imagine a world where the most powerful country on earth in 2021 wasn't the united states but rather spain and instead of setting up military bases just in their own country they also set up bases all around the world lots of those bases are in former colonies but also there's a bunch in the united states just imagine this you zoom into fayetteville north carolina and you see a huge military base but it's not a us military base it's a spanish base on american soil with lots of homes for the spanish soldiers and their families powerful weapon systems aircraft all run by the spanish military go inside of one of these bases and it's all spanish restaurants americans can't come in here unless they work for the spanish government and then imagine a hundred more of these all throughout the united states on american soil and hundreds of more throughout the world or shift the scenario a little bit what if it was a country that wasn't our ally a country like china what if they had military bases not in the u.s but right up close to our border powerful weapon systems right off our shores and islands in the caribbean if you're an american you have to imagine what that would feel like if you're not an american it's likely you already kind of know what this feels like the united states has an extensive network of military bases outside of our borders hundreds of bases i've been fascinated for a very long time about understanding these u.s foreign bases abroad but i've never actually taken the time to accurately map them so let's do it let's map every single us military base around the world it turns out that's a huge task this is the story of the men of the united states army who made this project possible and of man's never ceasing quest for knowledge [Music] this is a full armored division to give you an idea of size each of those small dark squares includes more than a thousand men the united states military is bigger than any of us can really fathom it's so big that even the u.s military doesn't know how big the u.s military is back in 2018 1200 independent accountants and analysts came in to try to audit the us department of defense to basically try to get like a paper trail of how big this thing is how much money it spends etc and the department of defense didn't pass the audit like they literally did not have the documents or the knowledge to really piece together a full scope of what this organization is how big it is how much money it spends so we don't know nobody knows how big the pentagon is in all of its forms all we do know is that objectively it is one of the if not the largest and most powerful organization on the planet and in the history of humanity i mean if you have a organization that's more powerful than than the department of defense uh in the history of humans like let me know i want to know about it but as far as i can tell there's nothing bigger and more powerful than the united states military in 2021. and much of the us military is not actually in the u.s but is actually outside of our borders all around the world this post is somewhere in germany overlooking a sector of the iron curtain one of the first things that joe biden and his administration did when they came into power a couple of weeks ago down the road was ask for an assessment of how big is our military presence around the whole world what is our strategy and what actually does this presence look like the department will conduct a global forced posture review of u.s military footprint resources and strategies footprint i like that that's like a nice thing like what's our footprint how big is our footprint around the world we don't really know the pentagon is going to start to try to assess that so let's help the pentagon out and try to map every single united states base around the entire world let's do it [Music] it wasn't too long ago when i used to think that having military bases in other countries was totally normal like doesn't every country have like military bases in in other countries yeah anyway this was sort of reinforced for me when i was in college i did an internship at nato with a headquarters of nato which was in brussels to get this job i had to get a secret security clearance from the us government in order to enter the military base which was nato this was really cool because there was always like people coming through nato that i got to meet like my diplomacy hero madeleine albright who used to be the secretary of state or this guy great honor representing my country abroad for the last 37 years good old joe hey joe had no idea you'd be president someday anyway the big benefit of having this secret security clearance is that i could go into any military base anywhere and so on saturdays i would drive an hour from brussels to a little village in the belgian countryside where a military base had been sort of plopped down in the middle of the belgian countryside in between like stone walls and quaint streets and sheep and farming plots yeah it's a little blurry in this map because it's you know a military base and sometimes they blur the satellite imagery nothing i can do about it sorry and as soon as i entered into the base went through all the security and i was in the base i felt like i had left belgium and was suddenly entering suburban america welcome to the united states there was a taco bell and movie theaters with american movies and all sorts of shops and like yoga studios and like a grocery store that had all of the products that i was very used to all at the same price as i could get them in the united states even though they had been flown across the atlantic and brought to this place which is a very expensive thing to do it was a dream for me as a poor college kid living in brussels and feeling a little bit homesick to be honest i hadn't really figured out culture shock at this point so yeah i kind of loved it and i was again sort of like doesn't everyone have military bases in other countries and they can sort of just go to their military base and it was just i was so naive alas i've learned the truth luckily i was able to talk to somebody who literally wrote the book on u.s military bases abroad most u.s bases abroad look like not so small u.s towns over the years david has been researching and compiling a database of all the us bases around the world the result is a very detailed audit that hasn't really ever been done to this degree in fact a few years ago the pentagon's own research arm the rand corp was doing some research on military bases abroad and instead of using the pentagon's list of u.s military bases abroad these guys used david's list like they used david he was like he's a professor he's like an anthropologist he's not like a part of dod and yet they're like this list that he made is actually more authoritative than like the pentagon's own list i mean i'm sort of honored but it's it's not a good sign if the the pentagon pentagon research arm is using my list and not the pentagon zone list so i got a hold of david's list and started wrestling with the data and finding a way to display it on a map so that i could get every single base to show somehow after a few weeks of doing this i finally have a map and that map looks like this [Music] every dot on this map is a u.s military base or installation of some sort in a different country many of these dots are not placed exactly where the base is because many of these bases are clustered in areas and if i tried to map them all in the exact spot where they really are they would all just sort of stack on top of each other and you wouldn't really be able to see them but these dots represent every single base outside of the united states from huge complexes the size of rhode island to small airstrips little facilities that only house american drones or radar or supplies this is all of them and at least all that we know of and if you look at this map and you see a base that you know of that is not here or one that is there that doesn't belong there tell me about it i want to know because this is sort of hard information to ascertain the pentagon is not very transparent and neither are host countries about where certain bases are and why they exist many of the bases around the world are their existence is due to an agreement between the two countries that is often not open to the public that is that is secret any errors here are mine and not david's all in all the number here is about 750. 750 u.s military bases big and small outside of the united states by outside of the united states i'm including u.s territories that are not equal to the united states like guam puerto rico etc but in reality we probably don't know the real number because that data just simply is not transparently available to us there are a couple major clusters here where the most bases exist one major one is germany and the others are japan and south korea these are basically holdovers from world war ii and the subsequent korean war when the u.s who won the war came in and occupied these countries in order to set up a new government write a new constitution and to help the post war transferred to a new government but what's most interesting to me aren't these clusters that came about because of world war ii but instead the far-flung sort of unexpected or little-known places that the u.s military has a little footprint like all the dots in africa which have popped up in recent years as the us has expanded its presence there these are usually small installations that hold maybe a few soldiers or mainly private citizens who are government contractors and they mainly house things like drones or radar or weapon systems you also have this cluster of dots deep in the indian ocean which is the island of diego garcia which i've talked about at length about the us military's role in displacing hundreds of local people to set up a base there some of these dots are just airstrips a runway in the middle of nowhere and these runways usually belong to the host country and the u.s just rents them for a period of time like this facility in the middle of the desert in oman places like this exists to hold supplies in case a war breaks out so the u.s maintains these stockpiles of war supplies all around the globe so that they can strike at any point without having to ramp up a like a war economy at home it takes away a lot of the friction from going to war it made it easier for the us military to launch offensive wars the wars in iraq and afghanistan were easier to launch because the u.s has maintained a huge infrastructure basis some of these dots don't represent a place where u.s soldiers are actually stationed but instead it represents where money from the pentagon has gone to influence or build up infrastructure for example in iceland the us is spending a lot of money tens of millions of dollars to upgrade this airport the airport that we all go through when we're going to iceland but doing it for military purposes so that the u.s can use it can land there if needed so next time you land in iceland on your way to the blue lagoon just know that you're passing by one of these little dots over here in the azores these islands that are owned by portugal nearly 2 000 kilometers away from any land mass there is a group of u.s military installations mainly used for refueling and weapon storage head up here to greenland and you'll see a little base way up high the most northern base in the world where 140 americans live kind of looks interesting i'd love to go there someday way out here in the pacific you've got loads of remote military bases owned by the united states they're mainly small airstrips like this base on the southern tip of this huge atoll of the marshall islands all right listen i'm not going to explain every single base there are 750 maybe 800 there's a bunch of bases i just wanted to give you a flavor of what some of these look like they're diverse they're all over the place and they're fascinating to me i have been compiling accounts of people who live next to us military bases i have over 100 accounts from people that from i call it on instagram i want more i want to make an entire video about life next to a base and that is why i'm calling upon all of you i'm gonna put a link in my description to like a survey it's like a form of like what it's like to live next to us military base i have it right here and i'm gonna be checking it you can fill out this form and then i will get your response and i will read through your response and i will use that to construct an understanding of what life is like next to a us military base i talked to david a bunch about this too he's done a bunch of research done a bunch of interviews and i want to keep talking about this so if you don't live next to a military base i want to hear from you like what are your thoughts about this whether you're an american or not an american like is does this seem right does it seem like the right choice the right thing for our taxpayer money to be going towards i'm still making up my mind on a lot of this stuff and i want to start a discussion my goal in this video was to just map it was just look at it be able to see it on a map and i've finally done that by the way there will be a high-res version of this map on my patreon for patrons who sign up for the map background tier that will be there so i will be in the comments more than normal for this video i want to hear from you before you go i want to say thank you to the people who gave me a lot of footage for this piece i didn't go out into the desert and the ocean to film for this video i got a lot of it from storyblocks who's the sponsor of today's video storybox has supported this channel for a long time and i'm very grateful because storybox is a place where you can get loads of amazing footage like this video would be half as visually interesting if i didn't have a lot of this footage but it's not just stock footage storyblocks is full of literally over a million assets from sound design assets like sound effects or after effects templates that you can use to make animations and then loads of beautiful high-res 4k footage that you can download wait for it unlimited amounts if you're a subscriber like you just subscribe you pay one price a month and you can download as much as you want of this like really good stuff i've been using store blocks as long as i've been making professional video well before they ever came to sponsor my youtube channel well before i had a youtube channel i will continue to use them because it makes so much sense if you're interested in using storyblocks there's a link in my description where you can learn how to sign up and get in on this amazing service clicking that link helps support this channel but it also gives you access to this amazing library of assets thank you storyblocks for supporting this channel for supporting my work and thank you all for being here i will see you all in the next video bye-bye