Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 171 - Nic McKinley

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

As an Operative who served as a Country Chief for a Special Unit within the CIA, Nic witnessed not only the epidemic of child trafficking within illicit markets but also the unrealized opportunity to apply his understanding and training to influence this global crisis. When Nic began to work with experts to better understand the problem in the United States he found it impossible to turn a blind eye. As a result, DeliverFund was officially established as a 501c3 in October 2014 as a counter-human trafficking organization, focused on ending sex slavery in the United States. Nic spent 11 years in US Special Operations as an Air Force Pararescueman prior to being recruited to the Central Intelligence Agency. Due to his highly specialized training and experience in both special and intelligence operations, Nic has a firm understanding of these illicit, illegal markets and has the highest levels of training to effectively combat them. Magic Spoon Athletic Greens Feals

Well, good morning, everybody. Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the most comprehensive daily nutritional beverage that I have ever tried. I think of it as my nutritional insurance. There is plenty of reasons to be stressed out in life, whether it be habits. There are plenty of reasons to be stressed out in this life. Schedule, sleep, exercise, not getting enough of or the right foods. I get it. It is difficult to maintain effective. effective nutritional habits. Enter Athletic Greens. A daily, all-in-one superfood powder that is your nutritional essential is by far the easiest and most delicious nutritional habit that you can add to your health routine today and empower you to take ownership of your health. One tasty scoop of athletic greens contains 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food-sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin, multi-mineral, probiotic, green superfood blend, and

more. That they all work together to fill the nutritional gap in the food. your diet, they increase your energy and focus, and aid with digestion and support a healthy immune system, all without the need to take multiple products. Super lifestyle friendly, whether your keto, paleo, vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, doesn't matter. Contains less than one gram of sugar without compromising the taste. Right now, Athletic Greens is doubling down on supporting your immune system during the winter months. They're offering the audience, a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. If you visit you visit,

visit the link today. You'll basically never have to buy vitamin D again. So whether you're looking for peak performance or better health, covering your bases with Athletic Greens makes investing in your energy, immunity, and gut health each day, simple, tasty, and efficient. Athletic Greens.com slash cleared hot and join the health experts, athletes, and health conscious go-getters around the world who are making a daily commitment to their health every day.

Athletic Greens.com slash cleared hot. You get a free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. This episode is also brought to you by Magic Spoon, a brand that I get feedback on just about every day from listeners. They don't believe me that it is so good. Oh, but it is. Cereal is one of my favorite snack foods. It always has been. And as I've gotten older, I realized there's some consequence, we shall say, to eating it.

So if you're like me and you like cereal, but you don't like the carbs or sugar or the fact that it's really not a healthy food, don't worry. I have a solution for you. And it's called Magic Spoon. and they have just released a brand new variety pack, which is now featuring their peanut butter flavor. Peanut butter was a limited edition flavor in 2020, and it sold out three times. It's gotten so much love that they decided to keep it permanent

and added to the bestseller variety pack, which also includes frosty, fruity, and cocoa. In that variety pack, zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein, and only four net grams of carbs in each serving. 140 calories per serving, and it is also keto-friendly, gluten-free, grain-free, soy-free,

low-carb, and GMO-free. What I'm going to say is this. Don't be afraid to explore the space. Mix and match, if you will. If this sounds interesting and delicious to you, go to magic spoon.com slash cleared hot, and you can grab that variety pack today and try it. Be sure to use the promo code, cleared hot,

at checkout, and you'll save five bucks. MagicSpoon is so confident in their product. It is backed with a 100% happiness guarantee, so if you don't like it for any reason, they're going to refund your money. No questions asked. Remember, you can get your next delicious bowl of guilt-free cereal at magicspoon.com slash cleared hot and use the promo code cleared hot to save $5 off.

This episode is also brought to you by feels. Now, if you have some stress or anxiety or perhaps chronic pain or you have trouble sleeping at least once a week, you're not alone. I have probably all of those things. Enter feels. What is feels, you might ask? It is premium CBD delivered directly to your doorstep. What does it do?

Well, it naturally helps you reduce stress, anxiety, pain, and sleeplessness. It could not be easier. This is a sublingual CBD. You place a few drops of fields under your tongue, and you can feel the difference within minutes. The thing to remember about CBD is that finding the correct dose is important, which is why I often recommend to people the flight. It is three different doses. So leave a little bit of room to experiment over the course of a week or so.

Don't expect this to be a magic recipe right away. going to need to dial it in for yourself. If you're new to CBD, Fields offers a free CBD hotline and text message support to help guide you and your personal experience. It works naturally to help you feel better. There's no high hangover or addiction. You can also, if you want, join their membership program. They have an entire community based around this and you can get it delivered to your door every month. You'll save money on every order and you can pause or cancel anytime. feels definitely has me feeling my best every day and i think it could probably help you too you can become a member today by going to feels f e a l s dot com slash cleared hot and you will get

50% off of your first order with free shipping that is f e a als dot com slash cleared hot to become a member and get 50% off automatically taken off your first order with free shipping feels dot com slash cleared hot this episode is also brought to you by duke cannon the makers of some incredible men's grooming products. Today, I'm going to talk about specifically their new cooling products. I don't know about anybody else, but oftentimes I feel like my internal temperature rivals the temperature of the surface of the sun. And what that means is I sweat a lot. So sometimes I deal with pit stains. If you are like me and go back and watch the episode with Dan Crenshaw and you'll see what I'm talking about, Duke Cannon has a potential solution for you.

And it's their cooling antiperspin made for guys like me who run uncomfortably hot, moisture, and friction activated, formulated with menthol to give you an all-day sensation of standing under an air conditioner cranked up to high. Not a heat lamp that's stuck on boil. It is available in refreshing menthol and eucalyptus and peppermint and musk scents. The dry ice uses activated charcoal to effectively combat sweat and potential body stank. With the highest level of odor and wetness protection allowable, you'll last longer on the heat and your shirts will too. So again, two products, the menthol and eucalyptus, peppermint and musk, both of the highest level of odor and wetness, of them have menthol to deliver instant cooling with a distinct fresh scent.

They are enriched with activated charcoal to remove toxins while deodorizing. Moisture and friction activated for a cooling system to keep you cool and are the highest allowable sweat protection. I was a little hesitant when they sent these to me, but I've been wearing them for the last few weeks and I tell you what, it actually does make you feel cooler. It takes a little bit or took a little bit for me to get used to that sensation, but I like it. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, visit duccanon.com and use the

promo code cleared hot 2021 for 10% off your next order. Free shipping with orders over 20 bucks, duke cannon.com promo code cleared hot 2021. That is all on the business side of the house. Let's get into this episode. My guest today for episode 171 is Nick McKinley. People had reached out to me quite a bit and said, well, you need to get some PJs on your podcasts. And in my head, I was thinking, I know, you're right, but I didn't really know any. But guess what? I got another one. Boom, in your face. Nick McKinley, PJ,

then decided that wasn't cool enough. Maybe I'll just go work for the CIA. Then maybe that wasn't cool enough. Maybe I'll start a company called Deliver Fund that directly combats human trafficking. And I would completely murder the description of all three of those things and who Nick actually is and where he comes from. So I'm just going to let him do it himself.

Episode number 171 with Nick McKinley coming at you. I'm looking at danger close. now. Yeah, given your background, I actually don't know where to begin. I like your bio. Yeah? It's good. It's got a lot of acronyms.

I love acronyms. Which one did you read? The deliver phone one. Okay. I got so many things going on in my life. I got to figure out, like, where is the individual I'm talking to? Where's their point of entry? Or reference.

Yeah, because that then completely creates the, uh, the context for the conversation from there. Yeah. Yeah. How'd you land in Whitefish? I'm assuming you live up in that area. Yeah, so I actually live North Calispell. Okay.

Significantly lower taxes, same views. North Calispell is known as South White Fish. It's no big deal. Yeah. Let's face it, we could take over whitefish any time we wanted it. We could take over whatever we wanted to. But when we moved up here as well, I was looking at the area codes and noticing a stark precipitous drop-off in price and taxes.

Yeah. So we avoided that area as it. if it was the plague. Yeah, I just got up here last August. So I'm a Montana boy, grew up in Montana. Where? Billings, actually, right? So I haven't made it that far east yet.

There's really no reason to. I've also heard that from most people from Billings. Billings is the hottest place in the state. It is also the coldest place in the state. Is it flat? Yeah. By Montana standards, it's flat. Cool town, but why would?

and you can live in the valley. I was having, who was I talking to? It was yesterday. They wanted to do a trip, and they were talking about, it was Billings, as if that was the only place. Like, I'm coming to Montana,

I have to see Billings. So they didn't say anything up front. Okay. And they started talking about, yeah, I want to see the mountains and the skiing. I was like, you know, there's more cities than Billings. And also, I've never made it that far east,

but I'm pretty sure the topography is a lot different. Yeah, you know, Really, once you get east of Bozeman, you can kind of cut down every tree in a day's work. Sounds about right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of those ranchers are really good at long range shooting because that's what they got to do to get deer.

I mean, it's just a completely different place. You know, the Montana that people want to come to is essentially. It's Missoula North. Or if they have a lot of cash, Bozeman, West. Yeah, Boz Angeles is getting a little. a little tough to stomach these days, I think. So here's a Montana-related question for you, because I was,

what's the most polite way to describe the interaction I was having online this morning? Somebody reached out to me and said, and this is not an uncommon message that I will get. And I'll paraphrase, hey, shut the fuck up about Montana because I can't afford to live here anymore, and you're not from here, and I hate you.

Now, I added a few things in there, but the essence was, This is a secret that nobody knows about. Spoiler alert that the lid's been off of that, you know, little case for 30 years, I think. But how much has Montana changed since you grew up? Are you seeing a crazy influx? Is it really that much different? Because my frame of reference would have been here now about three and a half years.

I can say that there's more people in the Valley. But this last year during the pandemic, I was at the DMV and they said they had put up 20 to 30,000 more pins of people, you know, who are coming in to do the driver's licenses. So there's more people, but I don't have a good frame of reference for the change. I think the change is in people's heads, quite frankly. I, you know, I left, I left Montana when I was 18, showed back up when I was 42, didn't notice much of a change, and was constantly kind of in and out visiting family and whatnot. Now, our home prices higher. Yeah, of course they are. They are everywhere, right? I mean, the economy continually expands.

So this economy is going to continue to expand too. Also, there's these things called airlines and freaking Instagram accounts. So anybody who thinks that Montana is a secret is diluting themselves. It wasn't a secret 30 years ago. No. And in fact, when I got my driver's license, right, I had a 1976 Jeep CJ7, right? That's an amazing vehicle. 99 horsepower, right?

You could maybe hit 75 going downhill with a really good tailwind. Yep. Four speed. Maybe hit 15 on the way up that same hill. Maybe. But that sucker would, I mean, it would climb a tree if the bark didn't slip. Oh, the torque on those things is amazing. Right?

So I drive it down to the courthouse in Billings and I'm, you know, getting my, getting my driver's license, like the real one, right? No, no learners per man. Yeah. What was I? I was probably 15? Because you get your learners per minute up here back in the day at 14 and a half. So that feels very farmer ranchery to me. Yeah, it's spontaneous, right?

And so I go down there and there's bumper stickers free for the taking that says Californians go home. Right? That was in 1994. For a long time. Yeah, I mean, this attitude has been around in Texas since Texas became Texas, right? It's the same mentality. It's why I call Montana in Northern Command and Texas is Southern Command.

Notice I have offices in both places. Yep. Right? Northcom. So calm. Yeah. So that, I mean, that's really the genesis of the culture in Montana. But you also notice nobody's complaining about the tax base.

Nobody's complaining about the fact that, you know, I have fiber in my house. You know, nobody's complaining about the increase in infrastructure. And maybe someday we'll actually get flights between the cities in Montana too, right? I mean, let's not get crazy. Yeah. But the Calispell Airport is, in fact, adding a terminal wing. I think they started construction on that project, actually. Yeah, I was talking to one of the business development leads at Glacier Bank, you know, one of our local banks here.

Those guys are amazing. I mean, it's 21st century banking with like, you know, 19th century customer service. And I was talking to one of their business development leads. And he said that the flights between Dallas, the non-stops they do in the summer between Dallas and Glacier was one of the most successful leg rollouts that I think it's United, who does that, has ever seen. So, you know, the state's going to grow. We've got plenty of resources to do that. We've got plenty of, we've got obviously plenty of space to do that. And I don't see how that's a bad thing for the state.

The only bad thing is when people start bringing their politics that caused them to leave the place that they're leaving, you know, and try to come up here and, like, destroy that, too. The difference, though, is the culture. The culture won't allow that. Well, and I think there's two types of transplants. There's one that I think falls into that category. And in my limited experience and exposure, that is generally the person who is a resident of Montana for somewhere between four to seven days per year. but they have a home here. So they visit and want to bring that with.

But most of the people I know who have left California, too, include a guy at SBG we were talking about. He just came up a black belt named John Boone. You know, they're leaving because they're seeking the opposite of where they were. So they're not trying to bring anything with them. They didn't like where they were. The people who like where they are are staying, except for when they're a resident here for four to six days.

And then you have to deal with that BS. But most of the people I'm seeing are like, hey, we didn't really like the politics. your gun laws are kind of way more awesome than Cali. Especially now. Yeah. Thank you state legislature the last couple of days. That's right.

They passed that constitutional carry. That's right. But yeah, so there's two pots of those transplants. One pot, I'm kind of worried about the other one. It's welcome aboard. Yeah, and I think the one that we're worried about, are we really worried about them? Because they're not voting here. It's true.

In many cases, though, they are trying to fund the candidates here. Yeah, they can influence that way. Sure. Yeah. A little behind the curtain action, if you will. Yeah, but I just don't see it working. I mean, look at, look at this last election, right? I mean, the whole state went red. And one of the first things the new governor did was limit the liability on, on businesses, right, around COVID. Hence the mask mandate being lifted two weeks ago. And then constitutional carry passes. Like, if that's a, that when people ask about the culture in Montana, especially politically. Did you know suppressors were completely legal and outside the NFA and Montana about, I want to say it was like 10 years ago? No, but that also doesn't surprise me. So the state legislature passed a rule basically saying that if you were a Montana resident and you were purchasing a suppressor that was made in Montana that was considered intrastate commerce and therefore was outside of the regulations.

of the NFA, National Firearms Act. And so elite iron is in Bonner, Montana, right? Great suppressor company. And there were people rolling in, paying cash for suppressors and walking out the door, completely legal. That's way better than the six to eight months that I waited for mine.

Yeah. So the ATF freaked out. Federal government actually made Montana bend a knee based on road funding. And so they got them with infrastructure. Yeah. So they started, they started restricting funding. And finally the state of Montana started, you know, got back in line, if you will,

with the federal government. But during that period of time, we had county sheriffs that were threatening to arrest federal agents that were trying to enforce the NFA in their county. And that's actually one of the beauties of the structure of, you know, just of our country. and really the brilliance of our founding fathers that, I mean, look at it this way. Counting sheriffs, how are they any different than warlords in Afghanistan? Right? Yeah.

They got a chunk of territory that they control. Yeah. They got better trucks. Right? Better weapons sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. There's not always better weapons systems.

Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, for the most part, like they're the king of that territory. They rule that territory. And what they say goes. And they're accountable to the people because they're like. politicians unlike federal agents. And so I think we're going to see a, you know, in case you haven't noticed, there's a little bit of a divide happening in our country right now. It's hard to miss.

It's out there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and that's probably only going to get wider. And I think what we're going to really start to see is you're going to see county sheriffs. You're going to see state legislatures. You're going to see people just say, you know what, enough is enough. And they're going to start taking their rights back at the state level. You're going to see that on both sides. Like, I'm not trying to make a political argument here. I'm just trying to say that you're going to see that on the right. You're going to see that on the left. But really, states are going to become safe harbors for people of those political views. And I think that's really what we're looking at. And if that's what we're looking at as a future of the country, then I'm glad I'm in Montana.

The divided states of America, as opposed to the United. Yeah, well. I don't know how that division actually, do you think it's at a place where it could course correct and heal itself, or is that just the path that we're on? I go back and forth on this one. You know, I do too. I think at the end of the day, most people, especially people with kids, just want to provide a better set of circumstances for their kids. I mean, I really think that that's what it comes down to.

So there's the, like, there's the part of me that says that, you know, people will eventually do what's in their own best interest. But then there's the other part of me that truly believes that, you know, mankind is, is innately evil. And as soon as you create that us's versus them's mentality, and then you pour a little bit of kerosene called dopamine hits from social media. And then the only other thing that research shows that provides more of a dopamine hit than social media is politics. Well, there you go. There's Twitter. Yeah. And so really people are cognitively incentivized to widen that gap as much as possible. And then all of the social media companies, right, and kind of the big tech, I mean, they're just, they're writing that all the way to the bank.

Yeah. And so show me the incentive for the system that supports the people to swing towards the people with family. who just want to make a better existence for their kids and go camping on the weekends and not completely, you know, deconstruct things. I cannot provide that. Yeah. So that's why I'm like, well. Yeah.

So, yeah, so when my wife and I, my wife is the one person who's actually from D.C., so I married her and got her out of D.C. You're welcome, honey. Does she like it better here? Oh, better here 100%. I can understand that move because I also went bigger city to much smaller. I don't know if I could go the other direction again. Oh, man.

I could see it being a journey or an adventure when you're younger, right? You start off small and like, boom, you're loving the big city. But I experienced many times, you know, driving to L.A. from San Diego could be either 90 minutes or 900 minutes. Right. So it, you know, and my, I lived in eastern San Diego and I had to get to the Silverstreet. to work and sometimes it was two hours, sometimes it was 25 minutes. The just population density, I mean, there's some things that I miss, the diversity of food. Sure.

Better elsewhere, but learn to cook was the solution that I landed on. So I could source all that stuff. I couldn't go back now. I think it would actually make me, I know for a fact, it would make me extremely uncomfortable to be that compressed again around other people. It would. And, you know, growing up in Montana, the thing you want to do the most. is get out of Montana.

You're like, I got to get out of here, this place. But here's the thing. Every person from Montana that I know has this magnetizing pull back at some point. Yeah. They leave and they're like, hmm, I must return. Yeah, you don't realize how, I mean, it's that whole, you know, grass is greener thing, right? I mean, you know, how many guys you know who went from the, you know, the Socom seal teams to the J-Soc seal teams and we're like, the grass over here is going to be plated in gold. Yeah.

And then, damn it, it's the same lawns separated by an imaginary line. Yeah. And you're like, wow, it's just kind of, kind of the same thing. You know, our lawnmowers are a little shinier and you run a little faster. But, but yeah, it's the same thing. I was, when I was at the agency, we were, we had a joint agency, G-Squadron combined little task force, if you will, right? And, you know, normally you're not getting up to what, you know, 2 p.m.

Right? Because you were out all night. Vampire hours. Yeah. So the radio starts cracking off. And I'm like, I'm like, whoa, man, what's going on? People are talking about like suppressors and belt feds? And I was like, are we under attack?

So I go, you know, I'm the team leader. So I go running out of my little, you know, my little chew. And I'm like, what's going on? And the freaking, the cag dides guys are doing a junk on the bunk. And I'm like, but, but wait a minute, you're, you're J-Soc. You don't have to do that stuff. and their certain majors looked at me as like, bro, still Army. Yeah.

And I was like, oh, okay. Same thing on the, you know. I'm a civilian technically. I'm going back to bed. Yeah. Same thing on the, you know, the Navy side of the house. At some point, the bureaucracy of the larger Navy, you bounce up against that. So.

And maybe that's a good thing. I don't know. I think it's actually a good checks and balance. Yeah. There needs to be at least a little bit of oversight outside of the community because I can tell you from working in that community, we are our single worst enemy. You think? would grind that shit to dust.

Yeah. Give it enough time. Like, no, no, it's fine. We're totally responsible with this budget. Don't worry. Also, it's March 3rd. Can we have some more? Because we are not going to make it to October 1st.

It was just a small fire. Yeah. I needed those shoes. 7,000 pair of those shoes. Right, right. Yeah. So why'd you, or where did you go when you left Montana? I joined the Air Force, enlisted guy.

Didn't go to college. like literally graduated high school. I had this great gig working up the of the Boulder River Valley. If you're familiar with that area. I'm not. Oh, so Google McLeod, Montana. Okay. Wait for the snow to melt.

Take a good four-wheel drive up there. And there's a little lake at the top. It's called, I don't remember off the top of my head, blue lake, I think. Golden Trout. You're up at about 6,000 feet, 7,000 feet. and there's an old abandoned mine up there. It's pretty awesome, right? I will check that up for sure.

You've seen the movie of River Runs through it? Who hasn't? Okay, I was going to say, because then we've got to... I mean, it's Brad Pitt. Is there, I mean, in the dictionary, right? Beauty is a picture of Brad Pitt. And even shirtless sometimes, right?

So, like, I totally understand as a Navy guy, like, you know, that's the thing you teed off on. Drawn to it, really. So it's the River Valley where that movie was filmed, right? Absolutely beautiful. I will check that out for sure. Yeah, so I spent my summers up there in high school, like would literally disappear for three months,

and just working on these guest ranches and church camps and things like that. So I wanted to do one more summer of that. And then right after the summer was over, joined the Air Force, went in the Parake Rescue teams. And yeah, that was what got me out of Montana. How did you land on the Air Force? Is there a base in Billings? No, I wanted to be a, well, it started with,

I wanted to be a force reconnaissance medic. No such thing, right? Because the... Yeah, they use Navy Corment, don't they? Navy Corpsmen. The FMF. Yeah. So no such thing, right?

So then I went over to the Navy because I clearly, I'm like, I'm not going to be in the Air Force. Like, no. So I went over the Navy and I was like, cool, I want to be a, I wanted to be a SEAL medic. And then the Air Force guy who, Air Force recruiter, who's kind of all. always hanging around the Army and the Marine Corps and Navy offices waiting for people. He was like, hey, did you hear this thing called Pararescue? And I was like, no, I'm not interested, right?

And then my mom actually brought home a Pararescue brochure. Mike Maltz on the front of it. Guy ended up being my supervisor. And I was like, oh, this looks super cool. Why did she get that? That's a great question. I actually don't know. She saw it on like one of those like, you know, the...

Like a leaflet little stand? Yeah, that they've got in like, you know, the strip mall and billings or something like that, right? Probably the one person that ever joined the Air Force based on the millions of dollars worth of pamphlets that they did, right? So I checked it out and I went back to that recruiter. I was like, hey, what's this? And he was like, that's what I was trying to tell you about, man. I have this thing about not really listening at first. But pointer for the recruiter have some of those available to give to people?

Yeah. Come on, people. Yeah. So then he shows me the video, right? You got to have the cool recruiting video. The recruiting video was awesome. And I was like, and the thing was is that Navy couldn't guarantee me that I could be a medic, right? It was like, well, maybe.

Or a sealed contract, probably. But maybe not. Yeah. And that wasn't a guarantee. But that also wasn't a guarantee in the Air Force, right? But I was confident enough, arrogant to think that, you know, it's like, well, you got an 80. you know or 92% chance of not making it and I was like no other people have a 92% chance not making it but I'm going to make it and it was like no um you've got to pick another job and I was

like why did you not just hear what I said yeah like this career field actually needs me yeah totally I mean you know yeah you know it is so uh so I was like yeah no this is what I'm doing and uh and my dad was there and my dad was like Nick like you know know, pick another job, you know, in case you don't make it. And I was like, fine, I'll, I'll do whatever. Like, what do you got available? And he's like, mechanic. I was like, fine, I'll do that. And, uh, and my dad was just like, you know, facing his hand. Just like, well, pain is the best way to learn, I guess. And, uh, yeah, so, so, uh, no guaranteed par rescue contract, uh, really wasn't such a thing back then. Um, but what I,

is it now? I believe it is. I believe it is. You know, my, my PJ knowledge is a bit dated, right? I got out in 2007. So it's a bit dated, but I believe that now you actually can go straight into pararescue. And the system is completely different, right? I mean, there's now this like Air Force Special Warfare thing, and it used to be just par rescue and combat control selected together. And really, those were the only two soft career fields when I went in. guys were failing out and then going to other career fields that are now part of the Air Force Special Warfare system.

So, like, I don't know a whole lot of how that system works now. But back then it was like, no, man, like, you got to pick something else. I mean, I think this is how the Air Force, like, filled all the, like, cop and cook roles, right? It was just sign everybody up for pararescue. And then that used to be how the Bud's pipeline was. Yeah. It was you could go there. Originally, you could go there as an undesignated seaman.

Ooh, that sounds dangerous. Well, if you didn't make it, you were going to get issued a paint hammer or a chipping just and you were going to be chipping rust off the side of a ship. Or painting an aircraft carrier from starboard side to port. And then when you get to the front again, it's like, you know what? Just keep going. But imagine, you know, if that was. Oh, man.

The number of people are probably disciplinary problems that came out of that. Oh, yeah. So I didn't get, I had to choose also. So I chose radar scope operator because it was the shortest one. Now it's a full pipeline. That's why I was curious. I'm sure the PJ one is probably similar. So you get contracts, pre-training, post-training from the pre-training, but it's still pre-training

for the training. Right. Yeah. It's a full foot to the floor system at this point. Yeah. The, the, I think the whole soft community has just come so far. Yeah. You know, the longest war in the history of the country will kind of tend to have that as a second order effect.

But the whole soft community has just come such a long ways. I mean, the training that they're getting now, the training they're getting now at the infantry level is arguably better than some of the training I was getting, you know, as a PJ. That's what I was going to say. I bet you the standard infantry training right now exceeds or matches special operations training. 20 years ago. Oh yeah for sure. I mean you look at and just look at combat experience. I mean we had like two dudes in my unit who had combat experience and it was it was a minimal experience compared to what guys have today right you get guys who spent 20 years at CAG and yet some E3 who was in Fallujah on his only combat tour at saw more combat than you know somebody who did 20 years at

at a at a J-Soc unit. I mean, it's just the way that, it's just the way that the cards fell. The pendulum of time. Yeah, but the good part of that is that the soft community now, I mean, the, the, I mean, everything down to the uniforms are better. I mean, we, we used to have to make our own kit, right? We had to freaking sew our own uniforms. I mean, it was. I can work a sewing machine, though.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, I mean, that was, I would get issued stuff. This pocket is unacceptable. I'm going to move this four centimeters. Absolutely. I mean, back in the day, it was you could get, you could get Blackhawk. Yep.

An eagle. Yeah. I think those were the two companies, right? And that was about it. You had the holsters with the like the little snap. Oh, I know exactly. We're talking about. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, good gosh, they got cool toys now. They have amazing toys now. My only hope is that they don't come to rely on the toys and that basic level of soldiering still exist, which I'm sure it will, but I just don't want to reduce to a video game, I guess I would say. Yeah. Well, social media is not helping us out there. No. Do you see that latest video on the, I think it was a bunch of Army Joe's doing CQB?

Where they were running in front of everybody's muzzle? Yeah. Live fire. Yeah. I can only tolerate so much of that because I assume the video is going to terminate in a catastrophic accident and I have a really hard time watching those so I'm not so I'm on social media but I'm not really on social media my social media is more of a leaves on the professional branch so to speak I'm not really a personally a social media guy and I'm getting but I always know when I'm

getting text messages of Instagram links from buddies that like it's going to be good and most likely somebody doesn't add with you know their their head getting canoed so so you got into the PJ pipeline pre-9-11. Yeah, 96. So 96. So you had a good amount of time, call it half your career pre-9-11 and then half post. Yeah, so it was two-year pipeline. It's robust. And that's one thing, like I was telling you,

I had Will on a few weeks ago, but his episode comes out next Monday, or actually when this comes out, it'll be the Monday before you. Right. People are like, you need more PJs. I'm like, what's up? Two back-to-back. Suck it. Yeah, suck it. And guess what? They all know each other, because apparently there's only six BJs. Yeah.

There's actually eight of us. Yeah, well, he was in your wedding. We both know Joe, so it's like one degree of separation. The training pipeline is crazy. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it is. He broke it down a little bit. I just love the skill sets and the combining of all that.

And basically the crafting of a multi-tool that then goes out and, you know, can execute that on the battlefield. And I always tell people, if you ever have hydraulic fluid leaking on the battlefield, you want a PG on you fast. For sure. We had them when I was at the J-Soc Command out east and they were amazing. I mean, like any, like, hey, I'm leaking and you're like, boom, okay, I'm fine. Yeah. Maybe I'm not fine, but I'm definitely going to live until I can get a higher level of care.

And that's really, I think, what everybody needs to understand. I get these calls a lot and I'm sure you do. You know, buddies, sons want to join special ops. You know, they really want to talk to you about being. a seal or a PJ or whatever. And I always back them up a little. I'm like, tell me about the story playing in your head. Because if the story in your head is you're sitting behind a long gun on some hilltop somewhere,

you know, in a three-day hide site, bro, PJ's not for you. You know. You might be there, but you're not going to be on the gun. Yeah. Like, like, that's not your job, man, right? You might physically be present, but you're probably not applying slow, even back pressure to that trigger. Correct, correct. Unless, of course, you know, you're on a range and the snipers are just giving you some cross-training. You know what I mean? But that's the deal. If you're if the story in your head is, you know, you're covered in blood and like you're really praying that you're going to be able to save this person who's like laying on the ground. And and you know that if you don't, everyone's going to blame you for them dying, regardless of whether or not, you know, it was your fault. You know that if you do a good job, people are going to be like, hey, you did your job, and then you're going to get to go through that stress all over again.

The thing about being in par rescue is, you know, lots of times you're chopped off. You're chopped off to a SEAL team or an ODA or a freaking wherever, right? I mean, there were times I was even chopped off to, like, federal law enforcement agencies. I mean, it's, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, and so you're all, I mean, you're constantly busy. you're you're there's always a mission for a PJ that's the cool thing but you you get attached to a seal team awesome guess what you're the Air Force guy back of the train bitch yeah and and you know it's it's a it's a 90-day deployment and by about about you know about day 89 and like seven hours guys

are like hey Air Force you're all right you know come on up here yeah and then and then you're like okay and so you got to you got to work harder you got to basically prove yourself to a bunch of people right just like you did when you're a new guy on a seal team well guess what you're the new guy every 90 days that's a rough cycle to be perpetually in well it is it a uh I don't know is it a limitation or is it a motivation you know I would take it as a ladder I always looked at it as a motivation like cool like and but but the really good thing about that is one you have a constant motivation to like be on the top of your game or at least you know try to be on top of your game but two you get to learn so much when you're you're within ODA for three months and then you're you know

working with FBIHRT for a little while and then you're in a training cycle on your team and now you're going to go work with a SEAL team I mean you get exposed to that many high performers who are who are all at the top of their game and all have various experiences you you you if you're just paying attention, you will learn so much from the, from the environments that you get stuck in. And that's actually one of the things that I really liked, you know, kind of perpetually having ADD. I need to constantly be stimulated with new things to learn. And being a PJ just kind of allowed that. How much is the medical training that you were receiving change post 9-11? Because it was insane the stuff we did pre-9-11, our medical, you know, an 18-month work,

up for a six-month pre-9-11 deployment, which was, it consisted of drinking and lifting. Yeah. And then also drinking. You could do drinking in the morning, lifting, drinking. So you can play around with the ratio. Well, it's all about the three ratios of, you know, how much sleep do you need to survive? Not perform, survive, right? Like at what point, at what point does it start becoming not detrimental to your health?

Because you're way beyond that. Oh, for sure. Detrimental to. The booze alone takes you outside. your existence, right? And then it becomes, you know, how little sleep do you need? How much can you drink while still being able to perform at PT the next morning? Really, I mean, that's the way you're making calculations in your life at that age.

At all times. Yeah. And as long as you can do it, you know, if you wreak of alcohol, that doesn't matter. I mean, that might even get you a little more respect with your team, right? It's whether or not you're throwing up on the run. Yeah, right? It's correct. So it's that modulation there that's really important.

And then you obviously got to make sure that you don't end up in a roll of duct tape because you blacked out. That is correct. You have to hedge yourself against that at all times because somebody is going to end up in that role of duct tape. 100%. Yeah, just don't be that guy. You want to be on the delivering and not the receiving end of it. Yeah, those Miller boards don't tape people to them themselves. We,

hypothetically. Allegedly. Yeah, there was a time at Team 5 where people would get taped to those plastic spine boards and then vertically placed in the grill of a vehicle that would then be paraded down the beach at a high rate of speed. Oh, what could go wrong? Oh, fuck. How did we survive this stuff?

Pure luck. Divine intervention. It's got to be. Because had literally not the hand of God been like, like, you know, had literally not the hand of God been like, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and put you guys in a bubble. Yeah. How would we have survived? I have no explanation for it.

But yeah, I look back at the pre-9-11. I think we did a week of medical training in that 18 months leading up. And I remember like splinting Ivy training with generally 18 or 20 gauges. Thankfully, I'm not a fan of Ivy training with 14s because those look like a straw to me. Yeah. And they feel like a straw also. And maybe some pressure. dressing. I remember them

basically, you know, saying a tourniquet's probably not a good idea. Yeah. Remember those days? What, tourniquet is the, you know, the tool of last resort? Maximum of one hour with a tourniquet. Yeah. Fast forward I mean, that was 96, 97, 98, and those workups, fast forward

four or five years and multiple tourniquets. I think they eventually, what was the name of the stuff that you would pour? It was a powder that you would... Quick clot. Yeah, so they went away from that. Yeah. Because it was burning, it would burn everything that was liquid, right? But there's new quick clot that you can use. But the advancements between that and then live tissue trading in the killhouse in the middle of evolution, you know, slinging a gun and diving into medical problems, whether it be a, you know, a point blank range shotgun and four round or even a guy like an outlaw, like, holy shit, why are we taking down targets where people have axes? Like, I don't want to be a part of this.

Like, what's going to. Well, what's interesting is in pararescue, I mean, we were doing that in the 90s. So life tissue training, all that. That's awesome that you were, because I don't think that had spread out very far. It's kind of our job. That's accurate. That's accurate. Yeah. So we were kind of into the whole medical thing.

But I look back on it now, and it's, I mean, it was a little on the dumb side because, I mean, so I remember being a new guy, I show up to my team, and they did an external jugular. stick on me, right? On you? Yeah, on me. I'm gonna take a hard pass on that. Yeah, well, that's welcome to being a new guy. Like, like, there's, there's, there's, the hazing at the PJ teams is a little bit different because it's really hard to practice medical stuff on, you know, Mr. Hurd's dummies. Yeah.

It's a whole lot easier to practice that stuff on new guys. And so that's your, that's your hazing at a PJ team back in the day. I feel like that probably still exists. Yeah, it probably does, right? But next thing I know, I've got, you know, a flight surgeon sitting there basically watching an E4, because I'm an E3, stick a needle in my jugular. And I watch him turn white because he missed. And like these are the kinds of things that like anesthesiologists do, right? So that.

I mean, an E4, let's be honest, is basically the same thing. Yeah, I mean, he did go through two years of PJ training, right? Of which a good six months was medical. So same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I bet you, again, going back to the baseline training now, I would imagine that as long as there is budget for life tissue training, I would hope, is force wide for anybody who's boots on the ground.

I mean, I believe it is. And look at that advancement. Like, holy shit. Yeah. In 20 years. And the difference in life-saving ability that that makes, it completely changed everything from where. to have turnicates, you know, hey, maybe you should be able to put it on yourself. That's something that wasn't discussed either. Right. Yeah, the whole like self-rescue, self-aid, you know, body care.

I mean, it just, it just wasn't really a thing. And one of the things that we always realized as a PJ was like, when, you know, you had some, some ODA, uh, Sergeant Major who like, you're number three in the stack and he pulls you to the back and you're like, oh, you're all mad. But then, but then you realize, like, if something happens to me, like, I'm done. There's nobody coming for me. So, okay, maybe that was a good leadership decision. And that's really where now you've got PJs are giving like blood transfusions on target. That's insane to me.

Yeah. There was this whole concept of the buddy transfusion that we like. You mean live person to live person? Yeah. It's not like you're hooking up a line from like one person to another, but where you're literally taking blood from one human like on target. Yeah. And putting in another human on target. There was this like high-level academic concept that was happening at like the surgeon of so-com level.

But that's like becoming mainstream within the Sockham community. And so when you look at the direction that the war has brought us, I mean, if we're thankful for anything on these wars, it's the fact that some of the best warriors on the face of the earth have been produced over the last 20 years. Hands down. I mean, it's incredible, and you can't. But what amazes me is, I mean, look at the firearms training that's available today. I mean, when I was a young PJ, it was like you got, you went to Thunder Ranch, gun site. Maybe Mid-South.

Mid-South was one. And there was that other Rogers, I think it was. Yeah. That was like, those were the big four. There was nothing else to do. Now, I mean, you can't throw a rock without hitting somebody who's got. That's tier one. Yeah.

guy who's running a shooting course for sure. Yeah. And so same thing on the medical side. Same thing on, I mean, everything. And I mean, in the 90s, I don't know about you guys, but we interacted a lot with LAPD SWAT because they were the only ones actually doing things for real. We did not actually. Oh, yeah. We interacted with them quite a bit, FBI, H-R-T because they were the only ones like getting in real gunfights.

And they were only getting in gunfights maybe once or twice a year. which was a magnitude of order greater than anybody else in the military. Than anything we were doing. Yeah. Yeah. And so we were going to them, right? And a lot of our stuff kind of you almost start looking like a little mini SWAT team. Well, now, fast forward to where we are now and now go look at all those SWAT teams.

They all look like a bunch of, you know, tier one units, you know, rolling around overseas. In AMRAPs? Yeah. In this country. Hey, didn't we fight a war to keep MRAPs off the streets in this country? I just thought, I think so. Yeah, that's a rabbit hole that we could go down for hours. Oh, yeah.

Why did you decide to transition out of the PJ pipeline? Yeah, so really every soft person knows that you get to that point where you realize that that thing that's behind the curtain is an elephant and you've got to choose whether or not you're going to accept that or you're going to move on. I always describe it as a donkey with a fly buzzing around its head. There's that. There's that. And so I made E7.

I was right at the, let me see, I was at the 11-year mark, and I was on the E-7 list. I couldn't sew it on yet because I hadn't been in long enough. And what am I looking at there? Well, my future is probably on one of these, right? I'm going to do less and less running with the teams. And so really at that point, I felt like I kind of became a victim of my own success to a search.

to a certain extent and wanted to go try something different. So, you know, my PJ trajectory was, all right, you're, you know, obviously you're a free fall guy. Let's go be a jump master and then let's go be a freaking tandem guy and the bundle guy. And then an AFF guy and you're out of schools. Right. And then it was, all right, well, you know, was I truly passionate about the medicine piece? because there are some PJs who, like, they live, eat and breathe this stuff. I mean, they just are really passionate about the medicine piece.

And I wasn't one of those guys. I liked it. But I wasn't truly passionate about the medicine piece. And my PJ team coming out of 38, there was a group of us that were already slotted to deploy Operation Northern Watch, right? People don't, people forget about Northern Watch and Southern Watch and was it Desert Fox? and the olive branch missions and all that stuff that was going on around Iraq on the 90s. And we were like, I mean, we were neck deep in all of it. There wasn't probably a country except for Syria where in Iran, where you didn't have a PJ

around Iraq supporting basically air operations and things that were going on in and out of Iraq, right? So PJs and combat controllers are all over the place. So my team was already slotted to go do a northern watch rotation into southern Turkey, right? And then it was like, oh, yeah, by the way, September 11th happened. So we're just going to go ahead and have you guys stay put. And we started running these operations in and out of northern Iraq.

Well, why are we going out of northern Iraq? Well, because we're going to attack them in a couple of years. I mean, that's basically what it came down to. And so we kept working with these agency dudes. And I was like, ah, it seems like a pretty cool mission. You know, some of them, some of them were. I've had hit or miss experiences as well. That's it.

I know I struggle with that as well, too. And don't get me wrong. I don't know a lot about the agency or a lot of guys there. But when it comes to specifically like case officers or they were called country, whatever it might be, but hit or miss. Hit or miss is a good way to put it. Some of the finest people I've ever worked with at the agency were, I mean obviously CIA officers.

Most of those were former soft guys. Yeah. It's really, right? So very, very interesting. Different mission. And it's unfair to the CIA to impose the same mission that we, or I mean the same standard that we impose on the so common J-Soc communities, right? It is a 100% different mission.

Yeah. However, there are subsets where it's kind of the same mission. and but you don't know that right i mean especially kind of pre-september 11th and then just right after september 11th like nobody really knows what's going on and and when you're in the soft community you kind of think that you know there there's got to be a red door of competence somewhere because surely this this can be it right so you're always you're always looking for that red door and and so i thought well it must be at the agency and so i really was at a a at a fork in the road.

It was, am I going to, am I going to kind of go down the J-Soc road? Am I going to go the agency road? Am I going to just get out all together and go civilian? What am I going to do here? And I just decided that the agency thing looked, you know, looked pretty good. But like, how did you apply to the agency, right? I mean, I didn't know how to do that. Nobody really did.

So I actually ended up kind of falling backwards into a private personnel recovery startup. doing a lot of private personnel recovery for Fortune 25 companies. Really cool. So you got out? Yeah. So I just bailed, but I stayed in the reserves. Okay. And then I was part of an operation that got the first 21 people out of Lebanon in the end of 2006.

Hezbollah and the Israelis decided to have their little party in Ternak Farms area. A bunch of Americans got stuck because the Israelis bombed the Beirut airport. basically tore up the runway so the planes couldn't come in and out and then established a naval blockade so there were a couple of very large recognizable companies who had engineers that were stuck in Lebanon and the system is so broken that there was like nobody to call so here this 27 year old PJ I get a call from the CEO of the company who had heard from like a friend of a friend that I was thinking about getting out and essentially hired me to the way he sold it was basically be a private PJ. It ended up being very different than that, but

that's the way that he sold it. So I went and I went and did that and then I got an email, actually, asking if I'd be interested in, you know, looking at a government program. And it was very, very cryptic. Jason Bourne at CIA.com? No, it was from, no, sorry. No, it was from a Mr. Bond. Yeah, it was sweet. Yeah. Bond, J. guy.

Yeah. So it turns out it's his dad. So, yeah, so I get this really, really interesting email. And I'm, you know, spam mail wasn't really a thing back then, right? So I was like, I was like, okay, like this seems interesting. And what it was was a covert action program being run on a, you know, out of an airport in a country overseas to narrow it down for everybody. And it was, you know, are you interested?

in doing this. I'm like, heck yeah, I'm interested in doing this. Like, this just seems, I mean, that's super cool. Yeah. Right. It was very cool. I was on a team of, you know, there was a couple of former force recon guys, like four or five seals, a couple of former scout snipers, the only Air Force guy. But that's just kind of the trajectory of my entire career. And did that operation for a little while. Obama got elected the day after he got elected. The day after he got elected, that that whole covert action program was shut down. Like, I've never seen the U.S. government move with such haste. Sounds like a little bit of a guillotine stroke there.

Yeah, definitely. It was, I mean, literally people coming in, taking apart helicopters, putting in boxes, and getting the heck out. And that little airport went from a pretty busy place to a ghost town overnight. And so then it was like, okay, well, now, like, hey, remember me first deployment and you just hired me to do this like now what and then it was I was like oh we got this other this other thing same office different mission what do you say and so I started doing that and yeah so did the agency basically hire you as a contractor

because there's a couple ways right you can go in and you can and again this is where I'm reaching the lip the depth of my knowledge already I know that like case officers are not contractors This is my understanding, right? They have a whole selection. They can be. But like the selection process, the farm, the traditional stuff that you hear about. And then, and I'll leave all the other acronyms out because I don't know where the sensitivities begin. But there's a lot of contract organizations that support and work with seamlessly.

So the way I explain this to people is it is the, and this isn't anything classified. I mean, it's on the CIA's website, right? I mean, their job is to be the hidden hand of the government. So it doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand that they probably have ways of being the hidden hand of the government, right? So what does that mean? How do you move money? How do you maybe pay people without paying them directly? Right?

There's lots of ways in that. There's this thing called the Publication Review Board, which you are subject to based on your national security non-disclosure agreement for life, primarily for the I. I see in J-Soc, which is essentially a big intelligence agency at this point. And they're also intimately tied together. So intertwined. So intertwined. I mean, half the time you're like, wait a minute. You are military on loan to the CIA on loan back to the military?

Don't worry about the badges today. Yeah. Right? It's like basically it's just like, you know, what title authority were we playing today? Right. Is it a title 20 day? Is it a title 50? What do we got going on your time?

Title 10. So anyway, that's, so the agency has ways of doing that. So the publication review board has told me what I can say. There are plenty of other people who have spoken about some of the ways that the agency works, perhaps in regards to contractors. I don't know whether or not they have been authorized to, or they've just decided, screw it, I'm going to do it anyway. what I know is what the rules I've been given and I'm trying even though I think a lot of them are pretty dumb trying to live by that and and so what I'm allowed to say is that I was a special agent that was part of a full spectrum intelligence operations unit you know that's specialized in working in austere environments and there's a number of different ways that the agency does that the one thing I can tell I can say is that the agency is a great place to work anybody who thinks that the CIA is involved in some big grand conspiracy theory has never worked there because it's a government agency. Hence the donkey with the fly buzzing around its head. Right. Right. You know, now that donkey at the agency in many, many cases, has a better haircut, but it's still a donkey. Of course. And maybe a higher class of fly. Yeah, yeah, exactly,

but it's still a donkey. But the CIA is an incredibly nimble organization, incredibly nimble organization. And that was one of the things that I really liked about it. So I decided, hey, I'm going to go throw my chips over over in this basket and just kind of see what happens. And I also thought, you know, being a, being somebody with a special operations background and a CIA background would probably lead to a pretty broad skill set that would serve me later in life. And so that's kind of why I decided to jump out of Parascue and go to the agency. It's definitely not going to hurt. when the resumes get circulated. Yeah.

It's going to grab some attention as it should. It does. It's a different choice. That's one of the things I like to tell people. It's just a different choice. If somebody spent their entire career in SOCOM units or did a little bit in SOCOM and then spent their entire career in J-Soc or went to the CIA, it doesn't make them better or worse than anybody else.

It just means that they just made a different choice. Now they're going to get different skill sets out of those choices. But those skill sets are not necessarily more useful, depending on what it is that you need them to do. When you left, did they individually outbrief you on what did you call it the PRB? Yeah, publication review board. No, it's not that squared away. You say probably some NDAs. Six week process that took six months.

Holy shit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that was interesting. I actually got to bring my parents to agency headquarters. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. Agency headquarters does have, they do allow visitors. There's a museum. They shoot movies there. Yeah, all stuff that you can see online. Like, it's not. I love it when people are like, yeah, you know, I'm doing some work for the CIA. I can't really talk about it.

And I'm like, you're a fraud. 100%. 100%. Because anybody, and you know, you've got listeners, so I'll tell the listeners, anybody who says that they worked at the CIA can prove it. Yeah. Anybody who says that they worked at the CIA and can't prove it either is not keeping their word to the CIA, right?

So they're breaking their nondisclosure agreements. And if somebody is breaking a national security non-disclosure agreement, what does their word mean to you, right? That's basically the way that I looked at it. And then, two, they, anybody who makes it seem like it's this super secret, like everything is squared away. Jason Bornship. Yeah.

Is full of it because at the end of the day, you've just got a bunch of people who are doing their absolute best to protect the country in the mission that they've been assigned. And they're good at it, right? Where our country is arguably the best in the world at fighting terrorism. Planes aren't crashing into buildings for lack of trying on the part of the bad guys, right? It's just that we're better. eventually they'll get a win right they only got to get one win even if we get 99 yeah but but the CIA is full of

good people the FBI is full of good people um I mean I'd even go so far as to say the ATF is mostly full of good people there's some good people just I know some people at the ATF I'm just joking I like you guys kind of you don't have to put my suppressor application in the shredder we love you It's a brace. Did you have a college degree when you transitioned over to the agency? Because I've heard that's a stumbling block for some people, depending on the path they go. No. I did not.

I actually finished my degree the first year I was at the agency. Interesting. Yeah. So I finished my first degree when I started at the agency basically on deployment because, I mean, if anyone's going to have really kick an internet connection, it's going to be the CIA. Because those Netflix, they don't download themselves, right? I mean, you've got to be able to handle the movie download at volume or at scale. For sure. In addition to the operational things, but those are secondary, of course.

Yeah, that's right. Those things. So, yeah, so I finished my degree while I was in the agency. You do not have to have a degree to work at the CIA. There are some jobs where a degree is mandatory, but they usually or because they need a physician assistant. And if you don't have that little card that says physician assistant, you're not going to get that job. And that's true. At almost every organization. Right.

You're going to hit a glass ceiling depending on what it is that you want to do. Right. And so if you want to go to the CIA or you're working at the CIA maybe in a allegedly a contract role and you want to go to a staff role, the question is who are you competing with? And that's, I get asked about degrees all the time. You know, I've got two companies. You don't have to have a degree to work for any of them. But at the same time, when that resume stack comes in, that's who you're competing against. And so if somebody has a degree and you don't, okay, well, that's fine.

What else do you have to make up for that lack of qualification? And if you don't have anything else, well, good dude doesn't put money in the bank. And so the person with the degree is probably going to get it. And when you look at the CIA, what's interesting about the CIA is, you know, the CIA is a 1% acceptance rate by their own public admission. Well, that's what that's what they get. Now, is it really, you know, is the attrition rate really that high? I mean, I have no idea. They're looking for a certain type of person.

What type of person they're looking for? I've never gotten to see those shiny rocks. I wasn't allowed. But that's actually one of the CIA's most closely. held secrets. Really? Yeah. They're...

What it is they're actually recruiting for? Yeah. Yeah. And then not only that, but how that process works. Because obviously if you knew the process and you knew what they were looking for from a psych perspective and all that, then it'd be pretty easy for foreign countries to infiltrate spies into the organization. So, you know, it's like somebody getting turned down for a, for a J-Soc unit, right?

I mean, for the most part, the SOCOM units. or a meritocracy, right? Either you did or you did not do the drownproofing. Either you did or you did not put the freaking soften a lime in the right freaking container, right? I mean, it's pretty binary. Yeah. But then you get to like the J-Soc level

and then you got all the boards and the psych stuff and all that. And I know some really good dudes who got passed up for J-Soc units. Yeah. As do I. Yeah. And at that point, nobody was like, oh, well, you're now a dirt bag

because you didn't make it to this J-Soc unit. It's like, oh, okay, well, I guess, you know, the more mature operators realize that it's just not the person that they're looking for. It's the same thing at the CIA, right? They're looking for a very specific person. They got a lot of data going back 50 years. They got a very small mission set, right? I mean, the CIA does not have aircraft carriers, so they're not hiring. Maybe they do.

Maybe they do. I don't know. But they're looking for a very specific person. And they, about of the people that they're looking for or the people, or the people, people that they allow to fill a slot, right? They know it takes 100 to make one. Yeah. I mean, and that's just the reality of the agency.

Could you have stayed there and made a career of it if you wanted to? Or was? So could I have? Absolutely. I mean, obviously you didn't because we're sitting here today, but. Yeah. Would my bureaucracy tolerance have allowed it? That's another question.

Yeah. I don't know that, you know, I just don't know. that if I'm going to be right in a desk, I want to be doing it for somebody else. It's fair enough. It's really what it comes down to. What was the point you reached when you decided to leave? Were you already looking at something on the horizon or you reached that bureaucracy tolerance point?

So, oh man, it was a confluence of so many different things, right? So have you heard that in the special ops and in the operational intelligence community, there's a bit of a divorce rate. I have heard that. Yeah, yeah, it turns out the rumor is true. So my unit at the agency at 86% divorce rate, but like, again, that's other people. That's not this guy. It turns out it was this guy.

So, yeah, I got home from Afghanistan. I'm not saying I was in Afghanistan with the CIA. I'm just saying I got home from Afghanistan, right? Maybe you were passing through. Maybe. It is a hub for some airlines. You know. So got home from Afghanistan.

to find my accounts cleared out. Yeah. One of those? One of those. But does that make me unique in my community in any way, shape or form? I know a guy who every stitch of furniture was gone, the ice trays out of the freezer, and everything to include not only the shower curtain, the shower curtain rings. Oh, yeah.

Like empty. So mine was I got home. And because I had not responded to a court order, you know, because I was in Afghanistan and I didn't get it. I actually had my entire house taken away from me, like literally everything. Oh, shit. Yeah, I'll signed over to my now X. Because you didn't respond. So therefore the court probably awarded it in its totality.

Thank you, New Mexico law. It's awesome. Yeah. So I was going through that. And so I was kind of on a career rocket ship, personal sinking submarine. You know, you know the type. Again, I'm not unique in this way. I might be unique in this way in the totality of civilization, but within our community.

Not in the cohort. No, not, not even close. I'm just, I'm one of the, I'm one of the many. Yeah. So I just kind of hit a crossroad where it's like, okay, I can continue to do the career rocket ship. But is that really what I want to do? And I started looking around at the people who I really admired as warriors. I mean, we have phenomenal warriors in this country.

And when compared to those warriors, I looked at it and I'm like, okay, am I like, am I like them, right? Could I be a Billy Waugh? Probably not. You know, I mean, I'm a solid B player. I can get to the B plus level. I go a C minus, you know. C, but I like to come in short a little bit. So I'll give myself a C minus.

So I was like, I'm like, you know, am I going to, do I want to be these people? Yeah. And then long term, is that is it truly what I want? Is it truly what I'm feeling called to do? Is that what I'm spending my time reading about? And, and so there was just this confluence of events that all kind of came together that said, you know, I'm going to go, I'm going to go try my hand and do something different. and I'd really been researching the human trafficking issue for about a seven-year period. What got you on to that topic? Oh, man.

So doing the private personnel recovery stuff ended up with a U.S. citizen who had been abducted in Coppous and Lucas, a 20-year-old woman on her honeymoon and just went to the vending machine and gone, right? Dad was worth a lot of money so he could afford the company. that we were working for. They had a policy through Lloyd's, Nick gets call, started working with the bureau on that one, and the guy was like, oh, man, I bet she's been trafficked. And I was like, no, because I went through that computer-based human trafficking training that the military makes us go through. So I'm an expert on this stuff.

And that is... I saw six PowerPoint slides on this. Yeah. And that is a bunch of Asian kids in shipping containers. Right? Like that's what that is. So like clearly Mr. FBI agent who specializes in this stuff, you're wrong. And so he started educating me on what the human trafficking thing was. And I'm like, man, that's really sad. Right. And one thing you are, you are raised in as a culture as a PJ is that that whole that others may live motto, like that is ground into you. And you look at, you look at what

PJs do. I mean, it all makes sense. And so that's still who you are. And so that's still who you are. And I call it being raised in pararescue because my parents raised me as a child. It basically kept me alive until they could hand me off to somebody else and leave that responsibility to them. But I was truly raised, right, and like who I am today within pararescue. I'm sure you were the same way as a seal. I'm thinking what you're describing me. My parents had an amazing influence. Yeah.

I would describe it as they calibrated my compass. Yeah. But it was really refined around. the generation of seals that shepherded and mentored me and made me less of a danger to myself and others. Yeah. That was really the refinement of, I would say, of my entire 20s was that community, which really shaped who I am today for sure. Absolutely. And so being raised in pararescue and then leaving pararescue and you hear that there's some poor woman got traffic.

It's like, well, then we're going to get her, right? I mean that that and and I ultimately end up getting myself in trouble with the CEO of the company because I was I was just hemorrhaging company money trying to find this girl whose dad's insurance policy was running out. That's a tough situation to be in, which is actually one of the biggest reasons that I left that I left that world. You are incentivized in that world to do what's to to to and actually compensated based on how much money you save the insurance company not based on mission out. That is completely the opposite of what I think it should be. Absolutely. It's a complete antithesis to my mindset. Yeah.

And so is it right? Is it wrong? I'm not the judge of that. I'm just saying it's not the right place for me. So then I end up at the agency and you can't do that work, right? In J-Soc or the CIA, all of it is counter-narcotics or counter-terrorism related. All of it. You can't do that work and not...

and not be bumping into human trafficking, right? I mean, those slums in Roval Pindi, those kids that are in the medians begging, right? I mean, we all know how they get there, and we all know kind of how that works. And I always thought that, again, there's a red door of competence somewhere, and like somebody's got the ball on this issue.

Because as a country, I mean, we can kill people with flying robots from 6,000 miles away. Surely we're doing something about this human trafficking. issue, you know a ton of operators. You ever known any of them who've gone on a human trafficking mission? Zero. Exactly. So I started asking around and couldn't find, could not find the agency that was dealing

with human trafficking. And fast forward, I'm in Lashkar Gai. There's a lot that happens in Lashkarga in my life, actually, on that deployment, by the way. Maybe it's just because it was Helmand Province. And so I was maybe paying a little more attention than I normally would. Helmand will do that to you. Yeah, Helman's a sporty place.

Pinball machine of sorts. Yeah, that's a way to look at it. You know, you spend a lot of time sleeping on walls with, like, magazines stacked. Just waiting to, just wait and rack that action back and start letting it fly over the wall. So, so, yeah, in Lashkar, guy, working with this J-Soc case officer type,

and you get basically smoking gun intel on a guy who's trafficking children from Pakistan into Afghanistan to, and he's selling them off for any number of reasons, and we know some of them, but one of the people that he was selling them off to, and the reason it was relevant to what we were doing was he was selling them off to a bomb maker who was using them to test homemade pressure plates, right?

And so what- And by that, you mean literally step on them to see whether or not they went off, I'm assuming? Yeah, yeah, because he wanted, to create pressure plates that would go off when, you know, man-sized U.S. soldiers stood on them. But not when children stood on them. Not because he cared about the children. It was because he wanted to kill the soldiers.

He didn't want to waste the bomb. Yeah. And so, and we had video of this. And that was just like, what the thought? So we have all this stuff. And I remember this J-Soc case officer was just like, just, I mean, type until two in the morning, gets that report done. Where do you send it? Show me the presidential reporting requirement for you.

human trafficking. Doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. And I was like, I can do something about this. I mean, human trafficking is just another target set. We're darn good at target sets these days. So why not, why not just, you know, put a crew together and go figure this out? And it was something I was going to kind of do off the side of my desk, right? It was going to be super easy to raise money for this. Just asking me. Raising money is so easy. Piece of cake. Yeah. It was going to be easy to raise money for this.

It was going to be, you know, why has this not been done? I started asking around and talking to people. Talk to every single person I knew who'd carried a gun and anger. Law enforcement, military. You ever do anything about human trafficking? Nope. Right. Now, I didn't know any human trafficking detectives, and there kind of wasn't as much of a thing back then.

But I knew lots of narcs guys, gangs guys, right? I mean, lots of soft dudes who then transitioned over to law enforcement. Nobody, nobody do anything about human trafficking. trafficking. Why is that? Because if they're in those world and that world on sport enforcement specifically, I'd have to say, especially here in the U.S., they have to be bouncing up against that kind of all the time. They are all the time. A lot of times they don't know it. They didn't want to do something about it or they guess they never did. Show me the budget line item that funds their ability to do something about it. Fuck, it sucks that everything comes back to that. That's what it comes down to, right? I mean, we have a great sheriff here in Flagg County. And I mean, at the end of the day, he's making decisions based on what is funded and what is not. I mean, you know, ultimately that's, that is what it comes down to. And now I've had to figure that out over the last seven years. But before that, I was like, this is going to be easy.

We're just going to do this. And I'm going to keep doing the agency thing. And I'm just going to go, I'm going to go, you know, help out where I can. A little moonlighting. Yeah. So I actually applied to be a volunteer to the National Center for Missing Exploited Children. I got loft out of the room. There's this whole executive order,

1, 2, 3, 3, 3 about, right? But hey, man. They're like, wait a minute. This is real? And then, you know, they've got a very tight relationship with law enforcement. And then my supervisor, actually,

at the agency, got an email being like, please tell Nick to stop trying to, you know, work for a private nonprofit. You never crossed the streams, man. Yeah, right? So I was like, okay, do that. Started looking around for, there's got to be somebody doing this work. Started looking around. And what I saw was a lot of what I call rogue vigilante cowboyism, right?

We know how to kick doors. So what we're going to go do is kick doors. I'm like, cool. So if you do that without a badge and a gun, that's called felony kidnapping. Yeah, you'll be the one who goes to jail. Yeah, I'm not really, not really interested in that. There was a lot of guys doing the whole, like, we're going to go be a door kicker overseas and rescue kids from brothels and stuff. It's like, Well, that's a fundamental failure to understand how human trafficking works overseas because I've actually been studying this. Anybody who knows me will tell you I'm one of the biggest nerds on the planet. I've been studying this. I talked to Sidharth Kara, who is a professor at both Berkeley and Harvard, arguably one of the formal subject matter experts on the economics of human trafficking.

People are interested in this issue. I highly, highly recommend they read his book. And so I understood what was going on. And what I noticed was that most of the efforts to fight human trafficking was happening overseas. Because human trafficking doesn't happen in the United States of America or does it? Sure, it doesn't. Yeah. And so then I started diving into that specific part of the problem.

What I found was that, yeah, human trafficking happens in the United States of America. It happens at scale. I mean, literally, do you have a lot of kids in your demographic who listen to this? I assume not. Unlikely. Yeah. So. on out let's not have this on while your kids are in the car yeah thank you um so what what we're

talking about when we say human trafficking in the united states is we're talking about um commercial industrialized rape of primarily children that's what we're talking about okay so how can you learn that and study that and understand that at an academic level have all the pieces right we got all the pieces to build this race car that fights human trafficking it's all there um we're really good at this. How can you know all of that and not do something? Right? As William Wilberforce said, you know, you can look away,

but you can never again say you did not know. Yeah. So I was like, okay, well, then I guess I guess that's what I'm gonna go do. And so where do you find all the information when you're studying this? Obviously, you're talking about that professor, but I mean, is there a, I'm gonna assume, Obviously, there's obviously law enforcement databases. I mean, what's the best resource that you use to educate yourself about this? Professors.

Really? Orlando Patterson and Sidharthcaro both at Harvard. Where do they get their information about it? Orlando Patterson is arguably one of the foremost subject matter experts on slavery, like the history of it, all of that. Because we say human trafficking, but ultimately that's just a very cushy word for slavery. Yes, that's what we're talking about. And so he really understands that well because, I mean, this full-time job at an Ivy League University is to teach courses on it and study it.

So, Sidarth Kara, the same way. You know, full-time job at two Ivy League universities is to teach courses and study this issue. So you really have to get into academic papers, right? I mean, you're using Google Scholar a lot to find this stuff. There's very, very few books that I think are truly worth reading. on the human trafficking issue. Mandatory reading at Deliver Fund is you have to read Siddharthcarra's book,

everybody. I don't care if you're an EA or you know, you're the top fundraiser or you're an analyst. You've got to read Siddharthcarra's book, which is called Sex Trafficking, the Economics of Human Trafficking. And then you have to read this book by Mosas Niam called

Elicit. And Elicit really explains how the whole underground economy all works together. All things you know. know from your work, right? I mean, we know that if you want to find the bomb builder, you find the guy who makes the documents, right? We all know this stuff. But keep in mind, the average law enforcement officer doesn't know this. There's no training course to become a human trafficking detective. There is no specialization here, right?

You're talking modern day that still doesn't exist? Modern day, that still, that does exist now because we created it. I mean, this is what we do with our donor funding is we equip train and advise law enforcement and commercial entities on the fight against human trafficking. And we focus specifically on the human trafficker. And this was the other epiphany that I had was that the major majority of the funding that we were spending in this country on the fight against human trafficking was actually happening at the victim level, which is important. We shouldn't stop that.

But the victim restoration process, average of seven years, $65,000 a year in expenditure. I mean, it's not scalable. So why are we continually playing cleanup instead of going after the actual person who's creating the problem, right? You cannot have a human trafficking victim if you do not have a human trafficker. It's the common denominator in the equation. You remove the human trafficker and the whole equation falls apart. And that was really the epiphany that was like, okay, got to go after human traffickers.

So I looked at joining Department of Homeland Security and let's just say, that I managed to somehow become the absolute best human trafficking detective the world has ever seen. Okay. Still one guy. And at this point, I've learned enough about government bureaucracies that I know, wait a minute. That grass is actually not even green. It's they gave me green colored glasses to put on. Yeah.

It's the same color of desert brown. Right? Yeah. So that's when I was like, okay, how do it? I do this. Well, we know a thing or two about FID, quip train, and advise. The agency is darn good at that. Right? Socom and J-Soc communities are really good at that. And we know how to do that with freaking Libyans who don't like us. We don't like them. We have absolutely nothing in common. We don't speak each other's language. If you find somebody with a sixth grade education, like congratulations,

you won the lottery. That person is now the commander of that. thousands of people, right? So if we can be successful in those environments with the terrorism issue, and let's keep in mind that a lot of, again, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, anybody who's actually been involved in the war on terror truly understands how true that is. Because if you start driving, if you're from another country and you start driving MRAPs through my neighborhood, we're going to go to blows. It's going to happen. And And so you start to understand after a while why people are shooting at you. It doesn't mean you don't shoot back.

And it doesn't mean that they don't incur the consequences of that. But you start to understand. Well, the human trafficking issue is a binary issue. You're with us or against us. There is no like, well, see, there's a reason they're a human. There's a reason they're enslaving human beings. There's a reason there. See, that's what makes sense to me.

Yeah. You hear people justifying, getting very close to justifying. Exactly that. And those are evil people who deserve to be confronted. Let's not call them a pedophile. Let's call them a minor attracted person. No. Try to round the edges. No. I don't understand the motivation behind doing those things because I agree with you. Oh, I understand the motivation. That's fucking binary to they're in on it. That's the, that's the motivation. Like you, you, you think it's okay to abuse children in any way, especially what we're talking about primarily with children here in the United States is sexually abusing these children for your own profit. You're an evil human being. that deserves to be put down by the system. I agree with you completely. Period. I mean, I have tolerance for adults doing stupid shit and suffering the consequences.

I have zero tolerance for people who prey on children. Absolutely. And ultimately what it comes down to, and I think you'll find this with a lot of soft folks. How many soft guys have you ever met who were bullies? Not many. How many of them have you met who got into a lot of fights in high school with bullies? Quite a few. Exactly.

Right? And what are human traffickers? They're bullies that are preying on weak people. So if we are willing to lay down our lives for the defense of the country, I mean, when I left the CIA, the GWAT didn't miss Nick, right? Just slot another guy right in there. It was probably did a better job than I did, quite frankly. You know, so. Nick V2.

Yeah. So GWAT didn't miss me. And that's actually most of us. I mean, if we're honest. Let's be honest. It's all of us. Yeah. I mean, when we left, the next generation came up and they probably did a better job.

I hope so. That should be the natural evolution. Yeah, because we created the foundation that allowed them to do a better job, just like the guys in Vietnam, a lot of created the foundation for us, right? I mean, that's the cycle. But if nobody is really fighting the human trafficking epidemic at scale, well, now it's time to do something, right? And so what I realized was we got all the training.

We got all the people with the experts or the resources. We have all the proper experts. We have everything. We just need to put it together and fund it. And so that's what we did when we created the liver fund. And I say we because, yeah, it might have been my brain child. And I'm like coming up with logos and my off time and doing this kind of stuff and figuring it all out. But really another seal.

Jeremy Mayhew, who's actually from Valley originally. Is he? Yeah. He lives in Dallas. now but he trader well he lives up here in the summer oh he has a place in Lakeside has a place in Olney all right welcome back yeah so anyway the organization would not be where it is today without him my chief of operations is yet another seal Michael Fulilov he was a human guy at SA2 okay and then

seal career right 20 plus years he's running our operations now. And, you know, we just have to put these people together and we have to fund the mechanism and make it work. And here we are seven years later, more successful than we ever could have imagined. We're working with over 70 law enforcement agencies. We have a waiting list of law enforcement that is, that wants our help. We have analysts embedded in human trafficking task forces around the country. I mean, if you think about any media you've seen around human trafficking in the last three months, operation reclaim and rebuild in California, deliver fund fully embedded in that, deliver fund actually being referenced in the charging documents for

these human traffickers because prosecutors are getting so comfortable with working with us. We're really just taking the J-Soc model and applying it to local law enforcement, right? We've got the Super Bowl operation. We had analysts embedded in both task forces there. The big Operation of Missouri, that just happened a couple weeks ago. And so now it's like, wow, we've figured this out. We're doing it at scale. Primarily what we do is software related, and people don't realize that. Really? Yeah. So, I mean, where's your targeting data come from on the CT side? If you had zero, like, all right, clean slate, what's the first thing those targeting officers are doing? Getting online. Yeah.

Right. And if you can find targeting data online in freaking rock farmer land Afghanistan, you're probably going to find some of the United States of America. The land of cat five. Yeah. So it was just a matter of actually paying attention to it and putting the resources behind it and figuring it out. Is this shit happening in plain sight? Plain sight. Obscured. You could pull the websites up on your phone.

You probably don't know where to go. I was going to say it's probably obscured by the. volume of internet data and activity. Start looking forward on your phone. You'll find it within five minutes. I don't want to because I feel like you'll send me a text and be like, hey, Dickhead, you just popped up on it. There is a portion of that.

Yeah, there's some websites that I'm going to go ahead and not browse to. Yeah. Not interested. There's about 32 websites here in the United States. Most of them are actually not actually headquartered here in the United States. They're headquartered in friendly jurisdictions overseas. to those website operators, I say, when you leave the protection of the United States, so do we.

So what's very interesting is they leave the United States thinking that they're protecting themselves and all they're doing is opening themselves up to things that we couldn't do otherwise. And our partners overseas can do a whole lot more to those sites otherwise. But just focusing here in the United States, there's about 32 of them that are relevant. There's actually hundreds of them, but ultimately it's where's the source data, right? Like where's the originating source? It only comes down to about 32 websites. And we are all over those websites like White on Rice.

We know everything they do, everything they post up. Yeah, I mean, and people talk about, like, well, why can you talk about what you do with Deliver Fund? Well, why can you drop flyers in a village before you hit it, right? I mean, everything that we do is completely above board. legally blessed. Prosecutors love us, right? We don't, we actually help their cases. We don't hurt their cases.

And we do it all without ever leaving our keyboards, right? This is not, I like to say, in fact, we have a T-shirt on our website that has this kind of rendering of Al Pacino. But instead of holding an M4 with an M-203 on it, he's holding the keyboard and it says shooters with computers. Because that's what we are now. you know that that's that's the weapon and I would even say even overseas in the the counterterrorism fight right keyboard is the weapon and so it really is you have to have good intel and good information before you I mean actions on target you train your entire lifetime for that you have to know what target and what door to go through to actually have an impact exactly and that's and that's what we do is we we are that targeting cell for human traffickers um for the United States and that's and that's what we do is we we are that targeting cell for human traffickers um for the United States. But then we ran into another problem, right? So we started, so in my naivete, I decided that I'm just going to start handing target packages to law enforcement.

They're going to love me for it. And instead they were like, who are you? How did you get this information? No, leave, right? So, okay, time to pivot, figure that out. Yeah. So we had a couple of really good law enforcement officers who took the chance on us, a couple of Homeland Security agents who took the chance on us and started working with us.

And then next thing you know, it just starts spreading like wildfire. And we were getting calls from nowhere, Indiana, Nebraska, and Alaska, and Miami, and, you know, all these folks helping us out. So I decided that, so what I'd done is I had dumped my retirement and I'd sold all my guns and my bike. And that was my, that was my seed round. Yeah. And then I'm like, okay, I got to start raising some money. I've got to figure this out. there's really no for-profit model for helping law enforcement because you could go to

Flatt County Sheriff right now and say, hey, I'll teach you everything you need to know. Here's the invoice. He's going to say, I have no bucket of money to pay that. And even if they do have the budget, it might be, you know, the whole government's bucket of money thing, right? So it might be focused on gangs or drugs or terrorism, but it's not, there is no human trafficking. Yeah, allocated because of some stupid three-digit code on there, so therefore it can't be used

for that type of stuff. Right. So that's really where we decided, okay, it's got to be a nonprofit. Let's go raise some money and let's start doing this. And so that's what we did. And not only has it worked really well, but once we figured out that nobody was actually building the cyber tools, right? I mean, so, you know, China Lake might build some tools for J-Soc because they want one. Well, there is nothing like that for law enforcement. So we started building software tools and really were at, about a 50-50 company between operational support and software, right, and actually building the software. Well, then we realize that a lot of times law enforcement don't, like, will give them the target package and they trust us, but now they don't necessarily know what to do with it because they can get that training, right? And it's nothing against the law enforcement officers. In fact, when you look at what law enforcement does in this country with as little resources that they have to do it, it's very impressive. Super impressive. Super impressive. And, you know, you look at all the

training that a CIA case officer goes through or, you know, a GB guy or a GRS guy or something like that, right? And now you look at what training does a detective get very little and they're essentially doing the same mission, in a less dangerous place, but essentially the same mission. So, okay, so then we started training them. We developed the counterhuman trafficking intelligence operations course. So we put on four of those a year. We bring in about 20 law enforcement officers from jurisdictions all over the country into Dallas. Pre-COVID, it was into Dallas. Now it's a computer screen near you.

Yeah, now it's a computer screen near you for a couple hours over a couple of weeks. But once life returns back to... Ted Normal. Yeah. We'll be bringing law enforcement officers back to our headquarters in Dallas and putting those classes back on.

So we started doing that piece. Then we found that... And this actually might be something you don't know. Do you know how in our world, right? So in the counterterrorism world, CTC was the central brain of all things terrorism, right? So it doesn't matter who you are, law enforcement, military, Joe on the street, all things terrorism flows through there. There's no equivalent of that for human trafficking in the United States for local law enforcement. So local law enforcement officers only have the contact of other law enforcement officers if they happen to see them in a conference or a training or something like that.

If the Flathead County Sheriff wants to get a hold of a sheriff in some county in Nebraska that he doesn't know, he goes through the website and the front desk operator just like everybody else. Really? Yeah. That's a problem. When you talk about a highly, highly transitory black market economy that is selling what our, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what a, what. are illicit commodities, right, human trafficking victims within a black market economy. So imagine trying to fight the war on terror, except for various fobs, aren't allowed to communicate to each other. And no blue force trackers, so you don't even know where everybody is.

Yeah, no nothing. Wow. Real problem. That's unacceptable in 2021, given the digital assets and resources that are available. Yeah. So we built a program called Path Platform for the Analysis and Targeting of human traffickers. And what that does is there's currently over 70 law enforcement agencies on it, everywhere from the feds to local county sheriffs.

And what that does is it connects human trafficking cases nationally. And in some cases internationally, but we don't focus international. We just focus here on the United States. Really think the last thing the world needs is more Americans running overseas, telling them what to do for their problems. I agree. Let's clean up our own yard first and then export the way to do that. And so here nationally within Path, platform for analysis and tariff.

of human traffickers, a bunch of military guys, we gotta have an acronym. Yep. It's got- I would have made it like cock though or something like that. Computer something. Computer operations countering kids being hurt. Computer operations countering kids.

There you go. See, this is, this is why everybody listening. This is why we can't have nice things people. This why we can't have nice things and why we need adult supervision. Taking us back to the beginning of the podcast. So anyway, it's got an AI backbone and what it does is if you put in a phone number, say, that's associated with a human trafficker, it's running a case that you're investigating. But now that human trafficker skips town, he's out of your jurisdiction, not your town, not your problem, right? And he moves to the neighboring city.

And now I'm a human trafficking detective and I take notice of that and I put in the phone number and the information I get into the system. The system then says, hey, there's already a detective from this location who is interested in this case. Here's our contact information. Why don't you to chat? So it puts it all together. It also really helps solidify federal cases. Some states you want a state charge, Texas and Montana, right? Northern Command and Southern Command.

You want a state charge because it's life in prison. Is it? Yeah. Should be gas chamber. At the federal level, it is minimum mandatory sentence of 15. years. You will get more for money laundering than you will get for human trafficking in a federal charge. So call your congressmen and senators. Yeah, that's unacceptable. Completely unacceptable. And so what this allows prosecutors to do is say, okay, wait a minute, Detective So-and-So in

Nebraska had a case against, or was starting to open investigation into this guy. And so was Detective So-and-So in Casper, Wyoming, and so is Detective So-and-so in Denver, and so as Detective So-and-so in L.A. Well, that sure looks like this guy's traveling across the country. Well, one, it allows us to get predictive because then we can say, okay, where is he, right, he's following an artery. Where is that trafficker most likely to end up? And I say he, but there's a lot of human traffickers that are actually females, women who are trafficking other women. Some of those traffickers, not all, but some of those traffickers were human trafficking victims who essentially started to help the trafficker run the trafficking business to get favorable

treatment. And then psychologically, they have just completely gone over to the other side. And so when I say he, when I'm referring to human traffickers, it's just because that's the majority, but make no mistake, there are women who are human traffickers. But what this system allows allows our analysts to do is say, well, they're in Indiana right now. Oh, and look, they just posted an ad in Detroit. They're obviously headed, they're headed to Detroit. Let's let law enforcement know that these folks are entering their A.O. So when you say they're traveling, are they taking the victims with them? Is this like a mobile road show we're talking about here? Oh, yeah. Because if there's no federal agency to deal with this, and once it's not in a local law enforcement,

jurisdiction it's not their problem anymore wouldn't you want to move about every three to seven days I mean what does that look like are we talking I mean they're not buying greyhound tickets for these people and what oh they are oh yeah plane tickets greyhound tickets sometimes sending them by themselves we had a case in the southwest where we're pretty sure it was a human trafficking victim so oftentimes people confuse human trafficking and prostitution to very very different things right a prostitute for whatever reason is making a choice, is providing a service, and getting to keep the proceeds of that labor, right? I got a lot of opinions about that, but that is not my fight. However, human trafficking is somebody who's being enslaved. The type of slave labor, they're

being forced to reform primarily here in the United States of America is commercial sex in nature, so you can see how they look the same, but they're obviously not anywhere near it. And the other thing that gets confused with human trafficking is human smuggling, which is also chosen, right? I live in Guatemala. I don't like the way that this is happening. I want to get my family out of there. I hire somebody to get me across the border. That's human smuggling.

Now, once I get here to the United States, I exist outside the system. So I am now vulnerable to human trafficking. But one is not the other. Makes sense? It does make sense. you know, if they're moving people via plane and, you know, Greyhound bus, wouldn't that give them the opportunity to, I don't know, not get on the airplane or not get onto the bus?

So human trafficking victim shows up in the southwest United States and operation, large operation that law enforcement is running. One of our analysts is embedded in the human trafficking unit in this city. And for this operation, human trafficking victim shows up. And, you know, our analyst is a full dossier on this human trafficking victim. There's no trafficker anywhere to be found. Like, huh, maybe we got it wrong. Start talking to the girl.

Detective start laying out all the evidence they have. Basically, they're trying to convince her that they know that she's a victim and that she's not going to be arrested and that if she cooperates, they'll help. And finally she breaks down crying and she says, I can't help you because he has my kid. And there lies the crux. Yep, law enforcement runs the phones, and sure enough, all kinds of text messages going back and forth about, you know, this trafficker is going to hurt her baby if she doesn't, you know, if she doesn't make a grand a day. So let's go back a step in this. Layout for me how that situation would even develop.

How would they select that woman, how, you know, with the child, how would they get possession of the child? Like what at a broad level, obviously, I'm sure every case is unique in its own way. But the actual foundation and framework of it, like what does it generally look like? So it all starts with fraud usually, right? It's, so theoretically this can happen to any girl or young boy, any person who's kind of outside the system. But once you start adding lower socioeconomic status,

you take away a positive male role model, especially for females, you start taking taking away the infrastructure of society, what do they have? Nothing really. So human trafficker comes along and starts showering them with gifts, starts, you know, I mean, we had one human trafficking victim who was super impressed because the trafficker took her to Sonic, right? I mean, this isn't-

The burger place? The burger place, like the drive-up, right? And he had a, you know, 15-year-old Lincoln town car and she thought that was pretty high class. right so he comes along starts showering her with gifts starts paying attention to her starts you know trying to fill quite frankly that that god-sized hole in her heart and so next thing you know she's hanging out with him and then he says can't come pick you up after work she's working at a fast food restaurant can't come pick you up after work but I'm sending a friend to

pick you up one of my one of my one of my one of my friends wives okay no problem She gets in the car and she just participated in her own kidnapping. The friend's wife was a human trafficker and her husband was a human trafficker. And the boy that she thought she'd been dating had about seven or eight other girls on the line because he was a recruiter for a human trafficker. Kind of hard to recruit a 16-year-old girl when you're a 37-year-old man. And so they get her in the house. again parents if you're listening this in the car and you shut it off right now they get her in the

car in the house the trafficker's brother is there beat her brutally rape her over a period of days and what they call a seasoning process stick her in a dog crate and start force feeding her narcotics and this is probably standard this is standard procedure okay there are literally books about this which is one of the things that blew me away when I started looking into this is there are there are you know we call it pimping but make no mistake there is no such things that thing is a good pimp. If you consider yourself a pimp, please give me a call at 505-715-6-4-7-2. Right? Like, we're going to talk, and my organization is going to make you our hobby because there is no such thing as a good pimp, right? That's not a thing. Pimps are human traffickers,

full stop, full stop. And we have multiple human trafficking. traffickers, ex-human traffickers, who actually are on our payroll, who are infiltrated into all these various closed, you know, Facebook groups and things like that, and are actually, you know, it's kind of cleansing for their soul. They've done their time in prison, and it's cleansing for their soul to help us, um, yeah, find the people that they used to be. Um, but so, yeah, this is pretty standard practice. They write books from prison. Um, this all goes back to what's called the, the, the Memphis model of pimping back to the 1960s. I mean, this is standard operating procedure. I would imagine there's multiple people in multiple dog crates in that, or in every stage of that along the way. Absolutely. And then where does it go from there?

So it doesn't always go to that level. It's what they call the, you know, the most, what they call the rogue girls. And keep in mind, we talk about this in general realities, right? We say that, well, there's a human trafficking.

We say he, but we know that there's some she's. Human trafficking victim, we predominantly say she, but we've been involved in quite a few cases where it was young boys, right? In one case, it was a young boy who was targeted over a period of months through a gaming console. My legal counsel says I'm not allowed to say which one, but you could make a guess and you'd probably

50% chance of being right. Yeah, targeted through a gaming console, human traffic, was, and it's called grooming. It's a grooming process and grooming this boy to, you know, let his guard down. Next thing you know, where do you live? And then this human trafficker was a truck driver. And he showed up in this kid's neighborhood and texted him on the gaming console and just said, hey, I'm up the street with my dad.

Come, you know, come hang out. So a kid leaves his house. The kid disappears. They find his cell phone in the front yard. And he was three states over. Luckily, one of our senior analysts, Kara Smith, former Air Force Sigantir turned NSA Detailee turned DOJ analyst. I mean, she's one of those types, right? You know the target.

Exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. She's an Instagram called it's at Kara the Huntress. She's pretty awesome. She tracked down this. She tracked down the human trafficker. the kid, it was just a matter of hours and a SWAT team kicked in their door and rescued the kid about a day later. What happens to a man like that in prison? Do they receive, I'm hoping that

they receive a particular type of welcome. You know, I don't know. Getting, because I've heard pedophiles don't get treated so hot in prison. Yeah. So when we talk about human. And there's a difference obviously here. Yeah. Well, yes and no. Probably a blending of the two worlds, but like, Blending, the overlap on the Venn diagram is darn near a circle. Because you have, you know, pedophiles are creating, you know, child pornography and things like that. And obviously, you know, touching children as well and doing horrible things. But the human trafficking piece, really what, when we talk about human trafficking, what we're talking about is somebody who is being controlled through force, fraud, or coercion and being forced to perform labor for the economic benefit of somebody else. Now, there are people like Orlando Patterson, again, super expert in

all things slavery at Harvard, and he will say that in order to have a true human trafficking situation, you need transport, but the law disagrees with him. The law just says that as long as you meet those three things, or somebody's under the age of 18, right? They're a minor. So anything that happens to a minor in the, especially in the commercial sexual world, can be, can be charged as human trafficking, but predominantly, and prosecutors really like those cases, because were they a minor? Yes, did you check these blocks? Yes, go to jail, right? Super easy. Prosecutors like them. And we need the laws to be that easy when it comes to the protection of children. However, girls 18 in a day, now she's got to testify. So you're going to take this

human trafficking victim and to put you to put it into perspective and yeah this this conversation went went deep pretty quick now you know why the the nickname I always had was buzzkill so what you know women who have had substance abuse issues and and they have psych issues you know women who have been sexually assaulted psych issues women who have been physically just, you know, assaulted and beat up, psych issues, women who've been emotionally abused, psych issues, women who've been, you know, with eating disorders abused. Human trafficking victims have all of those things wrapped into one happening at an industrial scale.

So where are their brains? You know, we talk about PTSD in the veteran community. Yeah. This is next level. Yeah. We have three human trafficking victims on payroll who work for us, help us hunt down human traffickers help us, you know, get the services that other human trafficking victims need. And, I mean, they are amazing people. When you talk to them, they're bright, they're articulate.

They've got a really good sense of people. They, they, they are very quick studies. They learn very fast. And you look at what they had to overcome to get to that point. It's truly amazing. So these human trafficking victims, when they go through all of this, right? And now let's see that human trafficking victim who went through all those horrific experiences is now going to have to testify against the person who did it to her three months after, you know, she's finally out. Yeah. How's that going to go? No, well.

You're going to put her up against an Ivy League trained defense attorney, right? which attorneys who defend human traffickers, like you can also feel free to text me at the number I gave earlier in this podcast. I'd love to have a conversation with you. Right. I mean, there's just a certain amount of evil. Like what won't you do? And there's this whole philosophical argument that, well, everybody deserves protection under the law. No, that's just not true. Yeah, I was going to say I disagree with that also. So anyway, so what we do is we help law enforcement go after the money laundering angle. We help them go after all different. types of crimes that these, because if you're committing human trafficking, like, there's a, there's a wake of crimes behind you. Yeah, I was going to say, it's probably not a one item jam. No, no. And human trafficking is also not one of those things where you're like, hey, man, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like, you don't get it. Like, you just, you happen to fall into some human trafficking. It doesn't happen. What is the, what does the execution of that

human trafficking look like? So you're saying they'll travel, which makes sense. They, using the internet, I'm assuming they're posting. I mean, what are they posting? So everything from agricultural help, right, in the migrant worker community to not all migrant workers are trafficked people, but a small subset are, where some rancher is working with a labor broker to bring labor to his ranch or to his farm to, say, pick produce. and what he sees is he paid a labor broker and all these people showed up and started doing the thing he paid them to do. So he just assumes that those people are being paid.

But the reality is the labor broker is keeping all the money and having 27 of them live in a three-room mobile home with one bathroom. Right. I mean, so that's kind of the execution on the labor side. The illicit massage parlor industry, like everybody, especially veterans listen to this. Like, got to tell you guys, like if you are, if you are participating, in the basically the rub maps culture and most people don't know what that means but it guarantee you some of your some of your listeners just just understood these are all things I didn't know yeah but there's a couple of your listeners who just broke out into a cold sweat by me saying

that they're participating in that culture if you've done it more than three times there's a hundred percent chance you have fed money into the human trafficking cycle right so so things that You know, especially sailors overseas off ships. I mean, you know, many people listening to this know what I'm talking about. It's not what people think, right? It's not prostitution. It's human trafficking. Like these women are, the major majority of them are being forced to do this.

And now are there sex workers? Absolutely. Are there women who are making half a million dollars a year, you know, selling their company with older men? Absolutely. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about slavery. And so the execution of it is really just like any other business model, right? They're going to the place they can get the most profit, and they're trying to mitigate their risk.

And in this case, the risk is law enforcement. So, you know, why don't they, we get all kinds of questions. Like, well, why don't they just tell a John, or, you know, one of the customers that they're being trafficked when the trafficker has their baby in another city? Right. I mean, it's- What are you going to say? Nothing. They're not going to say anything.

Not only that, but traffickers will send their buddies in to go pose as law enforcement officers to see if the girl will flip. And then when she does to their buddy, they beat them senseless. And so now a real cop comes into the room and they're like, hey, we think you're a human trafficking victim. And she's like, oh, I've seen this movie before. Yeah, for sure. Not doing that.

So it's very, very difficult for the victims to get the help they need. And when you think about where their minds have to go just to survive, like psychologically, where their minds have to go. I mean, we all know, in the war, maybe took things a little too far on target. Yeah. Because that's where their minds had to go to survive. And we don't judge them for that at all. In fact, quite frankly, if you're a politician listening to this, those men need immunity. Or don't ask them to go do those things.

but a human trafficking victim, where does her mind have to go in order to survive? Right? It's a pretty dark place. Yeah. And so, and now you want her to do the rational thing?

It's a lot to ask. It's a lot to ask of anybody. And so, so that's why we have to have a system that rallies around those victims and protects them from not only their trafficker, but then being further exploited by the system.

What would you say the scale or sizes of humid trafficking in the United States? You know, that is such a good question that we don't have a great answer to. It's an illicit commodity. It's like saying how many terrorists are there in the world? Seven. Yeah, right? You clearly have some information. I have some people who want to talk to you.

Exactly somewhere near seven. Yeah. So we don't know, but we can make estimates, right? We can make educated guesses. And so there's really two metrics I like people to focus on here. One comes from the National Center for Missing and Disploited Children. Phenomenal organization, our country owes them a debt of gratitude for what they're doing, you know, around the missing kids issues, child exploitation issues in general.

They did a study where they found that their tips coming in from law enforcement went up by 840. 26% in a five-year period. So rapid and expansive growth. Yeah. And when you overlay that expansion with the adoption of the smartphone of pockets or computers in your pocket, all right, with basically unlimited access to the internet, what you find is a ripe opportunity for many businesses to scale up, human trafficking being one of them. So take that metric and now look at just trafficked children.

According to the National Center for Missing or Exploited Children, one in four missing kids will end up in the human trafficking cycle. They estimate there's about 100,000 children who go missing in this country every year. So conservative estimates are, and we're not even talking about adults. We're not talking about anybody over the age of 18 here. Conservative estimates are that the victim population under 18. grows by about 25,000 children a year. What is the average age of somebody being trafficked? Also a lot of speculation on that.

Some will say 12 to 14. We don't think that is accurate. We think 14 to 16 is a more accurate number. And probably skews more towards the female side? 97% female. So those major operations you were talking about that happened recently. How much of a dent does it make? in the infrastructure and the ability for people to do stuff like that.

Makes a significant dent, right? It's like saying, well, what would happen if we took the counterterrorism center out of the fight against human trafficking? The whole thing would, or I mean, the fight against terrorism, the whole thing would blow up again. So for us, each one of those operations is really important. So we passed hundreds of target packages on human traffickers at the Super Bowl, right? The Super Bowl is a market opportunity for,

human traffickers. So they probably are, because it moves around every year too, right? So they probably come there as well. Yeah, they come there. A different type of Super Bowl. Yeah. So the human, the human traffickers are there, like they coordinate. They work together, right? This, and this is what's great is they're giving each other kind of best practices and lessons learned. That's excellent. Right? Online. And we're fully integrated into those, into those chat rooms and the various forums that they're communicating on and closed Facebook groups where they think they're letting in somebody.

Well, Facebook is a skiff. I don't know this. It's a private group or room. Yeah. Nobody can get in. And they don't keep the information. Never. It's like a disappearing.

Yeah. Yeah. People are idiots with their electronic devices, and I'm really appreciative of that when we're talking about people like this. Yeah. We have one of our analysts actually has a ongoing text thread, like cell phone to cell phone.

a cell phone with a active human trafficker, a pretty, pretty smart one, too, actually. Yeah, and she worked for a period of years to kind of social engineer her way in there, and she's actually chatting with this guy on like, you know, she's trying to become a human trafficker, and he's giving her best practices, and oh, yeah, it's awesome. I was at an event in the Arizona Attorney General's office had a detective there, and he said, working with Deliver Fund makes fighting human trafficking, like shooting, fish in a barrel. So the problem, though, on top of all that, is if I were to make every human trafficker in the country glow neon green right now, one, it's going to surprise you some of the

people. Two, law enforcement wouldn't be able to do anything about more than about 5% of it. Why? They don't have the manpower. Oh, shit. They don't have the prosecutors. Prosecutors are something, when we talk about that thin blue line that separates, you know, the, I hate to use the word wolves and sheep dogs because I think it's completely overplayed. And anybody who understands, anybody who's truly been to war understands that it's actually the wolves who win wars. Yeah, it's the sheep that are actually the most dangerous. Yeah.

So, but the truly evil people, that thin blue line that helps us all sleep in night and makes it so we don't have that bars over our windows, those, that is the law enforcement community. So it's law enforcement officers on the street. but it's also prosecutors. Prosecutors are an incredibly important part of the law enforcement system. And you think there's not enough cops. Oh, there's a fraction.

A fraction of prosecutors. And so there's not enough prosecutors. There's not enough law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, the political system has set it up in such a way that prosecutors are incentivized to be risk adverse because it can potentially hurt their career. I mean, they can get fired for losing cases, right? I mean, imagine if a SEAL team commander would get fired if a seal didn't come home. He's going to make very different decisions. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. And we've even seen some of that. Yeah. And so that's the situation our prosecutors are in. And so if they got to choose between taking a risk on a human trafficking case that they think they've only got about a 60% probability of closing or feeding their families, they're going to feed their families. Right? Because there's a reason the DOJ, as an example, has I believe it's an 86% success rate in prosecutions. Right? They pick the winners.

They pick the winners and they don't, they do not take risks on the prosecution side. So there's not enough prosecutors. There's not enough law enforcement officers, right? And then we get into like mandates and all of that. So what we are doing is we're taking a very holistic approach. You know, we may have paid attention to a fertilizer manufacturer or two overseas. We do the same thing in the commercial enterprises here. So we work with companies that, because of NDAs, I can't say who they are, but they're big household recognizable names that are doing the right thing

and making it so that the human traffickers can't use their platform. Because when a human trafficker goes on a business trip, he books a ticket, he uses Uber. He uses Airbnb. He uses, you know, keyless check-in at hotels. He rents a car from a rental car company. I mean, he does all the same things you and I do. Yeah. So we work with these companies to actually deny territory,

deny the territory of polite civilization and the business, the things that we all need to do business, we deny that territory to the human trafficker. That's what reduces it at scale. So it's a holistic approach, right? You got to have sticks, but then you also have to just make it so it's just complicated. And again, I'm not some super genius. I mean, this sounds a whole lot like the way we fight the war on terror.

Yeah. Right? We do a lot of anti-money laundering work. We do a lot of work with banks to help them kick human traffickers out of their bank. And there's a process for that. How do they generally try to clean that money? Same way. Probably narcotics is probably very similar.

Yeah, so this is where off air, I'll kind of tell you some trade secrets that you're going to love. Because it's so. Sorry listeners. Yeah, it's just so good. But, you know, human traffickers don't want a defense or they don't want a human trafficking charge. They want some type of charge, you know, lower level charge. And so we can get them to admit to things that they don't understand. Actually, we'll get them more years than human.

human trafficking. We can't. We train law enforcement on how to do that. And then prosecutors love it because by defending themselves against the human trafficking charge, they are admitting to a charge that's way easier for them to prosecute that they can actually get, that they have a very high probability of being able to convict on, which is why most of our cases actually just go to a plea. has there been a trafficker in an occupation that just shocked you or at a level inside you know what I mean like you would never think that somebody who does fill in the blank at fill in the blank like they would be immune from this and airline pilot really yeah airline pilot white dude super super kind the kind of person that you know you would you would never ever imagine there's media on it I don't want to say what company because they're actually trying to, you know, fight you know, probably not have it be the front page. Yeah, but it does tend to affect the stock price.

Yeah. But yeah, it was an airline pilot. It's absolutely, absolutely shocking. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that is, I don't think I would have guessed that one. No. I mean, we sure is heck didn't.

Yeah. We sure is heck didn't. What would you, I mean, some people see things and other people are oblivious. to things to include myself. Like, I often will miss social cues. But I could... You too? Yeah, but I could almost always tell you how to murder everybody in a room.

Sure. You know? So I have some blind spots. Career hazard. Yeah. But there are other people who I think pick up on that type of stuff. And for people who may feel like they are witnessing human trafficking, what do you, what do you, what does somebody do who doesn't do what you do? And they think that they are either observing it or have concerns about it.

So in the modern age, if you are witnessing human trafficking, most likely you're a customer. Not always. There have been some really good examples of airline stewardesses who said something because they just got the wrong vibe. I've read stories about this. Yeah, there's a hotel manager. I want to actually say here in Montana in a motel six who called law enforcement because they just knew something was wrong. Yeah.

But by and large, you're not really going to see human trafficking because, I mean, there's been so many victims that when we talk to them, they say that the, usually the hotels are in on it or a lot of times the hotels are in on it. The hotels are probably the people working at the hotel. Yeah, it's the, you know, it's the seedy hotels, you know exactly which ones. Yeah. And the locks are actually flipped on the room. So you need a code or you need a key or whatever to get out of the room.

Fuck. So, yeah, I mean, this is, this is, so again, you see, you see a lock flipped on a hotel. If you're staying in one of those hotels, definitely say something. But who do you say something to? Law enforcement. That's the thing that everybody asks. Like, oh, should we call you a deliver fund? I'm like, no, you should call law enforcement.

And in fact, with very, very few exceptions, we don't take tips from the public. We used to, and then we got flooded with narcotics. and, you know, all kinds of other things, literally people calling because they saw an interracial couple at the mall and thought that, well, clearly somebody's being trafficked. I mean, it was ridiculous. And so we only work to support law enforcement right now. Those tips need to go to law enforcement.

So if you're truly that concerned, take the time. Dial 911, you know. Preferably, if you, you know, that's a last resort. Let's not tie up the emergency line. But if you think you're witnessing human trafficking and you don't know what else to do, just dial 911 and tell the dispatcher what it is that you think you're seeing. It'll be recorded. And then that will be a tip for the local law enforcement.

So there is the National Human Trafficking Hotline. There are kind of DC level things. But ultimately, what you have to ask yourself is who's going to take action? Because ultimately, that's what we need in the fight against human trafficking. We need action. We need people taking action in form of education and outreach. We need people donating to organizations like Deliver Fund that are doing this work. We need people calling their law enforcement saying, hey, I think I see some human trafficking.

And the other piece of action that people need to be doing is holding their politicians accountable. So when you have a governor or an attorney general or somebody who says that they take human trafficking seriously, the very next question anybody should ask is, show me the budget line item that funds my county sheriffs fight against human trafficking. And if that doesn't exist, then you're all talk, no action. And either you're going to start taking action or we will replace you in the next election cycle and find somebody who will. But you just said politician, all talk, no action. Good point. I'm sorry.

I was redundant there, wasn't I? You know? I mean, not that there are any of those. There are some. And there are some people who live up to. every ounce of what the people that elected them would hope for. Yeah. You know, our past attorney general, Tim Fox, really, really tried to take this issue seriously. But he was, he was starting from zero. Yeah. Okay. So the new attorney general for Knutzen, I believe is his name? I think so.

For Montana. Okay. Let's see what you do. Yeah. Right? You were given a foundation to build upon. Let's see what you do. And if the fight against human trafficking is not, you know, is not better, is not better resourced. I'm talking like, show me the arrests. So anytime the law enforcement department says that, oh, yeah, we take human trafficking very serious. It's like, cool, let's see the arrest records. Because if there's no arrest records, then either you don't have a human trafficking problem, or you're not actually taking it seriously. But many times, it doesn't fall on the law enforcement officers. It falls on the politicians, right? Yeah. A chief of police is a soldier who does what the mayor and the city

council tells him to. A, you know, a county sheriff is a soldier who's really doing what, I forget what the name of the body is it oversees the county sheriff, but really doing what it is they, they say. And what are the politicians doing? They're doing what their constituency demands. So if you're a voter, I mean, this is the beauty of our country. If we're honestly serious about this fight against human trafficking, we honestly want to see it go away, then we're going to take action in all of its various sorts. Not everybody needs to quit their cool job at the CIA and start a nonprofit and freaking force gump their way around the fight against human trafficking and get it figured out, right? There's other things people can do like calling politicians and donating and

and, you know, providing services and resources to human trafficking victims. Do you think it can be one to fight against human trafficking or is it going to be a finger in the damn model? It can be reduced to a significantly manageable level, right? It's like saying that, you know, can you win the fight against terrorism? Well, is that really the goal? Because we all know that it's possible. Where drone strikes away from creating more terrorists, right? The kinetic solution to terrorism will in and of itself create more terrorists.

Right. So we all know that, but what we have to ask is, what is the ultimate goal? So the goal in the fight against terrorism is to keep terrorism off of the U.S. soil. I mean, at the end of the day, that's it. That's what we do. The goal in the fight against human trafficking is to absolutely end it. However, here's the cool thing. I talked about the proliferation of human trafficking based on Internet technologies.

So the thing that got us here is the thing that's going to get us out of here, right? And so we are using the human traffickers tools against them. As you should. As we should, right? Yep. So that's what we're doing. And as we do that, we will continue to reduce it. So what we are pressing for is when we reach a certain amount of funding, our models show that we're going to have an 80% reduction in online commercial sex trafficking in the United States in a seven-year period.

That's substantial. I assume. Because it's a single point of failure. Oh, for sure. You take away the traffic. to trafficer's ability to to use you know you take away the convenience of the modern business economy you take that away from the human trafficker and we roll them right back to the 1970s which is which is why that that was a level of problem that law enforcement actually could

handle that makes sense I would assume that human trafficking is occurring right now in all 50 stays. Absolutely. Are there any states that are head and shoulders above others? Anytime you have a, so it's like any illicit commodity, anytime you have a confluence of lines of communication, you're going to have an increase in human trafficking, right? Human trafficking is a high volume business model, which requires, right? There's no online human trafficking, I mean, there kind of is, but for the most part, it is a, it is a person to person transaction that is required. So you're going to have more in cities like Houston and Dallas and L.A. than you're going to have in Billings, Montana. Now that said, we actually had a human trafficker

leave Houston selling his girls all the way to Billings, Montana. I mean, this guy had tattoos on his face. He kind of stands out a little bit up here. Yeah. And, yeah, and selling girls all the way. And we've seen communications between traffickers talking really about rural America. Because 80% of the United States is still rural. And those law enforcement departments don't have the resources to deal with the human trafficking issue. They don't even know what it is. And many times a county sheriff just kicks them out of their county and, you know, sends them to go be the – Kick the can down the road philosophy.

Sends them to go be somebody else's jurisdictional problem. But that's where our software comes in because as long as they input the data. And even if they don't input the data, at that point, we at least have the advertising data of advertising that victim in that town. So it doesn't matter because eventually they'll end up in one of our nets. Just out of personal curiosity, for Montana, what's the most common expression of human trafficking? Meth-related, what appears to be meth-related prostitution. Hmm. As in they're as in they're prostituting them.

No, they're prostituting themselves to pay for meth. But really what it is is it, that's what people think is happening. But it's actually a human trafficker who's giving them meth to keep them under control. And then, you know, pimping them out. And you do see the CD massage parlors. Billings actually just did a, just passed some legislation about these, these illicit massage parlors. And these illicit massage parlors, What you think is happening in there is exactly what is happening in there.

And what's really interesting is the community. Yeah, go figure, right? The people who participate in that underworld, they communicate online. And they are, I mean, they are pretty brazen about the way that they communicate because they know that law enforcement doesn't have the bandwidth to do anything about it. So over this period of doing this work, we have managed to amass the largest human trafficking database in existence, the cleanest human trafficking database in existence. We have also amassed a database of every single illicit massage parlor where we have like cut and dry evidence that they are in illicit massage parlor in the entire country. So now we're actually in the process of unraveling the various businesses and shell companies and whatnot that own them.

Some of these... It's almost like you've done this before. Yeah, right? Well, and what's funny is we actually see within the massage parlor industry, we see a little bit of connection to foreign intelligence agencies that are actually using them to launder their money for their espionage work that they're doing over here. That actually kind of makes sense. Absolutely, it does. Yeah. So it's all so inter-counter.

connected and interrelated. And when we, you know, am I going to be able to get a JTTF to pay attention, you know, a very well-funded, so for your listeners, a joint terrorism task force? Yep. Yeah. Am I going to be able to get them to pay attention to an illicit massage parlor? No, I'm not. But can I get them to pay attention to the fact that that illicit massage parlor is being used as a funding mechanism for terrorism? Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah. You use that word. And they're like, excuse me, where is this massage parlor? Exactly. So part of what we do as a strategy is we tie the problem that we're concerned about and that we care about to problems that other people are care about and are concerned about. By with and through. Exactly. You got to do what you got to do.

Exactly. How close are you guys at the Deliver Fund, guys and gals, to reaching that fundraising goal? Oh, we're a ways away. So that fundraising goal is 15 million annually. Hopefully you're like 14.5, right? Yeah, we crossed two, three in 2019 and then COVID, right? So last year we actually dropped down to 1.7. So we found a bunch of efficiencies.

And, you know, I mean, we're very blessed. Many companies didn't even survive. And we survived. So Deliver Fund is continuing to grow. But yeah, that's really where we're at. And what's cool is of that $15 million, we're not actually looking to raise all of that. We're actually going to earn through some various entities that we're doing business with around the counter-trafficking issue. We'll be earning about half of that, right?

So we really only need to expand our fundraising by about $5 million a year to really start putting this down. But we're currently at about 44 people involved and deliver fund. And that's a mix of part-time contractors, full-time contractors, and full-time employees. Most of our full-time employees are analysts that are, this is all they do all day, every day. It's the information that's going to make the difference. Yeah, I well know, even back to the old GWAT. Yeah, absolutely. So what we're doing when we get to that 15 million part is that expands that up to about 150.

50 people, so essentially three people in each state. And that fully funds our ITAC, which is our international human trafficking analysis center down in Dallas. And what that does is it coordinates, right? It's a coordination cell that coordinates all of the various human trafficking operations around the United States. And then more importantly, when you have some law enforcement officers, like, I got a human trafficking victim, what do I do? It's like, no problem. We got somebody to walk you through that. right so that that becomes central for the fight against human trafficking where can people support

deliver fund how can they you know get involved i suspect there's going to be interest just based off i mean i have an interest to help but i would be in prison for the role i would like to play sure in this particular operation yeah um so a couple of things one if you're a soft guy and you just went and uh grabbed your rifle out of your safe and you're lubing up and you're like hey you know what making sure this thing works yeah rifle barrel yeah we're talking about rifle lobe that's a good point i am talking to a seal i got to be careful with that we take it out of context i like that this is the first place you went it's like i you're not trying to squeeze through a tight place so yeah that's not the answer because you'll go to fucking prison yeah well

not only that but it's not a scalable answer so if if if that is your role right and you're that soft guy and you're like and you didn't become a computer nerd like myself uh then And what you can do is you can donate and you can get the word out there and you can get other folks to donate. I mean, you look when the soft community decides to rally around things. And this is something since I got a little bit of a soapbox here. I'm going to jump on it. Do it. We'll stack shit underneath it.

When you ask, ask the public, what are you special operator? What do they think? 22 a day. You're broken. Thank you for your service, but you can't do anything for me now, right? I mean, and this is the issue. And we have, as a community, done a darn good job, too good of a job at pointing out the whole PTSD issues and stuff that our community relates to. To the soft operators listening to this, because I assume there's quite a few.

Crawling in that bottle, both pills and alcohol, is not going to solve that problem. the reason that many are in that position. And I'm very lucky, right? 30 combat deployments, all my fingers, all my toes. I got a bunch of pain just like every other soft operator. I am insanely blessed to be able to say this. And I've not had to wrestle with the demons that many of those guys have. So I'm not saying this from a place of judgment.

I'm saying this from a place of help. You need a mission. That's the reason why. We have so many people who are having problems because literally the public has no idea how many bombs didn't go off because of their work, right? They have no idea how many times some catastrophe was avoided because of the work of some special operators or intelligence community personnel or law enforcement operating behind. the scenes. So one of my missions is to make this the new mission that special operations and intelligence personnel are known for. Not you're going to be broken. We'll give you a middle management job at the Home Depot, you know, because we support our veterans. Like that doesn't

fix that guy's problem, right? What fix that guy's problem is a righteous mission. In front of him. Yes. Another thing that I see with our community is, you know, a ship does not sail on yesterday's wind. No. But they look in the rearview mirror far too long after leaving that career. And I think that's why, so for people listening, QAnon is not real. Hillary Clinton is not trafficking children and eating their faces in the basement. Like that's not real. It's not happening.

I get into these arguments with our former soft brethren because they're like, oh, no, you just don't understand. I'm like, really? I do understand. Because we actually do this every single day, and we're the largest organization in the country that does this every single day. Like, deliver funds, fingers touch more human trafficking investigations than any other organization, with the exception of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And they do 60 million a year just from the federal government. So like, don't tell me these weird conspiracy theories because we actually happen to know for a fact, because we're actually in the trenches doing the work, not just reading things like. online.

Yeah. So which to many is the same thing. Yeah. Unfortunately. But the reason why we, I think we've seen an explosion of these soft guys believing these weird conspiracy theories. So you're seeing it too. Oh yeah.

I am shocked by the number of people. Like the complete lack of critical thinking that is happening here is disturbing to It's disturbing to me. Like I used to work with these people like, hey man. Yeah. What are you talking about? Yeah. Like you're, I just got off a Zoom call with this guy and it's going to be the national

emergency. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? You're talking about your brethren who are still serving are like what turning a blind eye to child trafficking happening in the federal? I mean, it's just not real. Are there are there corrupt people? Yes. Are there bad people in all kinds of various places? Yes, but this is not some kind of like deep state conspiracy. The reason, though, that I think that we're seeing what we're otherwise like really solid dudes falling on this is because it's become a new mission. It's become something they can. their teeth into. It's become an evil that they can fight. And see, I never thought that. I just thought they hid their dumb dumbness really well. Did they know? I mean, because I look at it and I'm like, some of these guys who believe this stuff, am I really that much smarter than them? No. Oh, I'm not, I am probably the bluntest object in the shed. So, so why are they doing this? It's because you're talking about men that

God designed to pursue a righteous mission, which is the, which is the direct confrontation of evil. So that's what they need. So go get a badge and a gun. I don't care if you're in your 40s. You're going to do better than a lot of those law enforcement officers we're doing in their 20s. Go get a badge and a gun or make this your new mission, right? So beat this drum the same way that, you know, you've got organizations that are beating the drum on the, you know, on the PTSD issue, right?

And that has advanced that mission. The same way that we have organizations, what is it, Hunter or something that's really, really beating the drum on the wonderful smoke we all inhaled for decades that is causing all kinds of The burn pits? Yeah. Is it 1007? I think that might be it, right? Or it might not be.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't either. There's a chance that I am correct and an equal chance that I am not. But there's organizations that are pointing out and like pursuing some like righteous missions. Like go do that. And if you don't know, like if this is your mission, if this is your calling, this is the thing that resonates with you. Like, help us out.

Everything from one, we've had plenty of rogue vigilantes, guys that I knew, guys that I served with are like, I want to join Deliver Fund. We're going to go kick some doors. I'm like, no, we're not. Dude, where's my Punisher T-shirt? Yeah. And then it's, I'm like, hey, man, like, if you want to be involved, that's awesome. Here's a bunch of courses. Here's a bunch of books I need you to read.

I'm not even happy to pay for the book. books once you figure out how to use that keyboard and you get away from hunting and pecking then we can actually bring you in and you can actually be helpful and we'll actually embed you once you prove yourself we'll embed you in real world law enforcement operations no you're not going to get a gun but you're going to go tell them my door to kick and and you're going to save a lot of lives screw that I'm not going to go do that I'm going to go start my own organization and the next thing you know such a biopic approach yeah and and it just doesn't work and so I So like that's what we need.

We need the soft community to, to take this issue just as seriously as we've taken everything else. Because if we were fighting terrorism overseas and we have our own children being terrorized on our own soil, like what was it all for? Yeah, missing the forest for the trees. Yeah. So, so let's like let's solve this problem. And, and, you know, to employers and non-soft personnel listening, the soft community, are the most capable communities writ large that we have right now. I mean, we have, I mean, how many soft guys have gone to, you know, Ivy League schools

and gotten, you know, Ivy League graduate degree since they've left? How many have become doctors and surgeons and, you know, PhD researchers? And, I mean, it's pretty phenomenal. And we are capable of so much. We're capable of solving problems overseas, but we're also capable of solving this problem over here. We just have to decide as an organization, and I mean a collective organization of SEALs and PJs and Combat Controllers and Marsock or whatever they're calling themselves, you know, today. And, you know, Green Berets and Rangers and say, okay, like this is, this is a

common thing that we can all come together on and we can all, and we can all fight this. And if you truly want to fight human trafficking, computer skills are the way that it's done. If you don't like that, then, you know, tell, you know, going out and hosting a fundraiser and it doesn't just have to be for an organization like Deliver Fund, right? There's, there's organizations that restore these victims that, like, I don't have enough letters behind my name to even be helpful on that side. But those organizations need funding as well. You know, we have, we have incredible people who, who have capacity. We just got to get it in front of them to let them know that, you know, there's a solution to this problem. And I think the solution to this problem is the same solution to the fight against terrorism, which is intelligence

support. Intelligence support and essentially FID missions for local law enforcement through the equipped train and advise model. Yeah. So I don't even know if we got to it. The best way to donate. Oh, yeah. So sorry. I'm going to make sure we at least get that in there. Yeah. So you can go to deliver fund.org forward slash donate. You can donate directly through Facebook. If you want to, you know, cool crushing evil t-shirts and hats, we've got an online store. What else? You can find us on all the platforms is at Deliver Fund. We're the only one. You can follow me, which is essentially just an extension of the professional stuff at Deliver Fund, Nick. And that's, I mean, And that's really where we're at.

And we make announcements about large fundraisers we're doing July 14th here in the valley. We're doing one, which is kind of our big fundraiser that we do every year is actually up here in whitefish. I have ideas. We should do the running of the bowls like in Spain with cows down the middle of whitefish. That would be awesome. I don't know how. Right at the height at tourist season. Yes.

And I don't know how that would tie into fundraising. but for whatever reason I've been thinking about that for the last few days. I like it. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. I mean, we're nothing if not resourceful, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So that's, I mean, that's really the best way to support us is go online and hit that donate button. And if you know somebody with more capacity, get them to go online and hit that donate button. And if it's, you know, if it's worth a flight to go sit down and talk to somebody, we're happy to do that as well. But let's as a soft community be known for, let's be known for solving. this problem, right? So that our children can be like, oh, yeah, my dad was part of the, yeah,

human trafficking, horrific used to happen years ago. And our kids will get to learn about it in history books because we solved it. That would be amazing. Dude, thank you for your time. This was enlightening for me. I thought I had an idea of what human trafficking was, a slightly different perspective. Yeah, this was the PG version for sure. Yeah, that's okay. But again, we don't want people to just not listen at all. Correct. Yeah, it's important, but this is important work, too. I mean, getting folks like me on, you know, we've got a lot of folks, so anybody else

as a podcast wants to get the word out. I mean, this is how it happens. You know, we went from, you know, I went from basically being a spy, right? Which is, again, not what people think. Went from being a spy with a network of a bunch of government employees who have no money to now an organization of over 40 people that is working with over 70 law enforcement agencies, right, and a budget in the millions. I mean, that is, that happened because of things like this right here. So thank you. You're welcome. Let's do a, let's do a round two again sometime

in the future. We can talk about the progress. For sure. Cool. Good to do it. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. Thank you again to Duke Cannon for supporting this episode of the podcast. You can pick up a stick of Duke Cannon dry ice cooling antiperspirant and it will feel as refreshing as jumping naked into the frigid lakes of Montana, without the risk of frostbite to your undercarriage. Visit duccanon.com and use promo code cleared hot 2021 for 10% off your next order. Free shipping with orders over $20, a curated selection of Duke Cannon products are also available at your local target. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.

Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube, I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in. People ask me a lot, what can they do to help me spread the word? And the answer is actually embedded in the question. The biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the podcast and you think it would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people. And if you have the time, go on to Apple Podcasts and leave me a rating and a review. If you think the podcast sucks, tell me it sucks and leave a zero star review or the lowest stars possible. If you have a question, comment or suggestion, you can go to clearedhotpodcast.com,

and there is a contact me button right there, which will land in my inbox. And the last thing, if people are interested in helping out, what you can do is fly the old flag. And by that I don't mean an actual flag because they don't have any of those. I'm talking about t-shirts or sweatshirts or hats, whatever it may be. Again, cleardotpodcast.com, click on the shop tab. And hopefully something in there looks like it would be an item you would like to wear around town. And then you can tell people what it is when they ask you. But that is it.

The biggest thing I can say is thank you. I truly appreciate it. Until next time. See you.