Hodgetwins Podcast - Former Navy SEAL & Founder of Blackwater Tells All! | Twins Pod - Episode 22 - Erik Prince

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Erik Prince is a true American. Erik is a Former Navy SEAL and the founder of the world's largest Private Military Contracting company, Blackwater. Erik talks about his unique upbringing, the conflicts and controversies he endured through leading Blackwater, and how our modern military is being destroyed by DEI. Maybe Trump should hit up Erik to head his security detail! Get your Twins merch and have a chance to win a truck and a camper - https://officialhodgetwins.com/ Get Optimal Human, your all in one daily nutritional supplement - https://optimalhuman.com/ Secure your financial future today - https://prepperbar.com/ American-made, top of the line knives - https://dmoknives.com/ Want to be a guest on the Twins Pod? Contact us at [e-mail] Download Free Twins Pod Content - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_iNb2RYwHUisypEjkrbZ3nFoBK8k60CO Follow Twins Pod Everywhere - X - https://twitter.com/TheTwinsPod Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetwinspod/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/twinspod TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@twinspod YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX8lCshQmMN0dUc0JmQYDdg Rumble - https://rumble.com/c/TwinsPod Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/79BWPxHPWnijyl4lf8vWVu?si=03960b3a8b6b4f74 Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/twins-pod/id1731232810 02:16 - Quitting The Navy SEALs Early 05:22 - Working Hard As A Child 07:38 - Growing Up Country 09:56 - Why Did Erik Want To Serve His Country? 12:23 - How Did He Start Black Water 18:46 - 9/11 Changed Everything 23:48 - Early Days Of Black Water 30:47 - Controversy 36:03 - Lybia 41:21 - Missionaries In Haiti 44:47 - Nisour Square Massacre 48:51 - Fake News Media 51:45 - What Is Erik Worth? 54:32 - DEI Military 1:01:24 - The Stroy Of The Gatling Gun 1:02:14 - The Right Brothers 1:05:29 - What Conspicies Are True or Fake? 1:06:29 - Erik's Unplugged Phone And Smart Phone Spying 1:18:19 - Presidential Election 1:21:51 - Fighting Priates In Sololia 1:26:25 - NGOs 

Yeah, welcome to episode 22. We got Mr. Eric Prince, retired Navy SEAL officer. I just Navy SEAL, he was an officer. But not retired. Not retired? I was only in for five. Five years. Oh, okay.

That's right. Okay. Five years. What made she decided to get out? So quick. My father died and my wife got cancer at 29. Oh, wow. What gave you the idea to start Blackwater?

The biggest military contracting company in the world? So, seal teams, special operations kind of units, have been using private facilities in America since the 1970. 70s, especially after 9-11 happened, that was really the catalyst because we got pulled into doing security work overseas. So we had to prosecute and verify and process and supply the people to do that. So Blackwater was not just a training facility. It was effectively a recruiting, training deployment base, even with its eventually with its own airfield. Hey, Eric, how do you feel about our current military? Because I see a, I mean, I'm not homophobic by any

special imagination. But now I remember when I joined the military, you can, you can, you feel about it. couldn't even join if you had flat feet. Now they'll pay to cut your balls off. Yeah. Yeah, that is insane. The media has been lying about Joe Biden's health. They have been lying about COVID and all the nonsense around that. Right.

So let's just think about all the other bullshit the media is been feeding us. Literally half the country does not realize that the media is lying to them. Yeah, welcome to episode 22. We got Eric Prince. Yeah. It started Blackwater. Yeah. Right.

Navy SEAL officer. Just an all-around great white man. Yeah. But before we get to him, we got to talk to you about our sponsor. Yeah. Optimal Human over 90 ingredients. Good for your pee-pee, your vagina, your brain, your chest, your colon. It's for your all-round health.

And it goes with your ass, your vagina, your pee-pee, your brain, your stomach. It's only one nutritional supplement. Yeah, go to Optimalhuman.com, 4-slash-Hoggs20. Yeah, welcome to episode 22. We got Mr. Eric Prince, retired Navy SEAL officer. Not just Navy SEAL, he was an officer. But not retired. Not retired?

I was only in for five. Five years. Oh, okay. That's right. Okay. Five years. What made you decide to get out so quick? I love being a SEAL, but my father died and my wife got cancer at 29.

Oh, wow. Okay. So I was just back from a second deployment, and that kind of made a compelling case. they needed to change and sort of some things at home. My dad was a very successful entrepreneur, and he built a large business. There was 5,000 employees, and my mom had nothing really to do with the business.

And so there's a lot of things to be sorted out when that happens. Right, right. Yeah, my dad, he worked in a factory, and he was a barb on the weekends. I actually lost my father, a very young age. I actually lost him on 14th birthday. He caught some disease in his lungs and, you know, domino, killing everybody's buzz. But the thing that he instilled me that he worked seven days a week,

he worked money through Friday at that factory, and then on the weekend he always cut her out. Yeah, I had two jobs. So when we grew up, we always wanted to start on business. So I think that's what I got from my father. That's probably what you end up helping you going the route you took him back. Yeah, I think so. I mean, my dad was 12 when his dad died in the Great Depression. And in West Michigan, and he was, my dad's first job was sorting out nuts and bolts and screws in a boat factory that was making landing craft for the war.

Wow. And I remember my uncle was telling me he was in, I forget, Uncle Bud, he had this factory making, I forget, sawdust or something like that. Something's stupid. I don't know what it was as a sawmill. Okay. And I remember him telling me he bought a loaf of bread. bread for five cents. I was like five cents.

And I remember growing up a gallon of gas where it costs us like 79 cents. And now you look at gas prices and how much things cost it's like crazy. Yep. Like insane. Devalue the dollar. Yeah.

Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that. I would hear more about his dad and his business. Be too. Yeah. So my granddad, his dad, died when he was 35 of a heart attack. And so my dad became the man of the house. And he had to, he installed a hot water heater at age 13. At 13. Yeah. I cannot imagine, I can't imagine installing a hot water heater now a little bit 13. I hope so went total. He did it one, he did it one, he did

at one length of two at a time. And they, he learned how to sweat the joints. And it worked. So, yeah, by 16, he was managing the local car dealership. Wow. So he was mechanically inclined. Yeah, and just aggressive and hunger is a motivator. Ambitious. Yeah. Some things you can't teach, you can't teach that.

Yeah. Yeah, but you can enhance it. I mean, I think. Oh, you can definitely make it better, but. Yeah, I'm a big believer in child labor. Yeah. Right. We were just talking.

I have a farm. and I really wanted all my kids to be able to work to cut trees and bail hay and stack hay and I mean, geez, even the boys have done artificial insemination for the cows. Well, what is that like? Let's go to detail with that. Among boys, there's a lot of laughs. Right? I'm big too.

It is. You get a big glove by the long as your elbow. Right. He's mad to be a real man. Okay. I want to go to detail, right? So it's a sleeve, right? It's a sleeve.

Stuff comes in a little straw. Yeah. Yeah. You put it in just like the bull does. So inside the sleeve is nice and soft and furry or something. No, the, let's just say the guy who does the applying wears the glove. Right. Wow, that's got to be.

It's got to be traumatizing for a young kid, right? You've masturbating a horse. Well, when you put it on the horse, you've got to like attach it, but does he just have to hold it? A cow. Look, I have a funny picture of my oldest boy the first time we, because we started off with some cows on the farm, and the first time we had to castrate a calf before it became a bull.

Okay. That's traumatized too. No, I have a hilarious picture. My son with a... Machete? With a nut sack in his hands and went away. And the farm boss is coming in with a scalpel to do the deed. But, yeah.

Oh, man. I had to grow up quick on that farm. Exactly. You didn't necessarily you didn't grow up on a farm. I grew up in West Michigan, Holland, Michigan. Obviously, it's a very Dutch community and very hardworking. A lot of factories making everything from automotive. to appliances and hardware.

But I grew up trapping. So I guess that was my interest in the outdoors. My mom's side of the family were all outdoorsmen. So I learned from my uncle and cousins. And so I trapped muskrats raccoons, third, fourth, and fifth grade. I remember we grew up in the country, a country part of Virginia.

And I remember my brother would go out and shoot rabbits and squirrels. Yeah. And they were cooking. And I thought it smelled so bad. I never ate the stuff. But yeah. You remember that? Yeah, Timel wasn't very good.

Hunter, he used to kill squirrels with shotguns. Wow. Yeah. But then, yeah, you got all the pellets and you get you get you, yeah, I remember him. What's your teeth? Bringing in a squirrel and the head just hanging on by a piece of skin. I'm like six years old.

I'm like, I hate my life. He starts cooking that squirrel. And oh, my. Yeah. I remember the first time I had to skin a raccoon, it was... Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

What did it taste like? No, it was for the fur. Oh, okay. So you don't eat that. So when you're black and poor, you eat it. Wouldn't go in the waste of that house? Protein is protein. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember eating all kinds of stuff. Well, you're a mama used to. Have you ever ate chitlins? I have not. Yeah. Is that chicken parts?

No, it's pig intestines. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, I've had haggis, which is stomach. That's cow's stomach. So I'll imagine that's similar. Yeah. I think this is the small intestine in the... Oh, no way. Yeah, the pig intestine. Yeah, it's actually the intestines. Yeah, you think the stomachs, you ate stomach? Yeah. Yeah, it's probably better. See, let me say, let's explain something like, steak is the white man's meat. We was eating bologna. You was eating stomach. We've eaten.

Just two different lifestyles, you know. Come on, get a life. No, but it's just two experiences. Yeah. Yeah. So that's probably what I've noticed a lot of people that's outdoors from when they're growing up. They eventually go into Marines or be a Navy SEAL or something to that effect. You know, for me, it was always a, I loved history.

I loved military history. and one thing my folks did really want us to do is they took us and we traveled. And I remember in the 70s, in 76 we did a road trip across Eastern Europe. And, you know, East Germany, Czechoslovakia at the height of the Cold War. And it was a really good education to see the guns and the dogs and the barbed wire and the minefields in East Germany, literally holding people prisoner. Wow. For a seven-year-old, it was a pretty clear lesson that the socialist workers' paradise

maybe not so great. Yeah. Going to Prague, Czechoslovakia then, and it's a beautiful, you know, ancient city, a thousand plus years old. But all the buildings were just, they were black as your t-shirts. From coal dust. Oh, wow. Just dirty air.

The only bright thing was a red communist star. Yeah. I got some experience with that, Cole. We had a furnace and a woodburn and a furnace in our living room. Okay. And we grew up in his dilapidated house. It was, I can't believe it was still standing. We actually sold the house about a month, two months ago.

No, that's been a couple years ago. Sorry, got Biden brain, but we sold that house for $10,000, what was it, $5,000, $10,000? It was like $2,500. What do you talk about? It was $5,000. a dollar. But I remember when Mama would burn wood in the house,

yeah, to keep it with soot in the warm. It was soot all over the walls and it was soot on us, but we were warm. Yeah. And that's better than being cold. It's definitely about being cold. See, I love wood stoves. I have one now. I eat my house with a wood stove in the winter, but they make one now with a catalytic

combustor. Okay. That actually reburns the exhaust, so you don't get that soot. And it burns within two or three points. of efficiency of a gas stove. So, bitch, we had carbon monoxide all in our house. Probably. I cut all my own firewood yet.

It's very mentally healthy. Yeah, it is. It is. It is. Better than seeing a shrink. Yeah. Swinging axe. Right.

Chop wood. Yeah. So when you got out the Navy, what gave you the idea to start Blackwater? So the biggest military contract in So seal teams, special operations kind of units, have been using private facilities in America since the 1970s. Because, you know, we had a gun culture.

So there'd be great professional shooters that would start a little school, almost like a dojo. And so soft units would go to those and learn. And while I was in the teams from 92 through 96, visited some of those. And I thought that was a great idea. but no one had done it on an industrial scale, like a big one that could handle a lot of units,

and especially one that was close to the East Coast teams. So between getting out of the Navy, because I'd plan to stay in the Navy for 10, 12 years, which are kind of the good years to be a SEAL officer. Right. Before you get stuck at a desk. It was family policy that you don't come and work in the family business because you've got to do your own thing,

make your own, cut your own trail. Make you all. Makes sense not because if I, my dad had got money, I'm not joining the military. I'm staying home trying to grift off my dad. I mean, that's what most people would do. But it was, that was never, never even an option. I paid, I had no interest in the business at all. I mean, when I was in high school, some years I would work in the,

they called it the beautification department at the business, which just cut a lot of grass. Yeah. Okay. And it was funny getting dropped off because the business, we lived on one side of town or the business on the other side of town. And so I get a ride with my dad and I make him drop me off a block away because I don't want to be getting out of his Cadillac going to work in the grass department.

It just makes it harder to relate to the guy. You got your own set of problems, huh? Yes, that's a rich guy problem. Right. I'll acknowledge that. Yeah. But you know what? But showing up with everybody knows what my last name was,

and I don't want to dishonor my dad. but it was my plan to stay in these teams for for a while and then do something with him afterwards but that was cut short because he died of a heart attack and plans changed so and so having you know in the 90s there was the peace dividend and there was base you know bases being closed major bases once a month and a lot of ranges so there's a huge de-emphasis on all that But Well, was that so, because when I was in Marine Corps, I remember, well, I didn't know the details behind it, but when I was in the Marine Corps, a lot of bases were shutting down.

Sure. Because there was a lot more during the Cold War. And then in the 90s, they, you know, they rightly made a big rationalization because we just don't need a lot. I mean, there's 400 U.S. bases around the world. Oh, okay. A lot of room for rationalization there, too. But, yeah, it was. Were you Easter, West?

West Coast. West Coast. Okay. Well, East Coast, I went to Paras Island. But I was stationed and MCS tested. Then that base closed and went to El Toro. Okay. So you're in the aviation side?

I was a truck driver. Okay. Yeah, it was a truck driver on Halloween. Right on. Yeah. It was very chill. But necessary when you got to move supplies. Yeah.

Yeah. I wanted to go to Okinawa, get some of that long time action. But remember the dream sheet? You had to fill out where you wanted to go. It was all BS. Yeah, I put Okinaw, we wanted to go to Japan. You were both in the core. Yeah, we were both in.

And we saw that movie Full Metal Jacket, so we wanted to go get some long time. They stuck us in California, though. Yeah. Yeah, I was stuck with the Mexican girls. Yeah. Or the Asian. This is probably going to be the most unprofessional podcast

you've ever been on. It's okay, man. I'm well rested. I'm in the movie. Hey, so you initially started on. Blackwater, your vision was to just train Navy Seals, right? You know, when there was the, when we officially opened the facility,

there was like a sketch done of what the place should look like in 10 years. And included big runway and a track in a big, big fighting city called the Mount, you know, you know what Mount area is. And so that's kind of what we wanted to get to. but I had seen the absolute debacle of nonsense of the UN peacekeeping in Bosnia. And so I thought there was certainly room to do better in contracted peacekeeping forces because when the UN hires peacekeepers, they're hiring countries that largely have fairly unprofessional militaries,

not very well trained, not well paid or supplied, and they don't do a very good job. And so doing that better and handing, stopping people from being slaughtered, like in Rwanda, for example, a million people killed by farm tools in four months. Come on. It was... So, so starting with a training area, but then at the same time,

my dad started, when he started first in 1965, he started making die cast machines, which is a big machine, which squeezes a mold together, and it makes an illusion. aluminum transmission casing or your gas grill. Okay. Nice gas grill. That's a die casting.

Or the treads of a, um, an escalator. That's a big aluminum diecasting. Okay. So he made the machines that made those parts. That business, we did not sell.

And I took that over. And that one was kind of, um, I was a sleepy business. It had 250 employees. And so as I'm taking that through kind of a lean, transformation, making it buying stuff smarter and taking labor cost out and just making the whole thing more efficient. I start to think, what does a military do?

It recruits, vets, equips, trains, deploys, and supports people to do a difficult job. Why don't we do the same thing? And so we had the training thing pretty well wired. And then when, especially after 9-11 happened, that was really the catalyst because we got pulled into doing security work overseas. Okay. We had to recruit and verify and process and supply the people to do that. And so we really built the infrastructure to do all of that all in one base.

So Blackwater was not just a training facility. It was effectively a recruiting training deployment base, even with its eventually with its own airfield. Oh, okay. So you were not only training like Navy Sears, you was training active military at the time. Yeah, the Navy, the U.S. Navy came to us after the coal was flown up in October of 2000.

Remember that was in Yemen, Navy ship getting gas, and a suicide boat drove in the side killed, I think, 17 sailors. Right. Mm-hmm. And the sailors were holding unloaded guns that they hardly ever fired before. And it was so bad then the Navy was

using lasers in boot camp, not real guns. Really? Because guns were too dangerous. Yeah. Talk about sending somebody up to fail. The bureaucracy when left to itself, can really fuck shit up. Yeah, that's a woke-ass army, too.

Yes. They shoot lasers. Lasers. So they came, literally, senior people from the Navy came down and said, came to you to training. They came to Blackwater. Wow. Because I think they asked the SEAL teams,

where do you guys train? Well, we go to Blackwater. Okay, so down comes a couple of captains and a couple of master chiefs. And then we bid for a program. and we ended up training about 100,000 sailors nationwide at our facility and three or four other satellite facilities who stood up next to every Navy base and we trained them how to do basic firearms shipboard security visit board search and seizure all that kind of stuff that makes sense because when the military can't really train the military I mean was in the Marine Corps

and once a year we go to Camp Pendleton and play like real real Marines we go up in our can't put a way up in the mountains and they put these Alice packs on and it was like lasers. Miles. Miles gear. Miles gear. That's what it was called. So when you get shot, it would go off. Bebe, be, beep, beep, beep.

Right. So, I mean, one time I was in the back of a five-tonne, and we just grabbed down the road playing Marines. We were a fake Marines, really. He was a cook. What year were you in? 94-98. Okay. And we're on this side, five-ton, and we're just driving down the road.

You told me this story. Right. And a bunch of breeds in the back of this five there, right? So we're just playing like we're out in the war zone. And then we start taking fire from the left side. So the truck slabs on its brakes. We got all our M16s pointed up to the sky, right? So when he slams on the brakes, everybody's guns is doing this.

People pulling the trigger. So a bunch of us is like beeping before we even get off the truck. We shot each other. Yep. So the ones that made it off, we're shooting each other in the back. And I remember the I think it was a guttery sergeant He's like, yo, sons of bitches

The most worthless fuck Ever seen in my life But it's like we didn't train for that Yeah We did that in boot camp But after that we went to Marine comeback training Which was another eight weeks

But still not enough training I mean we're not like the grunits But we went to M.S school And I was in a mess hall For like a year Well again 20 years of that kind of stuff, certainly, you know, from 2001 until the debacle of Afghanistan, certainly improved that in the Marine Corps.

Right. Across the Army. I mean, that was a very rude awakening about individual soldier skills matter. Yeah. So, yeah, and that the Navy got the wake-up call in October of 2000. On the boat, in Yemen. And, you know, the, after major. combat operations supposedly were to stop in Iraq or Afghanistan,

where you still had the enemy that gets a vote, and so they bring an insurgency, and now they're bringing the fight that they want, not the one that the U.S. military wants. Wow. Because the enemy always gets a vote. Yeah. Right.

So you guys were both truck drivers? No, I was a cook. Well, I wasn't really a cook. I worked in the mess hall with the cook. They would tell me to go get the food. I'd bring it back and they cook the shit. But I was a Marine. What was it called?

What's the title? Subsistence Clerk. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That was green, though. Every Marine a rifleman. Right.

Yeah, I was a sharpshooter. I was expert with a rifle. That's good. Yeah. I just missed it. But I remember my shooting struck said, yeah, you're an expert on the range, but remember you're shooting a target is not moving. Not shooting back at you.

Right. I thought I was doing something, you know. As we, as Blackwater started, in fact, one of the things that really saved the business early on was making target systems because we had very destructive customers. We had special operations units. I mean, at that point, when I was in the Navy, the SEAL team's ammunition budget for training exceeded the entire Marine Corps's training budget for ammunition to give you a relative comparison. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Wow.

So we had customers that shot the shit out of everything. So we ended up buying outside stuff that got destroyed. And we, in a bring a guy named Jim DeHart who used to manage Steel Team 6's facility, came on and helped us build both the shoot houses and all the ranges, and he made some really beefy steel targets. And in the great irony, one of the things that really saved the business was in about 98, right? Because we're bumping along, not making any money, having to send extra money to make payroll. Oh, that sucks.

That sucks. September 30, 1155 p.m., literally the last five minutes of the fiscal year, the fax machine turns on. The fax machine. The fax machine. No email. And in comes an order from the FBI. The FBI. The FBI.

The FBI. And they ordered 11 different field offices a full set of our target systems. And that made the year for us. Wow. That's amazing. I always thought the government took care of the government. They was going to a private contractor like you. Well, in that case, they were not buying range time from us.

They were buying, they asked us to make their targets, which we installed on those ranges, and they're probably still running. There's a bunch of them that were even installed at Delta's facility in North Carolina, still running. Wow. I'm damn proud of that. Because that is a high volume usage, and it still works. Yeah.

Yeah. So you didn't envision that necessarily that that was going to be your cash cow that was going to save your business? No, at that point it was about 50% of the business training targets. Okay. I guess it's a good lesson that if you find the right people and you give them, you don't have to tell them exactly what to do, but tell them where you want to get to, they'll figure out a way to do it. Yeah. Where to make the business works. You also expand your business in providing like security. Yes. So we had no real plans to be in the security business overseas.

But after 9-11, when certain government entities had to go overseas, and they're used to one level of security, not an active war zone. Then we got hired. The first job was in Kabul, actually protecting the CIA station there. And then got pulled into other outlying small bases. and then when Iraq happened, we did similar work there. And then we got pulled into doing State Department Security and protecting, effectively, the guy who was the ambassador.

We protected Jerry Bremmer. And then later, who became whoever was U.S. ambassador, we ended up protecting pretty much all the diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years. Private security is a huge business. That took over your business, right? like financially or? It was,

that would probably our single biggest customer. Okay, sure. Because, and with that, we, the only, the only, like,

business acquisition we did was a aviation business in 2003. Because I really don't like, I don't like to buy businesses. I would rather find the right people and kind of build it organically. Right. But we bought a little company called Presidential Airways, which was basically six guys,

a leased airplane and the right licenses because they had all the FAA licenses, maintenance license, and they were carb certified, which means they could fly troops. And so we ended up providing overseas airlift support in the war zone for U.S. Transportation Command, part of the Air Force.

Wow. What was people doing before? There was Blackwater if you needed these services done. Well, remember you said that there was more bases and more stuff. but they're sort of closing those bases. Oh, okay. And so you had,

you used to have a much larger headcount in the military. And going forward, they've, they found it cheaper, ultimately, to outsource a lot of that stuff. You're going to have to carry all the subsistence clerks or, right. Right. So there's some things you can do yourself that you want to have,

military has to have itself, and there's other things that they can surge and they can rent more capability when necessary, that's been the math. The problem and why, I mean, we had Blackwater, as a private organization, we had to be extremely efficient because our stuff was not cost plus, meaning. And that's a real legitimate complaint

about military overspending that people have. Right. Is a lot of the big vendors prefer to have cost plus. So imagine building a house. And if the contractor said, well, I'm not sure how much this is going to cost. But I'll tell you about it at the end, and then I'm going to add my feed to it. That's effectively what cost plus is versus the way we wanted a contract, which was firm fixed price. But we tell you, just like you would buy your house to say,

I want to buy this house, it's going to have three bedrooms and two bathrooms and this many windows, and it's going to cost $250,000. Then if it was $255,000, I was eating that extra. or five grand. Okay. That's the difference. Look at everybody, inflation is out of control, and this problem's only going to get worse.

Can't have all your eggs in one basket, especially when you've got people like Sleepy Joe told in the basket in the White House. That's why me and Kevin are always diversifying our assets. That's the kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion we like. Yeah. The value of silver, gold has been steadily rising,

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of silver balls. Yeah. Yeah, Blackwater got a lot of flak. Majority's from the left, though, which I was overcharging. They made all kinds of noise about that. Yeah. Especially after the Nisar Square,

the shootout that happened in Baghdad, then literally a blizzard of subpoenas came from every part of the federal government. And they made every kind of wild-ass claim. Right. Including even George Soros sponsoring a whistleblower, a law firm to come after us with all kinds of whistleblower complaints,

making all this stuff. And after it all went to trial, because we contested in court, the federal judge said that they provided not one scintilla, which I had to look up with that word meant, scintilla. It sounds like much. Which is a really small amount. They didn't provide one scintilla of evidence of financial misconduct by us. And then he made the Soros lawyer actually pay our legal bills, which was a kind of a nice fuck you back to. Right. Yeah, exactly. Right. Which actually made that the bad plaintiff's where, you know, their business went bankrupt. So yeah, though, we went through every kind of proctology exam, audit. Right. It's a fishing expedition. And came through on all of that.

Right. And the only way that they, they really had us over a barrel was, because we couldn't fight back on licensing from the state department. Because as we're doing, active security work overseas for the U.S. government, including the State Department, the CIA, and the DoD. If we contested, they would have withheld any more licenses for us to export anything else. And so Hillary Clinton's State Department stuck us with a $42 million fine. It was the highest per capita fine paid in State Department history. And it was pure politics. Right. Pure politics. Because in their own report, they said there was actually no damage to national security. Right. And what they find us for is stuff like, if we're working for the State Department,

for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and they said, oh, we need 50 guys in this town in two weeks, go, go, go, okay, fine, we got the guys, we got to send their gear, have to wait for the license to be approved, now go, go, go, so this is one part of the State Department demanding that we show up. the other part of the State Department, the Department Director of Defense Trade Controls, working at the pace of speed time, at the pace of peacetime, wouldn't issue the license yet.

It was going to come a month or two or whenever their speed time works. That's the government, yeah. Damn straight. I'm sending the guys, and I'm not sending them naked, so they're going to have their body armor and their helmets and everything else, so they find us, you know,

$40 million for that. That's crazy. They pretty much targeted you because of your ideology politically, right? you're a Republican I think you know in the in the Vietnam War the anti-war left went after troops and this time they went after contractors and we represented um black order kind of represent everything they loved to hate right I was a I was a I was a came from kind of a Republican leaning family I owned the business I didn't have a whole bunch of generals or a bunch of other Washington clowns on the board I was the sole owner

The business was successful. We ran a very efficient business. It made money. I re-invested all the money the business made back in the business. And I was a male, married to a female. I had lots of kids. Well, kids, right? You're male-married to a female.

Straight, white, and Christian. That definitely makes you a target. So that kind of started way back then when Hillary was the tournament of... It explains a lot of what's going on. Trump right now. Yeah, sure. Look, I commend the guy for just having the

stiff spine to just carry on through the shit. It should be illegal whenever somebody weaponized the Justice Department and on government to go after somebody just because you don't agree with the politics and that lifestyle. I mean, that's the definition of treason, right? And it's especially bad

when the people they go out. don't have the resources to fight back. Right. Right. Because Blackwater was a very successful company. But they, I mean, their goal was to crush us. Right. And they largely did.

I paid legal fees of $2.5 million a month for two years. How much that ended up costing you, do you think? The business was sold for about one eighth of what it was worth two years previous. That's why you sold the business because of all the... Look, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know. I started a business because I loved the seal teams. I wanted to do something that would keep me connected with that community. Right.

Because my time there was cut short. So providing a great training area. And obviously, we met a demand that was needed there and it grew a lot, especially when Iraq and Afghanistan kicked off. And, yeah, I'm a little bitter about that yet. Yeah. That happened at the embassy. Was that in Iraq? Hillary got a lot of blame for that at the embassy.

where those, they attacked the embassy? Libya. Libya. Libya. Yeah. That's an interesting comparison. So that was 2012.

Okay. That's right after you sold. Yeah, I exited in 2010. Okay. And in that case, you had the U.S. ambassador, so another dumb idea that the Democrats said, are we going to get rid of Gaddafi? They supported a civil war.

Gaddafi was killed in 2011. The U.S. ambassador was in Benghazi, Libya, visiting locals, and local-located affiliate came to attack the embassy or the consulate. How many rounds were fired by the diplomatic security agents, the government employees, not contractors, the government employees, when that attack happened? Not many. Zero. So their compound is under attack by all kinds of jobs. jihadis, there's eight or ten, eight or ten diplomatic security service agents there, supposed to defend the ambassador.

Right. Not one fucking round. Wow. That's a good question. You think there was ordered not to fireback? No, it was cowardice. Cowardous disorganization. Maybe it was a little bit like that, the truck that stopped fast.

Like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah. Right. And it's a case of sending the wrong people. with the wrong mindset to do a serious job. And it's never a good look for your U.S. ambassador to get killed. Right, right. And that's the need your company was fulfilling.

Yeah. And we did that. We did 100,000 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and no one under our care was killed or injured. Wow. But it was her department of security. Hillary, she crushed her company. Yes, very much so.

So look, and the thing that really bothers me about the whole Benghazi thing, so that attack happened. And that was a State Department issue. A mile or two away is a CIA annex because they're buying back, they're buying back Stinger missiles, they're buying back weapons that should not be floating around the battlefield. Not stingers, Iglas, the Russian man pad. And they hear the gunfire, and they hear the calls for help on the radio. And so those were contractors.

some of them had actually worked for Blackwater, like Chris Perrano. He'd been my personal bodyguard for years. And they asked permission to go, to help other Americans. Denied. Denied, denied, denied by the bureaucrat senior CIA guy on site. Finally, they just didn't listen. And they went and they helped scoop up the rest of the people that were there, brought them to the annex. And then they're hold up. Now the jihadis are organizing and they attack multiple times and a couple more, a couple more of those people were killed.

Having called for help from the U.S. government for hours and hours and hours. And I just find it disgusting. The U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars a year to have capability for combat search and rescue. If a plane goes down somewhere, how are we going to go get our people back? Right. right take care of your own right right and nothing nothing there is there was a c130 with a bunch of army sf guys in croatia on the aircraft engines turning ready to leave denied by hillary clinton uh assets in a road to spain the b22s go to flown in denied there was an aircraft carrier

battle group with all kinds of jets and all kinds of stuff denied That's, I don't get it. Yeah. What was that reasoning? Did they ever come forth with a reason? It's, it comes down to, I think, the people that are put in positions of responsibility where, you know, what does it to talk about? Klauswitz, a great Prussian military philosopher.

So there's two kinds of courage to fight a war. Individual soldiers' courage, we have a lot of that in America. We have an abundance of that. Two, you need moral courage of your leaders who will commit. their people to an uncertain outcome. Right. You say, yeah, holy shit. Okay, SF guys, there's a bunch of other Americans.

Some are already dead. They're in the shit. You can go help them. Or I'm ordering you to go help them because that's your job. But they never got that call. They were denied. They were actively blocked. And whether you're the U.S. Africa command commander that failed to make a decision,

a state department there's all their command and control and radios and bullshit nobody put the right resources in place to do something for Americans that were to help and you know I contrast that to well shit

this is just two months ago okay there was two missionaries in Haiti Americans from Missouri they'd just been married for less than two years they'd been in country for three months on the way back to their house

they get ambushed by a gang gang. They hold up at their house. They're calling for help. They call the embassy, which is less than one mile away from their house in Porter Prince. Nothing, nothing.

Not send the fast team that was already down there, not even send any Marine guards, not anybody that would grow a pair to go out and help them. Nothing. And you can only imagine how badly the girl was raped,

brutalized, killed. The husband killed, burned, nothing. And, you know, I compare that to what Trump did. And not many people know the story, because it certainly got no media, was when, like, October 30th in 2020. So a week, eight days, nine days before the election. There's a missionary in Niger, no, in Mali.

with his family, and he's taken by a jihadi gang, kidnapped him. He's like a 27-year-old kid. And the U.S. is able to watch the Hispanic jihadis in their vehicles because they had drones overhead from the base that they've now been kicked out of, also by incompetence. But they watch, and they're getting close to Nigeria, where they're pretty confident this guy is going to be sold to Boko Haram, which is going to be a bigger problem.

right that's the that's the Nigerian al-Qaeda affiliate and Trump authorizes a rescue so they send the J-Soc package they free fall in they find them can you imagine 27-year-old kid goes to sleep in the middle of the desert surrounded by jihadis and then he's woken up by an American with not two but with four tubes right because they have the wider periphery of the end was 20 ones. Tap them on the shoulder and say, hey, we're here to take you home. That's crazy. I never make that.

Having, and the guys that came there killed all the other jihadis. One got away. Send a message. Don't fuck with the Americans. I'll let him go free so you can have a message. I think he was out taking a piss. The mission was to rescue the guy. They got him.

But it's beautiful. And you know what? Trump never took credit for it. That's moral courage. Committing people to an uncertain outcome. Because you know what? Politically, if something happened where those guys got hurt, it would have been a big black mark on him before a presidential election. But you know what?

He cared enough to get an American kid home that was just a missionary. He wasn't out on some drunk bender and he got kidnapped. No, he was there with his family helping people. And that's why we have resources like that. And it worked. And you know what? Every guy that joins the forces like that, they live for that mission. Right.

Right, that's what they train for. That's the first time I even heard about that story. Yeah, it's true story. Yeah. It was another story that came up regarding Blackwater. They, I don't know if this is a mischaracterization from your perspective, but the Nassar, massacre, that's how they label it. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah. What was your perspective on what happened there? That was another, look, Iraq was a dangerous place. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. And to give you a perspective on that for what the rest of the week was like, we had a helicopter shot down.

We had multiple other ambushes, explosive ambushes, put some of the guys in the hospital, destroyed a bunch of vehicles. And Nisar Square started with a car bomb that went off outside of a venue where there was a senior state department, an AID official at a meeting. And normally the guys would hard point in that building, but all the Iraqis, everybody left. And so they called for a support team. And, you know, Baghdad has big traffic circles.

And if you guys remember deer... Like a roundabout? Yes, exactly. Okay. And you guys, you know, you're deer hunters, right? I've never been hunting. Okay. Never killed a thing.

If you're going to hunt deer, you look for the trail intersections because that's where you're going to ambush them. And it's the same way for a jihadi, right? If you're going to ambush the Americans, you wait to wait to where the roads are going to come together, and that's where you sit. So the support team went to block the traffic to make it clear so this team that was fleeing

could move through there quickly and not get stopped and shot at. Okay. So the team goes to the traffic circle. They stop traffic except one car doesn't stop. It's a white Kia that meets the exact description of the Be on the Lookout briefing from that morning for what a car bomb could be.

Okay. And they did all the signaling procedures of waving, horns, lasers, right? Distracting devices. And they didn't stop. And the guy shot. And yeah, it turns out that was a civilian, an innocent, not a bomb.

But when it's coming at you at 25 or 30 miles an hour and you've seen what car bombs do to other vehicles, yeah, the guy shot. And then a firefight ensued, which, because a bunch of other Iraqis, open fire on the vehicles, and it actually disabled one of the armored trucks. because an 8K rounds skipped off the ground

and severed the drain hose of the radiator. You know, with a modern electronic engine, no fluid, the engine doesn't run. So they were even delayed more, getting out of the traffic circle, getting out of the vehicle in the middle of firefight to rig a toe to drag themselves out. So, yeah, in the end, there was 11 Iraqis killed.

It is still unclear which type of rounds did the killing because some of them could have been AKs, some of them could have been question rounds. but, you know, no autopsies were performed because of their tradition of burying within 24 hours. And the media spun that into along the same lines of contractors bad. Yeah, we got the buzzsaw for that. Yeah, I imagine that's a tough job. Like, the enemy doesn't have like a uniform on.

You don't know. Oh, and sometimes they do. Sometimes they're wearing Iraqi police uniforms or Iraqi military. trade uniforms. Look, the first guys we lost in Iraq were ambushed

partly by Iraqi policemen set up in Fallujah and those bodies were dragged through the streets and there the company was attacked

for not providing heavy enough weapons. Yeah. So it is a difficult mission. War is hell. This sounds impossible. And you know what?

For perspective, there's been 85,000 Iraqi civilians killed since that Nisor Square incident. And you haven't really heard about any of those. 85,000. I checked. They just highlight what happened that day.

Sure. Yeah. It's like that would happen with your man. And then you look at the contrast, what Hillary did. And nobody talks about it. It's like she's like immune from doing everything in her power to do everything wrong when you got a lot of people trying to do everything right. And then they hold us accountable for doing, trying to do everything.

the right thing. Yeah, I think, I think perspective on the media now, the media has been lying about Joe Biden's health. Yeah, and he's been caught in that real life. Yeah, they've been caught, yeah. They've been lying about COVID and all the nonsense around that. Right. So, let's just think about all the other bullshit the media has been feeding us. And I think it's important for people to have a bit of perspective on that. Yeah, and people, and people, literally half the country does not realize that the media is lying to them. Yeah. They're like a bunch of cheerleys rooting for their side.

They're not really being journalists anymore. They want to just make sure that side wins. Yeah, it's propaganda. Yeah, it's not a journalist. Right, right. Journalists, I feel, is dead in this country, especially on the left. I mean, I watch Foxx News,

but I know they're not perfect, but I think there's some sense of accountability and integrity when they're reporting from that side. I don't see that from the left. it's like they're just willing to paint a picture anything lie lie lie I um between my junior and senior year of college I was a White House intern

what administration George Bush Sr. George Bush. You're a man of many hats. It was before Monica Lewinsky made it popular. And uh... And uh...

And it was a boy this year ever. And uh... it was a really instructive. It was, to me, because I always thought, yeah, kind of like Washington and the whole thing. And I thought going to the White House was going to be this bastion of patriotic Americans. It was a den of vipers.

I mean, that was a Republican administration. What the fuck am I doing here? I wanted nothing to do with it. I ended up working for a congressman, Dana Roerbacher, who'd been a speechwriter for Reagan for the second half of the year. and that was yeah my god i Washington is a swamp Trump is right to call it a swamp yeah so you have no political aspirations at all right no yeah have you read i looked at a lot of

your interviews people really want you run for office yeah i i they'd be careful what they asked for yeah they'll get a dose of reality no look i have i am yeah no no Like, you're well off your dad's business, Blackwater. What would you say your net worth is around? A lot less than it was when I started. Oh, really? Yeah. So you wouldn't label yourself like a billionaire or anything like that, right?

Oh, my God. No. My God, no. You know what? No, if BW had continued on the trajectory, it was a very successful machine. and we did that stuff well. And, you know, I was going to, I was thinking beyond the Iraq or Afghanistan,

the government security stuff, and I would have pivoted into making a much bigger training area to do like civilian disaster response for a refinery fire or a building that collapses or a train derailment, that kind of stuff. Right. I would have done, we built a big airfield and I was going to provide another area for the Navy, Navy Air,

this largest concentration of naval air forces in the world is right across the border in Norfolk, Oceania, a place for them to train. And then I would have done red air training because I was a pilot early on as a kid, so I always loved aviation. And I would have brought in megs and sequoys and mirages foreign aircraft and flown them with hot shot American pilots against the Navy and the Air Force aircraft, which is now, again, we were right on the edge of when that would have come. It's a multi-billion dollar a year contract, and we would have ready for it. And then the last thing I would have done was contract firefighting, especially for wildland firefighting. Because we had the business model of tens of thousands of really fit brave men

that could move to an objective and make something happen. We had helicopters, we had vehicles. They really need that in California. Exactly. So many. I'm going to get you guys some new. Yeah, just keep their shit down. Fucking

Hillary Clinton fucking fucking military contracting chairs. Shit. Well, we heard y'all's request. So we hooked up with the most badass patron-owned knife company to make us unique patron

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So don't wait because just like the last batch, they're going to sell out fast. Go to official hardwins.com and hit your batter to get signed up for our next knife drop. Don't miss out. Yeah. Hey, Eric, how do you feel about our current military? Because I see, I mean, I'm not homophobic by any stretch of imagination, but I love gay people. Don't get me wrong, but it's like, it's like I see men behaving like women in uniform, you know. Oh, they're living their life as a woman.

Yeah, yeah. And then the military. And I remember when I joined the military, you couldn't even join if you had flat feet. Right. It's not your willing. And now they'll pay to cut your balls off. Yeah. Yeah, that is insane.

It's like not your, the decision for you to go into military wasn't your willingness to serve. It was your ability. Your ability to contribute to the thing. Right. Right. And right.

So there's been a lowering of the common denominator, lowering that bar. So now we have a lot of people that, I guess, they consider themselves transgender, join the military, because they know they get their surgery that they need to affirm that. It's absolute madness.

But you know, it's interesting, from a recruitment perspective, the one branch that has not had, it's the smallest, but they haven't had the recruiting fall off like the other services have, is the Marine Corps. Because what's the difference of their paradigm,

right? Marines have always had good ads in my mind. But what's different about it? Maybe if you're good enough, you can be one of us. Right. Not join up, and we're going to pay for college,

and you can sleep in and pay for your surgery. Right. No. Join up. Be a warrior. Join the ranks of the warriors that will stand on the wall and defend America. That's still the right paradigm for the entire military, not just the Marine Corps. We have a super bloated military that is... Got a lot of fat, you got a cut.

Yes. So we have the same amount of flag officers, generals and admirals, actually more. than we even had in World War II, when we had 14 million men under arms. Now you have like 1.4. So we had 10 times as many in World War II, and we have more flag officers now. In an era of email, video conference, secure communications,

where you should be able to run a very flat and fast operation, but it's super bloated, obese. And when you look at how many in the ranks even are, by measurement, obese, and they're still getting waived for it, it's just long, right? They're giving them waivers, huh? Oh, yeah. And worse.

So, you know, and again, why we didn't set out to make enemies as Blackwater, but when we can show up the military, when we can do airlift, and it takes us this much cost to do it and this many people versus the Air Force doing it. If we're organizing training to do X for the army, in every case,

we could do it cheaper and faster, just because the inherent organizational flexibility that we had, as a private organization, could always out maneuver big and bloated. I'm not sitting here advocating that we need to privatize the military, not at all, but good leadership will cut a lot of the nonsense out, and you'll have a much better product. The tooth-to-tail ratio,

if the purpose to be in Iraq was to, train the local forces or to conduct combat operations, I would consider that tooth. All the other tail to support that, there was about 12 tail for one tooth. That's a crazy, crazy high figure. Yeah, that's crazy. And now why that really matters

is because you've had a massive step change in warfare because of drones. Not high drones flying overhead with high-tech boyarism, no. But especially from using an FPV drone, one of those old racing drones with the goggles, right, that they've adapted in Ukraine. And the Russians have as well. Take a device about this big.

You can 3D print this with a frag sleeve. And you put a copper cone disk at the front, almost like a, that you use for an explosive form penetrator. a shape charge. And you mount that under the drone. And now that drone's flying around at 120 kilometers, 60, 70, 80 miles an hour.

With a drone operator, can look, find a vehicle, and fly it into the exact spot of vulnerability on the armor. And that drone costs $1,000, $1,500. Wow. So what that means, it's like going from an era of longbows and spears,

not to the first muskets, but to like bolt action rifles. Right. That's because now you're putting long-range precision weapons in the hands of every dude in your squad. I don't care how you're good, I don't care how good you are sharpshooter or marksman at 300 or 500 meters when a dude can fly a drone into your head from 15 kilometers away. Right, right, right. I'm useless. You're dead.

And so all the hundreds of billions of dollars of inventory that the U.S. and all these are the militaries are sitting on, very vulnerable. Yeah, that's going to replace everything. Yeah, yeah. And now the first strategic offset after

World War II was nuclear weapons, right? So the U.S. had nuclear weapons first, and the Soviets stole it. They built up, and then it was a race of tonnage, like who could throw more nukes at each other. Then the U.S. said precision strike, smart bombs. And that worked. And you saw that really in the 1990-1 war,

and then again, really in 2002, 3, 4 in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, everybody has it. Down to a 15-year-old kid in Ukraine who does this with a drone and goes out and kills a tank. everybody has it, ISIS had it, and the U.S. military is not adapting,

it is in grave danger. That's all coming from poor leadership. Yeah, all military bureaucracy is slow. It's just inherently that way. It's too big. Look, even, you know, when the Wright brothers, well, even before that,

like William Gatling, you heard a Gatling gun, right? Yeah. He developed that, he developed a corn, planter. It was a rotary device that would inject corn into the ground. It was a way to automate. And he's like,

I'm going to make one that shoots bullets. And so he did. And he took it now in the Civil War as the unions getting his ass kicked, he takes it to the chief of U.S. Army Ordinance. And the U.S. Army Ordnance chief said, why would I want to buy a gun that consumes so much ammunition?

That's what he said. But you know what? Gatling persisted. And he did a live fire demo. demonstration for Lincoln on the National Mall in front of the White House. Pretty badass. He said, okay, we're buying that right now. But again, when the Wright brothers developed an airplane.

Right. So was that 1904 or five? I read a book about them, yeah. McCullough's biography on the Wright brothers is fantastic. Because we used to spend time in North Carolina, so I've run up the dunes in Kitty Hawk hundreds of times. Right. Well, those dudes did it hundreds of times dragging their glider in the summer. Yeah. I just give those guys so much credit because they just persisted.

They didn't know what flight was like, but they were curious. They watched the birds. They say, we're doing that. And then once they figured out how to fly the glider, they went home and built their own motor to go on their aircraft to making a powered airplane. Right. Yeah. But then when they persisted and did that, They took it to the U.S. Army.

What did they say? To the Signal Corps. Why would we need an airplane? We have balloons. Yeah, I was reading about them when they decided to go to Kid Hall because everybody back then who were like more mechanically inclined, they had engineering degrees. They got all the money. They got all the funding to make the plane and stuff, right?

But they were like flying off of cliffs killing each other. Yeah. So they're right brothers. Yeah, so the Wright brothers is like, let's go to the beach with us a bunch of sand. So if we crash, we don't kill each other. Yep. I see all these old films like 1950s. There's people and they're just pushing these planes off,

eclipse and people just sitting in there. And you're pushing them to their death. It's like. Yeah. There's old pilots and there's bold pilots, but there's not old bold pilots. Right. It was crazy. Yeah.

But they didn't have the educational experience. But they cut through all the bureaucracy, though. Yeah. There was no bureaucracy. They just made it up. Yeah. Yeah, they learned everything through trial and error. Yeah.

Yeah. Didn't have the money. They didn't have the engineer, but. Yeah. They knew how. They learned mechanics by, I think, bicycles. Bicycles.

Yeah. There was a first to create bike. There's a great story. Ambition. Yeah. Amicious guys. That's what built America. Yeah.

I love that story even about Elon Musk, right? He builds an early version of Google Maps that he sells it while he's in college. Oh, he did that? Yeah. It became a online navigation system. I don't know if it was Google Maps,

but definitely MapQuest or something. There's probably MapQuist. And then he started PayPal, did well there, sold it, exited. He starts Tesla and he starts SpaceX at the same time. And both businesses were suffering, and he took his last dollars and put half into each.

and he took, I think he went to Johnson Aetal out in the Pacific where they, a remote spot that they could rent where they could trial and error and not hurt anybody. Right. And they had enough money for three rockets and the first two burned in. Third one made it.

Yeah. And good on them. Literally transforming space travel. And international communications with Starlink, with its ability to reach everywhere on the planet, it's amazing. Hey, I'm going to ask you, do you think we've been

to the moon? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen the videos? It's like a low-budget movie. I don't think about a camera that was spaceworthy in 1969. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Oh, no, I don't think it happened. You don't? I don't think so. They're like talking on the phone. I was like, we didn't even have cell phones. Y'all was just talking to each other.

Oh, no. I have my doubts. You know, you know what I probably think that way is because I see all the lies just fed to me, so you start to second-guess everything. Yeah. And it really hurts you. Because you're being lied, lied over and over and over. And then when you see things, you start to think for yourself,

I don't believe that. Like Candace Owens, she doesn't believe in dinosaurs. She said dinosaurs are fake. Did she say it was fake? Yeah. She said it was fake, right? I think the amount of fossils found deep in the earth would be pretty hard to fake. Yeah.

Yeah. And say, we've got to keep grounded, you know? You got to stuff hanging out with all this conspiracy kids. He did make friends like Eric here. Oh, man, that's crazy talk. There's dinosaurs who are here? So what are you doing now with your time? I'd say my biggest project is this.

This is a new phone. This is a standalone phone. This resulted from a rage call after the 2020 election. Oh, yeah. Between, yeah, look, seeing what big tech was doing to throw off certain voices off of certain platforms and controlling conservative media. And at that point, I had a team together doing a cyber unlock for like forensic investigation. And we pivoted immediately. I said, we're never going to fix big tech by complaining about it.

We're going to compete with it. So we built this phone. This is based on an Android kernel, but it's our hardware, our operating system. And the difference is this phone, our operating system, prevents the phone from collecting and exporting your data. Because your existing iPhone or Android that's running Google Mobile Services literally collects everything and exports it. And there's a book I'm reading just about done, a book by Byron Tao called The Means of Control. And it really describes how do we get here as a society for the amount of data that your cell phones listen and export for? And after 9-11, there'd been traditional advertising firms that would go through homeowner records and driver's license database, et cetera, to help target advertising.

But then the government started using that data to look for a needle in a stack of needles. Right, to find the terror profiles of any more 9-11-style hijackers. Right. And that put a huge demand signal into the market for more of that advertising intelligence, which just exploded in usage. And then smartphones come out, and that becomes one big... Smartphones today are basically a portable computer that you do everything in your life, right? You're communicating, your banking, your navigation, it's your will.

decks, everything. And, but all those apps largely are free. And if you're not paying for something, you're not the customer, you're the product. And so really surveillance capitalism exploded.

And it made, it's why Google and Apple make so much money from that. And we decided we're going to have a product that prevents that. And so this has a actually has a firewall setting where you can actually turn off the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth and the camera and the microphone and all the rest.

This phone even has a kill switch which separates the battery from the electronics. So that off is off. You shut your phone off? It's not off. Right. It's still pinging towers. It's still pinging Wi-Fi building a digital picture for that surveillance capitalism. We have the antidote to that.

And the frightening thing now is Apple just announced a couple weeks ago. that on their next system upgrade, their OS upgrade, they're going to include Jet GPT on the phone. So they're going to turn artificial intelligence loose on your phone, whether you like it or not, to own your shit.

So we did 500 units we deployed last fall and kind of a big beta test and we got 10,000 units in in May and we're mostly done that first run in 10,000 or ordering the next tranche. You know, I didn't really wake up three years ago deciding I wanted to take on two multi-trillion dollar companies. Right, right.

But someone had to. Right. Fuck it. Yeah, that's the problem. Nobody's fighting back. Now, with Big Tech, my information, it's like information is the new oil, right? What will be the cash cow for your product? So we make, we do okay selling the phone.

and then so you get the phone when you buy it and the operating system included, but then at month 13, you pay us $12 a month. Oh, okay. That's it. Okay. And you get with that, obviously the operating system are a very secure messenger at a VPN that works everywhere globally. Well, wow, so you're selling privacy.

You're selling privacy and data sovereignty. I think that's going to do very well. Well, I think so. When I leave the office, my phone tells me when I get home. And shit you not, whatever I'm talking about something, like I'm interested in buying something, I start getting ads on my phone for the exact same thing I was talking about. The phone's listening to us? Think about that.

Oh, absolutely it is. Why did Zuckerberg pay $20 billion for WhatsApp? Yeah. Because everything that passes through is analyzed by the algorithm. Look, I managed to piss off my wife. And she sent me a scorcher of a text. And for the next two weeks, she was getting nonstop advertising. from divorce lawyers and from Match.com.

That's crazy. Oh, yeah. So imagine that phone on the nightstand in your bedroom. Right? I had this people tell me all the time. Yes, I was talking, not texting, talking to my wife about needing a new mattress. And they're getting mattress advertising the next day.

Right, right. Shouldn't this be illegal? You accepted it. When you scroll through and you accept it on that user writing. Nobody reads that shit. Exactly. You read this one? Yeah.

So if I want to switch phones, how would I go about doing it? You order one from unplugged.com. Unplugged.com. And we'll deliver your phone in probably 48 hours. And there's a very simple transition to take all your contacts off of your old phone and push it onto here. And yeah, there's like 90% commonality, the apps that people are used to work on here, Spotify, navigation apps, banking, airline apps, Twitter X, what's kind of thing. So why don't our politicians like the Republicans, why don't they stop this, listening to us on our phones and our prophecy?

Why don't they stop this? That's a damn good question. And it's disgusting. And they did something even worse because the government got sick of getting beaten up when they go before Congress. Because government, the Fourth Amendment, talks about being secure. and our persons and our property from being searched. Yeah, exactly. And the government became the big buyer of this ad data from commercial entities.

And they're doing that, and they can buy that without any warrant, without even any probable cause. And just a month ago, Congress, including a lot of Republicans, passed a FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a massive extension on it, so that any federal agent can go to any private company that has any of that data. Wow. And turn it over with no probable cause and no warrant. For all Americans. For all Americans. Whether it's the, there's companies that actually measure the tire pressure of your tires.

Right? Because you have little pressure sensors in your tires. It's going to be a sender, right? You can put a device out alongside a road and collect that going by. You can license plate readers, the pervasive cameras everywhere in America, all of that, a ring, a ring camera, where do you think that goes?

That's going to some other company. That's not your data. How about the- So what the federal government can do is collect any of that data without a warrant, without probable cause right now, to go, like, I'm going to go after Keith and Kevin. I'm going to screw you guys.

and I can go on a fishing expedition, that's exactly what it allows. It is an Orwellian nightmare. This is an antidote, partially to that, obviously it doesn't affect a ring camera at home or your toucher pressure, but we did this

because free people need to be able to communicate freely and securely without knowing that you're just giving off this massive amount of exhaust being vacuumed up by a pervasive surveillance state. Even in our messenger, we have a...

So, you know, you guys use Signal as an app? Yeah. Yeah, I haven't used it yet, though. So when you do that, right? When you call on Signal, it answers right away. Right. Because you're using a public key that you download it when you download the app.

Right. This call, when you call on us, it uses... It takes four or five seconds to connect because my phone is generating a new key pair with your phone that's unique for one call. Oh, okay. We also have here something called a clear pin data code or if someone says, hey, Hodg Twins, give me your phones, I'm here to inspect them. You say, sure, officer, and you can unlock with a clear pin data code and you hand him a brick.

Because it wipes it. I like that. Look, this is. We need more products like that on the market. I've never heard anything like that. Well, unplugged.com, huh? That's what I've been working on. Yeah.

So. Don't let Hillary find out about it. That fucking bitch. Again, different standards of law. She's under subpoena to turn over emails. Right. And where they do, they burn, destroy the emails and use the bleach bit. Bleach bit, yeah, on their phone.

Yeah. And servers. Yeah. So law only works if it's applied. equally. Equal justice under the law. Equality. The whole thing like lady justice, that image with the balance scale,

supposed to be blindfolded. Not peaking. Is it a Democrat? Okay, you can go. That's not what's going on in this case. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Hey, y'all, three red flags that show you might have poop stuck in your coat.

Random stomach pains and abdominal cramps like you on your period or something. Oh, man. Think of my period. Uncontrollable leakage and episodes of diarrhea. Oh man, it's horrible. You got that mud butt. Oh, God. You strain and struggling and pushing when you're on the toilet.

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Yeah. Try optimal human for free today. Yeah. What do you think is going to happen this next election? It's a damn good question. I'm thinking Trump's going to win in Lancelight, but I thought he won't in a landslide last election. Yeah, I went to sleep that night.

We got this. Yeah. We're taking our country back. Yeah. woke up. Biden gets all these votes. I'm like, how did he get all the mail-in ballots? I'm hoping that there is such a massive turnout for Trump

that it makes it that much harder or even more blatantly obvious. Yeah, I'm taking my wife. I'm taking my kids. Everybody's registered to vote and we're going. I'm just not going by myself and voting this time. So my nephew, Drew, developed an app which lets you search your family members, like family, cousins, neighbors, and you can see who voted last cycle or not. You can actually go to them and say, hey, I know this is important.

I'm going to give you a ride. Right. Right. We need that level of turnout. Yeah. Okay. We need to absolutely crush any semblance of. doubt about a Trump victory.

Right. Because even if you took at the, look at the math from 2020, what they say if you add up all the supposed votes, it comes out to like 91 or 92% voter turnout. Impossible. Why? Right. Because in Australia, where it's mandatory to vote and they find you if you don't vote,

oh really? They never get above 82%. Wow. So you're saying, you're telling me that Biden, a 45-year failed politician, not a black guy, that's better in the black community than Obama does? Come on.

That's too much common sense right now. It's like they got something up their sleeve because that dude is obviously in mental decline and they never replaced them. It's tragic to see the mental gymnastics between the pro-Biden people who probably just realized the fixes in versus the other Democrats,

congressional Democrats, then realize they're going to get hurt with down-ballot pressure and so that their careers are at risk. That's what they care about, not really the country. Yeah, right. To see what's going to happen.

Yeah, yeah. I think Trump's going to win. What do you think? It's never good to measure the curtains, man. No, the, the, the, we must turn out in every state,

even what you think is a safe state. Yeah. Texas, Florida. They've got to turn out. Virginia? Yeah, we've been losing. Ah, because normal Virginia is great. It's the D.C. area.

And you know what? Don't forget about no folk area. Yeah, right. Some fools down there. But you know what? When you look at the explosion of the size of government, the five counties surrounding Washington, D.C., are the capital of the wealthiest in the country.

Right. That's a really unhealthy sign. Yeah. We used to live up in Herndon. That's corruption. And it's just the amount of federal spending. Yeah. It's just like a fire hose, showering it everywhere. To me, a successful Trump presidency would be a decline in the real estate values surrounding Washington, D.C. Yeah, my townhome's going down.

Well, sell it, buddy. Unless you guys are going to go take a... Almost up 100% of it already. I'm just going to sit on it because eventually a Democrats going back in there. Hey, you started a property equity firm? I, um, so I sold Blackwater in 210. Mm-hmm. I moved to UAE, United Arab Emirates.

Oh, wow. Okay. Oh, yeah, I mean to ask you about that. What's that? Because of Somali piracy. Because we'd actually done 20 helicopters for them. We basically modified them in, um, uh, we made them special operations birds. Uh-huh.

Put the desert kits on, sand. and satellite lab and weapons and stuff. And they were very happy. And so I was asked to go meet the leadership. And Somali Piracy was raging then. And so that was an interesting. Somali pirates. Yeah, that was raging in like 2011, 10, 11, 12.

They were taking 80, 90 ships per year off the coast. They would drive a 25 foot skiff out to sea hundreds of miles, find a ship, board it, take it back, park it, and then just wait for six months or a year, waiting for the ransom to get paid. Somali Press, those are a bunch of black people. Yes, they were. What the hell would you? You're this big boat.

They come up, help, help. Let me own your boat. No, it was not a help help. It would drive up with a boarding ladder, hook it on the side, scamper up. And, you know, four dudes with guns go to the straight to the bridge and stop the boat, or I'm going to shoot you. And they take it that way. So that... That's Somalia, man.

That's a shithole. Yeah. Look, it's a rugged place. It's a beautiful country. It's like the longest coastline in Africa. Great surfing. Great seafood. The whole country's continent is beautiful.

It's just... Governance matters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No leadership. So built a police force, the Puntland Marine Police Force, and you don't hear about Somali Piracy anymore.

It's funny how that works. But it wasn't largely a kinetic thing. It just went and dried up their logistics. We went, because it doesn't take some high-end spy satellite to figure out where the pirates are. Right. You fly an airplane along the coast and say, oh, well, there's a thousand-foot oil tanker anchored a half mile from shore.

Right, right. Duh, okay, they're going to be pirates there. Yeah. So the guys, their first mission was like a 300-mile drive across roads that had not been maintained in 30 years. But sadly, no news coverage, huh? Look, the U.S. government actively did everything they could to block us and to make it stop. That's weird. Yeah, because it wasn't, we offered, we were like, look, Ali North and Fox News came to the

base. A couple senators visited. Trying to make it nefarious. Look, look, we're here to build a police force. We're here to stop pirates. Yeah. And there's a movie we made, a documentary. It's called the Somalia Project. Because knowing that a bunch of white dudes in Somalia ending piracy was going to somehow

be controversial. White question straight males. That's going to, yeah. Stopping black pirates. And some of them were South Africans. Right. So, you know. My favorite part of that movie, because there's this kid that's interviewed through the movie, he's in his late 20s.

He's an Indian kid. And he said, yeah, we'd been held for a year, year and a half. And the engineer had been beaten to death. Another guy had his ears cut off. And one day we heard shooting. And we heard a lot of shooting. And then we heard a helicopter. And we knew someone had finally come to rescue us.

Right. Yeah. The most bedraggled, abused-looking dudes that finally make it to the beach. It's the crew off the ship that have been rescued. He said, we prayed to God, and he sent the PMPF. I thought, hell yeah, that makes it worth it. For all the bullshit, all the UN, calling me an arms embargo violator and destabilizing and all the rest, fuck that. We rescued those dudes, and we ended piracy, and fuck the haters.

Yeah. It's like just people live in two different realities. Yeah. Well, and the NGO industry that surrounds those kind of failed states, they're bad. It also needs to be massive cutoff of funding because it creates a cottage industry of people that perpetuate suffering, not end it.

Right. Yeah. Well, man, it's been a great conversation, Eric. Thanks for having me. Great conversation. Hey, I'm going to unplug.com, right? Yeah, where can people find you on social media? I am on Twitter at real Eric D. Prince.

Real Eric D. Prince. Okay. And they can check out Unplugged at Unplug.com. And I actually started a website, EricD.Prince.com. Because in other podcast interviews I've done, I've mentioned a lot of books. And I read a lot. And it also is a list of all the other interviews I've done,

articles I've written because I really care about, look, I have a lot of kids. And I'm now a granddad. And I'm having two more grandkids this year. And the country is not in great shape. And I think we can do better. We should expect to do better. And if this is,

what our coastal elites from the Ivy Leagues are giving us, then let's look somewhere else. William F. Buckley, the guy that founded National Review, old school conservative, he said he'd rather be governed by the first 535 names of the Boston phone book than the clowns that are in Congress. It's a great quote. It really is.

Yeah. Any other questions? No, it's pretty much yet, man. Thank you for covering. Thanks for having me. Nice to meet you guys. And good luck in your success. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.