Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Air Traffic Control Is Running on Windows 95 | Dan Rickert | Ep. 469

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Dan Rickert graduated from West Point and commissioned into the cavalry, running Bradleys and gun trucks through Iraq in 2008 before going to selection and finishing his nine years in uniform on a Special Forces team with 10th Group. He left the Army in 2015 and spent the next eight years at Palantir, moving from project management to international work and eventually to chief of staff on the defense side. He is now VP of Operations at Air Space Intelligence, the company the FAA selected to rebuild the software that runs the national airspace. Much of this conversation is about what people get wrong about the defense industry. He argues that competition produces a better product for the people using it, that a human has to stay in the loop on any decision that matters, and that skepticism is healthy either way. We also worked through privacy and security, and whether the two actually have to be traded against each other.  From there we covered drone warfare and trench fighting in the same conflict, rebuilding an identity after the uniform comes off, and the work of modernizing air traffic control. Join the Cleared Hot Newsletter: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com Today's Sponsors:  Black Rifle Coffee:  https://www.blackriflecoffee.com Betterhelp:  Sign up and get 10% off at https://www.BetterHelp.com/clearedhot

Okay, got the red smoke. West of the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. Come on winter, baby. Give it to me. I made it. You're clear it hot. He's hung over today. My son's birthday was, 21st birthday was last night, so he was out getting shit-faced until 2 a.m. And you're okay? I went to bed because I'm old. Yeah, we sent the next generation off into the wilderness, and they came back.

They were going to come back at midnight, right? That was the original Uber. That was the original plan, and we heard them come in and about. about 2 a.m. Michael slept on our couch with Tyler. We all dressed up in suits for dinner. We did that. I found Tyler. Real suits or like Canadian? Real suits. No, we went to the thrift store and got full suits. Leisure suits. Yeah. I had a, I think my suit was $27. That was with footwear included. And Tyler was passed out with his jacket on, tie still on and just a blanket over his face on the couch. So it's a, I mean, that sounds like a success. Lessons can only be learned one way. My 21st birthday was. at West Point. And it was like me and my roommate went to a tailgate and I had like two beers and then we went back to the barracks. Yeah, because you were at West Point. I was like, this is cool. Yeah. Keep that sucker about a fist away from me. Just move it around with you. What do you want to begin? What you do now is as we were discussing on the way over here,

I was going to say it's simple, but not easy, but it's not simple. The problem that you are going to be tackling and upgrading is anything but simple actually. I think it's incredibly complex, maybe defined by its complexity. Sure. But we'll get to that. Military for a bit. Defense contractor in the defense space for a while. Obviously just a war monger, right?

Just suckling off the war teat of the U.S. Yes. Yes, yes. That's what most people think. There's such a misunderstanding. Let's start there. Where do you think people get that wrong? Let's be fair, though.

There is a massive ecosystem around the war machine of the United States of America. For sure, for sure. And I think there always has been for clarity. Yep. I think the threats to our country are very real on a variety of fronts. I mean, you and I are GWAT babies, right?

So we grew up in that world. And I think the reality is when the GWAT ended. Yeah. Didn't end. I was going to say, I have yet to get that memo. Maybe they have the wrong email address. But it's like, okay, we pulled out of Iraq, we pulled out of Afghanistan. the reality is I think the threats are still there on the sort of asymmetrical side,

but now they're also there on the nation state side more than ever, right? So I think the threats are very real. I understand. I think skepticism is healthy for what it's worth. Yeah, I was talking to a guy last night at the Irish pub out here, and he's like, you know, I just don't believe anyone who tells me anything with like total conviction, right? Whether it's a politician or, and I was like, that's an interesting. That's an interesting take.

That's a stance. Right? I was like, okay. I get it though. And the point he was trying to make was like, how do we hold multiple sort of truths out there, right? I think in our world right now, everything's so divisive. There's like one side right, one side wrong all the time. Well, people also argue over what truth means.

Yeah, fair enough. Which is gnarly. Yeah. Because I don't know what the world looks like if we can't agree upon a truth. Yeah. Or what the word truth. truth actually means. Yeah.

What do you think the biggest threat is right now to the U.S.? I think the biggest threat is our, I mean, look, we have the edge in a lot of ways. I think it's ours to lose. That's what scares me the most, whether that's with a nation state or whether that's with terrorist organizations. I worry about us losing sight of what's important as a country and devolving into tribalism. you know, which it seems like we are every day. But I also like, look, I don't want to make too much of a pessimistic view of that because

I also have a lot of hope. And I mean, you and I live in the Mountain West. I think this is like intrinsic to living out here. Like I haven't talked to last night, completely different side of the aisle. We had a great conversation. We agreed on some stuff. We disagreed on some stuff. I bought him a drink.

He bought me a drink. It was a great night. It was like, holy shit. What a concept, right? Yeah. So I do think most, I mean, this is just my personal thing. I think most Americans care deeply about our country. I think that, you know, what I'm seeing in defense tech is people are putting skin in the game too, right?

These are, we hire these folks who traditionally would go work at large tech companies making, you know, what the next widget here or there, right out in the valley. And, you know, it's, Silicon Valley is an interesting place. I lived out there for a little while. We called it, when I was at Palantir, we called it the Shire, right? Palantir, another teet suckler, obviously. An enemy of the United States, some people would say. Another, I think, deep misunderstanding of, yeah, I mean, I got nothing bad to say. It was a very, I loved being at Palantir.

It was a very formative time in my life. And look, I came there right out of the military. And I'm sure, like most, my transition was like, the fuck am I doing with my life. you know let me know if you ever get an hard answer to that one because i'm also still searching look i that's but that's the point right like i dude this drives me nuts about getting out like guys look at it like it's you know i mean shit we call it terminal leave like it's a freaking cancer diagnosis right and everybody never thought about it like that actually you know what i'm saying it's that odd word it's like so and you're like it's like i got to get this right and i've had friends who have

struggled deeply and i mean i struggled myself probably took me two or three years to really get my feet, right? Like we were talking about earlier, it's like, man, every day I'm still learning new stuff. But that's how it goes. That's life, right? It's the same when you're in the military. You just don't realize it then because you have so much structure around you, I think. At least I did. But, you know.

What do you think people get wrong about the military industrial complex? Well, I think that the people that work in this space care deeply. for the most part, right, about the end users. Whether that they're, and look, there's plenty of people out there in the startup world who will talk crap about big primes and, you know, oh, and then the primes will talk crap about startups. It's like, look, man. You mean vendors when you say primes? Yeah, yeah, like the big dogs, right?

Like the traditional sort of, right? Yeah. The reality is it's like, we should all compete. We should because that's going to make a better product for the end user. And I don't think people necessarily think that. The other thing I think sometimes folks get wrong is like, you know, when we talk about kinetic effects on things, I mean, you know this, right? There is a human in the loop that is making a decision.

There's somebody with release authority. There's a drag that's like, yeah. You know, and I think that that, I think it's, I think that that'll stay. I think that's important, right? You have to have that sort of who's the responsible person for those decisions, you know? Now, that doesn't mean that you can't have tools. that help them make decisions faster, present them courses of action, right,

that allow them to say, okay, I can, you know, I was thinking about this the other day. I mean, I was in Iraq in 2008, right? And that was, I mean, we were tracking IEDs with like, do you remember the time wheels? Did you guys ever do the time wheels? I don't know, describe it. It was like a circle that you shaded in when IEDs blew up.

Like, at one o'clock, there was an IED. No, we definitely didn't use this. I mean, it was like innovative at the time. It was literally a freaking pencil and paper. Right. And like you think about that and you're like now, you're like, holy shit, I can't believe that's how we actually did this. Yeah.

So I think like technology can do a lot. It's certainly not a panacea. And the people that use technology, I still think are the most important folks. I think that's what you're seeing now with a lot of defense companies is like getting proximity to those users and understanding what they need working closely with them. I mean, we had guys out at Fort Irwin last week. you know, they're on the ground often with our customers, whether they're DOW folks, our airline customers, our energy customers, understanding what they need and actually building that

and not just shipping a new release every six to 12 months, you know. Do you think it's the dollar figures that trip people up and think that there is this nepotistic or incestuous system? Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. If you head over to blackraffle coffee.com right now, they have the most amazing, I guess I would call it a moving graphic. It's from their exclusive coffee club subscription, their current roast, which is the founder roast, the royal elk in the rut. And I don't know how people do this stuff. I wish I know how to do this technology-wise, but it's pretty amazing.

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and supporting amazing brands founded by amazing people still out there having an incredible impact on the veteran community, then Black Rifle Coffee should be your go-to. Head to BlackRifleCoffey. and check out everything they have to offer. Back to the show. It could be, but I mean, I also think like the DOW in particular, and I think in our experience with the FAA, has leaned in very heavily to competition, right? And like bring your product, show your, like, you know,

it's not going to cut it to just bring a PowerPoint slide and present. It's like, show your shit, right? I think the department particularly has leaned in pretty heavily to like exercise now. demonstrations too, right? Come out and do this in an exercise. Let's see how it goes, right? So I think I think the dollar amounts, yes, they're large. It's also like, to be clear, it's quite hard, right, to do that. It's, it's, I would say, you know, there's been a lot of push to innovate, particularly in the Department of War. And there's a lot of opportunity to get

small dollar amounts, but taking that into large programmatic dollars is tough, right? And it's also a hard business. I mean, 10 years ago, it was like a dirty word to say you were going to do defense tech, right? Investors didn't want to support that. It's great to see it now. I also think in some ways, like being a veteran in the space was kind of a dirty word too, right? Really? Yeah, I do. I think it was like, you know, there was this sort of concept of insiders and outsiders, right? Where it's like, oh, you're, you know, you're coming from that industry or this industry. You're just going to like think like them. And to be clear, like, it's not totally wrong, right? You bring some of that bias in with you when you come to an organization. But I think what's cool now, and I think you're seeing this

with a lot of companies where there are vets leading, right? You know, guys like Dino, it's Ronach, Brandon at Shield, right? They're building companies and they have extreme subject matter expertise in the area that they're in. And then they're able to build a team of insiders and outsiders. right, who have subject matter expertise. But then also like, I mean, I have software engineers. It's like, why would they, like, they wouldn't go work at DOW, right? Like they couldn't. They've got a career they want to build, right?

But they have an ability to actually come in and have an impact. And I think that's like one of the cool things that I've experienced through my career is you see these generally younger engineers who want to work on the hardest problem. And it's like the reality is it's really hard to do work in the defense. space, you know, or in government in general. Yeah. It's the hardest stuff. And so you have this corpus of people that are really jazzed about it and really excited about it and bring sort of an outsider perspective, but then you're able to build the team

together. So you have that sort of yin and yang, you know. How hard is it for a smaller company? I think competition and meritocracies. Yeah. Fantastic. But you have, let's, we'll use, and I'm just going to use this because I think a lot of people would recognize the term.

a Raytheon or a Boeing, fill in the blank. Huge existing, massive ability to innovate because they have funding to be able to do so. How does a small company with an idea get past the PowerPoint phase to be able to actually even do a field exercise against one of those companies of that size? Yeah. I mean, for us in particular, I think we had a bit of an edge because our software was already deployed with commercial airlines. We had a business, right? We weren't, at least when I joined the company, we were not. in like an idea phase. Yeah.

Right. The power food phase, if you will. Totally, right? Yeah. We were able to say like, hey, this, this works. Like we have customers using it. Like, why wouldn't you use it? Obviously, there's some nuances to that as you deploy in other environments and things like that.

But for the most part, I think that's what's made us successful is like at the end of the day, the product works. Right. And it's good product and people use it. It's built for what they need. You know, but I think like the defense tech scene is interesting at the most of the moment. It's frothy. Certainly. There's a lot going on. And I think it's there I haven't noticed. I think it's a good thing. That there's a lot going on or that it's frothy. I think that's okay. Like I think that's going to, I think that lets like, uh, it lets winners evolve, right? Like, at the end of

the day, it's like you have an administration that's very focused on results. Uh, that is very focused on how do we get the best thing? How do we get things that are used in commercial industry, right? And how do we bring that? I mean, it's, it's crazy. Some of these, critical industries are operating on, you know, Windows 95 era software or static dashboards. And it's like you're, when you need to make a decision, you know, off a dashboard, it's like the, the time is passed, right? Now you're reacting and you're sort of, you're sort of negotiating failure at that point versus being able to take more of a forward-looking approach to that. Is it possible for the small startups to compete with the Raytheons and the Bowings?

And again, I'm just using those as examples because people will probably recognize those terms. Yeah, I think it is. I think there's a lot of companies out there that are doing great work. I mean, you just, there was a micro nuclear company that just raised a big ground, had a big deal with Department of Energy. I mean, there's companies, again, I bring up Shield. I think they're fantastic.

Like, there's companies out there doing great. Shield is a UAV, correct? Correct. Yeah. Man, did you ever think, I ask everybody this who served during our era. When we used the term drones, I meant Predator. A hundred percent. Reaper.

Did you ever think? of a command-wired DGI drone coming for your face. Dude, there was like a video that came out. And it was like one of those like Black Mirror-esque sort of like future things. It had to be 15 years ago where a guy was like given a demonstration and there was a drone that came and like. Autonomously like delivered a payload. And I remember being like, oh. No, that would have changed things significantly.

Right. Because like I mean, you know, like a lot of guys, depending on where you were, a lot of bases. it's like once you're in the wire, you're like, okay, we'll occasionally get rockets and mortars. And they're not well aimed. Thankfully, because they're just propping them up on sticks or rocks. Or like holding them. Yeah. I mean, shooters choice.

Yeah, right? Pun intended, I suppose. So, yeah, no, it's wild, man. It's crazy to me to think through that. I mean. I've watched some of the more modern era recruiting videos. Yeah. And you know we've crossed the Rubicon when instead of they're flipping down night vision goggles.

it's an FPV goggle. Yeah. Like, wow. Yeah. The Earth has, like, entire, you know, an entire core of FPV, you know, guys, 3D printing stuff. And like, I was watching a video the other day, there were, I believe the command wire, the fiber optic.

Yeah. They had a bunch of huge cylindrical looking tubes. And of course, it just looks like fishing wire for people who haven't seen this. And it had to have been light because we are talking about basically almost a COTS or a commercial off the shelf item. 10.5 kilometers was what? I mean, I just, six miles of cable and a guy's just sitting in front of a laptop

just looking for people. I just remember like, I mean, before I was an SF guy, I was a cavalry officer and I was in Bradley's. And I remember the tow missiles. You'd shoot a toe and you'd have that big wire. Yeah. Right? And I, what's the range on a toe?

Oh, shit, man. Now you're going to make me look bad. Michael? What's the range on a tow missile, TOW? It's certainly not. It's going to be measured in a few kilometers. Yeah. I don't see.

These wires reach up to 3,700 meters. So, okay, yeah, there you got, 3.7 kilometers. But I remember, like, you shoot one toe out of gunnery or something, and guys are like, be careful, man, you're going to throw a track, like one wire, you know? And now it's like you see these pictures from Ukraine and it's like Spider-Man came through, you know? God. Yeah, it's wild. I mean, things are evolving significantly over there.

What baffles me and I think about this often is they're on the leading edge of what I'll call technology warfare and also fighting in trenches. I know, right? I mean, what's it going to be today? 2030 tech or 1942 tech? I know. I know. I mean, I've seen videos of them literally advancing in trenches,

hucking grenades around. I'm like, holy shit. All you're missing is a ladder and a whistle. Like, hey, here, we're going up over the wall. It's very different than driving an MRAP and trying not to get a EFP blown through your home. Oh, man. Which one of those is psychologically more damaging? though. I think the EFP, sitting in a vehicle having no control, and you're just in the back waiting to just suck it up.

Yeah. That was a, yeah, those were, that was a mind fuck for sure. Yeah, I've talked to quite a few psychologists and psychiatrists about it. And I can't speak for all of them, but there seems to be a level of agreeance that that, they call it the locus of control, the person in the back who has no control whatsoever. And it is all about. unknown. It is harder in the geometry of the brain and how that works to deal with that than when you went from that world into the special forces world and then you are more often than not initiating violence on your terms or at least you're looking for it, very different and the ability to long-term process those things. Because the locus of control shifts away from not having any to you largely most of the time are in control of that violence. I mean, look, I think there's a corollary to that for people getting out of the military too. your locus of control shifts significantly.

Yeah. I mean, my son, you know, my son had some health stuff early on. I remember sitting in the, in the ICU at the children's hospital. And I'm like, I can't control it. I was like freaking out. I was like, dude, I would rather be deployed right now than deal with this shit, you know. And I think that, I mean, that's something I had to learn when I was getting out is like, hey, like, you can't control everything, right?

You got to build a team that's able to, uh, to work to their strengths, right? I don't know. How long are we in for? I was in for nine years. Through the Army Service Academy, right? Yep, I went to West Point. How'd you select that one out of the other Man's Academy?

You know, ironically, I wanted, oh, God, I'm going to catch a lot of shit for this. I want to go to the Naval Academy and be a Marine. Okay. Which is hilarious in hindsight because I'm about the least Marine person in the world. I feel like they could have forged you into what they're looking for. I'm sure they could have. I believe that the Marine Corps is actually quite known for that. It was, we were at an event in Denver, and it was a really cool event where they bring all the guys and gals that are enlisting, and they do basically like 100 of them or so, and they do like graduation ceremony and call their names.

They walk across stage by like service. It's super cool. And the community, like, applause them and everything. And all the recruiters are there. And I was giving a speech. And during it, I stood up and I told my son and Dar, just take a look. I'm like, hey, this is what service looks like. And then I was like, William, my son, I'm like, sit down.

The Marines are over there. I don't want you standing too long, you know. But no, look, my grandpa was in World War II in Korea. He was in the Navy. And, you know, I told him I wanted to do that. And he's like, you're not going to be a Marine. He's in South Pacific. He was a combat cameraman to ask the Marines and was like, no.

Primary weapon system was a camera? No. Jeez. So, yeah, I, you know, my senior year of high school was 9-11. So I knew I wanted to go in the military. I had this like, I had an amazing childhood. Like I came from a family. My mom has seven brothers.

She's the only girl. And then she has three sons. Like, you don't fuck with my mom, right? But my uncles were these men that were like larger than life to me. A lot of them were cops and firemen. Right? So I grew up around this. Guys Irish?

You think? A little Catholic vibe there. I was going to guess very deeply. Irish with a shade of Catholic. Yeah. No, I mean, super Catholic family. Right? And, you know, my uncles were,

half of them were Eagle Scouts. None of them were in the military, but they were just like, in another era, they would have been frontiersmen, right? My uncle Dan still wears a bare tooth around his neck that he, like, killed in Alaska. Okay.

And I'm just like, dude, you're a different breed, man. So that's what I grew up around, right? And a really formative event that happened to me when I was, fifth grade three of my uncles were at um my family was all from cleveland uh they were at this place called the flats which is like the bar area down by the river and uh a boat exploded and they were at brunch it was mother's day they're at brunch with my grandma my grandpa and my three uncles jumped

into this like fiery boat rescued a baby off this boat um and i mean these guys were like heroes right uh like truly like got the baby out dove into the burning river holding the, I mean, just crazy shit, right? And then of course, and then I watched them, I was funny. My brothers and I were looking at it a couple weeks ago. I watched them being interviewed and just like total, like quiet professional. Let me guess. If you were to ask them why they did that, they would look at you and say, that's what you do? Totally. Like, what do you mean? Why did I do that? No, 100%. I am obligated to do so because I can. Yeah. But it's like, that's what I grew up around. Yeah. Right? Like men in the true

sent my dad right was uh you know working his ass off right like one of you my my family my grandpa was an asbestos worker like it's not like they came for much right my my mom ended up going to uh you know she got her master's degree at a time when people were like women don't go to college right so again i this is i grew up around these like larger than life people i knew i wanted to do something service related um and so as i and then of course 9-11 happened so it was like well shit shit. And at the time I was I was you can't tell this from my marbled figure but I was actually a college cross country runner. Yeah. And I was getting recruited by a couple schools and I went and visited one of the schools and the coach was a former colonel in the army. He's like,

what other schools are you looking at? And I said, well, West Point is like my other choice. But I would do ROTC if I came here or whatever. And he just looks at me. He's like, why the fuck you here? Like just go to West Point, man. Like, I was like, salty old colonel. Worst recruiting like effort ever. Or best. No, but it was great. Let's just cut all the bullshit.

I mean, the reality was if I would have went to a real college, it's like I would just. Yeah. I was high school. I was so focused on sports. Yeah. Are you trying to say West Point isn't defined by its dorm parties? You know, there's not a big Greek life.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. It's an interesting place. It's more like five beta, shut the fuck up and get up at zero five. Look, man, I am, I am eternally grateful to be from West Point. I hated being at West Point when I was there. I think that's the point of it.

100%. I don't know a lot of people who say, again, so for people who don't know, Marine Corps and Naval officers, they go to the Naval Academy. Air Force has an Academy, I think in Colorado Springs, who we leave it out. Yeah, I think that's everybody. Are you my name of Air Force, I don't know anybody who just says, oh, man, it was so pleasurable. Cotton sheets, Egyptian cotton sheets, you know what I mean?

and really slept in on the weekends. You're a sociopath, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, had so much free time for activities. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, it's like vivid memory as a plea of like, you know, you'd make your bed. Perfectly.

Just bouncing quarters and nickels off that thing. Literally in our, in our drawers, you would keep clothes that were consistently folded. Like, you'd keep socks, underwear, t-shirts that you never touched. Yeah. They're just in there. For inspection. Right? And you're like, don't touch that shit, right?

And I just I remember like one night we didn't have air conditioning and it's in West Point like New York in the summer is hot like in muggy yeah right and I remember one night like a couple of the upperclassmen are just like banging on our door, you know and you're like oh fuck they come in there like get under your sheets right now get under your sheets like break your sheets you're going to make your bed in the morning get on and you got like your sheets and they're like wool blankets too because we got these like big ass gray wool blankets at the box so it's like 90s. degrees out and I'm just like under a wool blanket and I'm like that fucking colonel who told me like what people aren't understand what you're describing and I totally get it because even in enlisted naval I'm sure it's the same and like yeah yeah you were sleeping on top of it because it's less work correct to re-correct it again in the morning as opposed to having to fully make your bed yeah 100% yeah 100% I still don't make my bed my try what is the lesson to be learned from that again. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not either. Not making your bed later in life. I feel like don't tell building some things in the military have great applicability and there's really good

lessons there. And others are generational trauma that is just continuously passed down. Yeah. That happened to the person who is an upperclassman. So therefore it must happen to you as well. Yeah. I don't know. The best like the best leaders that I've seen across my time in the military did not have that attitude. Agreed. Right. Um, they were guys. and gals who truly cared about their people, right? And I like, I always, I always bristle at the sort of like, well, that's how it's always been done, man. Yeah.

You know, I mean, yeah, okay, well, they used to not let women go here. Now they do. Like, you know, I think that's the formula for irrelevance. But you see, I mean, I had female classmates. You would see old grads come and, you know, talk shit to the female classmates there. And you're just like, come on, dude. Really? Like, have we, are we really?

there. I think that's changed quite a bit now. I would hope so. Yeah. Again, as long as it's a meritocracy and standards or standards, who gives a shit? 100%. And I'll tell you, it's interesting. I mean, I remember going through Sears School and I was the senior guy in Sears School, which was a blast. Let me tell you. For those of you listening out there, he was joking when he said that. Yeah, those is definitely some sarcasm layered on top of the time. of that. But, you know, so I'm like this, the senior officer, so you've got a certain set of, you know, things that you're supposed to do. And, yeah, when you're, when you're getting, you know, abuse, we'll say, you're supposed to stick up for each other, right? It's a big part of it. Hey, don't do that. Don't do that to him, right? And I remember I have this very vivid memory of this very young E4 female from the 82nd because it was a bunch of, SF guys going through at the time we were in the Q course and all that. And then the 80 second would get a couple slots, right?

And they'd send people. It was this young, probably 90 pound, you four female. She's like the only one who would be like, hey, stop hitting him. And I'm looking around. And I'm like, hey, assholes. You guys are all like big ass tough green berets. Like somebody else. So I'm, you know, I think your point is sound.

It's like, look, meritocracy is critical. And I think you see that in industry now too, right? So, yeah. Oh, West Point. Was it a happy day when you left? You know, it's, I had mixed emotions. I'm sure like a lot of us. I think I have more mixed emotions looking back on it now.

Towards the tail end, like your senior year, is it much more focused on. Oh, when I left West Point or when I left the military. West Point. Oh, I was thrilled. But at the end, I mean, I know I never went to the academy, but I've heard some interesting things about Pleeb year to include the way you have to eat and squaring off and all that stuff.

And I get that because that's civilian world to military world transition. By the end of it on your senior year, is it more like a balance of college courses? It's a little more normal, but you have more responsibility, right? Like you're, they put you in roles where you're like a company commander or something like that. So while some things are dialed back, like you can take pass on the weekends every weekend,

right? Yeah. Please, good luck. Yeah. But you have more responsibility. And I think you also, you know, the first two years at West Point, you can leave. As in, I'm done here. You can be like, hey, I don't want to do the same more.

And you can go elsewhere. But like, once you start that third year, you're in. It's either like you're going in as a lieutenant or a specialist one way or the other, right? Really? Oh, yeah. Do you sign an enlistment contract at that point? No, but like that's the known thing. You're like, you work now committed.

Okay. right um so it's like if you get if you get bounced out in your last two years hello specialist hello 80 second right like so i think i in you know i man i had a high school physics teacher who uh i mean i was kind of a goofball in high school and he told me he's like you're never going to make it at west point and i was like i think that's the thing that kept me not quitting um yeah that and I had a really positive experience like this summer before. Because I was really thinking about leaving. I got in a lot of trouble early on.

I was just discipline or academic? Discipline but academic too. Like I wasn't a great student, but I also was like, you know, more interested in going out and drinking and having a good time, trying to like, I mean,

you talk about it in your book, right? Like you're like, I'm going to live my own college experience, right? Yeah. And it's pretty dumb, right? But I had this experience I got when I, was going the summer before my junior year, one of my buddies said to me, because I was, he was a year older than me, I was talking about. I was like, I don't know, man, maybe I'll just

go to normal college. Like, this kind of sucks. He's like, yeah, it does. But you need to go experience the actual army. Like, try that. And I was like, okay, what do you suggest? He's like, well, because when you're doing your summer training stuff at the time, it's probably different now, but you could go to, like, Airborne School or Air Force school, or you could try out to go to, Special Forces selection or Sapper School, Combat Engineer School. While in the, in your summers. I think the Navy calls that their midship and cruise. Yeah.

Something along those days. That sounds way cooler. Like ice cream and I don't know. It depends on what you're doing for your cruise. Yeah. I don't think they mean that type of princess cruise, but Disney cruise life. More of a river cruise. Oh, man.

I think it's, I think it's exactly what you're saying. No, but it's totally, they're going out to the fleet. Same same thing, right? But ironically, I was like, I don't want to go to special force selection. that sounds that sounds lame i don't know that seems really hard i don't want to be a green beret right like they wear a painter's hat how manly can you be with a painter's hat jokes on me um but uh i went to sapper school and i i worked with this e5 he was my battle buddy and this dude was like the the the like stallion of stallion ncio's and there was no like you know when you're a cadet

you know people in the army it was so funny when we trained the summer you'd have some of the cadre be like, oh, the kid idiots are here, you know? I mean, they look at you like less than a second lieutenant, right? Which you are, totally, right? You know nothing. And this dude could have been a total dick to me. And he literally put an armor on me and was like, battle buddies, like, let's do this. And I learned so much from, ironically, he was, he became a warrant officer and was a pilot on a full mission profile.

I did like 10 years later. That's awesome. Yeah, it was like wild. We bumped into each other. I'm like, man, he's what's up, dude? Like, holy shit. But I've had like,

when I had that experience, I was like, this is what I came here for. Like the army is actually, this is like what I wanted to do, right? Like, go out, be in the woods, like do all these things,

work with great soldiers. And I, you know, I wasn't disappointed, man. My career was like one good NCO after another. I can't, you know,

you hear horror. stories of people talking about shitty leaders, you know. Yeah, which they're true, but they don't, they don't speak for the entire community. I had exceptional leaders. Yeah. That I worked with. I mean, I had a battalion commander who never yelled once, right? This dude was like, he was like, it was the first experience I had outside of family where it was like, you didn't want to let somebody down, right? And I think the best leaders instill that sort of mindset where it's like, they give you a lot of trust, right? And so I had, I mean, even up into my SF days, like my team sergeants, my groups are major, just guys who cared deeply.

And so I wasn't disappointed. When I joined the army, it was pretty cool. And I enjoyed it. Dob temple was a little tough. And ultimately, that's why I got out, right? My wife was pregnant. When in the process did you meet your wife? Right before selection. So you had already done your time. What was it? What's it called? The cavalry? Yeah. Yeah, I was. Do you have spurs? I do. Fucking many a Stetson.

Actually, I only have one Stetson, but I do have a lot of cowboy hats. Do they issue that to you? Well, you do a spur ride, right? Like they, oh, dude, you don't know about a spur ride? I don't know if you know this, but my. Come on. Service time came in the Navy where if you're wearing spurs, you're probably wearing leather assless chaps in an environment that I don't want to talk about.

Hey, no judgment, man. No judgment. No, if you deployed, you got gold spurs. If you got, uh... When do you wear them, though? You work about, like, battalion ball. I mean, you wear your stetson. Actually, hilariously, when I came back, so I was at Fort Carson as a Cav guy.

And then when I came back to 10th group, I was at Fort Carson again. Okay. And my old boss was doing a change of command at the Cavs Squadron. And so I was like, hell yeah, I'm going to go to this and wear my Stetson, even though I have this cool green beret now. You can wear one over the other. Yeah, why not? Whatever. So I took off the cavs, because you have like savers in your rink.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Put crossed arrows on. I put the SF. I was like, yeah, cool. Right. I show up to the change command. Not a single person's wearing a studson.

I still appreciate the idea, though. I'm like, I don't give a shit. This is awesome, right? Now I have a lot of cowboy hats. So that was my first dabble on that. Spurs. What a holdover. I just, when people walk and you hear those, the ching, ching.

Yeah. It's like, I mean, that's a real cultural thing. It was cool. Being in the CAV community was fun. What was it like deploying on that medium? Well, Bradley's right? Yeah. I mean, we basically, when we were in Iraq, it was right after sort of awakening, right?

Was it the Sunni awakening or she awakened? I forget which one it was. I think it was the Sunni. Yeah. Yeah. But so it was, you know, they had the sons of Iraq came out and, you know, it was, it was this weird moment where actually things were relatively peaceful, but a lot was brewing underneath. Like there weren't, we can get a ton of fire fights, stuff like that. You know, rocket

attacks, mortars, a ton of EFPs. Yeah. Right. But we, during that time, we basically just went to MRAPs or Humvees, right? MRAPs for folks I don't know. Yeah. The old, not old, I mean, there was a truck that basically could withstand like ID blasts. Yeah. Actually, a great example of like the department

quickly fielding a thing to like save so. V-hole versus flat hole. Right. which, and again, then you come into this game of chess where that works if the explosive is directly underneath you. Totally. And then they'd start burying them into the ground at a perpendicular angle to the V, and so we're just moving to flatten it again.

Yeah, never ending game of chess. But we deployed with all that stuff, and then we didn't use it. We basically put them up as static. Probably gun positions. Gun positions on bases and stuff like that. So most of it was Humvees, MRABs, stuff like that. So were you a vehicle commander?

Yeah. Yeah. Did you have like aviator goggles and a scarf when you were up there with like a cigar as you're cruising through like Iraq? Just go with me on this one. This is what I imagine. Yes. Yes, I did. This is what I wanted to be like.

Yeah. No. I definitely. Yeah. I mean, that was my, you definitely wanted your helmet and all your kit on. Michael, pull up a picture of a World War II tank commander.

This is what I imagine. It was like Brad Pitt with the, probably leather. Frap hat. I do get baggles. I quite a bit. So I'm, you know,

he's an handsome man. Yeah. I've been told by myself. Yeah. Yes. I mean, come on. Well,

I will say, I had already forgotten about the binos. We had those green suits. Six shooter, of course, cross draw. On it, we had green jumpsuits like when we were in our officer basic training.

Look at that. He doesn't have a six shooter. They were like, they were like aviator suits. They're pretty great. Michael's just pulling up action figures. Yeah. Oh my God, there I am.

Yeah. The Greenberry photos, I think. Speaking of Brad Pitt, there he is on the far left. There you go. Yep. Hey. Maybe. Yeah.

We'll go with that. Noticable jaw line. Totally. Yeah. Just like me. That's why I grow up. Yeah. You have to hide.

You don't want to get stopped. The paparazzi is out there and it's real. Yeah. Okay. So you go from that to special forces. How was that journey for you? I mean, I had a really good experience, in Iraq that was sort of formative to that. We were in a town, a lot of bad guys. And we had a

split ODA basically in the same town. And I, one night these dudes roll in like a orange quarter panel, Dodson, Dostasha is all, you know, armed of the teeth. And they're like, hey, can you stand up with QRF? I'm like, who are you? What? Maybe. Are you American? Like, I don't know. but it was the split ODA. They're like, hey, we're going into the, into the old city to meet with the Imam at the mosque. I was like, we're not allowed in the old city. He's like, you guys aren't allowed in the old city.

I was like, no, like, I don't, no, like, I wasn't like trying to be like, you know, I was just like, explain this to me because like everything I've heard is like, we can't go in there. Like a lot of bad guys will kick up a hornets nest. He's like, look, the Imam, we built a relationship with him. He trusts us. We work with him closely.

And I was like, and no. would he mess with these guys? And to me, it was like this light ball went off of like, this is, there is a better way. Undimensional warfare, man. 100% man. And so at that point, I was like, I'm doing this. And it was funny because I, one of my best buddies who was a, he's an Air Force Academy grad who came over into the army. We were both in fourth infantry division together. And we were both in the same base. And we both were like, we're going. So we got back from Iraq and went to selection. Is it a harder path being an O?

What were you at that time in O2, 03? I think I was, when I went to selection, I think I was a promotable first lieutenant, so like O2. So it starts, you guys go backwards. Second lieutenant is first, then first lieutenant. But I mean, to be a team leader, you have to be a captain.

That's like a unique difference, I think, between seals and GBs, right? Is you can't go be a green beret right out of the academy. Right? You got to go. And I love that, right? Like, it was great to be able to have a little bit of experience before because now you're working with guys where it's like, yeah, these dudes know their shit. Well, as an, you can go to Buds as an ensign.

Yeah. If you get to a team, you're, I mean, on paper, right? On the leadership rank, on the task organization, sure, you're in a leadership role over the enlisted personnel. Right. You're like a third officer billet. Yeah. And the directions for a third officer, you know, me, my opinion on this, not saying this as Navy doctrine is. shut the fuck up.

Listen. Use your eyes and ears in the ratio that you have to your mouth and learn as much as you possibly can. You'll probably do two to three years there at that and then maybe be the two IC for your next rotation. So it's probably similarly right in the army. You're doing that as a platoon leader. Yeah.

Right. I mean, as the third, you're probably carrying an automatic weapon. You know what I mean? And just learning the mechanics of how the sauce is just made. And you have to. Yeah.

Because especially I think when you get to a special forces team, again, I mean, the amount of training that these guys go through. I mean, my, my team sergeants had 10, 12, 13 deployments. These guys knew their shit and knew how to manage and run the team, right? And I still remember sitting down with my first team Sergeant Gary. And he's like, dude, I'm down and in, you're up and out. Like, just make sure we got our lanes clear. I'm like, I got it, dude. And it was, it was a really formative time for me. Selection was a mind fuck. How many officers in the class versus enlisted. Oh, man.

That's a great question. I'm assuming there's less officers. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just because of the makeup of an ODAO. But I don't know. For BUDs, I would say... Well, you don't know that's selection. Like, did you guys wear ranks at Buds?

Yes, on the helmets. Well, let me see. So again, I can always speak to my time there. If you had your helmet on, and this is more of a tool for the instructor. It's the color of the helmet is the phase you're in. The class numbers on the back. or on the side, name is on the back

and the rank would be there. But it's just, if you're an officer, it's just a single bar. Whether you're 01 through 03, I don't think that 04 is allowed to go to Buds. And I think, yeah, they have, we went away from the collar devices and went to the center of the chest.

I'm pretty sure it's on. Yeah. No interest ranks that. At selection, we just had engineer tape on our uniforms. Okay. With a number. Okay.

Okay. So even more blind. Interesting. So, I mean, you could kind of tell sometimes. The cadre knew, I'm sure. Sure. Oh, the cadre definitely knew. I'm sure. But that was the point. It was like, hey, like, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Like, this is selection, meritocracy. Like, put up or shut up. Everybody's, everybody's given way together on this. And it was, I was always fascinating to me. I mean, I had a kid in my selection class that went to Juilliard. Right? And then went into the X-ray program. Like, we have this ability to attract. That's a classic pathway, really. Yeah, totally. Yeah. But, I mean, I think the seals do this. too. It's like you, you attract these people who want to do the hard thing, right? And they're not, you know, yeah, you're going to get some folks. I think that's another misconception is like,

okay, these are all just crazy, like, warmongery dudes. The exact opposite. The total, I mean, I, I know more green berets that are deeply philosophically minded, like brilliant, high IQ. You know what I'm saying? You're like, high IQ, high EQ. A hundred percent. You have to be if you're doing UW. Yeah. And I think we have a good process. I think selection works, right?

Because you saw that then flow through on the teams too. Yeah, it's the opposite of what. There are, don't get me wrong, some sociopathic tendencies for some of the people. Sure. There probably are some legit psychopaths that just want to go into that world, the military in general, just because they have a desire to kill people. Okay. That's probably real.

But also special operations in all of the branches has the highest proponent. of college graduates in the enlisted ranks than the rest of the military. And I think there's a reason for that. Like I had some of the deepest philosophical, religious, world life, everything, our place in the universe, what in the actual fuck are we doing here type conversations with E5s? Totally. Yeah. No, 100%.

And I've also seen, I've seen some of those folks go on to be amazing leaders outside in the military to build real, you know, one of my favorites. examples of buddy went to he was enlisted green beret went to Harvard law school went was a lawyer quit was like being a lawyer sucks it's a very common narrative by the way and then came to palatier and i worked to them at palatier right and you know and now he's a CEO of a company he's run his own company and it's it's they're just a special breed man and i think it's the same in the seals i'm sure it's the same in marsock they vary by degree yeah not kind of person but i was blown away by it because it's like there are truly because the reality is the military is a cross section of society right there's

some great folks there's some not so great folks um but like I just I've I always felt like a bit like like how the hell am I here you know uh as I'm like stand around some of these guys I'm like these dudes are the real deal and now I'm part of this like it felt almost like an imposter at times but and then what do you get if you make it through that you've become an 11 alpha Is that the 18 alpha? That's right. 11 where that came from. Infantry.

Okay. Yeah. How long did you spend in special forces? So I graduated the Q course in 2012, I think. And then I got out in 2015. So I did my team time. Yeah. You know, I was, again, I met my wife during this time.

And my wife had no clue. I mean, she's from Connecticut. She had no clue with the military, any of that. Although she does like to tell me, she got recruited to swim at West Point and turned it down. Had a real college experience. Okay. But, you know, we were married for three years.

I was gone for two. She was pregnant and I was like, it's tough. Yeah, I just had them. I had that, I remember my old group sergeant major said, look, man, when you know, you know, like, it's time to go. And that was the other cool thing is like, I didn't, you know, I got a little bit, like my team sergeant was like, I fucking quitter, you know, ingest, but also like, hey man, like you should consider staying.

Like we, you know, you should stay. Like, why not, right? So it was a tough decision, but it was also like I knew I wanted to go on to other things. I knew I wanted to be a dad that was important to me. And I just, I didn't think it was fair to keep that life going and trying to balance that. And I have a ton of respect for the guys and gals that do because it's hard, man. And it oftentimes, I mean, the statistics net this out, it oftentimes doesn't end well for at least the marital relationship. You know, going and watching 9-11 as a senior in high school joining and then getting out five, six years later.

What are your thoughts on that service time looking back now? Was it what you thought it was going to be? Do you think you or felt like you had at least the ability to have the impact as somebody who watched it before joining? I had been in since 96. Yeah. God, I remember watching the, I turned the TV on about probably 10 seconds before the second plane went in live. They were just finishing up this sentence. What a horrendous aviation accident.

I think people were still thinking was a Cessna. I thought it was like, that was totally what everyone thought. Shortly after that, it was relatively clear that it was not a Cessna and things were, just the entire tone of the broadcasting changed after that. But I was already in. And I thought that the world was going to switch on a dime and like, here we go. I'm sure the bat phone from the president's office will call me directly here. at any moment. It moved at the speed of a snail, which the military does. But, I mean, you saw

that before you came in. Yeah. Looking back, do you feel fulfilled and did you accomplish what you wanted to as that young man watching that happen? I mean, that's a complicated question. Yeah. For sure. I think in some ways, yes, in some ways, no, right? You know, I took my son down to the, my kids know they don't know me in the military, right? They were both born after I got out. But it's like a very important,

I mean, my son has a diehard Army football fan, which I love. Talk shit to anybody wearing a Navy shirt. Yeah. How'd that work out this year, though? What was the final score again? Yeah, we don't need you to look at it, Michael. We both understand.

It's fine. This is our year. But no, like, I, look, I think with 20 years of, you know, my 20 years, 20-year reunion this year, which is crazy to me. The time has flown. I think with 20 years of hindsight, there's a lot. I'm very proud of that service. When I took my son in the 9-11 Museum, you know, which you have not been to that. You need to pack a lunch for that one. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't abdicate for having anything heavy later on in the day. It is. It's a lot. But again,

like, it's important for me. My kids need to see this. They need to understand, like, why did you do, like, why did you decide this path, right? And I, you know, I had mixed emotions when we were there because we're going through the, there's a whole section like, why did they hate us, right, with Al-Qaeda? And my son looks at me, he's like, is this why you went to the war? And I went to Iraq. Like, I didn't go to Afghanistan, right? And I'm kind of like, I'm like, eh.

Well, we're going to get to the Dick Cheney section up here in a little bit. Like, we'll talk about that when you're older, right? I do think back to, you know, obviously friends lost. And I'm sad with that for sure. I try to honor their legacy by being a good man, by being a good dad, by being a good husband, by being a good leader. I think about it often, frankly. And that certainly, you know, when you think back, you're like,

I mean, it seems some of the. these deaths seem so trivial in hindsight where you're like what the fuck man um so yeah mixed emotions certainly and i to your point i think as we were talking earlier it's like yeah still you know you're always going to have that in some way you're always going to be kind of working through that but i'm incredibly grateful to have had that opportunity and to have that chapter i i don't i try to live in a way and i think this is what i really respect about you when you in your book was like i try to live a way where it's like not the defining thing right yeah um i'm like really really grateful for the chapter but i want to keep right in great chapters yeah um and that's really important to me and i think that's

actually the best way to honor um to honor guys like that have that have gone before us right so i agree you think a war on terror is even winnable yeah what's a win right i think we definitely screwed up the messaging by titling it that yeah also So it's weird that we haven't declared war since World War II, but we're calling it the global war on terror. I think that's one of the issues that makes people very hesitant in this modern era as well as that we, I don't think anybody understands or knows where we are in the cycle of this. So are we at the beginning? Are we in the midstage? Are we in the end game here?

What's going on? I mean, particularly in the special operations community, it's just this perpetual cycle. Yeah. There is no beginning, middle, or end. It's always going somewhere, right? And yeah, I think, you know, I was in, I was in countries in Africa where we, I felt like we were making an impact. And then, you know, four years later, they coup or something. And you're like, yeah.

But, you know, I sad to see stuff like that because you're like, man, I thought, I thought we were doing some good there. So which you probably were. We were. I know we were, to be clear. That's what I, one of the main points in the modern era veteran community that I know, veterans of Afghanistan struggle with was the optic of the departure. Yeah. Which I totally get that.

And I think it's completely natural. And I think it was an absolute catastrophe and just a failure in leadership. Like if the plan isn't working, let's change the plan. Oh, we said we were going to do it by this date. Well, that's not working. Yep. So let, but we promised. I understand what you're saying.

Yeah. Let's do this appropriately. But if you tie your service to something that has. happened years after you got out or years after you served there, I think that's a mistake. Because even though the country may have couped years later like you're talking about, that doesn't mean that the work that you were doing there at that time. The best, all we can impact is the world that we can literally interact with and see and tangibly interact with.

If you take it farther than that, you are losing some of that agency and control of how you are going to feel about your service because you're letting other people judge it. and you had no control or metric of that. Well, this is, I mean, the interesting thing about being in the military is like it's so defines the totality of you, right? It becomes your entire identity. At least it was for me, right? I was like, I was a Westport or I was a Green Beret. I was like, this is what I am.

Yeah. Fully. Well, that's a hell of the pedigree. Don't forget the Spurs. Those are left out. Spurs are sweet, man. Give me alone. But you know what I'm saying?

And then you realize, I think when you leave, like that it's very good at. being your entire identity. And I think this is where guys and gals struggle is they're like, well, what is my identity now? Yeah. And it's like, dude, it can be a lot of different things. Like my identity now is a dad. Yeah. Is a husband. Is a businessman. Is a citizen. Right. Like I'm great with that. And there's, you know, I think there's also this like mentality of like, I need to get the same feeling of service and commitment that I got in military. And it's like my wife once said to me, she's like, dude, team room's gone, man. Yeah.

Like, you're not going to find it again. I have people ask me all the time. They're getting out and they say, how do I replicate that feeling that we get on target? And the only honest response is you're going to have to put that down. Yeah. Because you cannot. Or your life is going to be measured on an egg timer if you only pursue activities that get you up to that brink of whatever it is that you're searching for.

Well, and I think that's like you hit the thing on the head. It's like, what are you searching for? Yeah. Right. And this is the hardest question. There's a couple of great groups out there that I've worked with that I think do a good job of like helping talk through some of this stuff with people. It's like, what are you going to take forward and what are you going to leave behind?

This group to commit foundation does an awesome exercise right where they talk through some of this. And it's like, yeah, there are great things to bring forward. There are some things you should definitely leave behind, right? And I think it's harder for guys that or gals that are kind of forced out, too, like whether that's medically retired or, you know. Well, again, that goes back to the locus of control. 100%.

It's just applying it to a different aspect. But you're like, if that's the thing you've all, I had a guy tell me, all I want to ever be was a helicopter pilot. And now I'm hurt and I can't do it anymore. And I was like, we better talk to somebody about that. Yeah. Or are you not able to do it in the military? You know, if that's truly your thing, I bet you could, if you just love eviation, I bet you can pass a medical or do whatever you need to do to go teach people to fly helicopter.

And you might be doing it civilian-wide. You can wear your military helmet if you want to. You could go straight on full metal jacket helmet if you want to, right? But again, it's like what's important to you, right? I mean, and I think that's changed for me over the years. You know, right now, like I do a lot with my kids. I do a lot with their education. My kids are in a Catholic school.

the Catholic school system is really important to me. And like I feel a similar sense of commitment to those things that I felt when I was in the military. I think what you're describing is something that is even more difficult, but it's tied to identity and that's purpose. Because you lose both. Yeah, that's fair. The identity one I think is harder, or I'm sorry, the identity one I think is easier because you will get another job. Sure. And maybe your identity will become attached to it, maybe not.

the purpose one is tough. And I think that's what a lot of people are saying when they ask, how do I find this feeling again? Because I don't personally, I don't associate that with an identity or what you see in the mirror. That how do I find this feeling again is what is my purpose again? Because that's what you were driving towards, run into the sound of the guns.

Totally. Good luck finding that out of the military. But you can find your purpose in a variety of other things. But you have to at some point acknowledge that this particular avenue, although it was amazing and take all those lessons learned and go forward with it, you're going to have to close the door on that one, which doesn't mean you close all the doors. You're just looking down a different hallway at this point.

Well, and it doesn't mean you're closing the door with shame or regret or any, you know. Maybe you'll open it up from time to time. Yeah. Take a peek. I mean, it's fun to do that at times, right? I think especially as I've gotten further away and my kids have gotten a little bit older, you know, talking to them about my time of the military has been fun. Yeah.

You know, taking them down to, I took my son down to my buddy. he's changing command on a 10th group, right? It was like seeing that was cool. Yeah. Right? He's looking at me like, you did this? I'm like, yeah, man. He used to be cool.

Anything like my kids, they'd look back. War my spurs. Yeah. Anything like my kids, they'd look back at you and be like, huh, never would have guessed. You could have done that. Like, what happened to you, dad? Bitch. Yeah.

Oh, how was it for you when you transitioned out? Did you go right into the defense sector? I did. I went right to Palantir. Right to the teat. It was just call it what it is. Well, it was funny, man. Because I, you know, my father-in-law, actually, I had no idea what I wanted to do.

I knew I didn't want to be in the Army anymore. And I see this often, right? Guys are like, look, I'm kind of done with this. I have no clue. Like, I don't know what's out there. I don't know what. Spoiler rate to everybody. I'll turn 49 this year.

Still figuring out. I don't know what I want to do either. Look, and like, that's life, right? I've come to enjoy it. Because if you can relax just a little bit and realize you have the tools to solve problems that come your way, when you find opportunities and things you never would have considered, you can look at them and go, hmm, that seems interesting. I think I'll try that.

Yes. Yeah. And, you know, if you find yourself in a cul-de-sac, maybe do a U-turn instead of blasting through the little park that's in the middle. But at least you, I don't think everything I do now when I was getting out of the military, I would have not told you. I would have bet against everything that I do now. And that's what I spend my time doing.

I think I couldn't even consider. I think I would have said the same thing. Yeah. You have to be open to it, though. You also, there's like no right answer. That's the other thing. Everybody has their own sort of like math equation on what they're balancing and what they're optimizing for, right?

And I, you know, you talk to guys and gals and it's like, I want to live here and I want to do this. It's like, okay, you've got like a lot of conditions. Everybody's equations different, right? So for me getting out, like I was like, you know, you're like, it's like typical, like follow the other guy's playbook, right? I'm like, I'm going to go to grad school, get an MBA. And then I'm going to be a venture capital.

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I went and did a transition thing. We went to a, they held it at a big bank in New York City. I spent like a day at this bank, very well known. And I was like, I don't want to do this. This is not the thing.

right, which is great. Like knowing what you don't want to do is also equally as important. You know, I had like networked my way up to a CEO of a major health care company, right? And they made IV bags that were like world's biggest IV. And I was like, hey, you're, anyone never told you how to blow up a door with IV bags? Like, he was like, what? Yeah. And I had this, you know, it was like, hey, like you can interview with all my verticals and like, pick where you want to go.

And then my father-in-law was like, hey, have you heard a Palantir? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I know Palantir because I was a 10th group. We were one of the sort of early adopters. And I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to do defense stuff. He's like, no, it's more than that, right? So, you know, I had sort of these two great. And I remember having this conversation with my uncle, who's my godfather and just like stressing so much about like, dude, what am I going to do?

And he's like, you have great options, man. Like take a breath. Like your problem is you're going to have to pick between good options. And I think like that's a lesson for a lot of people is like you get so like, what am I going to do? Like I, where does this go? Right. It's like you figure it out.

And making decisions in that headspace where you are driving yourself into an existential crisis. Yeah. Palantir there. I worked, you know, I started off as a project manager. I was working in some our international business. I worked across, I had some stuff with my son where I had to, I couldn't travel as much. So then I built out like a lot of our learning and develop team, our onboarding, all those sort of processes. That's how I kind of got into more of the operational stuff. And then I was the chief staff. I was actually thinking about leaving and Doug Philpone, who ran the defense business of Palantor. He's like, why should come work

me for a little bit. We had done some stuff. We'd made a commercial for the Army Navy game together. And he's like, so my last couple years, I worked with him on the defense side. So like my first few years, I was not doing defense stuff. But it was, it was fun to come back to that. And I've stayed in and around that world since. What does the chief of staff do? Oh, man, that's like a million things to a million people. It really depends. There's a really good, because I get this a lot from guys and gals getting out of the middle. military where they're like, sorry, I keep it in this damn thing. I don't care.

Tastes really good. It's never been washed. Oh, good. Do you know how you wash a microphone cover? I don't. With a garbage can. Fair enough. Spike it.

Why did that take me a second? I was like, how do you wash that in a garbage can? Oh, you turned away. Or a flamethrower. I don't have one of those, though. You don't? No. I need to get one of the...

It would go well on the wall. Elon Musk one that says clearly not a flamethrower on the side of it, which is not, I think it's just a propane torch. but pretty dope. Yeah. So you can link it if you want to. I'm not going to tell you how to live. I'm going to.

All right. You manage the distance that you think is appropriate to the microphone. Fist away. Yeah. I didn't say any closer than a fist. I said keep it about a fist.

Yeah, my bad. That's all right. So Chief of Staff. Oh, yeah. I think it really depends. I get a lot of folks from the military say like, I want to be a chief staff. I wonder how they come to that conclusion.

I think it's like, you know, generally it can be like an operational catch-all, right? And I think the reality is when you're leaving the military, you don't really know what you want to do, you try to pattern match, right? And you're like, okay, well, I could do that. I could do that. I guess I could do that, right? We've all gone through a version of that. So I think a lot of guys and gals will see, like, oh, this chief of staff role can mean a lot of different things. So I think it's really important for folks when they're going out and they're looking at that. It's like figure out what that means, because that could mean like a high power EA or that could mean like a partner to the principal right um and what you just said

there's two very different things very different pay very different yeah um very different everything sphere of control right so um yeah it was it was fun i mean i worked really closely with doug he was a great guy a mentor to me still um and and just learned a lot in that space so what is palenteer describe themselves as if you were to ask the head of palatteer what is palantir what did they do? How would they answer that? I mean, I think I think Dr. Carp's been pretty vocal about that. I don't want to speak for them because I haven't been there in a while, but I think they, they build software, right? And I can tell you what there's, I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions about like data management. That's one of the main reasons people probably recognize that name recently is,

and I haven't read one of these articles in a while and full disclosure, I didn't read it very deeply when I did, but essentially they're somehow interfacing with the government to build a database, which of course people, and I think rightly so, have a concern about their privacy because, I mean, our privacy is in fact being eroded at a rapid rate. Most of that is through voluntary usage of things that we choose to use

are not forced to, but they are convenient in life. So I think that's fair, but I think that's probably where most people would recognize the name recently from Palantir. Yeah, the irony of that, is like we always talked about sort of the false tradeoff between security and privacy. Right. Like I think a lot of people think like to have security, you must give up privacy.

And that was sort of, you know, when I, that was what really attracted me to the company. It was like, hey, the sort of thesis for the company and their leadership has said this for a long, long time is like, that's not a tradeoff. You can still have privacy and security and not, you know, have to trade between the two. I think that depends on who's wielding the tool. I think it's possible to create a framework where they, and again, just for clarity, I'm not a tech guy. So everything I'm about to say, and anybody listening to this knows this, it's my understanding of how these systems work or these databases is skin deep. And by that, I mean see through skin deep, not like whale skin deep.

But the amount of information that I know is being gathered. that you can find just on open source. If there are guardrails and infrastructure put in place, I would agree with you that those two things could exist at the same time. I think it depends, though, with who is wielding that tool and how malleable those guardrails are. I think, like, you look at, I mean, the government has, like, access controlling and data classifications and stuff like.

It's not like it's just a wide open, right? Like, so I think you, there are processes in place on the government side that guard that. Sometimes. And then you look at the FBI who just goes out and purchases third-party software or the FBI who did, what was it, 270,000 illegal queries over, what's the intelligence? Well, the flock cameras are a different thing. I'm trying to remember it was the intelligence. God damn it, Michael, which is the one they just voted on. It was getting ready to expire.

And it had to do with gathering information on Americans. It was supposed to be externally facing Americans that were overseas, but in the end, they end up hoovering up FISA, yeah. Yeah. 270,000 illegal queries from the FBI in a single year. I mean, that's a problem. So, yeah, hundreds of thousands of warrantless queries on American using foreign intelligence databases. So those things are in place, but there are also ways that you can go around them.

And I think that's, it's fair to be concerned about that. And again, I'm not an expert in this, but as somebody who values both privacy and security. I worry about that. I think that's fair. Yeah. I don't have a solution to it either, by the way. I think it's also like I think the reality is like you have to build technology that that equips users in the government, right? Like the reality is like we need our government to be performant, right?

To be able to do the right things to be able to make good decisions. And I think you can do a lot of that with good technology. You still need those people to make decisions. But how do you actually automate more of that so that they can make decisions faster? Because the reality is, I mean, we talked about threats earlier. Like, our adversaries are doing this. Like, this is happening in very real time. I think you see this, you know, particularly now.

So I think that you've got to, I think it's, It's important to be engaged in the space, but I also think it's important to not be blind and to have serious questions. I mean, when we were at when I was at Palantir, we had a whole privacy and civil liberties team. It wasn't just like a, I mean, these guys would have conversations all the time. They would invite hard questions, right, in discourse around this sort of stuff. And I think that's really important. Why two cents? Well, it's like any tool.

I mean, you can use a hammer to build an amazing structure or you could cave somebody's head in. For sure. Is that the tool's fault or is it the problem? or is it the person who's wielding it? And I think that's the concern, especially in the modern political area where certainly seems to be a team sport as opposed to Team America,

not to steal the movie, you know, title, which I don't think that won any Oscars, but it probably should be reconsidered for such. Peace de resistance, or it's just an amazing. It's a pretty good one. It's pretty good. How many times did you quote that movie in the military? Many?

Oh, I mean, like, were we talking per day or per year? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was quite a bit. soundtrack would be playing it sometimes. In that team sport, you know, talking about the lawfare, the weaponization of information, I get the concerns because it's this back and forth.

And if you have this robust tool and, you know, today we're saying that this particular word or group of people is our enemy, but when the team switches to the other jersey color, what happens when you become the enemy of the, you know what I mean? I think that's the escalating Jacobs ladder that people are worried about,

which I don't have a solution to, again, because I don't only have a deep, understanding of these systems. But it's pretty gnarly. It's pretty scary. Yeah. I mean, I think you hit on an interesting, like, there's just the polarization of these two sides is, I don't think reflective of how

most Americans feel at the moment. I agree. In my day-to-day life, even people who would, the metaphorical street, they're on the other side of the street, and maybe they are on other side of political parties, 80 to 90% overlap of things they probably can find common ground on. Yeah. I mean, that's America, man. Yeah.

But not online. That's not America. I know, but online's not real. I know, but that's, well, if you look at where people are experiencing more and more of their life, though, they do think it's real. And if you don't, if you don't put that down, I mean, I think one of the most valuable things of my military service was traveling. Oh, 100%. Seeing with my own eyes, the stark differences between what could be presented about somewhere versus lived experiences in that environment. Yeah.

Because at least it gives you a little bit more of a refined bullshit detector. I think that totally shaped my perspective in the world. Did you leave the country before you were in the military? We went to the Cayman Islands one time. I don't think that counts. I mean, you said did I leave the country? I think technically that does... I went on a cruise to Alaska, which I vaguely remember.

Yeah. My grandfather was so pissed at me because I believe the tab I had for Shirley Temple was $460 to like $500. Nice. In my defense, I'm pretty sure he said, order whatever you want. I wasn't even getting out of the pool anymore. I thought he got the everything option on the cruise. Listen, I think I was nine at the time. So you're going to let's, you know what I mean?

Maybe be a little bit more clear with your guidance. Also, you didn't see me crushing all these Shirley temples and wondering, yeah, I didn't have any money. Yeah. I mean, I went to Mexico. Hilariously, my grandparents would, they would leave Cleveland in the winter and they would go down to Texas. like it was called the tip of Texas RV resort. It was a trailer park down in Brownsville, Texas. True Americana.

Which like now, Brownsville is like, you know, a little dicey down there. Yeah. But we would, the first, my first experience was going over to Mexico and just seeing like poverty. Yeah. Like my grandma always used to say like, and she was an incredible woman, like just, I mean, there was a time in her life where like the Navy during the Korean War forgot to like pay my grandpa, right, for like six months. And she's like, fortunate.

She's like, you don't understand like when we didn't have money. Like we didn't have money. There was nothing. Like we went to church to get food, right? Just this like incredible. But one of the most positive people I've ever met, right? And I remember going down there with them and just like getting that sort of perspective. But to your point, traveling in the military, going to the Middle East, going to Africa, going to Asia, all that.

You realize how damn lucky we are. And I think like that's the thing that frustrates me sometimes. in the current discourse is like, I don't think people realize that. I don't think people realize, like there's, it's so easy to just sit behind a keyboard and hurdle shit at people.

Yeah. And I don't think people realize like how good of a thing we got going. I'd agree and I don't know how to change their mind. I don't even attempt to. Yeah. Because I feel like online and these platforms are, they're almost designed to be more megaphones.

Yeah. And I think intentionally than to be for actual meaningful discourse. Yeah. The conversations are hard. to follow. It doesn't, you know, like, it just parsed out. Yeah, I don't, I don't know how to show people that other than to talk about my own experiences, which people can discount or disregard if they want to, but I think it, I mean, I think there's a huge parenting aspect of this. Like, I don't know, did you let your kids, when did you let your kids on social media? Oh, social media. Or get a cell phone.

My son asked me when you get a cell phone. He's 10. I'm like, dude, I was like 23. So, yeah, it's because cell phones didn't exist until you were 23. Hey, man. It wasn't even an option. The old man river. Do you remember calling your parents collect on a pay phone and being like, please leave a message for it? And you'd be like, mom, come pick me up for basketball practice, click. I remember the first cell phone I got was a flip phone that had the one you had to bite with the little antenna. Yeah, I think I had.

The black one with the battery on top? Probably. Yeah, I remember. I think I had my first cell phone plan might have been 60 minutes per month. Yeah. Or maybe 100, but free weekends. So you had to really think. You had to really think about it.

Or text messaging. I remember I blew the bill out of the water one month. It was like $79 million a text, something like that. My dad came in and he's like, dude, you spent $400 on text messages? Like, what are you doing? And I was like, I didn't know that they were. Yeah. So that's when I got my own cell phone.

Yeah. So I'll pay for that myself. Sorry. My children don't remember the world where it wasn't the digital age. Yeah. I remember specifically the first time, it was my senior year in high school. I went to a computer class. I think there's the first time I ever got online.

And then I remember playing, God, the flight simulators. But it was tough at the house because I needed the phone line. Yeah. My children, first off, don't understand the crucible and forging of arguing with a family of fork. Mom, get off the phone. As your mom's like curled in the court. I need to have 1996 dial-up internet speed of just scroll wheel of death, 1%. And you're like, fuck yeah.

2% my children have no understanding of that. I think though cell phones for them for us it was around when they started being out much more with their social circles sure probably right around

the teenage years yeah social media probably in the high school era I would say that worries me as a dad right like because you've said this before it's like that is not real it's not real and for everybody

who thinks that a cell phone or smartphone is giving your child access to the world, I would caution you because it's giving the world access to your child. 100%. And it's gnarly. And there are, even here locally, there are examples of young men and women who sex torsion type stuff.

Yeah. And I get it. Oh, God, I can't even fathom living life as myself, looking back at myself, could I have gotten talked into sending some pictures I regretted? If I'm being honest, more than likely.

It would have depended on the potential reward on the other end of that. But then the threat of embarrassing you to your, and everybody that you may know and it lives online forever. Yeah. I can't even fathom that. I know. I was talking with, uh, was I talking with you, Michael? It was, uh, the younger generations now, they're dancing less,

which may seem like an irrelevant metric. Yeah. But they're afraid to do so because everything is recorded. And they know if they are vulnerable. like they go out there and, you know, maybe their moves are a little bit off. Yeah. It's going to live forever. They're going to make fun of it.

They're less likely to approach the opposite sex because if they, if it, they fumble, which, by the way, you need to fumble and be a total jackass approaching the opposite sex. Without those reps. Do they even approach? Like, oh, it's all. It's less likely. And I'm not saying all of it is based on the ability for things to be filmed and live forever. But I think that is corollary to that. Yeah.

And that is a gnarly shift in human behavior. Yeah. I think it's interesting, though, that people are, I think people are much more aware of this. I think parents are much more aware of this now. I mean, I feel like not a week goes by where you don't hear about some crazy, you know, online game that's being a predator haven

or something like that. But it's that, I don't know, man. It's something that worries me as a dad. It's something I think about a lot. I think it should. I think the best that you can do, How old are your children? 10 and 6. 11 and 6.

Sorry, William, my bad. Just turned 11. He's not going to listen. It's okay. I remember the things I worried about with my children at that age. We're far less complex than the things I worry about now. You still have drug sex, alcohol in the pipeline. Oh my God.

I know. I know, dude. Just be helpful and maybe it won't all happen in the same day. You know, in the same event. Then there's driving. I mean, the thing I'm, my son literally like last week was like, hey, dad, I'm getting hair on my legs. I was like, all right, bud. Great.

Good. Thank you for the update. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, can I use your deodorant? I'm like, I'd prefer not. Like, I bought you two things of it. Like, I don't, totally don't smell, man.

You're fine. So. They're a lot. I mean, I remember living through that phase in my life. It's hard enough. I can't fathom the interconnectiveness. And the one thing that I saw in all three of my kids, maybe more so in my daughter when she was younger is, you know, know, when we came home pre-internet, even if you had your arch enemy at school, you got to reprieve.

You got to come home. Sure, I guess they could come to your house, but then your dad's going to go out there and do dad shit. Yeah. You know, they could call your house and your mom's going to pick up and give me a t-shirt. Yeah. Yeah. It says doing dad shit. But your mom would be like, fuck you, Johnny.

You know, I'm going to talk to your mom next time I see. Like, hang up, right? Yeah. You'd have to go deal with it the next day. But I tell you what, you have that interconnectedness. 24-hour alerts on your phone, which disturbs rest, which disturbs thought process. And it can seem like things are existential. Totally. I mean, this is why I think anxiety rates are so high with children now where you're like, because they're thinking about this stuff all the time. They're

processing this all the time. I also, look, I'm a, I talked about this a little bit, but I'm a huge fan. I think the thing we lack in society right now is that sort of tribal parent, right? I mean, this is like what we, I was what I came up with. My uncles were like dads to me. Yeah, you had extended family eyes everywhere. Totally. Hard for you to get away with shit. Yeah.

And I mean, to be clear, we moved away from Ohio, but I still like, I remember my uncle calling me, my uncle Tim called me one time and be like, you listen to me right now. And I was like, okay. Yeah. Right. Well, they can take a tone intact that the direct parents probably shouldn't. Yeah. And I mean, I didn't know all that stuff was going back to my mom, but I found that out later.

Yeah, that's it. you know, I think we, I've found a bit more of this, particularly, we're very fortunate to be in a great Catholic school system. And I found a little bit small. Yeah. And the parents are, you know, we don't agree on everything, but we're directionally aligned, right? We have a common sort of shared values set and principles that I think is really important to us. And we all know each. I mean, I coach these kids in basketball.

I know every single boy in that class, you know. And to me, like, that's, I think it's really important. I think like you and you know I got buddies where it's like yeah my son's being a goofball they'll be like William knock it off yeah you know and I'm like yeah do it right they're gonna listen to you before they're going to listen to me or call their football I mean I still remember last year I called the my son's football coach and I was like hey I need you to give a little tough love here because we're struggling in school and he's like I got it man right so I hope I have like a positive outlook on the generation that's coming up I do too

I'm seeing, you know, I see this in our business where folks want to work on important things. I see this where kids are, you know, have a healthy skepticism in, I think, a fair way. Yeah. And I see this where parents are, you know, plugging in more, right? And they're available more, to be clear. Hopefully, right? It does seem like the world has become a place where, you know, parents are around their kids more, right? You don't necessarily, I mean, you can, you know, obviously now there's like a bigger push to come back in office and stuff.

But for a while, COVID sort of blew that, which by the way, kindergarten gym class during COVID via Zoom. Wait a minute. What? Oh, bro. How do you even, hold on. How do you, how does gym class, wouldn't you have to leave the visible camera angle to go do anything? What a crazy time of life with a newborn at home and then gym class. Yeah.

They did about a year and a half of Zoom screen. up here and my children are not better for that time. No. The system wasn't prepared for that. I felt really bad for, I mean, we had a neighbor who graduated high school during that time. Right. I remember seeing them taking a photo out on his front porch.

He's like throwing his hat. I've seen it where they did, you would drive up individual cars and you would get your diploma. What a bizarre time. It was so bizarre. I mean, that was my grandma really started to take a downturn during that time, which was a bummer. She was sharp as attack for so long. And just that isolation was...

Do you think we learned anything as a country from that time? I mean, I hope so. I think we... I hope we learned the importance of family and human contact. And how dangerous isolation is. Totally, right? I hope we learn that, right? The thing I worry about is, you know, if something like that happens again, then what?

because there are really certainly real threats out there. There are real threats out there and I think the level of distrust in the government whether right or wrong justified or unjustified accelerated rapidly during that time period. Yeah, I think so. And the government was doing its best job

to step over its dick, which doesn't help. Yeah, I mean, and also I think I think that's a broad, certainly broad generalization. Like there are people who, you know, I think most of the people, people that I've interfaced with in government are trying to do the right thing. 100%. Right?

They're in that, you know, they're in that role or doing that job because they care about the mission. They care about what they're doing. You know, it's like I tell everybody, I still do like initial counseling when people, when I hire people.

And I'm like, assume good intent. Like most people, 99.9% of people wake up in the morning are not like, man, I really want to fuck up my job today. Right? Have it interesting,

you know, trying to work my way up the corporate ladder headspace to start your day with for long-term trajectory. I'm going to fuck up my job today. What can I do today to underperform? Yeah. I mean, but you know, you see that sometimes. People are like, oh, you know, like, let's give the benefit of the doubt here. The biggest mistake that I think the government and government officials made is they were trying to speak from a position of authority.

And instead of just saying this is the best that we know right now today, or we don't know, they would be very directive and this is what we need to do. And then as soon as that started shifting back and forth, the metronome started swinging, they would have just been better off to be honest. Yeah, I think being straightforward. And I mean, you know, that's a great life lesson too. Yeah.

It's like, hey, man, I don't know. Yeah. We're working on it. It's a rapidly evolving situation. I mean, look, I have a lot of empathy for the folks that were doing operation warp speed and running all these things at times. Can you imagine the pressure associated with that? No, I can't.

Having said that, though, if you don't have the answer, just tell me you don't have the answer yet. We're working on it. Now, this is, okay, this is what it is. Okay, this is what it is. And that deviation in gap, that's what throws people for a loop. Yeah, yeah.

And I think, like, I mean, to your point, I don't know, what do you think? What do you think we've learned from that time? I mean, I think the biggest thing is how dangerous isolation can be. Yeah. And I think another thing is how power, information and narratives can become very, very quickly. Very quickly.

And decisions can be made off of those narratives. And, you know, I don't think we took it to a place where we couldn't course correct, but I can see a future where that could happen and maybe a decision. I don't know, whether it's a chemo, nuclear response, whatever it may be. Some of those things, you let that off the chain. That's not coming back on. Yeah. So I would say probably those two things stick out to me the most.

And I will say, and I don't mean that. this negatively towards anybody, but I think people were far less resilient than they probably thought they were, or prepared for the unknown. There was a lot of people out there acting in pure fear. And I think they got hopefully a good snapshot of the mindset and who they are when pressed into that unknown, which was our job often going into the, and you learn how to deal with it, right? And you can maintain your critical and objective thinking. But toilet paper is a good example. there was always enough toilet paper. I know.

Unless you go to fucking Costco and buy 10 people's worth of toilet paper. But why do you do that? Because you're scared. Yep. And it's fear of the unknown. And so you are taking actions and making decisions in that space where they probably had never been before. So now there are people trying to still sell COVID-aird toilet paper on eBay. Yeah.

I still have a, I was up in our, we got a shelf up in our garage and I found like a 10 things of chlorox wipes. God. And I was like, oh, I was this. that guy for a little bit. Save it, though. You know, like we had my in-laws came and lived with us for a little bit because they were on the East Coast in New York was like blown up, right? And you're like, okay, get out. Come with us. Right. I had a kid with some health thing. So I was like, my wife called me hunter-gatherer, right? Because I was like, I'll go to the store. Yeah. I will get the supplies. Yeah. What do you think about that? I mean, you're like, man, it makes you rethink. Yeah.

I mean, similarly, I think where we live in here too, right? I think about this often with like the wildfire danger too. We were on pre-evaluation like three years ago. There's a big fire up near Boulder. And man, you learn a lot about what you value. Yeah. In your home when somebody's like, hey. You have three minutes.

Like, let's go. And to your point, it's like, holy shit, am I prepared for these things? Yeah. You have three minutes of your kids. Let me get my gaming computer. Yeah. hilariously my wife's going to kill me for saying this but she like we were like throwing stuff in the car and then after we didn't actually evacuate which was nice yeah my mother-in-law is helping us unpacked

isn't that a fascinating exercise though if you were going to take it with you to evacuate and all the rest of it was bullshit like why do we have this yeah spend time with those thoughts people yep but my my mother-in-law is helping us unpack and she's like katherine you didn't pack any clothes for the kids my wife's like we can buy those we'll be fine like we i was in those zone I was like, damn, respect. Credit cards do solve a lot of real world problems. She's like, we can go to Target. We can get pajamas.

We'll be fine. Yeah. But yeah. Interesting. Interesting times, man. Does it feel like it was four or five years ago? No, I, like, there's a weird time warp. There is a weird time.

I think there's like actual, there's like actual evidence of this. Like people measure time differently. Maybe. I felt like there was a study that came out that actually talked to this. We could make one up and just talk like experts about it. We could pretend. because we know what we're talking about. Sometimes take our word for it.

No, I mean, yeah, it felt, I guess I was thinking about that the other day. It feels like it was so long ago too. Yeah. But you're also like, oh my gosh, like a lot has changed, you know? Hopefully for the better. It was a really good, I think, look in the mirror for people. And I hope they objected. And again, not throwing shade at anybody.

But that's a great chance to do an AAR. How did we do? How did they do individually? How did we think about things differently as a family? Those evacuation drills, like, wow. We left almost everything behind. Yeah. Hmm.

Would life be better without most of those everythings? Not for me to say, but I tell you what, I love throwing things away. My wife isn't home. She admitted to me, I think Michael was in the room. She goes into the garbage when I'm not home and take stuff back out. Oh, really? I was a son of a bitch. I thought I was going to have this moment.

I'm like, I just want to tell you, sweetheart, that when you're gone, she's like, I know. which you don't know is I put it back in the house. I'm like, fuck, checkmate. Which is good. She's like, but I leave you a large pile of Amazon boxes to break down. Totally. How did you know it was time to leave Palantir? How do you make those decisions in the business world?

Great question. I think, you know, I'd been at Palantir for as long as I was in the military. And for me, it would, it just, again, I had that moment. There was no like, like great moment of like, oh, man, this is not. I mean, I have, again, there was a great. at that company. I learned so much, but I wanted to try something new. And I wanted to get into the startup space. I thought that was my ability to maybe take on more ownership, really, really drive that. So I did. Do you mean ownership by equity or just control? No, just like

ownership of problems, the building a business. Like a flash to bang. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is so critical in the startup space. Like you got to have folks who have high integrity, high ownership, right? Like, because you're wearing a bunch of different hats. You also have to have a massively low ego. There's this great article, one of the venture firms put out, I think it was first round capital put it out. It's called giving away your Legos, right? How to scale in an organization. And I reference this a lot with our team, right? It's like you're always trying, you know, and one of my mentors once says to me, he's like everything I built, I've given away, right? Everything that mattered. Right. And when you're you're always trying, you know, and one of my mentors once says to me, he's like, everything I've given away. Right. And

when you're in a rapidly growing organization, you have to do that, right? The opposite of that is the people who kingdom build or turf grab, right? And it's just like, that just doesn't work. Yeah. You always have to be like, okay, is this, is this actually a job that somebody needs to own full, full time, right? Is this something that I'm not good at? One of the biggest things I think I learned at Palantir was like we often talked about leaning into strengths, right? Hey, what are you exceptional at. Do that. Yeah. Maybe let me remove some of this other stuff that's not in your core competency. Find somebody else who, that, what you're not good at, they're great at.

Well, it's like you are, you're going to spend more time trying to shore up a weakness. Just like find someone who's good at that, have them do it. Right. And so I've taken that forward with me. I mean, you know, I give this example to folks all the time. We have our CFO at our company is amazing. I'm not a CFO. Right. That's, It'd be fun to try for a few days. It's like, it's a thing right there. You're in QuickBooks. Like, what if I just.

How do I make a pivot table? Well, yeah, I need to recategorize this multi-million dollar expense. John, we call him the master of coin. Shout out to the master of coin. No, but it's like, you know, there's a world where like we could compete. But it's like, we are tight because I know what I'm good at. He knows what he's good at. You know, it's like my conversation with my team sergeant, man.

It's like, hey, here's the lanes. Like, let's go out and execute. And the reality. is like me trying to be as good as him at that thing is actually not worth the investment. Like I should just go do the things I'm good at and let him do the things he's good at. So I don't know.

I segued there. No, I was just asking, it makes sense. Yeah. I think I would feel the same way too. I've never done any ventures into the business world like you're talking about like a major established company. One of the things I've determined is I don't ever want to work for anybody else again. Really.

I didn't describe. working for yourself as being the warden of your own prison. If you don't like the view, you can move the walls around. But you have to go into the bathroom and look in the mirror to find the guy when things aren't going well. Yeah. Turn that light and be like, oh, there you are. Ownership is scary. It is incredibly scary.

But I'd rather spend sleepless, anxious nights about that stuff than work for somebody else. Not that I don't think I could be a good employee for somebody else. I just really enjoy the freedom that it allows me. No right answer. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Again, what works for me may not work for you or.

for anybody else, which is why I always say I'm not here to tell anybody how to live their life. I can answer questions based off my own experience and that's about it. But also the things that I have done in the path I have taken, probably not a great fit for a lot of people. And there are probably people who could really say, well, that was a weird curve you made. I'll just go straight. And you should do that, by the way. If it works for you. Totally.

But like, I don't know, man. Some of the most interesting people that I've ever known have career paths that make no sense. Oh, I'm thankful for the ridiculous. It twists and turns, the stuff that I've done that I'll never do again. Because you get something from all of that. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And it makes you better in the long term. Yeah. You know. So what is your company up to these days? So I'm at ASI, Airspace Intelligence. We're doing some cool stuff. Software company.

We're building software engines for critical industry. What does that mean? Right. We started off in the commercial airline. working with the Department of War, working in the energy sector. What were you doing with the commercial airlines? How did you guys start off there?

Yeah. I mean, I think the reality is we got close to the problem, right? Tried to understand, okay, how are commercial airlines optimizing their flights? How are they managing their nodes? All that sort of stuff. Were you working with the carriers at that time or the FAA? The carriers.

Okay. And do they just have major just command centers where they're managing this stuff. Like Delta, I know is based. Network operation centers. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So, I mean, the main sort of thing for us is like, how do we, first of all, how do we modernize with the technology that exists right now?

And I think you've seen, you know, compute and AI evolve in the last couple of years significantly, you know, to help write better code, to help do legal review, stuff like that, to do trading, right? It's like, how do you actually apply that in the, in critical industries? How do you bring some of that together? Because these are, these are places where people need to make decisions that really matter. You know, an example I was telling somebody about, I mean, we, you know, thinking about just the grid, the management of the power grid, right?

Yeah, I live in Colorado, wildfire season. Yeah. Earlier this year, our power just gets shut off for like four days. I was like, what? Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Like, who made that call, right?

And then I go a quarter mile another direction. Powers on. It's like, wait, what? Oh, is an intentional decision? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it to mitigate a fire risk? Correct. Correct.

God, our grid, you want to spend some time getting anxious? Yeah. Take a look at the strength of our grid. But stuff like that, right? It's like, hey, how do you make a, like, I mean, thank God, you know, nobody in the house is on dialysis or. oxygen or, you know, but we didn't have, I mean, my biggest concern was saving a freezer our meat. Yeah.

It was like, as it should be, of course. Especially if it was hunted wild game. Good meat in there. We did have, we had some elk in there. Yeah. Pretty tasty. Do you have a generator? I don't.

I don't. What? I know. I'm sorry. Did you say that you used to be a green bear? Right. Trust me. My wife was like, dude.

You have just failed your operational readiness exercise. What's up soft hands? You know. You better hook up a fucking spin-bubber. like an unconventional warfare your ass a way to power that fridge. And you need to have. No, but I mean, we were like, it was actually hilarious. One of my neighbors had a generac.

And this was, gosh, when was it? It must have been like January or February because he still had his Christmas lights up. So in Denver, you don't take your Christmas lights down until the stock show is over. We have the stock show, which is like the big rodeo. Okay. Comes to town. That's like the rule. What month does that occur?

That happens in January. Okay. So he's still had Christmas lights up. But in the winter, I mean, we get massive winds. Where I live, it could be 100 mile an hour winds and super dry. So he's got the genera act going. And like the whole neighborhood's dark. And this guy's got Christmas lights.

Just like, yeah, buddy. And I text him. I'm like, really, dude? He's like, she probably have a generator. It's like, listen, what I do have are guns and a lot of bullets. So maybe turn down the flashing lights before you're generating. becomes my generator. Well, in fairness, I did buy some ammo from him.

Like, this guy is easy to leave. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, my wife was like, dude, can we, you maybe want to get a generator? I was like, yeah, fair enough. So, but that's stuff, I mean, that's super scary, right? I remember, I mean, crazy shit. Like going down to the end of the street and like the, all the street lights are out, too. And then the power company's coming out and like chain in generators to the streetlights.

And you're just like, what? Right. And like we're, you know, the world devolves quickly. Yeah. At that point, right. Um, So that's the stuff that that worries me. And I think that's the stuff that that worries me. And I think that's the stuff where technology is able to, to solve some of those problems, right? To make better decisions. Hey, why are we, you know, from a data processing perspective, you mean it helps it helps take really huge things and make it. I think modeling the domain. Okay. Right. So what we do really well is we work. across geospatial domains, right? Whether, again, it's with the airlines, FAA, right? But you model a set of networks and hubs, and then you have assets that move across that network, right, to those hubs.

So you understand the health of the hubs. You understand the network. You understand the asset, right? And you can make decisions to optimize those assets based on environmental variables that are out there, right? Weather, wind, I mean, this is what we see in aviation side. Like a lot of times major decisions are made due to weather. Oh, they have to be.

For sure. But I mean, a great example of this is like weather at ground level. It's very different than weather at 30,000 feet. Right. So you can, you know, you can just snap a big polygon on a map and be like, don't go there. Or you can say, hey, there's a way to actually optimize through some of this much better, right? So that's the kind of work that we're doing right now. And it's cool.

We've built an awesome team too. I think, you know, being able to talk about like, how do you get that feeling back? And I agree you don't, but you get parts of it. And I think being around, I felt this, you know, when I was at Palantir, I feel it at ASI now. When you have good people and you're working on hard problems, you get some of that back. You really do. And I think that goes to your point on purpose. Yeah.

Right? It's like if I'm going to, if I'm going to be in the trenches, solving hard problems, but I'm with good people doing it. Like that's a pretty rewarding thing, you know. I think that's what most people miss. I agree. The combination, you know, camaraderie is a combination of suffering and laughter with a group of people you care about.

I've never heard it said like that. It's really, I mean, think about it. It's kind of what it is. Yeah. All the training crucible as we go through. Yeah. Suck intentionally. Yeah.

But also in the middle of the suck, somebody else says something utterly hilarious, which deflates the balloon of stress and makes all of a sudden the unbearable becomes bearable for a short period of time. Dude, I remember you, can I tell one war story? It's not that war story, but it's hilarious. I remember we were on a mission in Iraq. It was like an all-day, we called them Clips, Combat Logistics Patrol.

We were bringing supplies back from one base to another. It was probably like an eight-hour mission. And we were like maybe three miles from base. And, you know, I'm like, leave vehicle. I'm like, all right, this is when. bad shit happens like end of the day like it's dark out like we're tired i can see the barn like let's get there you know and um my gunner just starts like gagging he's like and i'm like i thought he got shot like i was like what the i'm like dude what what and he keys the battalion net because you know

we've got these headsets on and you've got you've got the battalion net that is a command then you've got your internal comms and you've got your local net with with your trucks and all that always good to know which net you're on. Oh, buddy, he keys the battalion net and goes, I drank my piss. And I swear to God, man, I have not, I was crying. I was laughing so hard. And to your point, it was like, it was one of the funniest moments of my life was this, I thought, because I went from this like, oh my God, what happened? Why, like, did he get shot to like, oh my God, the jackass drank his piss? Man. And we were crying. And it's like, you know, we talk about missing the, missing the clowns and not circus sometimes. It's like, yeah, I look back on that stuff pretty fondly. So it's amazing how a little

bit of humor interjected into those horrendous environments can just change everything. But I think, I think, um, you know, that's one thing I, I wish more vets would bring forward is that humor, right? Um, I think a lot of guys and gals transition out and look, it's, it's serious. Obviously, they're like, how do I provide for my family? You're thinking about hard things, but it's like, you know, don't forget that part of it too because that's also what makes it fun.

And I mean, I see this in companies now too. It's like if you can laugh with each other, to your point, like you can get through a lot together, you know? So what is the ASI building for the FAA now? Because I know you guys just got what I'm to describe as a massive multi-year contract

to rebuild some systems that I think most people don't even realize or working behind the scenes. right now. Yeah, so we're building a brand new air traffic control system, essentially. And the goal is, again, I think you have a corpus of people, air traffic controllers, right, that have grown up with an iPhone. And our goal is to bring the technology that they have into the future, I mean, bluntly, right? There are a lot of these organizations that are working on, you know, Windows 95 era. I mean, some of it, you know.

Are you joking when you say that? I'm not joking. I'm not joking. I'm not joking. There's some, like, there's some very old systems. Like, it is time for modernization. I think this administration has been super forward-leaning. We, I think we've seen over the last 10 years, defense has gone through some of this.

We're like, hey, we need to modernize. We need to keep up with the pacing threats. And now, I think you're seeing that in other parts of the government, too, which I think is great. And so we were, you know, the FAA ran a process to basically solicit companies to come and demonstrate what they had. We're fortunate. You know, we had a system that we were using with commercial airlines, right? It was deployed.

It worked. So bringing that together to allow air traffic controllers, again, to model that domain, right, understand the variables that are impacting the network and the nodes. And then being able to look forward in time and say like, okay, how do we actually deconflict some of this, right? Whether that's, you know, multiple aircraft in a zone that they shouldn't be in, whether that's mitigating, again, weather, right, delays, flight risk, all that sort of stuff. So it's great. We're super excited about it. It's an honor to be given the opportunity. And the company's really pumped.

When are you supposed to implement? Yeah. So we'll start to go live in the fall. And then it's going to be like a two-year rollout. Do you go major hubs first or how do you guys plan to roll this thing out? And are we talking, God, how do we describe the airspace system for people who are unfamiliar with it? Let's just say, okay, so most people have probably traveled on an airplane. Sure.

So we could start at a commercial glacier national, international airport, which I think it's the international company. Is there international? I think we do a flight to Canada once a month. It's not a big deal. We don't have to celebrate it. I mean, I'm not the one who named it that. I'm assuming there's an international flight from somewhere. We are 60 miles from the Canadian.

I don't know. Maybe as they come in, they arc over the Canadian board. It's hard to say. So, okay, that's a tower-controlled airport. People get on an airplane up front in the cockpit. They're dealing in, I fly Delta. So they're talking to the Delta people probably in Atlanta, right? They have their hub.

To back the plane out, they're talking to ground control. So now they're interfacing with the FAA system. At a larger airport, there's probably clearance delivery, which they're interfacing with that. A lot of that now is digital over iPads. They're just going back and forth. but it would be clearance ground, then you're going to go to tower,

and as you depart up into the airspace, you're probably going to go to departure control and then center, and you work your way up to this umbrella of the national aerospace system. And then when you come back down, and this is broad, and I'm just trying to give people an understanding

of who you're talking to, you work your way back down, from center to approach to the tower, to ground, and you wouldn't need to talk to clearance delivery again because you're coming up to the terminal. But that whole way, you're interfacing with the FAA system.

Yep. So you're going to start at major hub, with your type, like call it Denver International, which is I'm assuming where you flew from. I did. Yeah, I spent a lot of time at Denver. Yeah. That's my favorite airport, by the way.

It's gotten a little better. It's been under construction for 20 years. Infrequently, I pass through there because I mostly fly Delta, but it's, I don't really enjoy it when I do pass through. Yeah. No, we'll roll it out. Look, we're going to be closely partnered with the FAA on where they, they're going to dictate where they want to start with that, right?

And I think like To your point It's a massively complex system You've got incredible air traffic controllers That have a really hard job Yeah So for us it's like hey How do we actually give them the best technology

To do their job right? That I think has been the core thesis For our work with the FAA And I think it's you know I think it's gonna be a game changer I'm excited about it What at the end of the day Let's say

even from like a tower controller's perspective, what would your program and software enable them to do? Or would it do more in the air? Is it helping them identify conflicts? Which unfortunately you can see things like what just happened at Boston, where a fire truck came across.

That was actually a combination of, I think one controller, and again, I don't want to speak out of school, but I think one controller, and this does happen, depending on the time of day, and this happens at Glacier International. You might, like, that's odd.

I was just talking to ground control and your voice is very similar on tower. It's the same person. Well, it's the same person. You might not have enough people. I believe that person was controlling at that time in Boston, ground and tower for that runway. And the fire truck came across and the Canadian airplane impacted it and things that weighed multiple tons. Well, and there's been, I mean, look, there's been a huge shortage of air traffic controllers as well, right?

Like, I mean, I think the administration's leaned in pretty heavily and try and get more. But it's a hard job. And it's also not a job where you can just start your first day. Right. Like the tower at Glacier is a class Delta airport. And then there's Charlie and then there's Bravo. And then there's not an alpha. That's just airspace that's 18,000 feet and above.

You have to work your way into all those positions. So it's not like you start at the FAA and all the sudden your controller, let alone all the other approach and center controllers and all those things. So it takes time. Yeah. No, for sure. So, I mean, we're working with the FAA. we're working with the airlines to be able to, again, map out their entire network, the entire

national airspace, and then be able to optimize their flights, how they're deconflicting air, right? All that sort of stuff. To ultimately, I think, you know, what does that mean for people? Ultimately, it means less delays, we hope, right? It means, you know, getting, getting to where you want to go on time. And sometimes, the interesting thing is sometimes the sort of, a manual answer, like when you're looking at a route and you're saying like, oh, okay, maybe we should go around here. It's like, look, what compute is really good at is actually looking at all those variables and saying, like, here are options, right? And sometimes the obvious option isn't the best one. The non-obvious one is maybe, you know, you should go up to 30,000 feet and fly through that.

So maybe you should totally go around it and you'll be there quicker, right? So I think what our system's able to do is provide those options to the operators to them make the decisions. Will that be a whole new interface for the controllers? Yeah, it's our, it's a software platform that they'll use. Damn. Yeah. Do you have controllers and FAA people helping you with the design aspect of that of what's best for them to look at what they want to see the most valuable information? Yeah, I mean, that was part of the, that was part of the acquisition process.

Like, we had to demonstrate all this stuff to a wide variety of stakeholders there to see. And I think ultimately that's what made us successful. Where's the first place you're going to roll out? It's a great question. I'd have to check. I'm not totally sure at the moment. Okay. Fair enough.

What advice do you have for people who are interested in the business world but don't really know much about it? Or specifically people getting ready to exit the military and they hear business. I'm going to business school. Can I get that MBA and then all problems will be solved? What advice do you have? I mean, I have an MBA and nobody really knows. You know, it was a personal goal. Yeah.

And to be clear, that's because of the industry I'm in. Like if I wanted to go be a banker, it would be a must. My advice is ask a lot of questions, right? But also, like, don't be transactional, right? There are plenty of people that reach out on LinkedIn. Hey, we'd love to pick your brain. You know, it's like I generally will try to make time for that as much as I can. The people that I think are the most successful, you know, they'll keep you in the loop.

Hey man, like, I just want to let you know, like, here's where I'm at. Like, thanks that was helpful. You know, that matters. But I think that the reality is like you got to talk to people. You got to understand. And not in a not in a cosplaying way, right? Yeah. Like you got to be honest with yourself too and get out of that.

Like, well, I could do that. I could do that. I could do that. Yeah. Are you going to? Do you want to? Like, think about it. You now have, we talk about your,

your span of control or what would you call? Circle of influence. Circle of influence. Circle of concern. It's like, dude, you have, you can make all the choices now.

So what do you want? Right? And again, everybody's got different things they're waiting for. I know guys are like, I got to, I got to be in this city because that's where my wife's job is and now it's her turn.

Okay. Well, that's going to, that's going to shrink. You know, you've put constraints on yourself. And that's okay. to be clear, but like be realistic now about what's available, right?

Or hey, I want to go into this field. Okay, well, I want to be a banker at Goldman. Well, you better go to like Wharton and go get an MBA to go do that because that's part of that side. So I think just understanding and asking questions and trying to understand, you know, the other thing is like, how do you create value? I think it's really important, right? Like I see plenty of people like, oh, I could like,

open doors here, open doors there. It's like most people don't need doors open. They need people who can actually own an outcome. Right? So it's like, how do you actually own an outcome? How do you actually create value in an organization? And you might not know when you're in, obviously, because you're like, I don't know. I've never been in this.

I think the DOW has done a great job with like the Skillbridge program. I mean, that didn't exist when I got out. As you say, came after my time. Somebody was talking about it very recently. It sounded amazing. Basically seemed like an internship. It is. That's fantastic.

That's exactly what it is. And there's a lot of great organizations out there that will support it. Hiring our heroes is one, right? Or they'll do that. I mean, there's a lot of companies that are actual registered Skillbridge partners like we are. But that's a great opportunity. Just like go learn. Go absorb.

Go see. Right. And then again, it's like you might be like, holy shit, this is exactly what I was looking for. You might also be like, holy shit, this is not at all what I was looking for. And it's like both of those things are useful, you know? But I think like take advantage of those things. I don't I don't think I mean I think about this a lot with like West Point. I didn't take advantage of like so much of the opportunity that was there right to go do things,

experience things. I think when you're in when you're getting out it's it's similar where you're like you're you're making this transition and there's so many people poised and ready to help you. Frankly I think it can be overwhelming now because there's so many options like there weren't a lot when you and I were leaving it was like. I don't know, dude. Good luck. Well, there was more than I took the time to explore. 100%. And, you know, the stuff at West Point you're looking back on now, I wonder if the vast majority of those things you could have participated in,

you even knew they existed. No, I mean, I was trying not to, like, fail physics, you know, wrote a recipe for nachos on my physics final one year. I did, well, my recipe for not failing physics was never attempting it. Yeah. So, well, I, well, look, I'm going to go on one caveat and talk about some of these athletes, at the service academies. Obviously, I'm partial to West Point,

but I look at, especially in an NIL world, right? You got these guys who are in girls who are playing D1 sports, taking 23 credit hours, majoring in nuclear engineering, and then going and playing D1 football. I mean, I'm like,

I'm in awe of some of these folks that go and do that. I mean, I couldn't, I didn't run the entire time I was there. I had to quit the cross-country team because I was like, I can't do this. Like I'm going to fail out of school.

The course. Lobe was just so heavy. Oh, it's just, it's hard, man. Like, it's really freaking hard, you know? But I'm always amazed by the people who are able to balance that and do that. So, I don't know, that's my tangent. My plug on Army football. Love those guys.

What are you going to do after your time is up your current venture? You think we'll move on to something else or is this a longer term play for you? Oh, no. I mean, we're building something special. This is where I'm at. This is where I want to be. at some point in the future, I'll coach basketball. And I love coaching basketball.

It's a lot of fun. Maybe be a gym teacher. I don't know. When did you get into it? It doesn't sound like you played basketball. I played in high school. Okay. Yeah, you couldn't tell.

I was six foot two. Very average looking. But you said he ran cross country. I'll be honest. I don't know a lot of cross country players that oftentimes double onto the basketball court. Yeah. Well, I was 6-2 in eighth grade. That's awkward.

Yeah, I was like the big guy. Yeah. I played center. And then I never grew more. Yeah. And everybody else did. But no, I mean, I played in high school and I love basketball. My dad was a big basketball player too.

We still play. I'm lucky enough that my dad is in good health that he can, he can still play one-on-one with me. How old is he? He's going to be 70 next year. My turn's 80 in January. Yeah. My dad was a national champion football player, though. The dude was like, I mean, again, the men I grew up around,

This guy was like, I remember walking down the basement. And he had Boston, the band on the record player with like six foot speakers. And he's just like, you know, we had like a Nordic track. And then like one of those, you know, all white weight machines. And he's just like jack and steel, you know. Yeah. That music is actually coming back. Oh, it's strong.

My son that just turned 20. I mean, you probably know Boston, don't you, Michael? Oh, yeah. I know Boston. Good. Our generation, though, I think is less likely to know Boston than the ones... You think? Yes.

Their generation is way more into the music of that era than our generation. It's like our parents, some people got deep into it. And then, you know, my middle son's got records of Creed and Clems. I'm like, who are you? So I got a record player in my office. Yeah. And my intent for the record player is I have like a chair in my office. like that I told my son like, look, this is a chair you sit in and you tell me anything.

No judgment. Right? We'll put on a record. We'll chill. What I like about the record player is like, you can't skip songs. He's like, dad, can we go to? Where's the, can we play Eminence front? That's the fourth song.

I was like, you got to play through, buddy. Patience. Yeah, I go. Patience. Right? So we, but my son, we go to a lot of concerts. I took them. We saw ACDC, which was my first concert with my dad.

was ACDC and then I took my son to go see. There's disrage when you went there as a kid? I mean, those guys are old, but they still put on a pretty damn good show. How about when you went with your dad, though? Were they still old? Oh, no. I mean, that was in the 90s, so they were, they were old-ish. They were like 50s, but they were rocking.

I mean, Angus came out on like a flaming dragon, you know. As he does. But no, I love, I mean, we were at a record store in Denver, and I'm like going through records, and I just hear my son, he's like, ugh, what's wrong? And he was like, they don't have any who here. And I was just like a little tear. I was like, I'm so, I'm so proud of you. You know, I thought that we were going to be screwed by the next generation, but now I have.

I got a lot of hope, man. I actually do too. I got a lot of hope. For everything that is going on out there and how we can be bombarded by negativity, I, dude, it is my mission in life to provide. positivity. I don't know if I'm somebody who can provide hope for other people, but I'm not going to stop trying to provide some positivity. I think we're going to be just fine. Yeah. That's not to say it might not get a little sloppy and messy long the way, but I think we're going to be okay. I think so. I have a lot of faith in not necessarily Michael, but in his generation, you know? Faith is a good thing. Yeah, he understands why I made that comment. And I feel like you would agree in many ways. Yeah, I have agreed in the past. He's actually listening to Boston right now. I honestly hold up your notebook so see he just draws pictures nice I've said this many times but oftentimes he draws hands and so I fill in the rest of the artwork for him things that fit into

the hands oh boy yes indeed like your Ramates indeed well they're not as linear though it's a little bit more yeah they're a little bit more bulbous oh I think we can get you to your flight. It's only 433 right now. If you want to give it a try, we could totally do it. Been out for a couple hours. What do you want to leave people with? What do you want to close it out with? I mean, your company already has a ridiculous contract. So it's not like anybody else needs to find you for business. No, I mean, look, we're- business is closed. We're building a great company. And I think, you know, for folks that are interested in working hard on hard problems. I was going to say, do you need people?

Absolutely. There you go. Who doesn't? Who doesn't need good people who are high ownership, high integrity people that want to come solve hard problems. I don't know. It seems like a lot of downside to people like that. No, but look, man, I think let's leave people with like a lot of hope. I think it's the right place then. It's the only thing. Because that's not bullshit too.

Like I owe people like, that's not some inauthentic trope. It's something I actually believe. And I feel like we're coming around and I see it whether it's, you know, what are, you know, my kids being skeptical of social media. listening to good old rock tunes. Mine are both doing the same thing. They're very wary. They should be.

Yeah. They should be. This is America. You're supposed to be a little bit skeptical every once in a while. I agree. You know? We are going to be okay. We're going to figure out our way through it.

But that doesn't mean you don't have to do your part, everybody. No, 100%, man. Yeah. Get in there. Yeah. Get in the arena. Yeah. I agree with that for sure.

Cool. Well, thanks, man. Yeah, I think we can get you to your flight. I think you're going to be good to go. Awesome. Hell yeah. I appreciate it.