CyberWire Daily - How realistic is A House of Dynamite? [T-Minus Deep Space]

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

The new Netflix movie A House of Dynamite, chronicles what happens when the unthinkable unfolds. How realistic is it? We ask the movie’s advisor and expert, Lieutenant General Daniel Karbler (Ret.).... Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here’s our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the N2K Space Network. AI agents are now reading sensitive data, executing actions, and making decisions across our environments. But are we managing their access safely? Join Dave Bittner and Barack Shalef from Oasis Security on Wednesday, December 3rd, at 1 p.m. Eastern for a live discussion on agentic access management and how to secure non-human identities without slowing innovation. Can't make it live. Register now to get on-demand access after the event. Visit events.thecyberwire.com. That's events with an s.thecyberwire.com to save your spot. From fishing to ransomware, cyber threats are constant, but with Nordlayer, your defense can be too.
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Starting point is 00:02:07 space industry what the worst space movie is, and yeah, there's going to be some disagreement, but there's a pretty good chance that that film would be gravity, sorry Sondra Bullock, and it's mainly because that movie gets so much of the science dead wrong. So I want you to imagine our intrigue here at N2K, when so many of us who are in the space, cybersecurity, and defense industries, watched the recent Netflix film, A House of Dynamite, and we all found ourselves breaking out in a cold sweat. Could it really be that close to reality? Well, who better to ask than the real-life expert? Shall we? I'm Maria Vermazas, and this is T-minus Deep Space.
Starting point is 00:03:13 My guest today was the advisor to director Catherine Bigelow on her recent hit, A House of Dynamite. The film chronicles what happens when the unthinkable unfolds. If you haven't seen a House of Dynamite yet, we will be discussing it quite a bit in this interview, so I do highly recommend watching the film to get the most out of this chat. With that said, I'll let retired Lieutenant General Daniel Carbler tell you more about his background and how he got involved in Hollywood.
Starting point is 00:03:45 I served almost 37 years in the Army. Started way back in 1987, I graduated West Point. My career field was Air and Missile Defense, which I've done my entire 37 years. culminated as the commander for U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, at Redstone Arsenal. But we also had elements of our command global as we provided a missile early warning, as well as missile defense with our soldiers in Fort Greeley.
Starting point is 00:04:15 And prior to that, I spent three years as the Stratcom chief of staff. So it became pretty well versed in strategic deterrence, nuclear operations. And at that time, Strachcom had the missile defense responsibility too. So it was kind of a melding of all your classic elements or your elements of classic deterrence. Impose unacceptable cost, deny benefit, and then being able to credibly message it. I also just by way some background, too, I would say Army's testing evaluation command commander. So as a two-star, so all Army testing that took place for weapons systems, you name it. I was responsible for that testing, which proved to be very helpful in just different other.
Starting point is 00:04:56 jobs that I had. And then I spent, you know, did my penance up in the Pentagon as well, several tours up in the Pentagon. Part of my career, too, that I need to mention is the fact that I worked for just some incredible, incredible bosses, John Heighton, when he was the Stratcom commander. The deputy was Chas Richard, and I was the chief of staff. And then Chaz went on to become the Stratcom commander when I was the commander for Space and Missile Defense Command. So I was his Army Service Component Commander. And then Tony Cotton, the Kernstratcom commander, Jim Dickinson. I just had these great space and missile defense experts, leaders,
Starting point is 00:05:34 super, you know, just incredibly strategic thinkers that I got to get a lot of credit to. Thank you so much for joining me. We're going to be specifically talking about a more recent project that brings us together. I feel like I shouldn't be the one to introduce this, but I will spoil it. The Netflix film, A House of Dynamite, which has been just on the lips of everyone I work with, lately. You had a major, major part in that film. Can you please give me sort of the pitch about what you were involved in with that film? Sure. So, you know, first off, I retired from the Army about a year and a half ago. Being a technical advisor to Catherine Bigelow in a movie was not on my
Starting point is 00:06:15 retirement to do list. It didn't even make the top 100 on the one to end list. But what happened was Doug Lute, who was a general retired, Doug Lute, who was Ambassador Lute, he had been doing some advising to Catherine or some of the White House Situation Room scenes. And she asked him, she said, do you know anybody knows anything about Stratcom or Fort Guerrilla or Missile Defense or Nicarper? She said, I got a guy who just retired and he actually did all those jobs. And so he put me in touch with the producer. Greg Shapiro gave me a call, said, hey, would you like to advise in this movie? I said, sounds intriguing. He goes, we'll set up a Zoom call with Catherine and myself, a couple of other folks as part of the production. And so we set up
Starting point is 00:06:59 a Zoom call and much like you and I are, you know, having our call here, everybody was kind of popping in. And then I had an idea. And so I left my camera off as everybody was popping in and they're chatting. And then there was a little break in the conversation. And I click on my microphone, but I still left the camera off. Click on my microphone and said, this is the DDO from the Pentagon convening a national security conference. The confiscation of this conference is Top Secret, TK, S.I., Poland, U.S. Stratcom, U.S. Northern Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, SECDF Cables, military assistance, military, military, command, CECDF, CABETHs, please bring the secretary in the conference. Secrets, please bring the secretary in the conference. Mr. Secretary, this is the DDO, because of time constraints and this missile attack, recommend we transition immediately from a national security conference, and we bring the president in the conference.
Starting point is 00:07:46 And I stopped there, and then I clicked on my camera. And I said, ladies and gentlemen, that's how the worst day of America's history will begin. I hope your script does it some justice. And that was my cold opening. And Catherine, and I kind of kid with my wife on this, Catherine Bigelow, she's one Academy Award for Best Director, so she has to have an eye for good acting talent, said, oh my gosh, that was amazing, Dan. I want to have you in my movie.
Starting point is 00:08:09 So nailed the audition, and here I am, you know, 12 months, 15 months later. Hollywood! I mean, that is a hell of a pitch. And for those who haven't seen the movie, the camera off is a really great device in the film, so I'm sure she got that idea from you. That is so, oh my God. I mean, yeah, amazing how the Rose and Life take us places
Starting point is 00:08:33 because that is chills, just even hearing you saying that. And yes, you are in the film, and you nailed it, by the way. So it's just great to see you in there. It was really cool. I'm glad. And I told Catherine, when she said she would cast me in the movie, and as the chief of staff, and I said, for you, Catherine, I'll take the demotion.
Starting point is 00:08:49 I'll go from three stars to two stars. to be the Stratcom chief of staff. I was going to say, you're basically sort of advising the actor version of yourself in the film, right? Is that... Yeah. I should have done a better job advising myself, too.
Starting point is 00:09:03 I don't know if I delivered my lines as well as I should have, but... This is what I would have liked to hear. Yeah, on the worst day ever, I mean, honestly. Well, Dan, it is a genuine thrilled to be speaking with you, and I was telling you right before we started recording, I just watched the film. So my opening question for you,
Starting point is 00:09:20 and I mean this with, like, Fullest respect is, how did you sleep at night doing that job? Well, a lot of times we didn't sleep at night. Many times it'd be 10 o'clock at night and I'm throwing my uniform on going back into Stratcom headquarters to the battle deck because, you know, our adversaries, they don't sleep, particularly in 2017, KJU, he was, I mean, he was testing. It seemed like just about every weekend, every other weekend. I mean, the number of Saturdays that were ruined because we were responding to another
Starting point is 00:09:50 missile test, lost count of them. But you know what, knowing the professionals that we had, whether on the missile defense side of it, Fort Greeley, or the great airmen sailors and soldiers that were manning, you know, our bombers and the ICBM fields and our subs, they train very, very hard, and we train as an enterprise quite a bit. Yeah. So even though the topic and the subject is, I mean, it can be mortifying. We have to stay ready, and we were, and we practiced it quite a bit.
Starting point is 00:10:26 I don't want to talk too much about what I thought of the film, because I want people to go see it if they haven't already. I wanted to ask you about, oh, my gosh, so many things. But one of the threads that goes throughout the film that is a clear driver of the drama is the lack of attribution of this inbound. That, to me, was a really fascinating point about, we didn't know where this ICBM is coming from. We just, our missile defense warning systems sort of just didn't catch where it was starting from.
Starting point is 00:10:53 Were we potentially internally compromised? Can you walk me through the realistic, how realistic that kind of scenario is? And what would that really look like? I don't quite understand. Sure. So first off, not a far-fetched scenario. When before I came into STRATCOM and just before General Heighton, Fort John Heighton took command of STRATCOM, Ash Carter, who was a secretary of defense, did a no-notice exercise.
Starting point is 00:11:19 Now, I don't want to say no notice. Like, also, we just saw nuclear missiles being shot at us, and we didn't know what was going on. But he basically said on morning, he said, we are going to do in a nuclear operations conference right now. And he started it. And he started it with an unattributed missile launch from the Pacific. Because he wanted to see how everybody would react. Now, now this, and this brought in the entire cabinet. and as well as, you know, the military that, you know,
Starting point is 00:11:51 NMCC, all the way to Stratcom and all of our components. And so, as you might expect, the military swung to action and went through our processes, procedures. The civilian side was a little rusty. I'll charitably say they're a little rusty. Cabinet members weren't in place, did not have the right communications set up to be able to dial into the conference.
Starting point is 00:12:14 some of the principles didn't have a good understanding with their strike advisor and what the strike advisor was to do for them, you know, with the, as the scene in the movie, the Nuka decision handbook. And so it, it was a good exercise to have because people needed to practice. Ash Carter made it complicated by having a missile that was non-attributed. Now, now, why he did it that way, I could speculate that he didn't. want to vilify is not the right word but he didn't want to make an enemy known you know oh look at the secretary defense just made china the aggressor on his own his own exercise he must really be against china right so yeah yeah so keff kind of left a vague kind of like how the movie did too no real villain
Starting point is 00:13:05 in the movie identifiable because that was because you can broaden the discussion then it's too easy to just say, well, it was Russia or it was China or was North Korea. And then the discussion gets very narrow. And Catherine didn't want to do that. She wanted to keep the discussion very broad. Now, when you look at the actual attribution and, you know, why did it happen that there was an attribution? So Gabe Bassel's character, Jake Barrington, Deputy National Security Advisor, who is the most unlucky, harried staff guy in the government. I'm sure you can't relate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The scenes where he's on his phone and going through security, we've all kind of been there, right? We can relate to him. But, you know, he alludes to, you know, maybe it was cyber penetration. And that certainly is, you know, we always are concerned about our different, you know, the threat surface areas that are out there that our adversaries could potentially get into. And so, so that being into the script kind of that helps the believability factor of the plot is, oh, maybe. Maybe this is what happened.
Starting point is 00:14:12 All my space, you know, compadres and friends. And, of course, they're like, you know, Sivers would have seen it, you know. Come on. And, well, we know that it would have, but it wouldn't have seen it potentially if there was a cyber attack that somehow, you know, penetrated into the system. Which, again, as Jake Barrington alludes to then, too, this is a, or maybe it was General Brady, Tracy Letts's character, said, part of a larger. more coordinated attack against the U.S. And so you have to give a lot of credit to Noah Oppenheim, scriptwriter, who did such fantastic research
Starting point is 00:14:52 to make sure that, you know, it's pretty, the plot is pretty ironclad, really. I mean, people are going to pick around the edges, which, you know, that's good because you're getting the discussion going. But in terms of the feasibility of it, I thought it was good. That's why I signed up for it, too. when they gave me this script, you know, I didn't immediately agree to work with them.
Starting point is 00:15:14 I wanted to look at the script first. When I looked at the script and I saw it and I go, okay, yeah, this is all feasible and I can definitely work with this as a whole scenario. Yeah, my background is predominantly in cyber. So when I heard that phrase about, you know, the potential of cyber compromise, my mind started going to, oh my gosh, is there a larger campaign? Is there an insider threat? Is this even a real missile?
Starting point is 00:15:33 Like, are we for sure, are we absolutely sure that the information being displayed is is actually accurate or is this completely compromised? And I'm sure that was part of the intent and that was just part of what made it. So, a panic-inducing for me, which I'm sure was just like, oh, gosh. I mean, we're all assuming that there's going to be a mushroom cloud, but what if this is all fake to try and, you know, flush out U.S.'s defenses? And I'm sure this is all stuff that you all drilled for constantly
Starting point is 00:16:01 and just practiced over and over. And I just, again, harrowing scenarios. I'm not sure there's even a question in there. I'm just going, oh, my God. Well, in all the different exercises, practice, rehearsals that we did, it ran the gamut of different scenarios, one off, both out of the blue, to, you know, existential, you know, 400 missile attack coming on to you
Starting point is 00:16:31 because you have to be able to understand the procedures, processes, communications, decisions, how, you know, what kind of advice that you're going to present, recommendations you're going to present throughout that whole, that whole range of potential scenarios you might face. Yeah. I have a sort of related question, and this is specifically about when the president is looking over the,
Starting point is 00:16:54 I'm putting it politely, the diner menu towards the end. This is where I go, is it actually realistic that the president would have no idea what these potential attack options would be until that moment? They don't, do we know, does the president usually? have an idea what those are? Or is it really the first time that he would potentially see them? The president gets briefed before inauguration day on the book. Okay. Stratcom commander's responsibility is to brief the president on the book.
Starting point is 00:17:19 Okay. Then, and that can take as long as the president wants to take. Okay. But then following that, when we do exercises, the president does not participate. When I was at Stratcom, the highest, the level cabinet member that participated was Secretary Mattis's Secretary of Defense. Rich Correll, who just testified for his confirmation hearing to be the next Trapcom commander, he testified that Jimmy Carter was actually the last president to participate
Starting point is 00:17:49 in one of the nuclear operation exercises. I had been told it was Ronald Reagan, but it goes back even further. It goes back to President Carter. People ask me about that, too. And my thought is this. First, I really can't blame a president. for not participating because even though the conferences are at the, you know, the highest level of classification, it's my sense that word would get out about what that president's decision
Starting point is 00:18:17 was. And whatever the president's decision was, he or she is not going to win. It could be don't respond at all, which is going to get, you know, all sorts of criticism from some camps. or it could be decide to respond and whatever level they respond with is going to get criticism from the other camps. And so a president not participating gives himself or herself a great amount of political decision space just as they're just doing the office without having a bunch of distraction about, you know, they're trying to run the country and now, oh, what they decided this on the whole nuclear thing and that would take up a lot of their bandwidth.
Starting point is 00:19:02 And so, again, I can't blame the president for not participating. Cabinet members' participation is important. When I was at Stratcom, we would often get, you know, first off, we'd have cabinet members come visit Stratcom headquarters. We'd run them through a scenario as they sat in the chair right next to General Hyatt and or Admiral Richard. And Secretary Mattis, like I said, you know, in 2017 when the North Koreans were testing, you know, every week, every other week, Secretary Mattis was in every one of those conferences. Sometimes he was quiet, and then you'd hear him at the end, and you're like, oh, boss was listening.
Starting point is 00:19:34 I can't remember he was a Marine General, Forest Hour. He's all about rehearsals and practice, and then after action reviews. And so we got very practiced at it and always expected Secretary Mattis to be in on the calls. We'll be right back. At TALIS, they secure what matters most. The most trusted companies and organizations utilize TALIS cybersecurity products to protect critical applications, sensitive data,
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Starting point is 00:21:24 And it fits right into your workflows, using A. to streamline evidence collection, flag risks, and keep your program audit ready all the time. With Vanta, you get everything you need to move faster, scale confidently, and finally, get back to sleep. Get started at Vanta.com slash cyber. That's V-A-N-T-A-com slash cyber. So I have another question for you about, I mean, I know you were heavily involved in this film. I'm curious where you think in real life things would significantly diverge from what was portrayed in the film. Yeah, so, you know, one of the things that we are always trained when we go through the scenarios is, especially in a scenario like this, is we are trained to say, Mr. President, you do not have to make a decision right now. in the case here you are not going to lose your ability to respond you still have all of your
Starting point is 00:22:30 ICBMs are available your subs are available your bombers are available because again this is just one one missile that's coming into a city not targeting our nuclear response capabilities so we're trained to say you do not have to respond immediately now it's tragic i mean you're going to lose the city of Chicago in this case or whatever metropolitan Senate you might lose. But when you look at proportionality then that a response might engender or in proportionate how do you add a response might engender, that's where you give the president the opportunity to say, okay, let me consult. And these are very collaborative. The conferences are very collaborative, even though it's only in a 30 minute time frame when you bring in the cabinet
Starting point is 00:23:18 members. They are collaborative. And, then when you say, hey, don't have to respond right away, the president can consult. There are other strategic ways to respond to an adversary's attack of something like that. Now, again, 10 million people lost in the case of the movie scenario, I don't know how you atone for 10 million people being killed, but the president then has time to bring together a coherent whole-government approach in responding to the adversary. And the other piece, too, is ultimately you are going to have attribution on that launch. You know, we would figure it out.
Starting point is 00:23:57 And then any president's response, then it would be obviously tailored towards that adversary who shot at us. I, that is a, especially on both those items are actually very comforting. I know the movie's a thriller and things are heightened for dramatic effect, but that's actually quite comforting to hear both of those. It wouldn't be a very exciting meeting if at the start of the conference, Trace, you know, Admiral, General Brady said, Mr. President, you don't have to make a decision right now. Okay, that's, you know. Like, you're good.
Starting point is 00:24:24 We've got you. Yeah, okay. We'll be over. Yeah. Yeah. No, I generally do really enjoy heightened thriller films like this one. This one, I think because it feels so, of this time, it does feel more immediate. And I think, Amy, I had to really break myself down from it when I was watching.
Starting point is 00:24:42 So it was very effective. And I... Very pressing it, too. Because when we shot it, Golden Dome for America was not a thing. Right. So imagine we're shooting the movie, and then the president comes up with the executive order for Golden Dome for America, and then the movie's plot lines kind of feed right into Golden Dome for America. Right. Yeah, that is very true.
Starting point is 00:25:00 And that is, I've heard a lot of people discussing this film in that context when I'm having those conversations. And it's been really fascinating how much these different ecosystems do really feed on each other sometimes. It is really fascinating to sort of watch that happen as a fly on the wall in my case. And that's the beauty of the movie. is it gives everybody an opportunity to discuss. Yeah. Whether you're, you know, for non-proliferation, you have a lot to be able to discuss.
Starting point is 00:25:28 If you're, hey, we don't think sole authority is right. You know, it needs to be, you know, something that's more collaborative and a decision building, you know, or a decision made by more of a consensus or more collaboration, you can talk about that. If you're for modernization of the nuclear triad in our strategic deterrent,
Starting point is 00:25:48 or gold known for America or space. And you want to make sure that, you know, our space capabilities, you know, are protected. So there's all, that's why the movie's wonderful because it gives everybody an opportunity to be able to discuss their viewpoints. Yeah, I, speaking of space, I'm curious if you have sort of a space wish list
Starting point is 00:26:05 that you would love to see in the realm of sort of what we've been discussing. You know, I would love the X-37. So I actually joke with John Hyde about this. I said, I said, you know, we should paint some windows. We should paint a cockpit window on the X-37 and fly that around and see what our adversaries think of that.
Starting point is 00:26:25 That would be the first wish list. Just confuse everybody. That would be great. I would love that. But from space, you know, the ability of that platform to be able to do what it does, and if you were to just take it to the next level and say, hey, look, if you had some sort of space-based intercept capability that you could park on that and then get it to whatever place it needed to be in orbit based on indications and warnings, man, that was.
Starting point is 00:26:48 That would be a game changer, you know, especially as we're trying to solve, you know, any kind of space-based intercept capabilities and you look at, you know, a plethora of on-orbit platforms that you'd have to have, you know, in order to be able to counter any kind of missile launch from wherever as they go into orbit, you know, having a very mobile platform to be able to get a space-based interceptor in a position to intercept. You asked me about my wish list. That would be one of them. That 100%, I think a lot of people would agree with you on that one for sure.
Starting point is 00:27:21 I want to ask about the film's very human portrayal. I know this is not necessarily the lane of what we wanted to discuss today, but I found it very compelling to see the way that servicemen and women were portrayed doing their duty wonderfully and also being very human. And I just was curious to get your thoughts on that. Yeah, a lot of thoughts on it. First off, when we do our exercises, 400 a year, processes, procedures, communications, recommendations, we never play a human element in it, right?
Starting point is 00:27:55 We will go through it. We will come up with our options and decisions. And when they will execute, we will AAR it, nobody's died. Nobody's been threatened. And so it's kind of sterile when it comes to the humanity side of it. The movie now touches on a part that we never even really excited. explore in our exercises, which is incredible because you have the different human reactions. I can't say that, you know, the four greeley soldiers, when their missile misses, you know,
Starting point is 00:28:27 you have the one guy going, hey, we got to get some more interceptors up. We got to get some more interceptors up. But we wanted to portray the human element there on those soldiers. And, you know, some of my missile defense friends are like, sir, you know, we can't believe that, you know, they wouldn't just quit. They wouldn't just give up. And I said, yeah, I got it. But the movie wanted to touch on the human element there.
Starting point is 00:28:47 And those soldiers, you know, that are up there at Fort Greeley, they have a human side, too. And personally, both of my kids are missile defenders. And there's the same age as the lieutenant and the, my daughter's a captain. My son's a lieutenant. Wow. So the same age as the crew members there. And so when my wife saw the movie and she, the scene where the lieutenant picks up the phone and calls his mom, my wife was very moved. Yes.
Starting point is 00:29:15 Very moved by that. And then I look at the young staff sergeant there or Sergeant Mary Nolan, who's the sensor operator. And I think of my daughter is a missile defender and, you know, how is she going to respond? And then, you know, real world two years ago, it was two years ago on Thanksgiving morning. She was in Iraq and she was under attack from drones and missiles texting me as she's in the bunker under attack. My first guidance to her was, don't tell your mom. The universal advice, my God. She was cool as a cucumber, just, you know, of course, very excited with a lot of, you know, salty language in there.
Starting point is 00:29:55 But how she trusted her system to work and which it did. And so, yeah, so I had a whole range of emotions watching these characters being a leader of soldiers, of these particular soldiers of Fort Greeley, and then have my own family dynamic interspersenet. So, yeah, thanks for ask that question, because the human dynamic piece that gets touched on the movie is really important. I appreciate you saying that, and I thought it was really incredibly powerful,
Starting point is 00:30:27 and I think something that is often maybe missing in films like this, and that exact moment when he called his mom too as a mother, my daughter's only eight, but I remember that that got me crying because I was thinking, you know, that's somebody's son, you know, we've all got families, we all, you know, You read that phone call, so, but my goodness. Yeah, and the other thing I tell people, I was like, look at how resilient he is.
Starting point is 00:30:48 Yes. I mean, the worst thing in his training that ever could have happened just happened, but he tells his mom, just want to check on her, nope, things are okay, you know. So he's pretty stoic through it all, but he's got the human touch to want to talk to his mom at that point. It was really beautiful. And as I said, like, everybody's doing their jobs. They are the height of competence, and it's just very admirable to see them doing what they're doing, what they've been trained to do
Starting point is 00:31:11 and also being human beings but still doing what they've got to do and it's just yeah I could say a million wonderful things about this film that you I'm sure have heard but I just really enjoyed it I'm fresh off of it so it's just it was really great
Starting point is 00:31:24 your heart rate come down yet is your heart rate still you know I had to take a little walk I won't lie I had to take a little walk but it did exactly what I would want to film like that to do and I will be thinking about it a lot and I was already talking to my husband about it
Starting point is 00:31:37 because we like films like this but usually it's like we've got to make sure we're ready for it. Yeah. You have been so generous with your answers. I want to make sure I ask you two last questions. The first one is, what's the sequel to a House of Dynamite that you're working on, no doubt? So I joke with people. The sequel is called Golden Dome.
Starting point is 00:31:58 The Empire Strikes Back. There you go. It is Star Wars all over again, isn't it? It's true. Yeah. Believe it or not, I am doing some initial consulting with another director on a, military movie. Nice.
Starting point is 00:32:12 Just very, very, at its nascent stages right now. So Catherine told me when I first started out with her that she goes, don't be surprised. You know, you're going to get going to get to these calls. And sure enough, this director reached out to me. So helping him along. So that's one thing. And then, you know, what's in the future? My son gets promoted to first lieutenant here in a couple of weeks.
Starting point is 00:32:33 So I'm going out to go out to Fort Bliss, Texas and El Paso for his promotion. and next week I'll head up to a joint-based Lewis McCord where my daughter is stationed at. She's a battery commander out there, and she's fielded a new air defense system. And so they're going through their big, long, collective training period. And we have a grand dog up there that somebody has to go watch for a few weeks. And so dad drew the straw to go watch the grand dog when my daughter's out in the field. So short-term things, what I'm working on, and then long-term, you know, hopefully this new movie will come to some fruition. I look forward to your cameo in that one, too.
Starting point is 00:33:07 So I'll be looking for you and going, I spoke with it. Oh, my gosh, that's so cool. So I want to always give my guest sort of an opportunity for wrap-up thoughts. Anything you want to leave the audience with at all. Anything at all, the floor is yours. Thanks. You know, people ask me about, you know, what's it like in the movie business? And I tell people the amazing parallels between the military and the movie business.
Starting point is 00:33:30 And if you look at it this way, you have a commanding general, you have a general who's in charge. and you have a director who's in charge. And if you think about it, that general, their ultimate objective is to, you know, put some effect out onto an adversary. A director, Catherine's job, is to put an effect out onto an audience. And then you think about the complicated processes
Starting point is 00:33:58 and capabilities and enablers that are underneath it. You know, a general has got, you know, staff and weapons systems and HR and, you know, maintenance and intelligence and, you know, everything that goes into helping deliver that effect. A director has got cast, actors, electricians, props, script, you know, all of that brings it all together to deliver an effect. And then, and then the other thing, too, is just their styles, right?
Starting point is 00:34:29 We've all worked for different. I've worked for bosses who are, you know, pretty directive in nature and, hey, just do it do it this way. You work for other bosses who are empowering, just kind of give you their commander's intent, then let you go with it. And I found out the movie business, you have some directors who are just right behind the camera.
Starting point is 00:34:45 And they'd be like, no, Maria, I don't want you holding yourself that way. Go this way. And then you have other directors who, like Catherine, she's offset. She's at a playback monitor watching the camera angles from there.
Starting point is 00:34:59 And she told me her reasoning is because if she's right there, The actress become too mechanical, and she wants them to be able to grow into their character. You think about a commander who empowers the sports to grow into themselves, professionally develop themselves. And that's kind of, that's where I reside is much more empowered. Just give commanders to stand and come back to me if you need some additional guidance. And in Catherine, the same way. So we got along great on the set, and she was wonderful to work for. That is T-minus Deep Space, brought to you by N2K CyberWire.
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