But today, Pantano’s got an agenda that has nothing to do with America’s wars in Central Asia and the Middle East. He wants to talk China’s moon program, its satellite-blinding lasers, and its potential to use Cuba as a launching point for an attack equal to “1,000 Pearl Harbors.”

The isn’t the first time Pantano and I have shot the shit about war and politics. We’ve known each other for 25 years, ever since I was a ska band dork at Horace Mann high school in the Bronx, and he was one of a trio of outsiders running around campus in camouflage.

So Pantano feels comfortable emailing me a heterodox December 2009 policy paper (.pdf) that he wrote as a student at the Institute of World Politics. It lays out a pretty radical scenario: a second Cuban missile crisis, with China replacing the Soviet Union as the enemy, and killer drones in place of nukes. He even gives it an acronym: CMC2.

It’s one of a bunch of topics we covered during a 45-minute phone call — part of Danger Room’s week-long series on the new Congress. Other subjects included Afghanistan’s alleged mineral wealth, the rules governing airstrikes. Then, eventually, we touched on his views about Islam, and about that incident in Iraq.

An edited transcript follows.

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Authors: Noah Shachtman

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