
executive vice president for public
policy lobbying disclosure report
Palunteer Technologies.
Tyler Jensen,
[snorts] how stupid do you think
the American people are? Palanteer has
some interesting services. Then they
have Gotham Foundry, the Army data
platform. A lot of this is based on a
subscription model and the military is
going to pay continuously for access to
data analytics rather than owning the
system. And that's one thing, but then
when you put this into the NDAA in place
of right to repair, you're taking that
business model and you're normalizing it
for everything. And I don't think that
that is a good idea. If I go down the
entire list, and I welcome you to do so,
it's very easy with the amount of
information that's out there nowadays. I
could make this video five hours long.
It's incestuous and it's disgusting.
When you have something that is this
bipartisan, this beneficial, not just
for the American people, for the
military, but for the culture as a
whole, for it just to get gutted,
crossed out, lol jk, and this is a
service. Here you go. Here's your BMW
heated seats for the military. There's a
reason that these people are looking to
sneak in data as a service provisions in
making everything into a service. As
said by Pogo here, operation and
maintenance costs comprise roughly 70%
of a program's overall cost. And as US
Per has found, contractor employees cost
2.84 times as much as an average
Department of Defense civilian employee
performing the same job. So if you turn
everything into a service and you have
it done by private contractors, it's
going to cost a lot more money. But more
importantly, you're taking the concept
of ownership away from the largest
organization in the United States and
you're normalizing it. This goes
everywhere else. The two people that are
trying to strike out the right to repair
provisions and replace it with data as a
service are people that in my
saying in my opinion, as stated as
objective fact, their campaigns are
funded by the defense industry. Am I
wrong? Their campaigns are funded by the
defense industry. Check. Their employee
goes on to work for a lobbying firm that
represents Palanteer. Check. Sensible
language that saved the American
taxpayer money is replaced with garbage
that allows Palanteer to rob the
American public blind. Check. How
stupid do you think the American
people are? Busy? Yes. Working 50 to 80
hours a week to feed their family? Yes.
Overwhelmed at the sheer amount of
tsunami of how they're getting
every time they open the news every
single day? Yes. Stupid? No. What I'm
going to ask of you is if you do not
want to see your tax dollars go to a $1
trillion department of our government
using everything as a service and
essentially having the military
equivalent of heated seats in a BMW.
Email your House representative, email
your Senate representative and tell them
you would like to see data as a service
and the right to repair provision put
back in.
This is very bipartisan. Yeah, Elizabeth
Warren, Tim Shehy, Pete Hegsth, the
Secretary of the Army and Navy, Marie
Glucen Camperez. The number of people
from across the aisle that agree on this
is crazy. The reason this has the level
of widespread support that it does is
because most people, regardless of their
political views on everything else,
don't want to pay a subscription for
heated seats in their car. This is the
military equivalent of heated seats in
your car. Data as a service instead of
right to repair. When these inventions
and innovations came out in the 1930s
through 1960s, they rippled for the next
50 years through the broadcast and
consumer space in the United States and
around the world in a great way. And I
also have a feeling that if this type of
anti-ownership crap takes hold in the
military right now that conversely, we
will see this type of anti-ownership
garbage take hold for the next 30 to 60
years in the consumer and professional
space as well. And I don't want to see
that happen. What I'm going to ask of
all of you is if do the following.
Number one, if you live in the United
States, figure out who your senator and
your congressp person are. Number two,
after you figure them out, find the
contact page on their website. Number
three, tell them that you think that
data as a service should not be in the
NDAA and that rather you would like to
see the right to repair provisions put
back in there that were originally
discussed by Pete Hexth, the Secretary
of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy,
Tim Senator Tim Shehy, Senator Elizabeth
Warren, and all the else. Put right to
repair back in, take data as a service
out. And if you want to explain why and
you want to explain in more detail, say
what it means to you. This probably
isn't the first video you're watching on
this channel. You've probably watched
many, many videos and you've likely, if
you've been along for the ride all this
time, you know why everything being as a
service sucks. You don't need me to
write the email for you. I won't be able
to write a perfect email for you. And
honestly, if I do write it for you, it's
going to come out as a form letter. It's
not going to seem real. It's not going
to be as genuine. I want you to write
what you have to say and call with what
you have to say. Now, some people may
say, "Well, what's the point? Nothing's
going to happen. Lewis, you've been
working on this for 13 years. What
progress have you made? And point
taken.
Would you rather do nothing at all? I
think that's even less productive. The
amount of time that it takes to do what
I suggested is less than the amount of
time that some of you that don't install
Ublock Origin spend watching ads.
Consider it. Let me know your thoughts
in the comments down below.
I don't feel like watching Palunteer
erase what little is left of ownership.
Definitely not for these rates either.
If any were this cheap, I would
have bought you myself.
ownership
or a subscription. Do you subscribe to a
politician or do you own a politician?
I'm not really sure how that works.
Anyway, that's it for today and as
always, I hope you learned something. My
apologies if this video is a little bit
scrambled. I'm just uh a little tired
today. I'll see you in the next one.
Bye. Now,
>> we also have the duty not [music] to
infringe the IP rights in the process.
It is in fact the manufacturers who have
the relevant rights, not consumers.
[music]