No One is Ready for This Coming War - Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf
CChris Williamson
정신 건강경영/리더십결혼/가정생활운동/피트니스
Transcript
00:00:00I'm gonna play a little trick for the first time ever in this studio to make you feel
00:00:04a little bit more at home.
00:00:05So you're a man who operated largely in the dark.
00:00:09When you are doing raids, when you would have been operating, I imagine some stuff would
00:00:14have been by day, but other stuff would have been by night.
00:00:16Unless there was an extremely compelling reason to do so exclusively at night.
00:00:20Oh, nice.
00:00:21Here we go.
00:00:22Transitioning.
00:00:23Evening.
00:00:24And now we're in a blood moon.
00:00:26We usually didn't go out at full moon.
00:00:28Oh, okay.
00:00:29Okay.
00:00:30Because there's too much visibility.
00:00:31Illumination.
00:00:32So, you know, even though you can see at night with night vision goggles, we constantly were
00:00:36looking at the illumination, the external illumination, because at some point people can almost see
00:00:40you as well as you can see them with the technological advantage.
00:00:45So we would avoid the high illumination nights and obviously aviators and things that fly
00:00:48that could be backlit against those, they try to avoid it as well.
00:00:52What are you surprised by with what's happening with warfare over the last few years?
00:00:57Like I can't work out whether technology is making things more humane or more dangerous.
00:01:02I think an equal measure of both.
00:01:03I've had a lot of conversations about this with guys during the time period that I served.
00:01:08I'd never for a single second thought about the danger of drone warfare.
00:01:13And I don't mean, drones to us was predators or reapers or overhead surveillance platforms
00:01:18that had great, you know, sensor paws and they could pipe stuff down and you can have
00:01:22the ability to look at what they could see.
00:01:23It was great for situational awareness.
00:01:26I never once was concerned about somebody essentially ordering a drone on the internet.
00:01:31Not that that's how it's being built in or made in Ukraine, specifically in Iran has some
00:01:35smaller ones as well.
00:01:37But having that be a kinetic option on the battlefield, didn't think about it a single
00:01:42time.
00:01:43And I am glad that I am not a part of that because I mean, I have an internet connection
00:01:47just like anybody else.
00:01:48And I don't go searching for those videos, but sometimes they find you and people running
00:01:53away from basically a DJI drone that detonates, a hard pass, the hardest of passes being involved
00:02:02in that.
00:02:03I read that field medics are not getting the same sort of trauma training that they used
00:02:09to because the kind of injuries that soldiers are getting on the battlefield are totally
00:02:13different now.
00:02:15Well, towards the tail end of Afghanistan and Iraq, it was very IED heavy.
00:02:22So it would be explosive wounds, which are really gnarly.
00:02:27Not that any kind of wound is particularly great, but it just tears things to pieces.
00:02:33And most of the stuff I'm seeing with the drone warfare is kind of the same.
00:02:36It's explosive base.
00:02:38So maybe, I don't know.
00:02:39I'm not sure.
00:02:40It might be more aggressive.
00:02:41It might be able to be more powerful.
00:02:43I don't know.
00:02:44But yeah.
00:02:45Well, what have you been surprised by?
00:02:47Would you have been able to predict the direction that warfare was going to go in?
00:02:51No, because at the same time, let's take Ukraine as an example.
00:02:54At the same time that they're at the cutting edge of what's going on with electronics,
00:02:58there are videos of guys running through trenches, fighting at distances between you and I. Just
00:03:04putting AKs around a corner, which by the way, I'm kind of a fan of clearing a corner that
00:03:08way.
00:03:09Like, hello, is anybody here?
00:03:12Not advisable, honestly.
00:03:14Maybe like P...
00:03:15A high risk strategy.
00:03:16It is controversial.
00:03:17I'm not here to tell anybody how to party.
00:03:20So you do you.
00:03:21But I mean, so we're talking back to World War I and World War II, but at the same time,
00:03:25the leading edge of electronics in the same battle space.
00:03:29What?
00:03:30So it's this blend of innovation and evolution and then humans getting it on like eye to eye.
00:03:37Do you think we're overhyping AI in warfare?
00:03:39Because each technological development is basically touted as the end of one era and the beginning
00:03:44of something different.
00:03:46I don't know.
00:03:47The way it's been described to me is that there's phases that AI is coming in.
00:03:52Right now there's a human in the loop, meaning a human in making the final decision may be
00:03:56assisted by AI.
00:03:58Then there's human on the loop, meaning kind of just over watching the AI.
00:04:05And then the phase that I think terrifies everybody is human out of the loop.
00:04:09And I think that's where a lot of the stuff when it came to mix clot isn't anthropic.
00:04:14I think that I want to believe that they stood their ground and again, I only have information
00:04:20based off what I could consume on the internet, which take all that with a grain of salt.
00:04:24But it seems like they stood their ground morally from a intelligence perspective or the ability
00:04:29for mass surveillance.
00:04:31And then getting to that point where humans being off the loop, because if we take humans
00:04:35off the loop, I don't know how you combat that as an adversary without doing exactly
00:04:40the same thing.
00:04:41Because if it can think and make decisions faster than any human, that's any of those
00:04:44earlier phases, then you're already at a tactical disadvantage.
00:04:48And then we end up working for robots for our daily water ration.
00:04:52And I don't think that's great.
00:04:53I don't want Terminator to become a documentary, which we might be on that trajectory.
00:04:58Yeah.
00:04:59I, uh, coming from a SEAL background, how do you feel about AI basically being involved
00:05:03in life and death decisions for operators?
00:05:07I don't know how it would be at the level that we operated at, I mean, broadly to speak
00:05:12broadly.
00:05:13And again, I am dated, so I don't know exactly how they are interfacing AI right now.
00:05:17The job was to, at some point, a lot of other entities would find, fix, locate an individual,
00:05:25fix them in a location.
00:05:27And our job was to get to that location and then finish.
00:05:30And that doesn't mean kill.
00:05:31Sometimes it does.
00:05:32It largely depends on the actions that the individual would take, but solve the problem,
00:05:36which means cross the threshold of the door somewhere.
00:05:39I don't know how AI does that for you.
00:05:42I think AI can do a lot of stuff, especially in the electronic spectrum.
00:05:46Um, I mean, I don't know.
00:05:48I mean, I guess you could, you know, those Raytheon dogs or whatever they are, the robotic
00:05:52types.
00:05:53I mean, maybe it gets to that level and maybe that removes the operator from that, or they're
00:05:58controlling him like the drone operators are now, but I don't think it's at that level yet.
00:06:02So I think it helps more in the planning and analysis process than anything.
00:06:07But as long as there are people still crossing thresholds of doors, I don't know how much
00:06:11impact AI is going to have.
00:06:12Could choosing to cross the threshold of that door or not, or the time to do it or not, and
00:06:17targeting and planning, the fact that that's done by AI now puts operators at the mercy
00:06:23of the decisions that maybe humans weren't involved in?
00:06:26It'll never make the decision as the go-no-go criteria.
00:06:30It will spit, like intelligence, the intelligence community can present packages and you can,
00:06:38you know, in your mission planning process, you are looking at every phase of the operation.
00:06:41You're planning mostly on contingencies, but you're looking at all of those things.
00:06:45The go-no-go is not based on an intelligence package.
00:06:50It's based on essentially the ground force commander saying this meets the criteria.
00:06:55Now there are exceptions to that.
00:06:57I would say, let's say if you are looking for somebody and there is a trigger, a cell
00:07:02phone pops up on a network and you've been looking for that thing.
00:07:05Like that's like, Hey, we might need to go like right now.
00:07:09But other than that, the decision is going to be based off when you think it is best suited
00:07:13for you and least suited for the person that you're going after.
00:07:18Tell me you saw this ghost moment thing.
00:07:20Oh, you mean how we can find heartbeats from space?
00:07:23Yes.
00:07:24Some other missing hikers would have appreciated if that got used for them as well too.
00:07:28You know, this is the wildest shit.
00:07:30Yeah.
00:07:31But that's because you found it on the internet.
00:07:33I saw Bigfoot on the internet one time too.
00:07:35That doesn't mean it's real.
00:07:36You don't think that this is what they did?
00:07:38No.
00:07:39Wow.
00:07:40Okay.
00:07:41No.
00:07:42Does it sound awesome?
00:07:43Yes.
00:07:44Would it, do I want that tech to exist?
00:07:45Well, now was it from space or was it supposedly from an aircraft?
00:07:47Supposedly from an aircraft.
00:07:49I do not want to tip my hand again, I am very dated, but I don't want to take my hand on
00:07:53any of the, like to me it is essential to maintain the TTPs tactics, techniques and procedures.
00:08:00There are ways and means that I think aviators have to identify their location that would
00:08:09be picked up by aircraft.
00:08:10And probably the higher you are, the better you would have for line of sight and things
00:08:13like that.
00:08:16Do I think it's capable of doing it at a heartbeat?
00:08:18Maybe but I don't think we're there yet.
00:08:20I really don't.
00:08:21There are other less complex ways to do that.
00:08:24You mean instead of quantum electrodynamics fixed to the front of an Apache helicopter
00:08:29detecting a heartbeat and getting rid of all of the gerbils and dogs and enemies that are
00:08:33out there zeroing in on this one guy from 40 miles away to pick him up and extract him?
00:08:37So when the episode comes out, can you just dub me saying what you just said?
00:08:41Because yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
00:08:44I don't know why you think that this is unrealistic.
00:08:46This is just fun.
00:08:47Here's the thing.
00:08:48We don't want stuff like that to be true, but can you imagine how pissed people would
00:08:54be who had lost family members in the back in like back country and technology like this
00:08:58existed and we didn't use it for our own people because we were trying to pretend.
00:09:04We wanted to wait for this one guy, what's he called?
00:09:06Like dude 44 bravo or something.
00:09:08What was his code name?
00:09:09I don't know.
00:09:10Dude 45 bravo.
00:09:11That was too good of a code name to be honest or a call sign.
00:09:14Most of them you'll notice they are from mistakes or things that the person who the call sign
00:09:22is associated with are not proud of, which is exactly why they need to be what they are.
00:09:26Like if you make a galactic mistake in training and they can associate one word to that, that's
00:09:29what you're known for for the rest of your military.
00:09:31What was yours?
00:09:32No, it's only aviator wise.
00:09:33Okay.
00:09:34Okay.
00:09:35Okay.
00:09:36I was just Andy.
00:09:37Okay.
00:09:38You're fucking lame.
00:09:39Super lame.
00:09:40What are some of the most stupid ones that you've heard?
00:09:41Oh God, you'll hear people you know when they're trying to make them up because most of the
00:09:46time this is involving alcohol to be like, oh yeah, yeah, my call sign was bone crush.
00:09:50I'm like, you're 142 pounds soaking wet, shut the fuck up.
00:09:54Stuff like that.
00:09:55You know what I mean?
00:09:56Like, you know, Reaper or just like, take it easy, dude, take it easy.
00:09:59You know?
00:10:00So you did, you think that this ghost murmur thing, at least the explanation of it's bullshit
00:10:04and the way that they managed to find this guy in the middle of the desert was something
00:10:07a little bit more.
00:10:08I think there are easier ways to do it.
00:10:10Okay.
00:10:11Because when, when pilots eject, they sound like they're ejecting with no tools.
00:10:16So part, you know, there's entire department, like the aviators don't maintenance the aircraft
00:10:22right there.
00:10:23So there's people making sure that the aircraft is good to go.
00:10:24There's people making sure that survival equipment is good to go.
00:10:27All of those things.
00:10:28So when you, first off, I've never punched out of an aircraft.
00:10:30I've talked to some people who have, it seems to be a spicy ride.
00:10:34How so?
00:10:35Well, I had a guy on my show who ejected at about three knots under the speed of sound
00:10:39about so, and I might be, I might be getting this exact detail incorrect, but he was doing
00:10:48a maneuver and was nose down in a Hornet looking at the Atlantic ocean, rushing up and punched
00:10:55out.
00:10:56And it basically, how did he describe it?
00:10:59Took all of the bones in his body that weren't broken and did the opposite of that.
00:11:03And the only reason he's actually alive is because the water was so cold.
00:11:06He was in the hospital for months.
00:11:09Keegan Gill is his name.
00:11:10Why would the cold water help?
00:11:12Because it shunts your blood vessels.
00:11:14He was going to bleed out otherwise.
00:11:16Hang on.
00:11:17So the force of ejecting?
00:11:20A few knots under the speed of sound.
00:11:23Because the air that was, that immediately slammed into, okay, so it wasn't the force
00:11:27of the ejection.
00:11:28It was the...
00:11:29I don't think that feels good either.
00:11:30I was going to say, because people, people can get concussed, I think, just by doing that.
00:11:34Oh, I think if you do two, you're done.
00:11:36I think they'd medically retire you if you get two ejection.
00:11:40It'll shorten your vertebrae.
00:11:41I mean, it's, I think...
00:11:42Dude, I used to be 5'11", what's for now?
00:11:44I think it goes zero to double digit Gs like that.
00:11:49And so, yeah, he was, and he was flying.
00:11:52That was a real one, two punch.
00:11:54Yeah.
00:11:55The jab was the ejection.
00:11:57He basically said he almost got liquefied on departure from the aircraft.
00:12:03And I'm like, okay.
00:12:06Yeah.
00:12:07And then his aircraft, aircraft just vaporized when it hit the ground.
00:12:11Yep.
00:12:12Well, water.
00:12:13Yeah.
00:12:14Well, the water.
00:12:15There happened to be, I believe it was a Coast Guard vessel nearby that his, he was flying
00:12:18with his boss.
00:12:19They were doing like some early air combat maneuvers and he literally said, he's like,
00:12:23I initiated a maneuver outside of the envelope that I should have put the aircraft into a
00:12:29position where it was not going to recover and can you imagine that visual?
00:12:34So he was probably like 600 miles an hour.
00:12:38And he said a second and a half from impact.
00:12:40Can you imagine that visual coming up here?
00:12:42Yeah.
00:12:43And then if you missed the little ejection, he didn't take the safety out.
00:12:51Yeah.
00:12:52Yeah.
00:12:53No, thank you.
00:12:54Hard pass.
00:12:55Wow.
00:12:56But when they go out, not in that situation, you have, you have tools with you.
00:12:58And so the ejection seat itself has some stuff that comes with it.
00:13:01Like a little life raft, but for existing in a...
00:13:04For sure.
00:13:05You're going to have a fire probably, you're going to have a radio, you might have a beacon
00:13:09type system.
00:13:10Maybe some food.
00:13:11Probably.
00:13:12Yeah.
00:13:13It's not going to be awesome.
00:13:15And people forget that aviators, so that we go to the same school, the basics of your school
00:13:19that aviators go to.
00:13:20They're specialists.
00:13:21That guy was a weapons systems officer.
00:13:22So he was in the back seat of an F-15, I believe.
00:13:24So he wasn't flying.
00:13:25And I actually don't even know if they're pilots.
00:13:28My guess would be that they're not.
00:13:30So the guy up front is completely responsible for manipulating the controls.
00:13:33I don't even know if they have controls in the back actually.
00:13:35I've never been around an F-15 cockpit.
00:13:38So he's doing all the weapons stuff.
00:13:39Their world is very high off the ground.
00:13:42And so I've done a backseat ride in an F-18 and it was, I'm like, this is ridiculously
00:13:48uncomfortable.
00:13:49Like my head was bouncing off the canopy.
00:13:51Was sick for about two days, felt nauseous because of the Gs we were pulling.
00:13:55But then earlier in my career, I went to sear school and I was paired up with an F-18 pilot.
00:14:01And you want to talk about a duck out of water.
00:14:03Like how do you read this topographical map?
00:14:05Like how do you, you know, now to me, I'm like, oh yeah, but just will celestially navigate
00:14:09or this is East.
00:14:10And we're just going to do that.
00:14:11And they're like, where's my airplane?
00:14:14It's the complete inverse.
00:14:15Like if you were to throw your average special operations dude in an F-15, they'd be like,
00:14:20oh my God.
00:14:21So just imagine the reverse of that when these people punch out and now they're on the ground
00:14:25and supposed to be in three dimensions and now in two dimensions.
00:14:28Yeah.
00:14:29And it's, it's real, you know, you could maybe see you in your sensors, people looking for
00:14:33you trying to shoot at you at 25,000 feet and now you're at 250 feet and those same people
00:14:39are down there and they're looking for you.
00:14:40I don't know if anybody got that close to him, but I would like to believe that tech exists.
00:14:45I think that's a far stretch.
00:14:47Probable.
00:14:48I don't, well possible, not probable.
00:14:50Yeah.
00:14:51It's crazy to think that these guys that have been, will they have training to be able to
00:14:56evade?
00:14:57Limited.
00:14:58So, like I said, we will, we go to the same school.
00:15:01It's about a week of in classroom stuff.
00:15:03And a lot of it, at least when I went through was based off of Vietnam, a lot of studying
00:15:07the Hanoi Hilton and the POWs there and the, you know, the tap codes that they, they created
00:15:13an alphabet system that they would teach each other through doing it.
00:15:16And it was a five by five and a lot of it is what to expect if you're captured, how
00:15:22you're going to be questioned, you need to, you know, stay, you're supposed to do the best
00:15:25that you can to stay inside of the boundaries of releasing particular information.
00:15:30But the reality is with enough pain, people are, they're going to break, you know.
00:15:36And then you go out to, the one I went to is in Warner Springs, which is in East San Diego
00:15:40by not very far.
00:15:41The one you went to?
00:15:42The Sierra school, survival, escape, resistance, and evasion.
00:15:46You go out to the, and there was, this was aviators and largely people who might find
00:15:53themselves on the ground.
00:15:54So special operations personnel, anybody that might find themselves on the ground in like
00:15:57a theater of war.
00:15:59I don't think you would need to send like traditional Navy people who are going to be on a vessel
00:16:03to Sierra school very unlikely, but that would be, that'd be a rough day if they ended up
00:16:07getting rolled up.
00:16:08I don't know.
00:16:09You're like, wow.
00:16:10They swam out here and took you out of your bed.
00:16:11Really far from home.
00:16:12Totally.
00:16:13Yeah.
00:16:14God, that would suck.
00:16:15That's cool.
00:16:16But you know, you got to play the odds on that one.
00:16:18So it was a couple of days of group navigation.
00:16:23And then they, they start off a simulation where now you're on E&E, escape and evasion,
00:16:28and you're paired up and you were trying to evade an enemy force that is looking for you.
00:16:32Probably very similar in concept to Iran.
00:16:35And then everybody eventually gets caught because you spend about two and a half days in slappy
00:16:39camp where they slap you around and they introduce you to being, I don't know if they would say
00:16:45interrogated, but it's essentially what it is.
00:16:48And you're in this little, you know, it's just, it looks like dog kennels that human beings
00:16:51are in, you know, and they're way too small to be in there.
00:16:55So you can't find a comfortable position.
00:16:56There's music playing all the time.
00:16:57It must be very hard for you to get comfortable with the erection that you heard.
00:17:01Just stay hard.
00:17:02You know what I mean?
00:17:04Just the whole way through.
00:17:05That's that's actually a great way to warn the terrorists off you.
00:17:08Like we can't go in, don't go in kennel number five, like he's just permanently erect.
00:17:13That's the problem is some people, they let it go.
00:17:15The key is, go hard state.
00:17:17Always got to be honest.
00:17:19I mean, I've, if I put myself on the other side of that coin, I'd be like, just leave
00:17:22that dude alone.
00:17:23Yeah.
00:17:24Clearly there's some psychopathy there.
00:17:25I don't know why.
00:17:26I'm terrified of him.
00:17:27You're doing right.
00:17:28But it's a couple of days.
00:17:30And then those people go back to, if you're an aviator, your job is to aviate.
00:17:33And so they're going to go back and master that craft.
00:17:36And I don't think...
00:17:37Don't keep on top of the handguns.
00:17:38Probably not.
00:17:40I don't know what like level of minimum training that they are required to do.
00:17:43It's probably currency at best competence in currency or not the same thing, but again,
00:17:48they have to be competent and current and flying in multimillion dollar aircraft in a place
00:17:53where...
00:17:54Prioritize your training appropriately.
00:17:55Totally.
00:17:56Yeah.
00:17:57So I can only imagine that that guy, he had a hell of a day and a half or two days, however
00:18:01long he was on the ground.
00:18:02Someone said, can't wait for Mark Wahlberg to play this guy in a movie.
00:18:06Yeah.
00:18:07Yeah, it's possible.
00:18:08That's basically what you're doing.
00:18:09Yeah.
00:18:10I don't want to be picked up after 12 hours.
00:18:12If I get picked up after 36, then there's a movie.
00:18:14Mark Wahlberg doesn't get to play me.
00:18:16Especially if it's like 48.
00:18:17Yeah.
00:18:18Now we're talking.
00:18:19Yeah.
00:18:20Yeah.
00:18:21Don't turn your beacon on.
00:18:22Yeah.
00:18:23Like looking.
00:18:24Really keep them guessing.
00:18:25Wouldn't it be cool if you had like a little chart and on the chart, it's the different
00:18:27actor levels.
00:18:29And for the longer that you stick about and you go, it's 36 hours, but at 36 hours, I only
00:18:32get Marky Mark.
00:18:33But at 48, I get Brad Pitt.
00:18:35How did you get such insight into how the US military operates?
00:18:38At 72, it's Chris Hemsworth.
00:18:39Oh my God.
00:18:40I'm going to make it to 72.
00:18:41I want Hemmy to play me.
00:18:43He's a handsome man.
00:18:44Yes.
00:18:45Better in person.
00:18:46Yeah.
00:18:47Unbelievably handsome in person.
00:18:48Yeah.
00:18:49That actually was where I got the permanently erect idea from.
00:18:50Okay.
00:18:51It's terrifying.
00:18:52So technology in war.
00:18:53Yep.
00:18:54Is it making soldiers more fragile or more effective, do you think?
00:19:03I think two things can be true sometimes.
00:19:06I don't, I don't think you should outsource killing and killing through a screen, even
00:19:15though I think that that's the way that the world is probably headed.
00:19:18I think that removes the burden associated with that, but at the same time, some of those
00:19:23tools can help you kill people a lot more effectively.
00:19:27So you mean there shouldn't be a flippancy with pulling the trigger or the equivalent
00:19:30of on another human?
00:19:31No, I don't think so.
00:19:33I think you should scramble your eggs for maybe the rest of your life.
00:19:38Not like destroy you, but it should change your optic on humanity in the world.
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00:20:44Wasn't there a stat around the number of soldiers who either didn't fight their weapon or fight
00:20:51their weapons in a direction that wasn't basically toward the enemy in world war II?
00:20:56Yeah, SLA Marshall did a study on this and it's why they went from shooting at circular
00:21:01accuracy targets to silhouette type targets.
00:21:04Now there's some issues with SLA Marshall and his data collection though.
00:21:08So as they've looked at this in hindsight, he claims to have interviewed a substantial
00:21:15number of people.
00:21:16And somebody finally just got out a calendar and a piece of paper and said, how many did
00:21:20you say that you did and how long were you over there for?
00:21:23The math doesn't math on that.
00:21:25So they're come to find out there's some BS involved in that section of military history
00:21:31as well.
00:21:33But that is a lot of where Grossman got his on killing information as well too.
00:21:39And walking through that, they claim that there was a statistically very small amount of people
00:21:46that would actually aim their weapon at another human being and pull the trigger.
00:21:49And they associated that probably with two prongs, one just the morality of humanity,
00:21:55but two only practicing shooting at things that didn't look real.
00:22:00Not that it's still like a green type silhouette, it doesn't look that real, but it looks more
00:22:03human than a circular bullseye.
00:22:05So they swapped that out.
00:22:06And then I believe SLA Marshall and Grossman, their theory was that the percentages went
00:22:13up.
00:22:14I don't know how you actually measure that.
00:22:17I talked with some guys who served in Vietnam, they're like, "God damn man, I was shooting
00:22:20at everything I could give him."
00:22:21Well, one thing that stopped me is I ran out of bullets.
00:22:25I'm like, "Whoa, dude, you're at 12.
00:22:29Can I get you back at an eight also?
00:22:31Are you okay?
00:22:32Have you talked to anybody about this in your life or are you just waiting for me 60 years
00:22:35later to ask you this question?"
00:22:41Has my dad, by the way.
00:22:42Jesus Christ.
00:22:44And look, I mean, the technology might enable people to get around that if that is an issue.
00:22:49And should we allow that, man?
00:22:53Killing is so romanticized in so many ways and it is something that I, God, it should
00:22:59be a measure of last resort.
00:23:01And I don't know if you should remove the complexity and difficulty associated with that.
00:23:10But certainly the flippancy that people can find around that shouldn't be there.
00:23:16Well, look at it.
00:23:18If you're on any social media platform, I mean, did you see Charlie Kirk's death?
00:23:24How would you say?
00:23:26Unconsentingly.
00:23:27Yeah.
00:23:28Twice.
00:23:29So all three of my kids did too.
00:23:30That was the hardest conversations I had to have was with all three of my kids.
00:23:34Especially knowing what their dad did.
00:23:36I am the most resoundingly uninteresting human being to them.
00:23:40I think they had maybe asked me about my old job five times.
00:23:47I don't know what they know or don't know.
00:23:49I don't talk with them about it.
00:23:50I have nothing military related at the house.
00:23:53It's just, I just try to be their dad.
00:23:56But all three of them in formative years of their life, scrolling on social media because
00:24:01their generation is of course almost terminally online at this point, saw that.
00:24:05I saw it as well too.
00:24:08And on any of these social platforms, if you go deep enough down a rabbit hole, there's
00:24:11no way that these filters can be as effective as we want them to be.
00:24:15You're going to see people who are dying online.
00:24:17And that is not something that most people ever actually see in their real life.
00:24:21And I don't know if that reduces your, you know what I mean?
00:24:25It's like this barrier that I'm very thankful that almost nobody is willing to cross.
00:24:32I think people might talk a big game about that, but almost nobody is willing to cross
00:24:36that barrier.
00:24:37And I'm very thankful for that because it's not something that should be talked about flippantly.
00:24:40I don't think we should remove barriers to making that easier.
00:24:45That was really, I mean, that's seared into my brain.
00:24:48Think about how many videos on the internet you've seen, like tens of thousands of videos
00:24:53that I've seen on the internet.
00:24:54Looky numbers.
00:24:55Yeah, I know.
00:24:56Fucking baby numbers, dude.
00:24:57Up your game.
00:24:58We're talking a week?
00:24:59Yeah, yeah.
00:25:00And that one, it's not the main angle that everybody saw.
00:25:05It was the second one that was much more graphic.
00:25:08And I didn't mean to see that one either.
00:25:11That's not my idea of a good way to spend an afternoon to see that.
00:25:14And yeah, I didn't mean to, but then you're contending with what does freedom of speech
00:25:19mean?
00:25:20And freedom of exposure?
00:25:21Is that the same thing as freedom of speech?
00:25:24Freedom to be exposed to these things and how much should we, there's certainly things that
00:25:28we don't want to be insulating people from.
00:25:32But then there's stuff that almost universally, like a guy being killed in a really, really
00:25:37graphic way.
00:25:41That's one of the ones that, who needs to see that as a part of their human development?
00:25:46I completely agree.
00:25:47And the fact that that stuff exists and will for the foreseeable future.
00:25:53I don't know what that does to the psyche of people who see that when they're in those developing
00:25:58ages.
00:26:00What's something about special operations that you think civilians glorify that's completely
00:26:06wrong or misconstrued?
00:26:09The people?
00:26:10Legitimately so I, I truly served with people that I consider to be just tremendous in every
00:26:21regard.
00:26:22And not like a person that was tremendous in every sense, but I could look at somebody and
00:26:26say, Oh my God.
00:26:28I wish I could do what you're able to do to fill in the blank.
00:26:30I could find inspiration in those people and look at them and say, okay, I know what's possible.
00:26:35And if you can get to that level, I can at least try to get to that level because I want
00:26:38that to be the standard.
00:26:39You could apply that across the board, but they're all exceptionally normal people.
00:26:47The special operations community is not comprised of people that put a cape on and go to work.
00:26:52They are very normal people that are tasked with doing some exceptional things at times,
00:26:57but they suffer from the same ailments of life that everybody else does.
00:27:02And you can easily create this unrealistic expectation that they can do anything, that
00:27:08they can tolerate anything, that they are impossible to knock down.
00:27:13And that isn't the case, man.
00:27:15They're normal, exceptionally average people.
00:27:18I wish I could take people and introduce them to the first day of Bud's training, where you'll
00:27:22have a couple hundred people lined up and just like, just look at the physiology of these
00:27:26people.
00:27:27And this is going to be like a D1 college athlete, which guess what, the fucker's not going to
00:27:31be able to swim.
00:27:32So see you later.
00:27:33Right.
00:27:34And there's going to be a marathon runner and that guy's going to have a really hard time
00:27:36swimming.
00:27:37So that stuff kind of sorts itself out.
00:27:38The rest of it, you would look at their physiology and anatomy and just be like, really?
00:27:44Like you look like the dude who was checking me out at the grocery store and that's like,
00:27:47yeah, that dude's a savage, but still also a normal person.
00:27:52And I think that's forgotten often, and you can actually lie to yourself when you're in
00:27:58that community, because if people expect that from you, you start expecting it from yourself.
00:28:02And then you're headed into a really deep, dark place.
00:28:05You've got a line, we are not as unique as we think.
00:28:08We just struggle in different ways.
00:28:10Yeah.
00:28:11I'm guessing that's what you're talking about here.
00:28:13Yeah.
00:28:14I mean, you have more in common with a guy who was bagging your groceries and a special
00:28:19operation soldier than you could possibly think.
00:28:22And nobody wants to believe that.
00:28:23Why do they not want to believe it?
00:28:25I don't know.
00:28:27Because then I think it makes it easy for people to say, well, I can never do that because that
00:28:32person's different.
00:28:33And I'm not saying take the grocery bag or two.
00:28:35I ran, you know, maybe take the guys.
00:28:37See if you can fucking survive.
00:28:38Actually, we really want to make a movie about you with Mark Wahlberg.
00:28:42You can put whatever you want to in this brown paper bag, but it's all you have to survive.
00:28:4572 hours.
00:28:46Yeah.
00:28:47Only if you want Chris.
00:28:48Yeah.
00:28:49Yeah.
00:28:50And if you can say, well, they're different, then you give yourself an excuse.
00:28:53I can't do that.
00:28:55And I went back as an instructor for 18 months and I watched these kids and I'm sure the instructors
00:29:00watch my class and said the same thing like, God, I work with retards.
00:29:10Clearly what they were saying about my class, but it was not a group of people that are on
00:29:16baseball card decks.
00:29:18It was people from all over the US from the Midwest to coastal cities who would probably
00:29:24have politics align a little bit more blue and some align a little bit more red and people
00:29:28who joined the military to get out of their socioeconomic position because they had no
00:29:32upward mobility and legitimate people had probably generational wealth and they're all there.
00:29:37And they're all so ridiculously, the differences are on.
00:29:42It's just, it's Randolph here.
00:29:44The similarities are, yeah, they're just average people.
00:29:48What did you learn as an instructor looking at selection that you didn't learn being part
00:29:54of selection?
00:29:55Yeah.
00:29:56Let me just tell you, it was a different experience.
00:29:58Right.
00:29:59Yeah.
00:30:00Because you were warm.
00:30:01Did you play into the fact that when you went through it, you saw some bastard with a big
00:30:05anorak on holding a hot cup of cocoa and you're like, ah, now it's my turn.
00:30:09Well, with all generational trauma, the goal with it should be to pass it downhill.
00:30:13So at least that's what the military uses.
00:30:14No, there are definitely people who play roles and caricatures.
00:30:19I went back about 10 years after I had been in and I was rehabbing from getting hurt.
00:30:25And also we were well into the global war on terror.
00:30:28So when I went through in 1997, the concept of the real world application of the job was
00:30:33exactly that.
00:30:34It was a concept.
00:30:35I volunteered during peace time and there was a generation of SEALs that had served post
00:30:40Vietnam all the way up until that point that had never seen anything happen.
00:30:44Didn't see anything happen.
00:30:45No, but I mean, that doesn't change though, how hard they trained and how much they focused
00:30:48on the job.
00:30:49It's either good luck or bed lock, depending on the optic that you're looking at it.
00:30:53And people will tell you, it's both like, oh, it's good luck.
00:30:55I didn't get that.
00:30:56Or I had feel like I have horrible luck because I didn't get those experiences.
00:30:59So it was a different world for me going through training a lot of this stuff as a student.
00:31:05It's really weird.
00:31:06Actually my class started with 180 people and we graduated 18 of the originals.
00:31:11So every day you're peeling people off mostly in the first phase of training.
00:31:15That's where the vast, vast majority of people are going to disappear, but you don't get to
00:31:20talk to them because your training day continues and they're just, they're gone and they are
00:31:24shifted over to another division and they're housed in a different area.
00:31:27And that's not demeaning by any stretch.
00:31:29They just, they lift and shift them from the class that is going through training and you're
00:31:35back to the needs of the Navy.
00:31:36You can come back.
00:31:37And that's something that people don't often know.
00:31:39You can, you'll have to go back out to the fleet for a couple of years.
00:31:42You're going to have to rescreen to come back in.
00:31:44But some of the most legendary SEAL operators are guys who didn't make it through BUD/S there
00:31:48first time.
00:31:49And I don't know why people don't understand that like, oh, you failed one time.
00:31:53I have to go.
00:31:54You know, my life is over.
00:31:55And I'm like, I don't, you know, I don't, if I had a list of my successes and failures,
00:31:59let me just tell you the failure list is multiples.
00:32:01Magnitudes of order greater than my success list.
00:32:04But when I went through as a student, nothing made sense.
00:32:07Because you would have an instructor one day, he would, you would do something that they
00:32:10would ask and they'd be like, good job.
00:32:12And the next day you do something that they would ask and they would just hand you your
00:32:15ass.
00:32:16You know, like, what is going on here?
00:32:18So it was very chaotic and it didn't make sense.
00:32:21Like, why are we so focused on some of these things?
00:32:24It was always attention to detail, attention to detail, attention to detail, and follow
00:32:28procedure regardless of how you feel and what is going on around you.
00:32:32As an 18 year old kid, some of those things are very difficult concepts, right?
00:32:37And I also, again, the lens of, I mean, this is just training, right?
00:32:42Like nobody's been to war in a really long time.
00:32:43Like you guys take it easy a little bit and then like, God, then I go back in 2006.
00:32:48So we're five years into the GWAD at this point.
00:32:51And I looked at the curriculum and I saw what we were doing and it was constant aha moments
00:32:55of like, Oh, this is why we do that.
00:32:59Attention to detail has nothing to do with the knife that I'm expecting to see if it can
00:33:03cut hair before you go for an ocean swim or the CO2 cartridges that you twist into a life
00:33:08jacket that was produced in 1918, that I don't even know would save your life if you fire
00:33:13the cartridge at all.
00:33:14But you're sitting there as an instructor and you're looking at each one of the, you know,
00:33:19the screws and all the little crevices.
00:33:21Is there any rust in there?
00:33:23Is there any sand in there?
00:33:24It's not going to matter when it comes to functioning.
00:33:27You're focusing on attention to detail above everything else, because that's, what's keeping
00:33:31you alive when it comes to following a tactic, when the entire world around me was falling
00:33:35apart.
00:33:36So that type of stuff, time management, emotional control, decision-making, all of those things
00:33:41going back as an instructor, like, okay, now I get it.
00:33:46And the way I viewed it was this, I'm only going to be an instructor for two years, maybe
00:33:51on the far end, 18 months, and I do want to continue my career.
00:33:55And if I do so, I'm going to go back to a SEAL team and guess who I'm going to end up
00:33:58serving with?
00:33:59All of these people.
00:34:01So it is probably even to my own benefit and perhaps survival if I try to pour as much knowledge
00:34:07information into these people, as opposed to treating them like the redheaded stepchild
00:34:11that you'd like to forget, which is technical description of how my class was treated.
00:34:16Not that I harbor any resentment and bad feelings.
00:34:18You think you had a particularly bad one?
00:34:20They hated our class.
00:34:21Well, I hated the leadership of our class.
00:34:23We did, so hell week is the fifth week of training and it opens with like M60s fire in blanks
00:34:30and smoke grenades.
00:34:31It's supposed to be like this intro into combat.
00:34:32It sounds like fucking Coachella's opening party or something.
00:34:35I've never been to Coachella, but I like where your head's at.
00:34:38And probably less alcohol at this party than Coachella and Molly.
00:34:41But for our class, they just walked out to the beach because they put you out in these
00:34:44huge general purpose tents.
00:34:47And they just walked out to the beach and with the bullhorn, they're like, hit the surf, which
00:34:51just means run out of the tent and you just go get into the water.
00:34:54That's all we got.
00:34:55They hated our class.
00:34:56They beat the shit.
00:34:57Why do you think they hate you so much?
00:35:00There's leadership.
00:35:01Do you have a leader during hell week?
00:35:04You have a leader at all times, right?
00:35:06So they did not like me.
00:35:09Were you the leader?
00:35:10No, no, no, no.
00:35:11I was going to say, I totally understand them.
00:35:13No, no.
00:35:14I failed in my leadership roles much later on after I had enough knowledge and experience
00:35:18and just not the technical capacity to do my job.
00:35:23It's not everybody's, and there's another thing that a misconception that people have.
00:35:26Well, you know, if you come from special operations, you're just naturally this leader.
00:35:30You're going to be awesome.
00:35:31You can lead in any situation.
00:35:32And it's not true.
00:35:33The best leaders that I ever was around was in that community.
00:35:38And in the same breath, the worst leaders that I was ever around was also in that community.
00:35:43But nobody can tell that from the outside because we still will be successful.
00:35:47Get the job done.
00:35:48Right.
00:35:49And then, so people look at that community and then they say, well, okay, if you guys
00:35:51always get the job done, then your leaders must all be awesome.
00:35:54Why don't you go ahead and canvas the group and you'll find out right quick which leaders
00:35:59are liked and appreciated and are actually doing the jobs and which ones are lucky that
00:36:04they might not have a dick rubbed on the inside of their coffee cup.
00:36:07So you had a strong headwind.
00:36:10Does that mean a dick on my coffee cup?
00:36:11Yes.
00:36:12Yeah.
00:36:13I did the best I could, I've never claimed to be a good leader, man.
00:36:20I have made, I'm not joking, I've made more mistakes in my life than I've had failures.
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00:37:21You have this line about failure being tuition payments.
00:37:24Yeah.
00:37:25I've reframed how I view failures.
00:37:26I now consider them tuition payments.
00:37:28Some of my tuition payments have been relatively inexpensive and some have taken me to the brink
00:37:32of bankruptcy.
00:37:33Yeah.
00:37:34It's just an easier way to get comfortable with consistently failing, you know, just lying
00:37:40to yourself and reframing like, "Hey, maybe this is a good thing."
00:37:43Cost of doing business is a great way to look at this stuff though, dude, it really is.
00:37:48Legitimately, I didn't view it like that for many, many years in my life because you want
00:37:53to sit there and blame every external circumstance.
00:37:56And maybe you do fail because of an external circumstance, but by reframing it as a lesson
00:38:02that I learned then that I can apply moving forward, the tuition payment that you really
00:38:06don't understand the cost of, I mean, I'll take a, to put it in business terms, I'll take
00:38:11a $5,000 mistake that would save me $500,000 later on, you know, and that's, that's really
00:38:16all it is.
00:38:17It's, failures are rough.
00:38:18I mean, it doesn't make it any easier by reframing it to that, but I also am sitting here today,
00:38:24the person that I am because of the failures and hopefully what I've learned from those
00:38:26as well.
00:38:27What are some of the most expensive lessons that you've paid for?
00:38:31Oh man.
00:38:33So earlier in life, my entire life was based around this concept of being somebody who was
00:38:42incapable of quitting because that's the community that I came from.
00:38:48And because of that, I put my children and myself through probably 10 extra years in a
00:38:57relationship that I'm still working my way out of and the impact of, because I would look
00:39:03at myself in the mirror and say, today's the day, huh, pussy, you're going to quit.
00:39:09I literally talked myself into staying in something that demonstrably and objectively, almost everybody
00:39:16from the outside after I had made the decision to leave was like, Hey man, good job on that
00:39:22one.
00:39:23Wish you would have done that about a decade ago because of how I viewed myself in that
00:39:29situation.
00:39:30That shift that I write about it, it's I'd actually at this point in my life, rather see
00:39:34people fall a little bit short of their goals and know when to walk away than destroy themselves
00:39:42because they don't ever want to quit and they end up having nothing in their life.
00:39:47There's a fine line between resilience and suppression, but this, and a lot of the time,
00:39:51I think we are, we compute, confuse suppression for strength.
00:39:56And I didn't, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of fascinated about the line between giving up too soon,
00:40:09leaving it on the table, sandbagging a workout and stopping because you're about to get injured.
00:40:14That is a tough one because how do you measure that, that there's no external tool that somebody
00:40:18can look at you and say, Hey, you should keep going because they don't actually, you know,
00:40:23like they don't know how your body is, what your limit is.
00:40:27Yeah.
00:40:28And especially you need to use an exercise as an example, like the tension that you're
00:40:31under, like you, you're actually getting physical feedback, like, no, no, I'm not going to put
00:40:34that down.
00:40:35So I don't blow my, you know, my spine out, but the emotional one's even more difficult
00:40:40because what does it mean to say that you went past your emotional limit?
00:40:44What does an injury relationally or karmically or psychologically mean compared with, yeah,
00:40:51dude, I put 380 on the bar and tried to do 20 back squats and I blew my MCL out.
00:40:58Yeah.
00:40:59That was a bad idea.
00:41:00But what does that mean?
00:41:01Because it's, you erode psychological wellbeing in small chunks, typically over a very long
00:41:07period of time.
00:41:08So you can always go one more day.
00:41:11You can always go until you get to the stage where you've accumulated sufficient damage.
00:41:16Yeah, I wish I would have been able to recognize that point earlier in my life.
00:41:22It would have saved a lot of hardship for myself.
00:41:25And I think for my, my children as well, too, but if I'm like anybody else, I'm almost always
00:41:31my own worst enemy, you know, my mastery of negative self-talk I have no, uh, education
00:41:39beyond a high school diploma that I barely got.
00:41:41I think they gave it to me just so I would get out of there, but a PhD in negative self-talk.
00:41:45How does that encourage you to stay in situations that you should leave earlier?
00:41:50The reason I stayed is because the entire currency of my life up until that point was being known
00:41:55to somebody who wouldn't quit.
00:41:57And that's very common inside of that special operations world.
00:42:00Again, you know, what, what do you, what are these misconceptions that people may have?
00:42:04And that's why to me, it's so important to at least try to pull back the curtain a little
00:42:08bit and just explain that these are absolutely average people like, yeah, God, so many guys
00:42:13will say this, I hate the term always and never, but most guys would tell you like, listen,
00:42:18the job will always suffer last.
00:42:20The boys will always suffer last, but the family will absolutely suffer before your job performance
00:42:26does.
00:42:27I mean, you put everything for that pursuit of who you are and what you're doing on a pedestal
00:42:33and everything else around you in life is falling apart and you still have to deal with that
00:42:37at some point.
00:42:38And it's just that unwillingness to let people down and that unwillingness to admit like,
00:42:41Hey man, like I'm falling apart at the seams here.
00:42:44Like I might be performing at work, but absolutely every other metric in my life is trending in
00:42:50the wrong direction.
00:42:51The guys won't say anything and it's dangerous.
00:42:55I think it has a lot to do with what happens when, you know, guys get out and the struggles
00:43:00that they have when they get out as well too.
00:43:02I found out that of professional athletes who get divorced, 50% of the divorces happen in
00:43:09the first year after they retire.
00:43:12It's a different universe when you stop going to work and you actually have to physically
00:43:16be there.
00:43:17The world I came from, 270 days a year on the road, easy.
00:43:24I mean, you're living independent, but make hopefully parallel lives.
00:43:30And then you switch to 365 home.
00:43:32Hey honey, do we know each other?
00:43:35Do you still like me?
00:43:37And you've lost your purpose.
00:43:38I think that's a big one.
00:43:39You are trying to deal with the deceleration of your own identities.
00:43:43Hopefully you guys put the brakes on a little early, you know, lift their head up a little
00:43:46bit, realize that however long you want to stay in the military, the end is coming.
00:43:50So you can kind of keep an eye on the horizon, on the future.
00:43:53The longer people wait for that, I think the tougher the transition can be, but yeah, it's
00:43:58a shock, man.
00:43:59You gotta be careful that it's not who you are, that it's just what you do.
00:44:05Given that it's so all encompassing, that's got to be difficult though.
00:44:07Extremely.
00:44:08That's why, I mean, the stats don't lie statistically, veterans, special operations as well, suicide
00:44:16rate is statistically anomalous in comparison to the rest of society.
00:44:21You've got this line until you view yourself as the author of your life, you'll be the victim
00:44:25of it.
00:44:26Yeah.
00:44:27What's that mean?
00:44:28It means until you stop blaming everything else around you for the course and trajectory
00:44:32of your life, you're just going to be a flag in the wind going with the direction that the
00:44:38wind is blowing.
00:44:39And for clarity, you have almost no control over what happens in your life, but you have
00:44:45complete and total control in how you respond to it.
00:44:48And that is being the author of your life.
00:44:50So life sucks sometimes.
00:44:52Cool.
00:44:53Are you going to suck with that or are you going to take control of who you are and work
00:44:58your way through that and maybe even be better at the end of that, right?
00:45:02And that's the difference between somebody who will sit there and externally, instead
00:45:05of doing anything about what's going on, they'll sit there and complain about what's going on
00:45:08and point fingers at everything.
00:45:10The author of your life, not that it's any easier, you accept what's going on and you
00:45:15focus on what it is that you can control, which is largely going to be your actions, your thought
00:45:18process, your internal monologue, and what you do with it.
00:45:23I suppose an interesting challenge that you have here is you are the author of your life.
00:45:31And that means that you need to take responsibility for how you have contributed to the problems
00:45:34that you're facing.
00:45:36But that also includes how your traits, even the ones that in a different world or a different
00:45:41environment with strengths, you are having to pay the price for now too.
00:45:46That's also, you are your own responsibility.
00:45:50Your traits are your own responsibility.
00:45:52If you take a no quit attitude to everything in life, you are headed towards failure.
00:45:58You have to control those tools as well too.
00:46:01And again, from coming from the community where that was the currency and equity is your ability
00:46:05to never quit.
00:46:07Let's apply that to alcoholism.
00:46:09Like, I have a drinking problem, no, never quit.
00:46:13Okay.
00:46:14Maybe let's just pick up heroin then too and see how far I can push that one.
00:46:18There's easy examples of where that can get completely out of control.
00:46:22And it's just, God, it's so, God, it's so dangerous.
00:46:28And that's why I say, I would rather have people fall a little bit short of their goals and
00:46:31understand that not everything is worth destroying who you are or killing yourself for.
00:46:37There's just so few things in life that I think actually rise to that level.
00:46:41What's the classic avatar mold of a special operator's relationship with their wife?
00:46:51Man, that really varies.
00:46:53I don't know if there could...
00:46:56You guys like to marry strippers.
00:46:59So I mean, that's a weird avatar and I'm not here to tell anybody how to party.
00:47:06But I mean, that relationship dynamic often involves Chinese food getting thrown at you
00:47:10for some reason.
00:47:11I don't know why, but I've seen it.
00:47:15I've seen it.
00:47:16It's weird.
00:47:17So it really depends.
00:47:19The divorce rate in special operations, I would say, hovers at 80 to 85%.
00:47:25That's an estimate.
00:47:26I have no...
00:47:28It's anecdotal based on my experience.
00:47:30But the other side of that is, so let's say it is 85, 15% of those people are making it.
00:47:34And I have seen it where it's been high school sweethearts, legitimately high school sweethearts.
00:47:39And they have the ability to grow together even though they're apart and they can reconnect.
00:47:43I mean, a lot of that has to do with what was modeled for you when you were young.
00:47:48Because a lot of people will replicate the avatar of what was shown to them when they
00:47:52were growing.
00:47:53That's what they think a relationship looks like.
00:47:55That's one of my regrets for staying 10 years longer than I think I should have is...
00:47:59And I got to the point where I was asking myself, would I want my own children to follow my footsteps
00:48:05in this?
00:48:06Relationally.
00:48:07Yes.
00:48:08And if the answer...
00:48:09And you are imprinting them.
00:48:10Yes.
00:48:11And what am I modeling here?
00:48:12I am the most influential person in my children's life, especially at that point in time in their
00:48:15life.
00:48:16What am I modeling?
00:48:17And it's like, that is a tough conversation here to have like, oh my God, I'm actually...
00:48:23Even though I view myself as somebody who can never have quit, and this is the only currency
00:48:28that matters, I am actually modeling something I would never want my children...
00:48:31Would you want that for your kids?
00:48:32Yes.
00:48:33Yeah.
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00:49:46I mean, I spent a good bit of time with Jocko over Christmas.
00:49:53He's an autonomous robot.
00:49:55Dude, he was just extolling the virtues of his and his wife's relationship.
00:50:00Yeah.
00:50:01That's an example of one that did work.
00:50:02I think we've had about one and a half arguments in 35 years or however long they've fucked
00:50:08it.
00:50:09Oh, that just means they lied to each other.
00:50:12Or she's too scared to do it.
00:50:14Jocko is a teddy bear.
00:50:15Yeah.
00:50:16He's cute.
00:50:17He's been...
00:50:18He was nice.
00:50:19I saw him fucking roll on the floor with Mark Zuckerberg.
00:50:20That was a scene that I never thought I would have observed.
00:50:23That's not...
00:50:24Why is it Mark?
00:50:25No.
00:50:26No.
00:50:27That's not good.
00:50:28It's about half the weight and size and about a 10th of the experience of Jocko.
00:50:32But it was fun.
00:50:33It was fun to watch.
00:50:34Especially while they were on their feet.
00:50:35It was really fun.
00:50:36Yeah.
00:50:37It was like watching UFC1 happen.
00:50:38Is Zuck...
00:50:39Is he wee?
00:50:40Is he a tiny man?
00:50:41Not small.
00:50:42He's definitely packed on some muscle and size.
00:50:43And he's been training a good bear.
00:50:44How tall is he, James?
00:50:465'9".
00:50:47Average height for a woman, but...
00:50:52Look, I mean, it was good to see Jocko lie on top of another man.
00:50:56That was a great way to spend it.
00:50:57That's the best part about you, James.
00:50:58Yeah.
00:50:59Getting to lie another man.
00:51:00Or have them lie on top of you, you know?
00:51:03We're not all tops.
00:51:05Sometimes we're both.
00:51:06Sometimes we're both.
00:51:07Dude, what happened with this Rob O'Neill conversation?
00:51:10Because Mimi was texting about it and I saw an absolute tsunami of bullshit occur.
00:51:14Man.
00:51:15Um, I don't know how to accurately answer that because I don't know.
00:51:19It's the first time he and I ever had sat down and talked.
00:51:22When we opened the conversation, he reminded me that I had taken him for his first tandem
00:51:26when he went to the tandem course.
00:51:27I didn't remember that because on that day I was there as an instructor.
00:51:30You probably take six or eight people for a jump and that's how you...
00:51:35That's strapped to you.
00:51:36Correct.
00:51:37You're a bottom.
00:51:39They would be the bottom.
00:51:40Ah.
00:51:41They're front riding.
00:51:42Power position.
00:51:43Yeah.
00:51:44Power position.
00:51:45Yes.
00:51:46PBA.
00:51:47Power bottom actual.
00:51:48Yeah.
00:51:49Um, I didn't remember that because I'd always said I'd never met the guidance.
00:51:53It's like, dude, you took me for a first hand.
00:51:54I'm like, fuck.
00:51:55Sorry, man.
00:51:56I didn't remember that.
00:51:57I've taken 1500 people for a first hand.
00:51:59So it definitely wasn't intentional.
00:52:01I have never seen a military operation that has more tentacles going out with divergence
00:52:13in relayed experiences or stories, whatever you would want to call it than that particular
00:52:20one.
00:52:21And I don't know what to make of it.
00:52:23I know a lot of people that were there.
00:52:25I was not.
00:52:27And not all of their stories aligned with the most common narratives as well too.
00:52:35This is the Asana Bin Laden, right?
00:52:37Correct.
00:52:38Yeah.
00:52:39The operation was called Neptune Sphere.
00:52:40So dude, I don't know.
00:52:45He didn't deviate from a story.
00:52:47He added some things in there that definitely surprised me about what they included in the
00:52:52debrief and what they left out of the debrief.
00:52:55What were those things?
00:52:58From again, I was not there, so I'm relaying this.
00:53:01There was the first floor, the second floor, and then Bin Laden and his wives.
00:53:06And I believe a few children were on the third floor.
00:53:09The stories or the relayed experiences seem to start deviating at the stairs that go up
00:53:15from the second floor to the third.
00:53:17And very, very few people were actually on those stairs.
00:53:20I don't know why the stairways actually were, but stairways can actually be really dangerous
00:53:24from a tactical.
00:53:25You don't want to get a bunch of people in there.
00:53:27It would take one guy to pull a pin on a grenade and roll it down a set of stairs and you're
00:53:31having a real shit day.
00:53:33So you want to have enough people, but also the minimum amount.
00:53:35And the way you described it is that they were getting a little bit thin on bodies, but the
00:53:41first person saw movement, took a shot.
00:53:46They went into the room, Rob encountered Bin Laden, shot Bin Laden.
00:53:53And then essentially before they went to the debrief, and then after that, I mean, Rob said
00:54:00that as he was getting ready to take pictures, a guy walked up and shot him in the face multiple
00:54:03times right in front of him.
00:54:07Essentially before they went down to do the debrief, the people who were on the third floor
00:54:11got together and decided what they were going to include in that and what they weren't going
00:54:14to include in that.
00:54:15And again, the conversation was a while ago, so I don't know the exact specifics of it,
00:54:18but it was the initial shots and then the follow-up shots from that as well, from Rob and the man
00:54:23who was in front of him.
00:54:24Why are you shooting an enemy combatant that's dead in the face?
00:54:28It's a workaround.
00:54:30Mutilation of an enemy combatant.
00:54:31Yeah.
00:54:34Not, not advisable.
00:54:39And if you are going to do that, and I mean, it's just, that stuff happens.
00:54:48I mean, bottom line.
00:54:50You also sometimes, I mean, there's a difference between the way he described it is there was
00:54:54an immense amount of time between essentially the target being called secure, which is where
00:54:58you can kind of unwrap a little bit from a tactical perspective, but you'd like that call,
00:55:03come over the radio, and then you start a process of basically gathering as much information
00:55:07as you can.
00:55:08That's where you get the cameras out and you start looking for stuff and bagging things.
00:55:13When you're clearing, you don't want to, you don't want to leave uncertainty as if you engage
00:55:19somebody, you don't want to leave uncertainty as to whether or not they're going to resurrect
00:55:23themselves and come, so it's, and so you, what you end up doing is you inflict wounds that
00:55:28are incompatible with life.
00:55:30So if you can put the inside of their head on the outside of their head, that's usually
00:55:34a good indication that that problem is solved.
00:55:37There's a difference in doing that as you were clearing instructor in his structure and actively
00:55:40engaged.
00:55:42And then after, you know what I mean?
00:55:43After that happening, it happens.
00:55:48This is, it's a fucking ugly occupation, and it will show you the best of who you are and
00:55:55the worst of who you ever thought you could be.
00:55:58And some people get lost in that and you put people on the front lines who have been sharpening
00:56:03their teeth for decades, fighting the same people in the same places.
00:56:08It happens, but does that feel like righteous retribution in the moment, perhaps?
00:56:13Probably in the moment, but, and almost immediately regret.
00:56:17I don't know if there's always regret.
00:56:23Sometimes I don't think there ever is.
00:56:25To me, my personal opinion, and I only speak for myself, we need to be better than that.
00:56:31If we want to be a beacon to the world, we need to be better than that.
00:56:37And that's tough.
00:56:38Does it mean that you need to play by rules that other people are maybe not going to?
00:56:45You need to respect certain boundaries.
00:56:47You need to play.
00:56:48I mean, the Geneva convention, get it, totally understand rules of engagement, totally understand
00:56:55law of war, rule of war, totally understand.
00:56:58There is a lot of flexibility inside of all of those things.
00:57:01You can do everything that you need to do and be accomplished the mission you need to and
00:57:05dominate people on the battlefield inside of those things.
00:57:09Just imagine, I mean, in a lot of times, all you have to do is flip the coin.
00:57:12How would the American people react if, let's say, pilot in Iran, all right, we'll go to
00:57:17modern day, got captured, got killed, and then they put on the internet, a guy walking up
00:57:22with an AK and unloading a magazine into his face.
00:57:26That's not going to go over well.
00:57:29If we do that to other people, oftentimes that'll move the barrier for what they're willing to
00:57:33do to us as well.
00:57:35And I think that our country and our flag needs to stand for more than that.
00:57:40Well, there's already a level of contention over the U.S. entering conflicts at the moment.
00:57:46And I don't know what you think this does to how attractive military service looks at
00:57:51the moment, but at least for me, you know, in the UK, for instance, you've spent a good
00:57:55bit of time in the UK.
00:57:58There is no, we would like to invite first responders and active military personnel to
00:58:03board the plane early.
00:58:05How come?
00:58:06Because no one gets a fuck about our military.
00:58:10I've never, I've flown hundreds of flights around the UK.
00:58:13I mean, they may have changed it now, but I have never once.
00:58:15Do they have a special group that they invite on early?
00:58:18I'm fascinated now.
00:58:22I don't know.
00:58:23Maybe your friend that ejected himself out into liquefied, perhaps he would get to go
00:58:26on first.
00:58:27Being in Gil, look him up now.
00:58:28Holy.
00:58:29Can he walk now?
00:58:30Yeah.
00:58:31Okay.
00:58:32He's like running half marathons.
00:58:33Okay.
00:58:34I mean, I'm not saying there's gates good, but.
00:58:35He's like loping down.
00:58:37Yeah.
00:58:38So the UK doesn't revere the veteran community in the UK.
00:58:44I have no idea what that, to me, it's the sort of shit that I just learned about in American
00:58:48movies.
00:58:49And then since coming here, for instance, I once was wearing a black rifle coffee t-shirt
00:58:53and I think it had the American flag and it's a sort of a military green kind of color.
00:58:59Yeah.
00:59:00It's really nice t-shirt.
00:59:01I wore it until it was fucking Fred Baer and I got on a plane and a gentleman who was sat
00:59:07in one of the earliest rows said, thank you for your service to me as I went past.
00:59:11What did you say?
00:59:12I was like, as I'm like being fucking conveyor belted along.
00:59:17The movies you say you're welcome.
00:59:18I did it for you.
00:59:20There's enough about stolen valor already for the British to come in.
00:59:24Not only stolen valor, it's stolen patriotism.
00:59:26Holy fuck.
00:59:27It's stolen passing valor.
00:59:28You were being pushed along.
00:59:30That's correct.
00:59:31I needed to get my British out of the way first so that I could apologize for him getting it
00:59:37wrong.
00:59:38I'm like, I'm so sorry that you, you, you seem to be mistaken.
00:59:41Allow me to say my word.
00:59:43But even within that, like it's just so there's a reflex response in this country.
00:59:48Not always though.
00:59:49So my dad served in Vietnam.
00:59:51They didn't get that.
00:59:53Most of my dad's generation that served in the military, they'd be the last person to
00:59:56tell you that they actually did.
00:59:58His experiences were completely different than the modern era veteran.
01:00:04How do you think it would change in the UK though?
01:00:06Like let's transport 9/11.
01:00:08Do you guys have twin tower?
01:00:09Are you guys allowed to build that high?
01:00:11Are you capable of it?
01:00:12I think we're capable of it.
01:00:13I mean, look, Christopher Wren.
01:00:14I thought five stories was the maximum.
01:00:16Christopher Wren was, I mean, dude, we had the 7/7, we had the 7/7 bombings.
01:00:20So let's say it was something, okay, for whatever the analogy would be, if 9/11 had occurred
01:00:24in the UK and the UK had responded in the way that the US had in Afghanistan, right?
01:00:30I was taking the fact differences in size and all that.
01:00:34Do you think it would have changed the mentality though of the citizens in the UK and how they
01:00:39viewed it?
01:00:40Perhaps.
01:00:41I mean, look, are you saying to me that the turning point around how the military was interpreted
01:00:49the level of warmth towards people who were veterans was 2001?
01:00:55I don't know if that was the, I don't know.
01:00:57I can't claim causality.
01:00:59The correlation certainly exists.
01:01:01That seems to be a prior to then, not quite so revered, after then, pretty revered.
01:01:06But okay.
01:01:07So maybe it's just recency bias for me talking that what I know from my memory of how people
01:01:13respond to American veterans is that.
01:01:17Yes, thank you for your service, special dispensation, a variety of different days and parades and
01:01:24all sorts of other stuff with rainbow flags.
01:01:26And then you get to now where I don't know if the same thing's quite so true.
01:01:32I feel like there's a lack, there's a dearth of pendulums always swing.
01:01:40So maybe it's going back to what is more typical.
01:01:42Perhaps that was the aberration.
01:01:44Perhaps that was the anomaly, the last 30 years or so, 20 years.
01:01:47Perhaps that was what was strange.
01:01:49I would say 20 years is the anomaly.
01:01:51And honestly, I think the, again, to go back to misconceptions, I, I, I, sorry, World War
01:01:58II.
01:01:59Yeah.
01:02:00Guys came home.
01:02:01That was a big part of the baby boom was off the back of dudes that were just revered by
01:02:07every single person who hadn't been to war and all of the other people that had as well.
01:02:11Yeah.
01:02:12And I think a revering a community above all others can also become incredibly dangerous
01:02:19as well.
01:02:20It becomes a manipulatable system that becomes a system that you can gain and then pour examples
01:02:26or expressions of that.
01:02:27Start that pendulum going back in the other direction.
01:02:29I think it's a naturally correcting thing, but yeah, I think it has more to do with the
01:02:35previous 20 years than anything else.
01:02:37That'd be my guess.
01:02:39Yeah.
01:02:40I mean, just, you know, if you are, if there's the potential for boots on the ground being
01:02:46needed in the Middle East, which every day, just however low the likelihood was or is,
01:02:53that likelihood increases each day.
01:02:55I have absolutely no idea what is going on.
01:02:58It is pretty wild.
01:03:01How so?
01:03:05I thought that we were in the end the worst phase of politics and, you know, don't start
01:03:13any new ones, even the tech who were not at war, right?
01:03:16Of course, there's that lovely little caveat of how the authorized use of military force
01:03:20has been completely bent by every president that has been in office since it was created.
01:03:27I don't know how well the checks and balances are currently working.
01:03:30I don't know what the conscription thing like registering for the draft.
01:03:32I mean, there's a difference between registering people for the draft and then like executing
01:03:36a draft.
01:03:37I would actually really like to see two years of mandatory service for young men and women.
01:03:41It would give people such a different context on the world around them as opposed to just
01:03:46experiencing world through Instagram at that age, you'd go out and just, if you could leave
01:03:50where you were at and go to an area that was perhaps more impoverished or just get a different
01:03:54view of it and serve something bigger than yourself for two years, I think it would help
01:03:57a lot.
01:03:59But I mean, I don't know.
01:04:03I get really wary when there's no definable end state and that's on my own experience
01:04:09in the global war on terror.
01:04:11I mean, we accomplished our military objectives in Afghanistan and this is people way more
01:04:18steeped in military knowledge and understanding than myself in about 90 days.
01:04:24We saved for 20 years.
01:04:26Our exit probably could have been better.
01:04:30We left a few things behind.
01:04:31Did you see the video of like the day after we left, they were flying a Blackhawk with
01:04:37a man hanging from his neck underneath the rope, underneath it literally the day after?
01:04:41No.
01:04:42Oh yeah, not really.
01:04:43We left a lot of stuff behind.
01:04:45Iraq, you know, what's our definable end state?
01:04:50How long, sorry, how long ago was the official withdrawal?
01:04:56Five years?
01:04:57I think so.
01:04:58Yeah.
01:04:59We have to look that one up.
01:05:00My point is, however long ago that was, I don't know.
01:05:04It's like you and a toxic ex.
01:05:05You're just not able to stop going back.
01:05:08She's not good for me.
01:05:10She wasn't good for me for a long time.
01:05:11I've had a few cocktails though.
01:05:14Damn it dude, I had to send the you up WhatsApp.
01:05:17You know what's wild too is, where was it?
01:05:20August 30th, 2021.
01:05:21So not even five years.
01:05:23And here's what's wild.
01:05:24You know what, the talking point now is that Iran has been our enemy for 47 years, which
01:05:30I'm not going to argue, but depth to America is a thing for a certain segment of the population
01:05:35and ideological belief there.
01:05:37Got it.
01:05:38Why are we choosing now over the 47 years?
01:05:42Where was the people?
01:05:43I mean, we had a robust, for people who don't know where Iran is, it sits in between Iraq
01:05:49and Afghanistan.
01:05:51We had Oreo that fucker.
01:05:53They were the delicious creamy center.
01:05:55I was like, oh, this analogy is getting wild passed out of the US military.
01:06:02But what we did is bailed when we had an immense amount of infrastructure there.
01:06:09And now we're going to go back and I just, give me some metrics by which we're measuring
01:06:16or like, what are we using as our metric here?
01:06:19We destroyed their entire anti-air system, but we just lost two F-15s and two A-10s.
01:06:22We just nuked four of our own A-6s in the C-130s that they flew in there on like, I
01:06:27thought we had air superiority.
01:06:29Can't get one.
01:06:30We can't let them get a nuclear weapon.
01:06:31Well then what did we strike for last year?
01:06:32Because the president of the United States got up there and said, we completely annihilated
01:06:35their ability to enrich uranium, but now we're saying we can't let them get a bomb.
01:06:39Like, were you not telling me the truth then or are you not telling me the truth now?
01:06:42Or are you never telling me the truth?
01:06:44That's probably the better question for politicians.
01:06:47I just, it's such, it is such a horrific thing to ask of people to go do those things that
01:06:55I wish the people that made the decisions, to some degree, I wish they had more skin
01:07:00in the game.
01:07:01I wish they had to go with them, you know, which it's never going to be the case, but...
01:07:04We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first tell me if this sounds familiar.
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01:08:32What's that line about wars being chosen by old men so that young men go out and die?
01:08:38There's some, yeah, some pithy aphorism around that, but I mean, I think what's been fascinating
01:08:44to me is watching the commentariat and the supporters and the critiques, criticizers of
01:08:51both sides, like contort themselves into knots, trying to work out what their position is on
01:08:56this.
01:08:57People who didn't like Trump still don't like Trump and have more reason not to.
01:09:01Lots of people who did like Trump also now don't like Trump.
01:09:04I don't know of anybody who has been converted over to the support, and I think this is shown
01:09:10in the polls, but he's had over the last two years, check this out, Jared, I'm pretty sure
01:09:15over the last two years, what's happened to Trump's approval numbers?
01:09:19I think he's had the fastest decline in approval numbers, maybe in American history.
01:09:26Historically, when you tell people to go fuck themselves on Easter, that may happen.
01:09:32What did he end the Easter post with?
01:09:34Praise to Allah.
01:09:35Oh yeah.
01:09:36Yeah, what the fuck was going on with that?
01:09:39You're asking me what's going on with that?
01:09:41In the last two years, Trump's approval has followed a pretty clear pattern, a modest bump,
01:09:45then a steady decline, now persistently low and polarized, 46% approval and 43% disapproval
01:09:53in January, 2025, which is higher than 2017.
01:09:57Keep going down, recent polling shows 55 to 60%.
01:10:01So net negative approval of 14 to 20 points.
01:10:06Maybe that's not as low as I might've thought, but I mean, still not great, but that's a big
01:10:13drop.
01:10:14And what was the fucking, I was in Australia for this, I kind of saw it third hand.
01:10:21Why did he say DLR thing?
01:10:24I love that you're asking me for an explanation to that.
01:10:28Can you psychoanalyze Donald Trump for me for a second?
01:10:33Oh yeah, good.
01:10:34There you go.
01:10:35Psychoanalyze.
01:10:36Right.
01:10:37I have a theory about why Donald, hey, look.
01:10:38Oh, is it a glass this time?
01:10:40Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:10:41Put these on.
01:10:42And now that you've got ... Okay.
01:10:48So why did Donald Trump say praise to Allah?
01:10:53Because we elected a TV star to be the president of the United States.
01:11:03I'm going to have to condition myself to use this.
01:11:06Yeah, well, I don't know what the fuck is, what you can say the current US administration's
01:11:16plan is.
01:11:17Well, I don't know if they have one, and I think that might be the scariest thing.
01:11:22People get so wrapped around the color of their team's jersey, and I want whatever administration
01:11:28is in office to do the best they possibly can so that we all can benefit from that.
01:11:34And I don't know where it leads us when people forget that the goal should be like, hey, thriving
01:11:43of this country, but they'll choose alignment of their color jersey over to the exclusion.
01:11:48I don't understand that.
01:11:49I don't know why it got that way.
01:11:51I don't also don't know how to get out of it either.
01:11:52They'd rather their side win, but the country lose.
01:11:55I don't know if they would verbalize that, but their actions seem to be in line with that.
01:12:00And I don't ... That's not great.
01:12:02It really does.
01:12:03At the moment, dude, it really does seem just like, I don't know, own goal after own goal.
01:12:07And then even inside of the Republican party, the whole thing that J.D. Vance ran on was
01:12:11America first.
01:12:13His whole philosophy was there.
01:12:15The next Republican candidate for president is going to have a very interesting character.
01:12:20Which fucking unwind this?
01:12:22Well, they're going to have to run at a time while he is still president and answer for
01:12:27a lot of the policy.
01:12:28You mean throwing him under the bus?
01:12:29I don't think they'll be able to, because I think he would cut his own nose off despite
01:12:34his face when it came to that.
01:12:35I think ... And not support them?
01:12:37I think so.
01:12:38So you've got to walk this tight rope of ... And how do you do that?
01:12:40Well, this was the issue that Kamala had, right, where she was being asked ... Putting it down
01:12:46to a single issue or ... That's right.
01:12:48She was being asked to under the bus Biden while still being his VP.
01:12:53Yeah.
01:12:54And that was something that she struggled with.
01:12:57I mean, something I thought about, you know, did the Republicans win the last elections
01:13:02or did the Democrats fuck it up so much?
01:13:05You know?
01:13:06Like, hey, we're not even going to let you choose which candidate you're going to vote
01:13:08for.
01:13:09All because of all the money we would have to give back and not be able to fundraise with.
01:13:12So yeah, we're going to strip away your choice and like, this is the person you got.
01:13:17Get on team blue.
01:13:18What?
01:13:19What?
01:13:20Yeah.
01:13:21What do you think about the future of mercenary organizations, of sort of guns for hire, increasingly
01:13:29I'm seeing ... Depends on who you ask.
01:13:31Some people are saying it's the way forward.
01:13:35Usually those people own those companies, but ... That's a tough one.
01:13:41I don't think you should be able to rent the American flight.
01:13:43I think it should be issued on your uniform and that's it.
01:13:46If you want to do things, if the military is not capable of doing the things that you're
01:13:49filling those gaps with, then do me a favor and restructure the military and develop those
01:13:53capabilities instead of outsourcing it.
01:13:56Because there are some ways to cut corners, outsourcing it and paint outside of the lines
01:14:01that the military isn't supposed to be able to do.
01:14:04And I think that's a dangerous thing.
01:14:07I think if the military isn't certain of the rule and isn't capable of doing it, then let's
01:14:12solve that problem.
01:14:14Because you're using this buttress performance enhanced thing to compensate.
01:14:21Yeah, and there's also risk in that too.
01:14:26The Iranian pilot, as an example, dude, we need some assets to go get that guy.
01:14:30Which by the way, people complain about the price of that, but to go back to being issued
01:14:34and flagged on your uniform and being asked to do exceptional things, it kind of helps
01:14:38to know that if shit goes sideways, the chariot will be lit on fire.
01:14:44It might not be pointed in the right direction.
01:14:45You might see it go off a cliff, but we're going to come do something.
01:14:47Send another one.
01:14:48Totally send more chariots until we get you.
01:14:52That doesn't exist in the contracting world.
01:14:54If you're out there and you're doing a contract, a kinetic contract in an environment that is
01:14:59maybe less newsworthy, but you're still, there is no red button, like, hey, send everybody.
01:15:06So there's a lot of risk involved in that as well too.
01:15:08That's interesting.
01:15:09I didn't know that.
01:15:10How could there be?
01:15:11I mean, the, the, the, the C star combat search and rescue response, that was all military
01:15:16based, right?
01:15:17I thought that there would be something that was a part of that ecosystem inside of it.
01:15:23I suppose it's, it's much closer to a market.
01:15:25It's just a capitalist.
01:15:27Correct.
01:15:28Yeah.
01:15:29I mean, they're talking probably minimum manning at times, you know what I mean?
01:15:31How many bodies do we need to be able to do this?
01:15:33What can we charge?
01:15:34They're not going to have like the assets that we, no pun intended, metaphorically and literally
01:15:39burned to the ground.
01:15:41Those organizations don't have a stable at those things to be able to do that.
01:15:46So yeah, it's, I don't like the idea of outsourcing military type rules specifically when the underlying
01:15:57motivation behind it is to skirt rules that prohibit military behaviors and activities.
01:16:03What are those sorts of rules?
01:16:05Rules of engagement, meddling in affairs that the U S military is not supposed to be meddling
01:16:12in.
01:16:13Because it would cross some kind of diplomatic or legislative, right?
01:16:21I don't think we should be doing that stuff.
01:16:22I think that it gets real murky real fast.
01:16:24I'm not saying there's not a role for private military contractors, PMCs, which are most
01:16:28of those organizations.
01:16:33I don't think outsourcing war is a good idea.
01:16:38But it suddenly opens up the problem of who's got the biggest bank balance and who can continue,
01:16:43who, who is going to pay the most.
01:16:46And if allegiance is basically to whoever's got the biggest paycheck, that's a problem.
01:16:52I don't know much about Bitcoin, but there's a lot of people out there with a lot of Bitcoin.
01:16:56Why don't we have our own private military contract?
01:16:59That'd be nice.
01:17:01People quit when they focus on how far they have to go.
01:17:04Yeah.
01:17:05Where'd you learn that?
01:17:08So interestingly enough, going back as an instructor was there for 18 months.
01:17:12I did not want to go back.
01:17:14It was global war on terror.
01:17:16That's a sure duty command, non deployable meeting, regardless of what's going on.
01:17:20Your job is to be an instructor, which if you are in a profession of arms and arms are being
01:17:25used in your profession, you're probably going to want to be over there.
01:17:28Out of the school house, wiping noses and asses, right?
01:17:31We didn't actually do that.
01:17:32We let them do that for themselves because they're adults.
01:17:35But it ended up being the most rewarding 18 months of my entire career.
01:17:41I look back on it and I learned a lot about myself and it gave me an incredible understanding
01:17:46of the community.
01:17:48And I realized it was like the world's best laboratory on why people quit.
01:17:55Like all of this, there have been so many millions of dollars and I don't have an exact, I'm going
01:18:00to say, it's safe to say millions of dollars had been spent trying to figure out who makes
01:18:05it through SEAL training, psychological assessments, looking at your sporting background.
01:18:10Did you come from a nuclear family, a broken home?
01:18:12Where'd you come from?
01:18:13Socio economic status, all of these things.
01:18:16Pre-training programs that existed for a couple of years.
01:18:18The attrition rate just hums right along.
01:18:22All of this stuff, it might've bumped at a percentage point.
01:18:25For people who don't know the attrition rate in the summer months is about 75%.
01:18:28So three out of four students aren't going to make it.
01:18:30Winter months, a little bit colder.
01:18:31So more exposure to the elements, maybe sometimes 90% attrition rate.
01:18:36Which is winter, right?
01:18:37Winter hell week.
01:18:38Yes.
01:18:39For sure.
01:18:40My class was the last hard budget class that there ever was.
01:18:44Documented.
01:18:45It's written somewhere, probably in my handwriting, but the winter is just, it's just colder.
01:18:52And the cold sucks more.
01:18:54As a student, when you're going through, you don't get a chance to talk to the guy who
01:18:59is next to you who quits because they're gone.
01:19:01And your training day continues.
01:19:04And especially in like hell week, if that's a five day evolution starting on Sunday and
01:19:07ending on Friday, if they're gone, most of the quitting occurs between Sunday and about
01:19:11Tuesday morning, they're already moved out of the bear.
01:19:14Like you'll probably never see them again.
01:19:16So as a student, you're just like front side focus.
01:19:19As an instructor, they're there for a couple of weeks.
01:19:22They have to process out, they get put over in a different birthing place.
01:19:25A lot of times they have medical issues that they're working their way through.
01:19:29And you are around young men who probably a week before you have a conversation with them
01:19:39would have told you that it is their singular goal and focus on life.
01:19:43And there's nothing that you could have done to make them quit and that they were going
01:19:47to be there on graduation day.
01:19:48And that this is the only goal that matters to them.
01:19:52And then eight to nine out of 10 of them quit and you can sit there and you can talk to
01:19:56them about why.
01:19:58And I try to be very kind in talking with them because most of the people who have regret
01:20:03is the largest emotion that just is kind of outpouring.
01:20:08They want to go back.
01:20:09It sucks.
01:20:10I've met students decades later are people who have quit Buzz and like, Hey man, I'm not
01:20:13trying to be a dick, but I'm just curious because I have a theory.
01:20:15Like, how do you feel about that decision regret every single time they wish they had been able
01:20:20to see it through because it leaves a really large question mark in their life going forward.
01:20:25So in spending time with the students, I would ask them, you know, well, why did you quit?
01:20:30And in that kind of fragile state, they were really honest with me and they kept saying
01:20:35the same things.
01:20:36There, there, there was a couple of categories and one of them was huge.
01:20:39The small one was like, life happened.
01:20:42My dad died and I got to get the fuck out of here.
01:20:44Like, dude, I wish you the absolute best.
01:20:46You know what I mean?
01:20:47Like that's not the data set that I'm looking for injury.
01:20:50There's another one can't control that because that wasn't necessarily a consensual choice.
01:20:53So boom, they're gone.
01:20:54Everybody else who rang the bell, why'd you quit?
01:20:58And they would all say the same thing.
01:21:00I couldn't be as cold as I was for as long as I thought I was going to be cold.
01:21:06I would say, well, how, who told you how long you were going to be cold for?
01:21:11Well, nobody, but I told myself I couldn't be cold for as long as I thought I was going
01:21:16to have to be.
01:21:17Or tired or hungry or the combination of all of those things or in physical pain or it was
01:21:24too hard.
01:21:26What they're all expressing is a moment where they became overwhelmed by the situation that
01:21:33they were in.
01:21:35And they started looking at time, literally time, how they viewed time was the determining
01:21:43factor on the decision that they made.
01:21:46If they could only see where they were like, this is the startup Bud's first day, and
01:21:51this is graduation on average 180 days.
01:21:54And the only thing that they can see is that the gap between my two fingers, dude, that's
01:22:02a lot, especially on your first day when you get your shit absolutely kicked in.
01:22:06And let's say you had a three end stack of little notes on the first one, it said 180.
01:22:11And at the end of that day where you're barely able to walk back to the barracks, you rip
01:22:15that off.
01:22:16And it says 179, how pumped are you?
01:22:19Not that pumped.
01:22:20So that's a person who became, they're creeping towards becoming overwhelmed.
01:22:25Hell Week, the same thing.
01:22:26Starts on a Sunday, ends on a Friday.
01:22:28But if all you can see is this gap and how far you are from your goal, you're getting
01:22:33into a really susceptible position and a really malleable position from an instructor state.
01:22:39And that was literally like, that's the secret sauce.
01:22:44This is the most important thing that I learned in my entire career.
01:22:47If you can identify that that is the main reason why people give up on their lifelong goals,
01:22:53you should be able to reverse engineer that.
01:22:55So how do you do that?
01:22:56You think about everything other than that.
01:22:59So instead of trying to get from here to here and only looking at that distance, you slam
01:23:03these two together.
01:23:04So there is a microscopic step that you can take and you only focus on that step and then
01:23:09the next one and the next one.
01:23:10And you don't have to keep track of your steps because as long as you keep making forward
01:23:14motion, this bridge will be gapped at some point in time.
01:23:19The muscle that fails at buds is not below the neck.
01:23:22It's between the ears.
01:23:24So they focus on that distance, they become overwhelmed when they make a decision that
01:23:27they'll regret for the rest of their life.
01:23:29So the key to that is to chunk your goals into the most digestible piece that you possibly
01:23:34can.
01:23:35And they consistently put those one on top of another.
01:23:37Is there a difference between stress and overwhelm?
01:23:40Can somebody force you to be overwhelmed is a better question.
01:23:43I don't think so.
01:23:45You can't actually, and I would, I would sort of have some interesting conversation with
01:23:48a student like, well, instructor so-and-so made me quit.
01:23:52Stand by please, I have additional questions.
01:23:54What do you mean?
01:23:55Well, they made me quit.
01:23:56I'm like, so they, they, they interlaced fingers, like the movie Ghost where they were doing
01:24:02pottery and they put your hand on the bell and rang the bell.
01:24:05They're like, no, no, no, I mean, that's not what I'm saying, but they were like in my face
01:24:11and they weren't going away.
01:24:12Cause it told me they weren't going to go away and I couldn't take it anymore.
01:24:16So I quit.
01:24:17I'm like, okay.
01:24:18And again, these are people in a fragile state, so I'm not like trying to have an argument
01:24:21with them, but I would try to, you know, maybe reinforce a little bit like, listen, that instructor
01:24:26facilitated an environment for you where you became your own worst enemy and you made that
01:24:31choice.
01:24:32And here's how I know that this works.
01:24:33As soon as I understood that concept, that the view of time was the most dangerous thing
01:24:40for the student, I gave up on all physical tools that I had, whether it was the ocean
01:24:48or the watch or food or physical exertion, then I would just talk to students like you
01:24:54and I are talking right now.
01:24:55I do.
01:24:56What's going on, man?
01:24:57It's like you're having a shitty day.
01:25:00This is only the first day of hell week and it was be like the third, but they're already
01:25:03hallucinating and I had sent my watch to the incorrect day in time.
01:25:10You look like you're really cold.
01:25:12How long do you think you can be this cold?
01:25:14I'm on shift for the next 12 hours.
01:25:15I'm going to sit here with you for 12 hours, I'm going to keep you in this water for longer
01:25:19than you thought was even possible.
01:25:22And you can see it in their eyes.
01:25:23The students are like, just whatever, dude, I know the game, fuck off.
01:25:26And so what they're chunking in that moment is just surviving the interaction with me.
01:25:30And I can recognize it too and like, lame, next.
01:25:32Then you go to the other student and you start seeing the self-doubt and you just water the
01:25:37self-doubt.
01:25:38It was the single most effective tool to get people to quit training.
01:25:41It had nothing to do with anything in the physical world.
01:25:46So you can reverse engineer that.
01:25:50So by reminding them how much further they had to go.
01:25:55That's all I focused on is I tried to get them to focus on where they were, how much more
01:26:00work they had to do to get to their goal.
01:26:03It's not just going to be the next minute.
01:26:05No I tried to get them to think of anything but that.
01:26:07The kid was thinking about the next minute, like Lane, get out of here, you're going to
01:26:09be fine.
01:26:10As you're walking, you're like, good job.
01:26:11You wouldn't say that, of course, but you think it.
01:26:14You outfoxed me.
01:26:15You saw the game that I was trying to play.
01:26:17Yeah, totally.
01:26:18I mean, it's for clarity, for people who are hearing this, they're like, yes, I'm going
01:26:22to start doing this and everything in my life is going to be easy.
01:26:25No.
01:26:26It doesn't make anything easier.
01:26:28It makes it more digestible.
01:26:30Pain still hurts.
01:26:32Suffering still sucks.
01:26:34But little bites of suffering, focusing on that little bite and not letting yourself get overwhelmed
01:26:38to make an emotionally poor decision, that's going to make a huge trajectory distance in
01:26:43your life.
01:26:44Yeah, the being paralyzed by indecision thing is something that I've been pretty fascinated
01:26:49by.
01:26:50And I know it's something that you are too.
01:26:51That line, many a wrong move was made by just standing still.
01:26:55So worst thing you can do.
01:26:56I write about that too.
01:26:57You get ambushed, the actually the worst thing that you can do is just stay in place, which
01:27:02is a really hard one because sometimes you find awesome rocks to hide behind.
01:27:06You're like, hey, dude, get over here.
01:27:08This thing stops bullets and your body will be screaming at you.
01:27:12Stay behind this rock because it currently is stopping.
01:27:15It's ballistically, it's cover, right?
01:27:17Cover is something that stops bullets.
01:27:19Concealment is something that hides you.
01:27:21Both work in hide and seek.
01:27:23Both do not work in a gunfight.
01:27:25Don't confuse the two.
01:27:26I've actually seen it happen.
01:27:27It's pretty gnarly.
01:27:28Mostly it was the enemy combatants thinking that bushes were cover.
01:27:33It was not.
01:27:36But also I can see it because you keep picking your head up.
01:27:38So like, dude, you suck at hide and seek.
01:27:42If you stay there though, because you're scared, because you don't want to die, both of which
01:27:47legitimate emotions and your enemy starts to come around the corner, it's going to be where
01:27:53you die.
01:27:54Your indecision and inability to control the fear that you are experiencing and being shot
01:27:59at and somebody trying to kill you is scary.
01:28:02It's another one of those misconceptions people have that there's this fearless nature of people
01:28:08in that community.
01:28:09That is not my experience.
01:28:10I actually don't want to work with somebody who is fearless because that either means you're
01:28:13not paying attention or you're a sociopath or a psychopath, neither of which are a good
01:28:17model for that world.
01:28:19So if you just stay there because you're scared and your enemy starts to maneuver on you, it's
01:28:23going to be where they find you.
01:28:24It's actually where we're going to be.
01:28:25They're going to find your dead body.
01:28:26What you actually have to do is even knowing that you could potentially absorb risk.
01:28:34You could get hurt.
01:28:35You have to move and you have to switch that on the people that initiated the ambush on
01:28:39you.
01:28:40The fastest way to get out of an ambush is to either, depending on the type, there's linear
01:28:44ones that look like lines or L's.
01:28:46Oftentimes it's to punch through it or to flank, but that requires movement and that's the same
01:28:51thing as that indecision.
01:28:52If you're paralyzed by indecision, you're not going to do anything and the world is going
01:28:56to continue to shift around you and then you're even farther behind the eight ball.
01:29:00I'd rather see people take, maybe even take a step in the wrong direction, but get some
01:29:04momentum going.
01:29:05Obviously correct for your mistake as quick as humanly possible, but dude, get the wheels
01:29:09running, like get the wheels spinning on the road.
01:29:12What are the other traits that matter in life or death situations that people overestimate
01:29:16or underestimate?
01:29:18Emotional control.
01:29:19As ridiculous as that is to say, because it is an emotionally scary event, you have to
01:29:24be able to detach your emotions from your decision making process.
01:29:28You have to be able to function and that is what the test I administered in second phase
01:29:34was a dieting test and it was 20 minutes long.
01:29:36You're tying a bunch of knots in the student's gear and they have to get the knots out in
01:29:42an appropriate procedure.
01:29:43If you deviate from procedure, you fail.
01:29:45We'll pull you out of the water.
01:29:46You get four attempts at the test.
01:29:48So even if you do the knots, but you do them in the wrong way?
01:29:52At a broad level, the mouthpiece that you are breathing out of, if it is in your mouth and
01:29:56I leave it in your mouth as I tie a knot, you have to start from the mouthpiece and work
01:30:00your way back.
01:30:01If I rip it out and tie a knot, you have to start all the way from your manifold and trace
01:30:05it up.
01:30:06And some people will just reach up and put the mouthpiece in their mouth, like dude, you
01:30:09just it's like fail right there, but they can't breathe.
01:30:14And I know that because I can see the inhale and exhale.
01:30:17And if you want to be a dick instructor, your way to all the bubbles come out and go my mouthpiece.
01:30:22If you don't want to be a dick instructor and you want to teach the students, you just
01:30:24tap them on the mouthpiece because it's a one-to-one ratio.
01:30:27This is a one-to-one test.
01:30:29Tap them on the mouthpiece.
01:30:30Let them get a big breath.
01:30:31And then I take the mouthpiece and I tie knots.
01:30:34And there's a variety of different ways that you can do it.
01:30:36And I'm sitting there as an instructor, just floating in a wetsuit with a mask and snorkel
01:30:40on.
01:30:41And you start seeing it.
01:30:42They start like, it's insane.
01:30:45And it's like, cool.
01:30:46I've been there.
01:30:47I know it sucks.
01:30:48Are you going to follow procedure?
01:30:50And at the end of that week, if they pass that test, you sit them down, you know, like for
01:30:54the love of God, please do not go recreational scuba diving.
01:30:57Because you guys don't know a fucking thing about it.
01:30:59This test had absolutely nothing to do with diving and everything to do with stress management
01:31:03and following procedure, regardless of what's going on in the world around you.
01:31:08What's drown proof?
01:31:10Drown proof is an evolution that does not make you drown proof at all.
01:31:13Plenty of seals, unfortunately, have drowned.
01:31:15You get introduced to that in first phase.
01:31:18The final evolution, which is the picture on the front cover is where you have your hands
01:31:21tied behind your back and your feet tied together.
01:31:24And I believe this is 30 years in the rear view mirror.
01:31:29You bob up and down for an hour.
01:31:31You then have to transit the pool all the way to the end and then back after now.
01:31:41This is one of the most relaxing, what I'm about to say is not a recommendation for people
01:31:47to do in their own personal pool.
01:31:49What I'm saying is, as a student, you can only hear them yelling at you as your head
01:31:52is above water.
01:31:53So if you're comfortable, if you're comfortable in the water, I get, if I stay down here, I
01:31:58can't hear Andy shouting at me.
01:32:00It's yeah.
01:32:01Well, I had a bullhorn, so it's like talking at a normal voice with an extremely high decibel
01:32:04level.
01:32:05Yep.
01:32:06Which talking to somebody from six inches from their face with a bullhorn, let me just tell
01:32:09you, it's pretty fun.
01:32:11What are you thinking about right now?
01:32:15Again, generational trauma, it has to be passed downhill because instructors did that to me.
01:32:22It is for an hour.
01:32:24I played water polo in high school, so for me, I was comfortable in the water.
01:32:26And although on the picture on the book, their hands are tied, their feet are tied, but this
01:32:31is also a one-to-one ratio.
01:32:33Half the class is watching the students in the water and there are instructors in the
01:32:37water for safety.
01:32:38So you try not to kill people.
01:32:40We do our absolute best, even though I will say it is essential people die in training
01:32:43from time to time.
01:32:44I can touch on that if you want to after I describe this.
01:32:47But the first time they do this, their feet aren't tied together and they're just holding
01:32:50their fingers behind their back.
01:32:52It's a crawl, walk, run approach.
01:32:53Then we'll use like some Velcro, right?
01:32:55Or maybe just do the legs and then the hands.
01:32:57If you bob up and down, it's honestly, you bounce off the bottom, take a deep breath and
01:33:03you slowly exhale to become negatively buoyant and you bounce.
01:33:06It's really not that bad.
01:33:07The swimming isn't that bad either.
01:33:08Then you get back and they throw a mask into the water and you have to go down, bite it
01:33:13with your teeth, come up and then bob with it for a bunch of times and then the test
01:33:17actually ends.
01:33:18Because that limits the ability for you to breathe or it's just a fucking awkward thing
01:33:22to do?
01:33:23I feel like it's the latter.
01:33:24I have no explanation as to why.
01:33:26And I think there's honestly a somersault in there somewhere too.
01:33:29Scientifically, this isn't justified at all.
01:33:31No, it's not at all.
01:33:32Again, this is just a rolling rock of generational trauma.
01:33:35It's going downhill.
01:33:36And so that is drown proofing.
01:33:39The concept being though, before thriving, let's learn how to survive.
01:33:43It's about control and comfort to the best of your ability in an environment that you
01:33:49can't control and probably shouldn't be comfortable in if you have your feet tied together and
01:33:53your hands tied behind your back.
01:33:54Some people are like, "Oh man, it's just so like, if you guys were taking a hostage on
01:33:58a boat, you can just go do like a dolphin off the side and pour poos out?"
01:34:01I'm like, "Uh, no, that's not what that's for at all."
01:34:05So I'm up like, it's so crazy, and again, I didn't understand a lot of this as a student.
01:34:10This was just the evolution of the day.
01:34:11I'm like, "Okay, cool.
01:34:12Let's go through it.
01:34:13Let's get it done."
01:34:14One of the evolutions of a 50 meter underwater swim.
01:34:17Like why?
01:34:19Why do we do this?
01:34:20Because it freaks people out.
01:34:22And that's exactly why we, is it, do you really need to be able to do a 50 meter underwater
01:34:27swim?
01:34:28I don't think so.
01:34:29I hope not.
01:34:30That would suck.
01:34:31I don't want to do one, but you do it in training because it scares the shit out of the students.
01:34:35And it's again, it's a one-to-one and the instructors are doing the best they can to
01:34:38make you nervous beforehand.
01:34:40How are they doing then?
01:34:43We have many tricks and tools.
01:34:45Well, here, is it 2026?
01:34:48Okay.
01:34:49Statute of limitations has probably expired on this.
01:34:50So we would often grab the foreign students first that were augmented training.
01:35:00They were paid to be there by their host country and we couldn't really get rid of them anyway.
01:35:05And so like the diving test.
01:35:07When you're, so the 50 meter underwater swim is a great example, but the diving test or
01:35:12even the tread is even better.
01:35:14We have scuba tanks on your back.
01:35:16You have your fins on, a weight belt on, and you have to tread water with, to the wrist
01:35:20or about where the watch would be with your hands out for five minutes.
01:35:25Five or six students are going at a time.
01:35:27Everybody else is on the pool deck, but their back is to the pool so you can only hear it.
01:35:33So if you were to grab a subpart performer and they were to lose their shit and everybody
01:35:42else had to hear that wondering what in the absolute fuck was happening, knowing that they
01:35:47have to go next, thinking that they were prepared, sounding like somebody sounds like they're
01:35:52just like talking to a dinosaur and then is being pulled unconscious out of the water and
01:35:56being slapped back to life by a dude with seven years of medical school.
01:36:01Just one way.
01:36:06The noises, you could just see people just like, God, you know, like, God, I love my job.
01:36:13It just, it warms your soul like a candle that starts a forest fire, you know.
01:36:17And what about the underwater swim?
01:36:20Same thing.
01:36:21Just people struggle with that.
01:36:22They make noises when they come out.
01:36:24Well only when they pass out.
01:36:25Of all the evolutions in training, that is the only one I'm aware of that if you pass
01:36:29out, so you jump into the water, front somersault, front somersault sucks.
01:36:34I don't know.
01:36:35I don't know.
01:36:36Well, it's just, it's weird.
01:36:38It interrupts because anybody could like run and jump and dive and carry the momentum.
01:36:42Right.
01:36:43And it like screws with your ability to hold your breath like just enough, right?
01:36:47Like we know you can do this, but can you do it the way we ask you to do it for no reason
01:36:51other than we're asking you to do it.
01:36:52So you jump in front somersault, the smart students dive down to the bottom of the pool
01:36:57because it compresses your lung a little bit more.
01:36:59It makes it easier to hold your breath than maybe six inches above the surface or below
01:37:03the surface.
01:37:04You get the other side, you touch the other side, you have to do another fucking front
01:37:07flip.
01:37:08And I think that's just so you can't push off actually.
01:37:10Now that I think about it, you start coming back.
01:37:13This is also a one-to-one instructor ratio.
01:37:15So anytime it's one-to-one, it's considered more high risk.
01:37:18This is the only evolution that I'm aware of that as you are, if you can stay down there
01:37:24and do like this last Herculean breaststroke in your four momentum, your head touches the
01:37:29wall as you are unconscious, we will pull you out and you go to the past line.
01:37:33But the noises that students make when they come out of the water, I don't know how to
01:37:39describe it.
01:37:40And it's, it's like a drunk elephant trumpeting or a blue whale surfacing.
01:37:46Is you're trying to get water out of them?
01:37:47No, because they're just unconscious.
01:37:48They're only unconscious for a few seconds, but they're just like, and meanwhile, all
01:37:54the other students are just like, Oh my God.
01:37:57It's wild.
01:37:58And yeah, cause people are like, Oh man, they make you hold your breath in training until
01:38:01you pass out.
01:38:02Right?
01:38:03Like no, actually in every other evolution in the water, if you pass out, you're going
01:38:06to fail for not following procedure because there's a hand signal you can put out.
01:38:10If you need us to come down and get you.
01:38:12But does that not mean you fail too?
01:38:14It means you fail.
01:38:15So that if you get to that point, it means you either didn't follow procedure or you didn't
01:38:21control your, you know what I mean?
01:38:23Like something went awry and that's why you don't get just one and done.
01:38:25You get four attempts at the test.
01:38:27Most people pass it on their third attempt, the dieting test that I administered.
01:38:30Oh, okay.
01:38:31Yeah.
01:38:32You get two attempts on one day and two attempts on the next day with a really, probably great
01:38:36night's sleep.
01:38:37That's rough that you have to know that you've got to go back and do it again.
01:38:41As somebody who passed on their third try, you don't sleep very much.
01:38:44It sucks.
01:38:45And then that night I slept way better, but to go back to chunking.
01:38:52The reason I failed the first two times.
01:38:54The first night I've been met, 30 years ago, I remember there's a knot where your head can
01:38:58get turned to the side and it's just an exhalation knot, meaning you can still inhale and get
01:39:03air, but your head is crimped to the side and you can't blow.
01:39:07It's a regulator, much like Jacques Cousteau would die with.
01:39:09It's two rubber hoses that come to a bit, essentially.
01:39:12So your head is yanked to the left and all you have to do is breathe out of your nose.
01:39:17But down there, you're freaking out because this happens within 30 seconds of starting
01:39:23and a little bit of water is coming into your mouthpiece too, because your head is to the
01:39:26back.
01:39:27I remember the first time that happened to me, I started thinking about the exact thing
01:39:32I was telling myself, "I can't do this for 20 minutes."
01:39:35All I started thinking about was the gap in between the two.
01:39:37Same thing on the second test.
01:39:38By the time I got in the third one, the only thing I was thinking about was the problem
01:39:42that was introduced at that time, which again was the head yanked to the left.
01:39:46I'm like, "Whatever, no problem."
01:39:47Just went back to crawling, meaning as the student, you accept the malfunction.
01:39:51It's not a critical malfunction.
01:39:52You're ready to continue with the test and be like, "Why didn't I just do this first?"
01:39:56That's the only thing I changed.
01:39:59I was like, "One problem at a time, we're going to work it, and that's the only thing that
01:40:02exists in my life is that one problem at a time."
01:40:06Why is it important to have a proper attrition rate for people to actually die?
01:40:11Because the job is very dangerous and I don't want people to die, but if nobody ever died
01:40:15in training, you are not training hard enough.
01:40:18The training has to be a reverse engineering, downstream, real-world requirements of the
01:40:26job that you are expected to do, and it is a dangerous job.
01:40:30You cannot prepare for that by avoiding danger in training.
01:40:34Because if no one ever died, there wouldn't be anything on the line.
01:40:37Ultimately, there wouldn't be a sufficient risk for the guys to know that there's a reason
01:40:42to fear it.
01:40:43Yeah, you wouldn't be pushing hard enough.
01:40:46What's the most common way that people die, drowning?
01:40:50That is not uncommon.
01:40:52The last one I think in the pool was somebody who vomited and then aspirated it while they
01:40:56were underwater.
01:40:59The last soon-to-die in training was post-hell week, and I don't remember the exact medical
01:41:05term, but it was fluid into the lungs, and he made it to the hospital but still expired.
01:41:12You are destroyed at the end of hell week.
01:41:15It's the only week afterwards where they let you walk in tennis shoes.
01:41:20You're wearing life jackets.
01:41:23Sand is abrasive.
01:41:24For people who didn't know this, imagine just basically wearing sandpaper for a week because
01:41:27you're wet and sandy the entire time.
01:41:30It does things to the body, and you're just absolutely destroyed.
01:41:34Most people are nursing an injury anyway throughout training, but that won't get you.
01:41:41What role do you think hardship plays in people's lives?
01:41:46I'm at a place now, as I'm getting closer to 50 than 40, that I actually think the pursuit
01:41:50of an easy life is a mistake.
01:41:53I think that the grind is actually what life is all about.
01:41:57It's not a matter of whether you're going to have a hard life or an easy life.
01:42:01It's your ability to determine how well that you can suffer along the way and try to enjoy
01:42:07the journey.
01:42:08Okay, so as somebody that has either endured or doled out quite a bit of suffering, how
01:42:14do people deal with suffering more effectively?
01:42:18First by acknowledging that sometimes the answer is you are going to suffer instead of looking
01:42:21for a way to avoid it altogether.
01:42:24You don't have to nerf all the corners on tables.
01:42:26Maybe you shouldn't.
01:42:27Maybe it's okay to bang your knee every once in a while in the middle of the night.
01:42:31So I think it actually starts with accepting that if you really want to accomplish something
01:42:36in your life, there's no hack to hard work.
01:42:38I think you should hack as many like for efficiencies, like hack your Gmail inbox, but totally go
01:42:43to town.
01:42:44Hack your business systems.
01:42:49There is no substitute for hard work.
01:42:50Do you have anything in your life that was truly given to you that you didn't work for
01:42:54at all?
01:42:55And then I look at the things that I worked the hardest for and the goals that I set where
01:43:01I'm like, am I out of my mind?
01:43:03Can I actually do this?
01:43:05That's the stuff that I value the most.
01:43:06And then I'm trying to, trying to, emphasis on this, learn how to enjoy that journey more
01:43:13because it's hard and enjoying hard things is it's difficult.
01:43:18What gets in the way of enjoying it?
01:43:21Usually just myself.
01:43:22You know, my biggest enemy throughout my entire life has been myself, you know, waking up knowing
01:43:28your day is going to be difficult or more difficult or choosing to have it be more difficult to
01:43:32do the hard work up front so maybe you can enjoy an easier day later in the week.
01:43:36It's not, you know, it's challenging.
01:43:38I think that's where people struggle, that's where I struggle.
01:43:43It's strange to think that as you get older, you try to make things harder, not easier.
01:43:48Yeah, my goal in life for sure up until let's say exceptionally recently was making things
01:43:53as easy as possible.
01:43:55Everybody's searching for that.
01:43:56And then you just edit, you know, you realize that all the stuff that you got easy just doesn't
01:44:01matter.
01:44:02It's the stuff that sucks, especially if you could share that with your friends.
01:44:04That's the biggest thing I would say I probably miss about the community is that we would
01:44:10do the dumbest, most painful shit ever and laugh about it while we were doing it.
01:44:14Because you were doing it with somebody else.
01:44:17Yeah, totally.
01:44:18It would suck by yourself.
01:44:19I mean, you could do it, but watching somebody else suffer with you and finding joy in that,
01:44:23you know.
01:44:24If you could take one lesson from the SEAL teams and force every young man to learn it,
01:44:29what would it be?
01:44:31Hmm.
01:44:32One lesson.
01:44:33Be cautious.
01:44:34And make sure you know what you're willing to die for because not everything's worth it.
01:44:45Same old.
01:44:52Many times in my life, the things that I thought were the most important ended up being inconsequential
01:44:57because I didn't put enough thought or time and effort into understanding why I wanted
01:45:02to do them.
01:45:03And killing yourself and sacrificing everything in your life and trying to achieve that, you
01:45:08might get it at the end of the day and be the most hollow shell of a human being non-demand.
01:45:16And how do you do that assessment without having to go through?
01:45:18I think you have to slow down a little bit.
01:45:22We seem to be in a world where speed is one of the most important metrics.
01:45:26And I think that's important at times.
01:45:30But do all decisions have to be made in a moment's notice?
01:45:34For me, it's one of the things I really like.
01:45:37If your house is on fire, get the fuck out of your house, right?
01:45:40If your house isn't on fire and you have time to make a decision, think about the decision.
01:45:47Think about your available options and make the most educated one at the time.
01:45:51And then on that journey, keep asking yourself, is this not mean like reinforcing it along
01:45:56the way as opposed to just one decision and then your full back dive straight ahead.
01:46:03I don't think you can get to that point though without making some mistakes on your own.
01:46:07People always ask me, what would you say to your younger self?
01:46:09The truly honest answer is buy Bitcoin, you dipshit.
01:46:12Yes, buy Bitcoin and do 531.
01:46:14That's it.
01:46:15But here's the problem though.
01:46:16If I was 18 and my 48 year old self went back, I'd be like, shut up, dude, I got this figured
01:46:21out.
01:46:22All right, granddad, sit down.
01:46:24Yeah, totally.
01:46:25I'd like to invest in new cars, like to buy high and sell low.
01:46:31It's not a big deal.
01:46:32It's a new investment strategy.
01:46:34Yeah, I wouldn't have listened to myself, but I also probably would not remove the mistakes.
01:46:45I wouldn't remove some key mistakes in my life just to make sure that I learned the lesson
01:46:52from them.
01:46:53I would remove some for sure, because they were unneedless pain and suffering and don't
01:46:58worry.
01:46:59I mean, they were repeats of mistakes that I was already making, but you have to have
01:47:03those mistakes.
01:47:04The fascinating thing about the question, what would you tell your younger self?
01:47:06What advice would you give your younger self?
01:47:08If you answer that, it is almost always the exact advice that you need to hear right now.
01:47:15In the same way that you've got the same feet that you did 30 years ago, you have the same
01:47:18patterns, the same fears, the same coping mechanisms, the same responses when things become stress
01:47:23ful or overwhelming.
01:47:27That means that you're going to be driven by those unconscious, unalchemized trends.
01:47:34Those are going to be the things.
01:47:35They're going to be the shit that you dealt with when you were 18 and you got cut from
01:47:40the baseball team or the way that your first breakup felt and how you coped with it after
01:47:44that.
01:47:46For the most part, those are going to be the dynamics that are going to drive the rest of
01:47:48your life too.
01:47:49That's what you think about, so for me, it would be fearless, like just stop fucking fearing
01:47:54so much.
01:47:55What do you fear the most?
01:47:57Not doing it right, not getting it right.
01:48:00What do you use as your yardstick for that though?
01:48:02Totally superfluous, ethereal, fucking fluffy big cloud of like something going wrong.
01:48:10Things will go wrong and you'll be in the wrong and something will be taken away from you.
01:48:15I don't know what, I don't know by who, but not doing it right, not getting it right, not
01:48:19being enough.
01:48:20I don't know who for or why.
01:48:22All that's going to happen though?
01:48:24Of course.
01:48:25So isn't the juice then in just preparing yourself for that and working your way through it?
01:48:29And then overcoming it.
01:48:30Yeah, of course, which I've done throughout my entire life.
01:48:32But the-
01:48:33I'll be the judge of that, sir.
01:48:34Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:48:35Interestingly, we have a pool and a bunch of knots for you to get stuck into at the minute.
01:48:42All of the things, everybody that's listening, whatever the challenges that you thought was
01:48:45going to destroy you by virtue of the fact that you're listening to this, it hasn't.
01:48:49Can I add one thing to that too?
01:48:50And this is one thing that I wish, I know people hear this, but they don't believe me.
01:48:55Whatever it is you think you're going through, please do not convince yourself that you are
01:49:00the only one struggling with it.
01:49:02My God.
01:49:04If COVID taught us anything that it should be that isolation or even perceived isolation
01:49:11is one of the most damaging things to the human brain.
01:49:14We are, every person I've ever met in my life is more defined by their similarities than
01:49:18by their differences.
01:49:20It is so unfortunate, again, statistically, the world that I come from has a much higher
01:49:26suicide rate than many other occupational fields.
01:49:30And for those that have chosen to leave things behind, oftentimes there are deep sentiments
01:49:35of being isolated and alone and feeling like they were dealing with something that nobody
01:49:40else would or was, or that nobody else would understand, and it's not true.
01:49:47Nobody knows what's coming on behind your eyes, right?
01:49:50I guarantee you and I are probably spending our mental bandwidth worrying about the vast
01:49:57majority of the same shit.
01:49:59But in my mind, I'm like, who could I possibly talk to about this because I'm the only one
01:50:03on earth dealing with this.
01:50:04And the reality is almost everybody is.
01:50:06So we lie to ourself, you isolate, you don't say anything and it ends up getting worse.
01:50:10And it's interesting you said, I don't think that I can do the thing that I need to do for
01:50:16as long as it's going to be required of me.
01:50:19And that's not too dissimilar to one of the most common thoughts that people have before
01:50:23taking their own lives, which is that the world would be better off without me.
01:50:27Or I can't take this anymore.
01:50:29The people around me will be better off without me and I can't continue.
01:50:33And it's the combination of those two things.
01:50:36It's the isolation that's in there too.
01:50:38The wonderful line, the feeling of being alone is one of the most dangerous lies we tell ourselves.
01:50:43I have never asked for help and not received it.
01:50:47And I have been like in tears, overwhelmed with a number of people who saw that I needed
01:50:56help but didn't say anything because they were waiting for me to ask.
01:51:01Well, this is a curse of being competent.
01:51:04The sort of people that listen to this show and read books like yours, they're the kinds
01:51:11of people who, usually in their friend group, are the ones that have got it figured out,
01:51:16you know?
01:51:17They're the ones that are working on their diet, thinking about their sleep pattern, that
01:51:21are reading and doing meditation.
01:51:23Their looks maxing.
01:51:24Everything maxing.
01:51:25Like Thor.
01:51:26He just genetics maxed.
01:51:29And what that means is that if you're the friend that always seems like you've got your life
01:51:35sorted, people tend to not want to come to your aid because, well, fuck, like, you know,
01:51:40he's the guy that I go to.
01:51:42Like, who am I?
01:51:43Who am I?
01:51:44Who am I to help him?
01:51:46Like he's got it sorted.
01:51:47Like it's not on me.
01:51:48Like it's going to be embarrassing or it's going to be whatever.
01:51:51And it's a weird inversion of things that are, there are lots of ways that competence is
01:51:59great, but this is one of the ways where competence can hold you back.
01:52:02And yeah, I think it's.
01:52:05It goes back to the misconceptions about special operations.
01:52:09And by their competence, a country calls upon that community to solve problems when they
01:52:15can't figure out another solution.
01:52:17And by the way, they're not looking for a negative result.
01:52:21They're looking for success.
01:52:22I wrote this essay.
01:52:24This came to me when you were talking about the fact that you stayed in a marriage for
01:52:29longer than you should have done, and that you'd used a skill that had got you a lot of
01:52:35accolade in your military career, but it had damaged you when it came to your relationship.
01:52:43The curse of psychological strength, everyone has a limit, an end to the amount of discomfort
01:52:48that they can cope with.
01:52:49This is obvious physically.
01:52:50Some people can lift more and run further than others, but how much emotional pain, upset
01:52:55or disappointment a person can endure is subtler and harder to detect.
01:52:58It's not apparent in the size of someone's arms, but the capacity of their nervous system.
01:53:02It's not a weight that you can see on squat rack.
01:53:04It's their ability to carry a heavy emotional load.
01:53:06This psychological strength can be a good thing.
01:53:08You're able to handle more than most.
01:53:10You don't bulk at pain.
01:53:11You keep pushing through regardless of how you feel, but too much strength can be a weakness.
01:53:16High performers are particularly vulnerable to this trap.
01:53:20Psychological strength is rewarded almost everywhere.
01:53:22In the gym, it's discipline.
01:53:23In business, it's grit.
01:53:25In public, it's composure.
01:53:26You become the person who can handle it, who doesn't complain, who pushes through when others
01:53:29would quit.
01:53:30Your ability to ignore how you feel and keep moving forward earns admiration, builds your
01:53:35career and creates momentum.
01:53:38But what you are praised for in public, you often pay for in private.
01:53:42Relationships don't reward endurance.
01:53:44They require attunement.
01:53:46If your default strategy in life is to absorb discomfort and override warning signs, you
01:53:50will do exactly that when someone repeatedly hurts you.
01:53:54You'll rationalize it, reframe it, decide it's your job to make it work.
01:53:58And the stronger you are, the longer you can stay.
01:54:02What looks like strength from the outside becomes self-abandonment on the inside.
01:54:06You've trained yourself to believe that struggle is noble and difficulty is meaningful.
01:54:10So when love feels destabilizing, it doesn't register as a warning, it feels like a challenge.
01:54:16And challenges are your thing.
01:54:18But a relationship isn't a marathon to be endured, it's a place to feel safe.
01:54:22The qualities that make you formidable in the arena can quietly make you miserable in your
01:54:26own living room.
01:54:27Let's say that you're dating and feel like a side character in your own relationship.
01:54:31You put them first and they put you sixth.
01:54:33The rupture is regular and the repair is absent.
01:54:36Lower resilience, less stubborn people, would have broken long ago and said, "I'm out."
01:54:42But not you.
01:54:43You're the jocko-willink of psychological suffering.
01:54:46Forget carrying the boats, you'll carry the whole fleet forever.
01:54:50In these situations, you're faced with a much tougher problem.
01:54:53Not how much can you tolerate, but how much do you want to tolerate?
01:54:58Perhaps this is what you had to do as a child.
01:55:00If your needs weren't noticed, your sadness was ignored and your feelings didn't matter,
01:55:03then you become accustomed to pushing through disconnection in order to make those relationships
01:55:08function.
01:55:09If child you learns, "I need to work hard to be loved," then adult you believes, "If
01:55:15I am not loved, I just need to work harder."
01:55:19You've achieved 10,000 hours of ignoring your own needs.
01:55:21You can't tell people how you feel without first worrying about how it will make them
01:55:25feel.
01:55:26You unconsciously believe that suffering is the price of connection and that silent subjugation
01:55:30is noble.
01:55:31You basically think, "I should be able to tolerate the intolerable in order to make this work."
01:55:37What inspired you to write that?
01:55:39Thinking about some of the ways that I'd denied myself prioritization, that I'd pushed through
01:55:49discomfort because I could, because almost everything that was valuable in life had come
01:55:57on the other side of working hard and going through difficulty.
01:56:00So there's just this implicit belief that, "Well, if something's hard, that must mean
01:56:07that there's something valuable on the other side of it."
01:56:09But there is such a thing as pointless suffering.
01:56:14It made me think about the curse of psychological strength and made me think about what you were
01:56:18saying.
01:56:19It made me feel self-reflective as you were writing it.
01:56:21Massively.
01:56:22Massively.
01:56:23I could have easily used...
01:56:25You have a better grasp on the English language than I do, probably because you guys...
01:56:28You guys don't use it properly, but you guys might have.
01:56:30Kind of invented it.
01:56:31Yeah.
01:56:32So yeah.
01:56:33No, that's...
01:56:34Say more.
01:56:35It's good, man.
01:56:37I can hear a startling amount of myself in that.
01:56:42It's tough.
01:56:44Yeah.
01:56:45What people see from the outside isn't always what's going on on the inside.
01:56:48I like that line, "What you are praised for in public, you pay for in private."
01:56:52And it's one of the reasons why, when you look at anybody that's a high performer or
01:56:56somebody that's in the seals or whatever, anybody that's got unusual results typically has unusual
01:57:05inputs and an unusual environment internally too.
01:57:10Normal people get normal results.
01:57:12Weird people get weird results.
01:57:14And the most successful popular in the world, your first response shouldn't necessarily be
01:57:22envy.
01:57:23A lot of the time it should be pity.
01:57:24What happened to you that caused you to do that to yourself?
01:57:27Or at what cost?
01:57:28Yeah.
01:57:29Yeah.
01:57:30What did you have to go through in order to get there?
01:57:31Man, that message is so not put out there.
01:57:36Be careful what you wish for, and envy may not be the first thing that you cross your
01:57:41mind when you see somebody who has something you want.
01:57:44That's the question that I've been most fascinated by on the show for probably about five years
01:57:49now.
01:57:50Unfortunately, it's an anti-meme.
01:57:52If you tell people that the view from the top of the mountain that they are still climbing
01:57:57maybe might not be worth the rest of the journey, it feels to them like you're sucking the oxygen
01:58:02out of the fuel tank.
01:58:04Because fuck your feelings, just work harder.
01:58:09You will get there and glory is waiting for you.
01:58:12The total addressable market for that is 99.999% of people.
01:58:17The people who get there or got close to the top and said, I think this is a false peak.
01:58:22I don't think that what's up there is going to be worth it.
01:58:25Or they got there and said, no, there's a very small number of people who got there and went,
01:58:29it's two mountains.
01:58:31That's the problem.
01:58:32As opposed to this entire game is kind of rigged against me and I actually need to look deeper.
01:58:38I'm not going to fill an internal void with external accolades, et cetera, et cetera, et
01:58:42cetera.
01:58:43It's an anti-meme.
01:58:44It's an anti-meme and it's always going to lose to a much more simplistic, no, no, no,
01:58:48it's just more.
01:58:49The answer is more.
01:58:50You should push for more.
01:58:51Well, especially in a society that celebrates more.
01:58:56It's radical to say that you're satisfied.
01:58:58The most radical thing that you can do in a meritocracy that's capitalist is say, I'm good.
01:59:05It's to be in Montana as opposed to downtown New York city.
01:59:09It's to, I kind of like my life.
01:59:11It's kind of enough for me.
01:59:14And yeah, dude, it's, it's, it's fucking fascinating.
01:59:18And what's more fascinating to me is how many guys have come out of special operations and
01:59:24turned their hand.
01:59:27There's still always the fucking glint in your guys' eyes, the little, yeah, that one.
01:59:32What do you mean?
01:59:33Tell me more.
01:59:34I'm scared you're going to pin me down after we finish up, which actually is my request.
01:59:41It's the turn to fuck, like I really did a lot physically kind of in these three dimensions
01:59:49and then, you know, this is you trying to turn that mirror around, I guess, on yourself and
01:59:56then start to show it to other people too.
02:00:02The most common thing people say to me when they find out about my background, they'll
02:00:07say, first off, dude, you must be crazy.
02:00:10So I skipped that part of it, but they'll say those experiences must have been like unbelievable.
02:00:17And the reality is they were, and they are statistically out of reach for almost everybody.
02:00:25But if I end up doing nothing with that and it only impacts my life and I'm on my deathbed,
02:00:33I will regret not doing something with that.
02:00:36And I think that there is a way to take those experiences and package them in a way that
02:00:44can help people.
02:00:45Because at this point in my life, all I really actually want to do is make the world a little
02:00:52bit better than it was when I came into it.
02:00:54Like that's literally, money is cool.
02:00:56I like nice things as well too, but I'm also at a point in my life, like, okay, I get it.
02:01:00Like I might want the nice thing, but there's no actual happiness from the nice thing.
02:01:04Teaching somebody something or giving them a tool that they can use to just attack a problem
02:01:09in their life.
02:01:10That's fucking awesome.
02:01:11And it is so much more rewarding than a thing that you write a check for.
02:01:16And that's what I'm trying to do with that is to take experiences and tools and lessons
02:01:20that people think they don't have access to and I will be honest with this too.
02:01:24You can learn or be exposed to those lessons in organized sports.
02:01:28It's not like there's no unique creations inside of the military.
02:01:31Yeah, a lot of things are reinforced to a higher degree because the consequences of the environment
02:01:37can get pretty gnarly pretty quick.
02:01:39But if things work in that pressure cooker environment, you're telling me that they're
02:01:42not going to work in your personal and professional life.
02:01:44It'll help you just crush whatever it is that you're trying to do.
02:01:47And that's, I resisted writing something for many years, one, because I talked so much
02:01:52shit about other guys who were SEALs that wrote books and now I'm well deserved and deserving
02:01:57of the other people who are talking shit on me.
02:02:00But I just, I want to try to take those, to create tools, to give people a foundation and
02:02:09a framework to throw it at whatever it is going on in their life.
02:02:13So that they can maybe suffer better.
02:02:17I don't know, that's a great way to put it, but just to attack whatever it is that's going
02:02:22on in their life.
02:02:23Suffer better is a wonderful tagline, dude.
02:02:25If the world went completely sideways from a zombie virus outbreak and we had to put together
02:02:29a militia to save the human race, Andy Stumpf would be my top draft pick.
02:02:33Can you imagine how retarded the rest of the militia would be?
02:02:36Oh, exceptionally.
02:02:38You're the first guy?
02:02:39Yeah.
02:02:40The tip of the spear?
02:02:41Well, the base of the shaft or not.
02:02:43Ah, of course.
02:02:45Andy, you're a fucking legend, dude.
02:02:47I appreciate the hell out of you.
02:02:48Congratulations on this.
02:02:49It's awesome.
02:02:50Worked real hard on it.
02:02:52Yeah.
02:02:53I don't know if you get emails like this, I'm sure you do.
02:02:59Because the internet's a weird place, right?
02:03:00We hit upload and I don't know where anything goes.
02:03:03Your platform is massive and I could not be more proud for what you have built.
02:03:08Thank you.
02:03:09I bet you get emails from people that you'll never meet and they say, you know what?
02:03:14Something I heard you say or a guest say changed the course and trajectory of my life.
02:03:20And that is, I don't, I saved those emails.
02:03:24I have a folder, but a dozen people have reached out and said they chose not to kill themselves
02:03:29because it's something they heard on the podcast.
02:03:33Books are measured by bestseller lists.
02:03:36Fuck all that.
02:03:38I want to hear about people who changed the course of their life because it's something
02:03:42they got from a place that they never thought that they would have access to, but picked
02:03:46this up and realized, holy shit, we are way more simpler and I can use this and I will
02:03:53use it.
02:03:54And you're still going to make mistakes.
02:03:55And I hope you do because you need them, but it'll help you suffer better.
02:03:59Fuck yeah, dude.
02:04:00You're awesome.
02:04:01You're awesome.
02:04:02Congratulations.
02:04:03Thank you, man.
02:04:04Appreciate it.
02:04:05All right.
02:04:06Goodbye everybody.
02:04:07So good.
02:04:08Unreal.
02:04:09Unreal.
02:04:10Thanks again.
02:04:11Thank you very much for tuning in.
02:04:13If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are deeply.
02:04:18It thinks you're going to like this one even more.
02:04:20Go on, press it.
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