Jocko Podcast - 234: How to WIN Using Your Mind Rather Than Brute Force. Applying Couter-Insurgency to Life. FM 3-24

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening. 0:09:39 - Counter Insurgency Manual. FM 3-24 1:50:57 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:55:35 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:21:07 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 234 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So I was working with some echelon front clients the other day talking about leadership. And I was talking about the minimum use of force. Have you heard that phrase before? Yes, I have. So we talk about it from sort of a combative's, a tactical perspective.

But I was talking about it from a leadership perspective, meaning that you want to lead. You want to lead most of the time with a minimum use of force. So I want to do as little as I can to make you do what I want you to do. That's a good rule of thumb to lead with. I was also thinking, and this is you might, I don't know if you're going to find this funny. You might.

I was thinking about leaders being legit. Have you noticed I use the term legit? Yes, I use it more now. You've acquired it. I've acquired it, yes. And we know what it means, right? We use the term to mean like that's cool, but it's a little bit stronger, right? It means kind of approved.

But then I was thinking about the source of that word, legitimate, because once again, I was talking about leaders being legitimate. And actually beyond that, leaders being legitimate leaders. Think about that, right? Think about the difference in your mind when you think of a legitimate leader or someone that's an illegitimate leader. There's a huge difference because when a leader is viewed as illegitimate, then they're not respected. They're not listened to. If someone gets put in a position because they're the boss's favorite or because they backstabbed someone.

right to get into that to get that promotion they're not going to be considered legitimate a legitimate leader and that hurts their ability to lead so as i was thinking about these two things the minimum use of force and legitimacy and i recognize both those thoughts in my head from the counterinsurgency manual FM3 tack 24 now here's a little history behind this manual when I arrived in Ramadi you know this is this is the manual that I read when I arrived at Ramadi so what happened was I arrived in Ramadi I went to an Intel briefing during the Intel briefing there was this massive link diagram of all these bad guys a bunch of them connected how they were connected who they were connected to some of the bad guys had

little slat red slashes through them made they be killed or a little green slash to them meant they've been captured but the thing is this massive link diagram didn't really look all that much different as the link diagram that I had left in Baghdad two and a half years prior. So in my mind, I kind of realized, wait a second, if we're still doing the same thing and things don't really look all that different, this isn't good. And well, it seems like we're losing. So I don't know what necessarily thing triggered my brain to go and read the, Counterinsurgency manual, I must have seen something.

You know, I used to read all these and still do. I'd read, you know, these sort of military websites and, you know, military news and those kind of things. And somewhere in there, I had seen that this new, this new field manual is coming out. And I knew that this new field manual had been written by General Petraeus and General Mattis. Both those guys need no introduction, both incredible leaders. very very well known inside the military when I was in and and now both of them are well known outside the military and that reading this so I so I went and Googled it on

the regular internet and so now this is like May yeah this is May of 2006 and I'm trying to remember I don't think I saw the whole completed manual I I think I saw chapters of it, and I did a little research, and it turns out that they did. They had sort of assembled the initial chapters and released them as quick as they could, just to get this information out there. And when I read it, it definitely shaped the way I thought about the Battle of Ramadi.

It shaped the way that task unit bruiser could operate in the Battle of Ramadi, and really it ended up shaping the way I think about a lot of different things, about leadership and business and the teams and and life. And so I actually dug around the internet and I found one of these early versions. So one of the versions that I found of this, it says on it, FM3 Tech 24, and it's June 2006. That's when this, this is the final draft. So I think the thing I read was probably just a little bit earlier, probably one of the few chapters released. And also, when I read that, I read what I read, and again, I wish I remembered it better, what I read, I read the whole thing.

And when you see the whole manual, it's 250 pages. And there's a lot of stuff that gets into stuff that wouldn't have been as pertinent to where I was and what I was doing. So I think I probably saw the first two or three chapters of this. And I absolutely know for a fact I saw the first chapter, which is what I want to dive into today. Now, this is what made me want to dive into. Because believe me, this is one of the first manuals that I wanted to cover. I said, oh, you know, I should cover the field. I should cover the counterinsurgency field manual.

We should go and read that. Well, here's the deal. It is a huge manual, right? And a lot of it digs into the weeds and kind of gets really granular on, you know, how you do logistics inside it. So there's a lot of really deep. Not deep is not the right word. There's a lot of very tactical. techniques that you're going to use to make things happen inside of a counterinsurgency.

But what I find fascinating about this is the way that it relates to absolutely everything, especially from a leadership perspective, especially from a leadership perspective, because you start thinking about things. You start thinking about the way the world is formulated. And if you think about it from an insurgency and a counterinsurgency perspective, you start to see things much clearer. And the reason is because, let's face it, if you want to take a look at things,

you want to say, oh, war is comparable to everything, right? Everything is comparable to war. Is it possible to say that? Okay. Well, it's possible to say that. But if you don't include insurgency in that and counterinsurgency in that, look, war is not always, especially in business, especially inside of a business, inside of a team.

Is it really a war when I'm trying to get one of my subordinate teams to do what my other subordinate team is doing? And they're giving me resistance. Is that war? Is that an all-out war? Not really. It's more like an insurgency. And what I've got to do, I can't just go to war with them.

If I go to war with them, I'm going to destroy them. That's the goal of war. Insurgency means I'm going to form relationships. I'm going to bring people on board. I'm going to get rid of the people that are bad actors. Like it's a totally different, much more nuanced thing. And that's what allows you when you can put, when you can look at things through the prism of insurgency and counterinsurgency,

it gives you, it will give you some, it will give you some visibility on how to handle situations. So it's real easy to say, we're at war with our competitor. Okay, I get that. We're at war with our competitor. We're going to go to war with our competitor. We're going to go to war with this other team.

But when you say, hey, we've got people inside of our own organization that don't agree with what we're doing. All of a sudden it takes on a totally different meaning. Because if you go to war with them, what do you do? You destroy them. Can you effectively and perfectly destroy only the things that you want in a war? No. War means there's going to be collateral damage. People are going to, you know, it's a, it's a gnarly thing.

So, but insurgency and counterinsurgency is more nuanced. It takes more, you have to use a scalpel instead of using a battle axe, right? That's what you're doing. And so when you start seeing things as an insurgency and acting as if you're utilizing counterinsurgency procedures to try and solve that problem, it's a much more accurate way of saying, hey, everything in life is comparable to war. Okay, does everything in life compare to war? Maybe, but that's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is this allows you to make much better analogies like that. I'm not saying there's perfect. I'm not saying everything in life is war. No, this allows you, if there's a war analogy, if there's a war metaphor there, If there's things to be learned from war, you have to learn from the insurgency and counterinsurgency mindset. So let's get into this. And I want to make sure that I kind of point some of this stuff out as we go through. So here's the forward.

This manual is designed to fill a doctrinal gap. It's been 20 years since the U.S. Army published a manual devoted to counterinsurgency operations at 25 since the Marine Corps published its last manual. with our soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it is thus essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations. And they call that coin. Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it must be informed by contemporary experiences.

So what's cool about this is, and they reference the counterinsurgency and the insurgency in Iraq in 2005. Like, that's how up-to-date this thing was. and they were trying to get this information out there as quick as they could. This manual takes a general approach to coin. The Army and Marine Corps recognize that every insurgency is contextual and presents its own set of challenges. So guess what?

Every little disagreement that you have inside your team has its own little contextual things that are happening in its own set of challenges. So you have to be able to adapt to that. You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamic extremists the same way you would fight, the Viet Cong, the Moros, which is a Philippine, let's call insurgent group, or the Tupamaros, which was in Uruguay,

the application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each very considerably. And it goes on to say that nonetheless, there's common characteristics of insurgencies. It says a counterinsurgency campaign is, as described in this manual, a mix of offense, defense, and stability operations conducted along multiple lines of operations.

So that right there, if you take that little thing right there into your mindset, because if we just say we're going to war, what does that mean? It means optimally, we're just going on offense. Maybe we say we're going to go offense, but we're going to have to go on defense sometimes. But then stability, like what does that mean? That means you're trying to keep this whole organization together. Right? You're not worried about this.

When I'm going to total war with Echoes country, I'm not worried about stability for you. I'm worried about just destroying you. I'm going on offense. And then conducted along multiple lines of operations. So that means there's all kinds. It's not just fighting. It's not just guns.

It requires soldiers, Marines to deploy a mix of both familiar combat tasks and skills, more often associated with non-military agencies, with balance between them depending on the local situation. This is not easy. Leaders at all levels must adjust their approach constantly, ensuring that their elements are ready each day to be greeted with a handshake or a hand grenade. What does that do to your mentality?

I mean, just think you're going into a meeting. You've got to be ready to deal with a handshake or a hand grenade. That's what you've got to be ready for. To take on missions only infrequently practiced until recent years at our combat training centers to be our nation builders as well as warriors to help reestablish institutions and local security forces to assist in the rebuilding of infrastructure

and basic services and to facilitate the establishment of local governance and rule of law. That's what you throw the military into all that stuff. That's why counterinsurgency is so hard. Yeah, just everything I just said, going to war is like the easy part. Here's the bad guys, go kill them. That's the easy part.

Everything else I just said, that's what makes this. so complicated. Conducting a successful counterinsurgency campaign thus requires a flexible, adaptive force led by agile, well-informed, culturally astute leaders. Probably the opposite of what the stereotypical military person is. Is our hope that this manual provides the necessary guidelines to succeed in such a campaign in operations that inevitably are exceedingly difficult and complex. soldiers and Marines deserve nothing less.

And it's signed David H. Petraeus, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, and James and Mattis, Lieutenant General, United States Marine Corps. So there's your introduction. Right out of the gate, you can see we're dealing with something totally different. Just infinitely more complex. Chapter 1, and this is the only chapter we're going to cover today. And it may be the, look, like I said,

It gets into some very granular stuff, but this is such a good opening Chapter 1, insurgency and counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency is not just thinking man's warfare. It's the graduate level of war, special forces officer in Iraq, 2005. And this is what's really cool about this is the Battle of Ramadi is seen as a model of counterinsurgency. And I was lucky enough to be there and lucky enough to sit in. and brigade brigade op orders and division op orders and to sit with the brigade commander

and listen to what his thoughts were and hear what the input was and here, I mean, I was so lucky to be a part of this. To be there. So starts off overview, insurgency and counterinsurgency are subsets of war, though globalization and technology and technological advancement have influenced contemporary conflict,

the nature of war in the 21st century is the same as it has been since ancient times, a violent clash of interest between or among organized groups characterized by use of military force. Success in war still depends on a group's ability to mobilize support for its political interests and generate sufficient violence to achieve political consequences.

Means to achieve these goals are not limited to regular armies employed by a nation state at its core war is a violent struggle between hostile independent and irreconcilable wills attempting to impose their desires on another it is a complex interaction between human beings and is played out in a continuous process of action reaction and adaptation war this manual is available for free on the interwebs Google it. I'm not going to read the whole thing today. I'm going to hit some highlights.

Says this also. It's scale and complexity should never, this is talking about counterinsurgency. Its scale and complexity should never be underestimated by leaders and planners. Indeed, the possible scale and complexity must be understood before the beginning of any such operation. This is a mistake we've seemed to make over and over again. You think you're the big, badass American military.

We're going to go in there. We're going to squash these these enemy soldiers and the peasants will be on board. You know, the local populace will be on board when they see the freedom. And we just underestimate this thing all day long. You underestimate how hard it is to do this, how hard it is to actually execute a counterinsurgency. It talks about a couple different aspects of insurgency, a couple different kinds, a revolution, which they describe as an unplanned, spontaneous explosion of power. popular will.

Another one is a coup d'etal, which is a small group of plotters that replace state leaders with little support from the people at large. And an insurgency is an organized, protracted political military struggle designed to weaken government control. Insurgencies normally seek to either overthrow existing social order and relocate power within the country. Talks about internal wars. As the name internal wars implies, these.

are primarily conflicts within states, not conflicts between states, and they all contain at least some element of civil war. That's why I think so much of this is pertinent to being a leader, because so much of being a leader isn't about how you're taking the fight to the enemy. It's how you're handling the people inside your own country. That's what's hard. Handling the people inside your own company, handling the people inside your own organization. Let me tell you something. At echelon front, where we do leadership consulting. Sure. We spend at least as much time helping solve the problems inside the company as we do

helping companies figure out how to solve what they do to beat their competitors. Because if you don't have a squared away organized situation inside your team, you're not going to beat the competitors. You're not going to defeat your enemy. So this counterinsurgency, these these counterinsurgent tactics are what you use to help your own team stay unified. And if you don't utilize them correctly, guess what you get. You get an insurgency. And at worst, it rips your team apart. But even if it doesn't rip your team apart, it has you rowing in different directions.

And when you row in different directions, you don't. go where you're supposed to go so you need it you need to keep a check on that one possible exception to this rule involves what can be termed a liberation insurgency where indigenous elements seek to expel or overthrow what they perceive to be a foreign occupational government such a resistance movement could be mounted by a legitimate government in exile as well as elements competing for that role another thing that happens in business businesses get bought Businesses get bought by bigger businesses. Businesses have people get inside and take over.

There's hostile takeovers. There's all these kind of situations. And then you get these little insurgencies inside companies, inside businesses, inside teams. Also, it can be outside actors get involved. Fast forward to it. In all cases, the long-term objective for all side remains acceptance of the legitimacy of one side's claim to political power by the people, state, or region. So if you're a leader and you are in a company and you're not considered legitimate

You have you're you're you're basically out of the gate. You're probably going to be dealing with an insurgency That's just how it's happening It's gonna be rough another little section here the scale and complexity of coin should never be underestimated the effort requires a firm political will And extreme patience on the part of the government its people and countries providing its support. Widespread security requirements also limit flexibility again seating to ceding the initiative to insurgents. There's all kinds of reasons that the insurgents have an advantage, right?

Oh, another quote here. The contest of the internal war is not fair as most of the rules favor the insurgents. Most of the rules favor the insurgents. Iraq, they absolutely did. Do the insurgents in Iraq care if they were? wounded friendly civilians not one bit did they care if they killed each other not one bit did they use torture absolutely did they use terror absolutely did they do the most brutal and savage things to the local populace yes they absolutely did and they didn't care

at all so they have a complete advantage when it comes to the rules and whether you're talking about the tactical rules or the actual rules of engagement or the law of They don't care about any of that. The insurgent can make exorbitant promises and point out governmental shortcomings caused by the insurgency. So yeah, so you make a mistake fighting an insurgency, they're going to use it to their advantage. You kill civilians by accident. Oh, that's going to be, you know, national news, world news, global news. They're going to take advantage of that.

They want that to happen. Fast forward. Coin is not an approach to war that can be classified simply as foreign internal defense. features a full spectrum of operations, including stability operations like any other campaign. In all cases, however, insurgencies will not be defeated simply by killing insurgents. Since the insurgents, since the insurgent begins with strategic initiative, meaning they have an advantage, the counterinsurgent is usually involved initially in more defensive than offensive operations.

That's the way it kind of kicks off. They're attacking you. You don't even know who they are. victory cannot be gained until the people accept the legitimacy of the government mounting coin and stop actively and passively supporting the insurgents. That right there, I was smiling when I read this because that's one of the quotes that I just completely ripped off from this when I read it for the first time and I started using that all the time.

You know, I started saying, well, you know, when my boss would ask me, you know, what are you guys trying to get done? I'm like, sir, you know, we're trying to stop the passive support that's happening for the insurgents. And all of a sudden I sounded smart. Stole, stole words from them. Because that's what,

there was a lot of, in Ramadi, in Ramadi, there was, local populace was so scared that if an insurgent came into their house and wanted to use their window to shoot their sniper rifle from,

they would just like, get out of their way, give them some bread. You know, we don't want to bother you. You do what you got to do. We're not here to cause you, but they provided passive support.

Yeah. And that happens inside companies, too. You know, You get the whatever that one element that used to be here that are gonna help you They're gonna give you a hand they're not definitely not gonna rat you out because they see that illegitimate leader that Whatever stepped in dude just want to keep their job a lot of the time. Yeah exactly They don't want to make any waves right I want to make ways

Um this gives a good section that kind of talks about the histories of insurgencies. That's why it's worth pulling out this book Each insurgency is unique, although there may be similarities among them. In all cases, the insurgents aim is to force political change. And this is important. I was trying to read my note here. Force political change, but actually sometimes, especially in business, the goal is to prevent change. Right? They don't want some new system.

They don't want some new procedure. So they have a little insurgency to fight against. They're fighting against change. specific types of insurgency, here's some things that you're supposed to try and figure out. What's the root cause of the insurgency? How important is that, right? If you're in a team and you're in a business,

you're in a leadership position, and there's some kind of an insurgency happening, you feel that. Find out what the root of it is. Where is this coming from? Next, extent to which it enjoys support, both internally and externally. Who's on board with us?

bases on which insurgents appeal to target population insurgents motivation and depth of commitment where they are at like how much does this mean to them likely insurgent weapons and tactics operational environment which insurgents seek to initiate and develop their campaign so there's some things to look at and this is why this again this is why I think this is important because if you just look at your own team and you just think

oh they're against me I'm at war with them it's a problem The way you fight that war is not going to be correct. If you look at it as an insurgency, you say, okay, how do I actually assess this? And this gives you such a strategic advantage. Several different types of insurgents. Some of them seek to completely change the existing political system. Anarchists, egalitarians, traditionalists, pluralists, they got good little definitions for all these in there. Some do not seek total political power in a state.

These are secessionists, reformists, preventionists, commercialists, and you've got to try and figure out what it is that your insurgents are seeking. Insurgent strategies, you've got conspiratorial. Conspiratorial strategy involves a few leaders and a militant cadre or activist party, seizing control of government structures or exploiting a revolutionary situation. This is what's interesting. such insurgents remain secretive as long as possible emerging only when success can be quickly achieved that's definitely something to think about because you think everything's going cool right you hear a little bit of murmur here a murmur there someone's talking about this method that we're using someone's against some way some change that we want to make you hear little whispers and then all of a sudden one day boom you get hit in the face with it and you weren't ready for it

So you got to watch out for that. Military focus, these are ones that are going to use military force to try and make things happen. Urban organizations like the Irish Republican Army and Latin American groups have pursued an urban warfare strategy. Approach uses terrorist tactics in cities to sow disorder and create government repression. Those such activities have not generated much success without. wider rural support. You also got the protracted popular war. God, that's just an ugly term, protracted war.

What does that mean? It's going to last a long, long time. And what sucks is, from a psychological standpoint, like if you and I are going to train Jiu-Jitsu, and you know that I'm just a guy that's just going to go protracted war. Like, you don't want none of that, right? No, I tend not to you. Hey, well, let me, let's say you set up the clock, the timer,

and you put five-minute rounds on there, and then I walk over and I just turn it off. There's no time limit. It's just going to be a protracted war. We're going, and I don't care how long it takes. I was thinking of doing a, is there still, is there a jihitsu tournament right now that's no time limit, submission only, does want to exist right now.

I don't know. We've had some variations of it. Attempted. Yeah. But is there anyone that's doing no time limit? No. Submission only. I think there's certain ones that have like those types of matches, but I think there's specific like special matches.

Like no time limit matches or something like that. It's not all of them, but it's actually pretty rare, but yes, I've seen that. What if we do a jihitsu tournament called protracted war? Yeah. Sure. The thing is you got to be ready. You got to be ready for it. Think about this as a competitor.

As a competitor. You're like, I got to hydrate because I might be fighting for the next nine hours. Well, that's what the UFC was. Yeah, I know. The first ones were, what? How many before they made time limits? 15 minute time limit with like overtime or so. It was one and two, I think, and three.

Something like that. So you'd have to do this. I had an idea. You do, because you've got to figure. Most matches aren't going to last like nine hours. Very few matches would last nine hours. I think very few matches would go over an hour, but occasionally you would get two just really evenly matched humans.

And you know how hard it is to submit somebody that's good. But if you had three mats running at the same time, and they all had no time limit, protracted war on each one of them, So that way if you have an audience that wants to see this, they can watch whichever one is is happening. Because let's face it, some of them is going to get, you know, the guy's going to get a position and he's just going to start grinding somebody down, but it might take two hours. Yeah. I mean, if I got, if I was in, if I was going against you in this tournament and I got a cross side, it would be a long time. Yeah.

I would be there for a long time. Yeah. I wouldn't rush it. Right. I would cook you for a while. Sure. Yeah. I had, why would I rush?

Yeah, no reason. And I think that was the whole thing about Jiu-Jitsu to begin with. Like how, you know, Helio Gracie's, you know, smaller guy, you know, and he lets that, you know, he can put himself in safe position, positioning to minimize damage, all this stuff. And then the guy gets all tired and then he can use his, you know, leverage or whatever. Like there was a lot of them, his matches, old school, over one hour. Yeah. When they had no time limit. But you got to be ready for that.

Yeah, as a competitor. but as far as tournaments go as an audience member two you got to be ready for that yeah well that's why maybe you're doing it with multiple matches going on at the same time and that way you can you know you can kind of highlight the big the match where there's action happening but i watched a i don't i don't think it was no time limit but it was one of those ones that i think it was like a 30 minute time limit it was like a super fight and one of the early tournaments that i did and they were super good. They're both really good, so they're even. And like, none of them even scored a point on each other. And after a while, I was like, bro, this is, I like jujitsu a lot. But it's kind of

boring, yeah. That's the, you know what the problem is there? The time limit. The time limit. Because when you have a time limit, you're like, oh, well, I was training yesterday. I was like, there was something like 40 seconds left. I could see it on the clock. And I was fighting, I was growing with Andy and I was like fighting to keep him in you know from passing my guard and then you know there was like 32 seconds left and I was like hey man even if he passed my guard right now you know he's chances are he's not going to finish me so so I'm not saying I let him pass because he definitely passed it but yeah you don't kind of like you know I kind of like then lock my hands and I kind of sat there and I'm like you know and he even he knows it yeah he's laughing he's like smiling or

whatever he's like yeah so that's in your head yeah so when you when you're in these things you have a time limit you're like whatever I can I can I can I can hang out for another seven minutes yeah not just just don't expose anything but if there's no time limit it's a different mentality so when you're going into those protracted wars if you're the if you're the insurgent bro you live there. Yeah. You live there. It's your life now. So, so you don't care how long, you know, when we, when we fought Vietnam, when we fought in Vietnam, the Vietnamese, they're not going anywhere. They're not, they're at home. Right. You know, we have to go over there when we're fighting in Iraq. They're at home. The insurgents are there. They live there. There was foreign fighters,

of course, but Afghanistan, same thing. So they have this weapon on their side, which is time. the protracted war. This is going to sound kind of off, but I was watching this. It was like one of, it wasn't a documentary, but you know the kind of where it's like on like discovery or one of these. And then they, they propose like what if this happened, you know, like there's a show called what if humans disappeared or something like that. You ever heard of that where it's like, okay, after, you know, 10 years, the cities would start to get overground. And they have the CGI and it's pretty cool. So there was one where it said, what if aliens took over?

And how would we beat them? Because if aliens took over, that's what they would be. They wouldn't be like, oh, let me just come and live with you guys. That's what they're saying. Chances are. Chances are they're not benevolent. Yeah, not to help people. They're here for Earth, you know?

It's kind of like, I mean, think about it. That's every living thing. It's kind of like, I live here now kind of thing. Like we got to. So anyway, there. They're saying, how would we fight the aliens? And they're breaking it down. Like, this is what the aliens would do first.

This is what they'd do second. This is what they'd do third. They're just totally breaking it down. I was like, dang. But they're saying at the end of the day, the best way we could win is through, I think they called it, or maybe insurance insurgency. I forget what they called it. But that's what they would say.

It's like, we live here. So we have that advantage of like, we can hide for, you know, months and then attack and then go hide again, you know, because we live here. Meanwhile, they're here. So it's like... Yeah, they're here. They got to run supplies from their own whatever alien spaceship. Yeah.

And they got to make moves and they got to, you know... You just dragged me into a protracting conversation about alien invasions. I'm losing this war over here. But it's the exact metaphor, though, you know, like where if like aliens are coming over, whether it be to take over or to get some alien job done, bro, we live here. We don't, you know, we can take hits. We're still living here. This is the thing that's ridiculous about this argument.

is what level of competence does the alien do the aliens have? We'll say varying levels of competence. Okay, so if there, let's face it, we could get invaded by aliens that were not that advanced and we would just kick their ass real quick. Like on District 9 or something like that? I don't know, but I don't, I'm not familiar. Where did that battle take place? South Africa.

What was, who were the insurgents? Aliens. Oh, no, the insurgents were, I guess that's not really an insurgents. Oh, it's a movie. Yes, sir. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about an actual wartime situation that I was unaware of. Oh, yeah, the aliens came down.

Yeah, I don't know. But, yeah, on that movie. Yeah, I guess, you know, District 9 was not about any kind of insurgency at all. It was more of that show. What was their competence? What was their competence level? The aliens? Yeah.

Basically, it was like aliens. I don't know. I forget why they were there. No one really knew why they were there. But it's essentially the ship didn't, it didn't crash, but it sort of got jammed up. And they were sort of stuck there. Okay. So they would, they find after a few months.

months or a month or whatever they they were the human people went up and with their helicopters because the alien ship kind of came didn't crash just hovered and stayed there didn't open didn't nothing so they go up and they explore they open the alien craft it's pretty good good show anyway they open it and all the aliens are all starving and freaking you know they're messed up like they're desolate you know got it and so they're like hey well they're not hostile so what do we do? You know, so they set up these camps for them, you know, they'd help help them or whatever. So the aliens were kind of quarantined.

They were quarantined. They were quarantined. They were quarantined. They were a lack of food. Lack of food. So they kind of shuffle supplies, but rather they're sort of aliens, you know, like, I don't know. What do you do? You can't just let them live with us because they're kind of whatever.

So it's kind of that situation. So it was less about fighting them. It was less about that. It was more about some other issue. Yeah. And I guess you'd have to figure that if an alien element made it here, they're pretty advanced. they got some technology. So I don't think we're to be coming up against the JV team.

No, that's what that show was saying. The JV team isn't going to show up on Earth. No. Right? Because how did they get here? They designed some kind of a spaceship that got here. These are some Elon Musk level smart people. Well, then again, technically, sure.

But does that indicate or does that prove that they're going to be squared away in all way? You know, maybe they just have this new technology. They can do this stuff, but does that mean that you can make a spaceship that can get here? I mean, you had to you had to fight to get here. This was not easy. Yeah, but that's a different kind of fight when you think about it. It's kind of like, you know, oh, maybe they're just people that if, imagine if they just didn't even have the concept of violence, right? Yeah, it just was totally foreign to him. Yeah. And so they could show up here and the first one that, you know, tries to do something, somebody just hits him in the head with a bat.

Yeah, no, they're just all shocked. Oh, yeah, all confused and what? But is that even possible that there's a group that just has no comprehension of violence? If there is, you know what they'd be? They'd be aliens. Because, you know, you know, I'm saying? Things work different. You know how, like, every once in a while, like, you'll get a situation where, I don't know.

This turned into a grounded podcast, real correct. I'm thinking of something real, like, ambiguous, actually, right now. But let's say, okay, let's say you're the alien. You go to a distant planet and you're like, we're going to take over. So we're going to bring this poison. This poison is like the most lethal poison ever created here. So we're going to take this and we're just going to exterminate them all. Like that's how.

So we're going to go and then you go to this distant galaxy. You go to their planet. Whatever. Perfect for, you know, perfect, just like Earth, whatever. And you go, you start spraying this poison. And they're licking it up. Yeah, they're like, oh my gosh. It solves like a bunch of their problems and makes them super, you know, it's like that kind of situation.

I'm just saying it doesn't prove that just. because they know how to travel through dimensions or whatever. It doesn't mean they're going to be successful in everything. You see what I'm saying? It could be the opposite. Right on. All right. Well, protracted war.

That's where we were at. Mao's theory of protracted war outlines three-phased politico-military approach. Strategic defensive, this is where the enemy, and in this case you're flip-hopping back and forth and who's the enemy, but the enemy, meaning the government, has stronger forces. So you're in defense then stalemate where you're doing guerrilla operations and then offensive is when you actually have beat down the government forces enough that you can actually have a real war with them almost like a conventional war and then it talks about how you can go These stages you can go you can go through one stage you can skip a stage you can come back to the stage

So that's what happens with protractor war it's very hard to speaking of protracted war, it's very hard to get the submission on the insurgents because every time you get him get him in a chokehold, they slip out and they slip away, right? And now you can't go and find them because they slip back in with the local populace.

So you've got to kind of, you know, check for that. So that's protracted popular war. They've got traditional, many contemporary insurgencies fit a more traditional approach based on clan tribe or ethnic group. Such insurgency typically has an entire community join the effort as a whole bringing with them their existing social and

military hierarchy the primary struggle in an internal war is to mobilize people in a battle for legitimacy and i think that word legitimacy and legit is one of the thing that made me start thinking maybe i should do the counterinsurgency manual because think about how often that happens in an organization the leader is either legitimate or not. And if you're not considered legitimate, everything is hard. And if people think you're legitimate, everything is that much easier. So when you are acting as a leader and you do things that negate or detract from your legitimacy,

you're doing a whole lot more damage than you think you are. Every time you use your authority an abusive way, your legitimacy goes down. Every time you tell a lie, your legitimacy goes down. Every time you do the right thing, your legitimacy goes up. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like, you know when people will say, I demand respect, you know, like that thing? You automatically just lost respect. Yeah, kind of, right?

Yeah. Because that It's not really how like By the way, you don't even have to say that You can just act like that Yeah Just act like you demand respect Yeah like call me sir

Damn it kind of thing I'm not saying there's anything wrong Calling someone sir or whatever But you know that kind of stuff Like they'll harp on that kind of stuff Like you can tell someone's reaction When they're reacting to this detail Where it's like oh man you're you know

Like I see what you're doing right now You're basically saying like I demand respect I'm not gonna I mean, me earning it, that's a whole different thing. You know, see what I'm saying? But you just better give it to me kind of thing. So it's like one of those, you know? If you're illegitimate, that tends to be like what it looks like.

If you're legitimate, it tends to not be what it looks like. It's just a good little framework to think, to, to filter your actions through. Does this make me more or less legitimate? Mobilization means there are five means to mobilize popular support. Persuasion, coercion, reaction to abuses, foreign support, apolitical motivations. A mixture of them may motivate anyone, individual. So persuasion, political social security, and economic benefits entice people to support one side or the other. This is where you're like, hey, we're going to take care of you.

Coercion, this is the carrot and the stick, right? Persuasion is the carrot. Coercion is the stick. You either get on board with what we're doing or we're going to give you a beast. beat down reaction to abuses this one is important a government that abuses its people or is tyrannical generates resistance to its rule think about that from a leadership perspective think about all those three things from a leadership perspective you can either use persuasion you can use court so carrot stick and then reaction to abuses so if your abuses if you abuse people as a

leader they're gonna have been injured maltreated victimized dishonored or had close friends or relative killed by the government, particularly by security forces, may lash back at their, at their attackers. So when you're abusive to people, it's going to come back at you. It adds fuel to the insurgency. So you're saying the insurgency will use that? Oh, yeah. That's how you get people to come on board. If I show up at your house and I was like, hey, Echo, I was real sorry to hear about your brother. Yeah, I'm really sorry to hear about your brother. I can't believe that they did that to you. I can't believe the government security forces did that to your brother. Do you want to fight back?

Yeah, yeah. Here's what we're doing. You see where I'm going on this? So what does that mean? That means that when you're fighting an insurgency, you can't add fuel to that fire. You have to be very careful in how you act towards the populace because the populace,

because the insurgents will utilize your abusive action. to bolster their cause. Foreign support, obviously, you can have people on the outside that like to see, that want to support some insurgent inside of a country. A political motivations, these are, here's criminals, mercenaries, people attracted by the holy warriors romantic status and others whose self-images of being a warrior and a fighter for a cause might also join insurgency. I think you saw a lot of that in ISIS.

People that were just criminals and just wanted to go get crime on. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't like they were promising a whole bunch of nice stuff in the Islamic State. Yeah. Well? Other than authorized rape of, you know, women, children, girls and boys. There was, you know, I'm not going to say how I saw this, but I saw some ISIS promo videos. Like promo.

Like yeah I don't know that they were recruiting videos. Oh no, I've seen some of those too But it was like a promo like an advertisement for this cool like club kind of thing I was like dang oh wait were they ones that were like Insanely violent no so they were just kind of real positive yeah and it would show like yeah they were probably There was a there's a whole bunch of them and yes they're the insanely violent one that were kind of like produced a little bit You know that was yeah that was kind of odd it was like weird. Because I don't know who they were marketing to.

I mean, I couldn't relate to the audience that they were marketing to. We'll say that. But yeah, and the other one, the nice one was odd because of like what everything else they've been putting out, you know?

Then it was like almost like this utopian commercial. Yeah, that's a crazy world of, I guess, social media. Have you heard my due term for the social media? Yes. Emotional media.

It's not only for social media. It's actually all media. Because every media right now is just emotional media. How can we make everyone hyper emotional? What story can we show to make everyone freak out? Let's do that. What video can I tweet or share on the gram to make people get super crazy? Oh, yeah.

Let's do that. Yeah, which one can we, can people retweet? That's a big one where they'd be like, okay, this is like super retweetable. Because you're going to get all fired up. And then you're going to say something. lines in your head you can say some of long lines up of can you believe this guy said this boom retweet everyone who agrees with you boom they're gonna feel the same way hopefully retweet too well it's also actually some people that weren't really

thinking about it see that and they go wait yeah oh yeah they get emotion yeah and then you get a whole millions of people yeah um next little sections is about causes a cause is a principle or movement militantly defended or supported. Insurgents may create artificial contradictions using propaganda and misinformation. Insurgents have much to gain by not limiting themselves to a single cause. Insurgents employ deep-seated strategic causes as well as temporary local causes, adding or deleting them as circumstances demand. So you get this sort of whatever your problem is with the government.

Like if you're an insurgent in Iraq, people, you know, not only do they say, well, well, in Iraq, it was, you know, the Bathis had been in charge forever. And not only that, but we don't have whatever, you know, we don't, we don't sell our oil. We don't, we don't get enough money for our oil. Whatever grievance you have becomes part of something that we adopt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that can happen inside any team, right? What starts off is, you know, if you're mad, you know, I'm telling, I'm mad because we're using a new method and you're mad because, you're mad because. We didn't get a pay raise.

Guess what? Now we got it. We're both. I'm mad about both now. I'm going to adopt. You're damn right. We need more money. Yeah.

And that's how the insurgencies grow. You start adopting all these different problems. All these different causes. Unify them into one giant cause. Yeah. So it like solidifies the like enemy. Oh yeah. That's the enemy versus us.

Any country ruled by a small group of that broad, without broad popular participation provides. a political cause for insurgents. Exploited or repressed social groups by the entire class, be they entire classes, ethnic groups, or small elites may support larger causes in reaction to their own or narrower grievances. So again, as a leader, when you're looking at your team, internal, see that you might be getting multiple causes turned against you. Next section is about mobilizing resources.

And obviously insurgents, well, resort to tactics such as guerrilla warfare and terrorism, not only because of their disadvantages in manpower organization, but also because they usually begin with limited or inadequate resources compared to the counterinsurgent. So that's why you end up with guerrilla warfare. Asymmetrical warfare. They talk about money. They talk about insurgency and crime. Sustainment requirements often drive insurgents into relationships with organized crime

or into criminal activities themselves. This is absolutely true. I know the Iraqis had all kinds of crime going on. The insurgents had all kinds of crime going on. Smuggling and black markets and the whole nine yards to try and pay for what they were doing. And then, you know, in Afghanistan they got this massive drug trade to support the insurgency. So that's definitely something that can be problematic. Elements of insurgency, leaders, combatants, political cadre, exiliaries, and mass base.

leaders control the insurgent movement they are the idea people and the planners they usually exercise leadership through force of personality the power of revolutionary ideas isn't that interesting the power of revolutionary ideas isn't it kind of interesting like you always hear me talk about how I was a rebellious kid and I'm even I'm I was rebellious in my Navy career without a doubt I was rebellious I always have that kind of rebellious thing but this the idea that the power of revolutionary idea, of revolutionary ideas,

there's like a natural human kind of, there's a natural human draw to that. And you know what? My best example of that, which you, my friend, will give me a full salute and credit for. You know what it is? What is the insurgency that you think of

that everyone is drawn to and everyone's support? Insurgency that I want to try Every just about every human being Supports One particular insurgency Individual responsibility No What?

Star Wars Star Wars The show? The movie? Yeah the movie Who are the What's the name? The rebels

Yeah Right? They're revolutionary That's what's happening Yeah Why does Why do these revolutionaries Why does Shee Guevara

You know Have this t-shirt That everyone because he's a revolutionary. Right? People like that. Yeah. There's just some weird,

it's, I guess it can be kind of like rooting for the underdog. Yeah. Maybe there's some kind of, some kind of attraction to that. Yeah, yeah. That just naturally exists. That's why when we watch Star Wars,

no one says, hey, I hope the empire wins, right? There's no one saying that. Even the name the empire thing. I see, I see what, yeah, what's going on there. I mean, it's the American revolution, right? The revolutionary ideas. People like that kind of thing. Yeah.

Yeah, under, I mean, that's a common story. You know why I guess, you know what I'm thinking through it? Psychologically? You know what you like about it? You know what's naturally attractive about it? You take all your grievances in life. Right? I don't make enough money.

I didn't end up where I wanted to end up. My girlfriend dumped me. My boyfriend dumped me. I don't like my house. I don't like my car. I don't like my apartment. Whatever grievances you have, you can package all those things up,

and you can point a finger at them, and you can say, those things are all wrong. I'm being revolutionary over here. Yeah. Yeah, and you identify with that. I mean, back to the movie thing, where you identify with that person. I really opened up a door.

You're the one who said Star Wars. You're the one who says, Star Wars. So you think, what are they called? What are they called the rebels? The rebels, yeah, rebels, rebel base. Yeah, the rebellion in the Senate. Yeah, that's, yeah.

And you support them. They're the underdog. Versus the empire. Yeah, but that's most, that, I don't want to say most movies, because I haven't seen most movies, but that's a lot of movies,

the underdog. For sure. It kind of, to be honest, it seems like all of them. Like, bratie kid, freaking Rudy,

I don't know, name, Rambo, I don't know, whatever movies you watch or whatever. Yeah, the underdog. Yeah.

So those are the leaders. They're going to capitalize on the power of revolutionary ideas. Even in marketing. Right even in marketing people like this is a revolutionary new pair of sneakers or phone or whatever right everyone is attracted to that idea Well remember on Rambo first blood part two this that time where he was hiding in the wall Oh yeah it wasn't the wall it was the mud is the mud wall essentially in the you know in Vietnam or whatever

And like he opened his eyes you could only see his eye and then he'd like undoes his fingers first you know And he comes out and kills everybody That at the time was a revolutionary idea. Like, oh, he hit in the mud right there. That was kind of dope the way he did it. You see what I'm saying? Bro, I think you just, I think you just nailed it. But it's true.

It's true. It's just captioned it all. I think you just captured it all. More or less. The combatants, combatants do the actual fighting and provide security. There's the political cadre. The cadre is the political core of the insurgency. They're actively engaged in the struggle to accomplish the insurgent goals.

Auxiliary. are active sympathizers, active sympathizers who provide important support services, and then you get the mass base, and these are followers of the insurgent movement supporting the populace. And again, so inside your organization, inside your team, you can identify who these people are when there's an insurgency going on, right? There's the leaders of it that are kind of, guess they have this advantage of they're standing up to the man, right? They're revolutionary.

So they got a little advantage there. There's combatants that are actually going to try and make things happen. There's this cadre that's out there kind of, you know, run in their mouths and sowing seeds of discontent. Then there's sympathizers and the mass base. So if you can identify who these people are, you can realize what you need to do to disrupt this insurgency from happening. And isn't it weird that as we talk about this, I just had this instinct right now, even in

my own head, just right now, as we're having the same. conversation, even I sympathize with the insurgents in like talking, I'm thinking about, oh, I got this new idea and the man and all that stuff. That's real. Yeah. That's real stuff that you feel. Yeah. Maybe I, you think it's because we're American?

Or is it a global thing? Like, are we American that were raised? Hey, you know, we're Americans. We're revolutionary. We rebelled against the king. Yeah, maybe. We made our own country. We won't stand for this kind of, you know what I mean?

That's America. But the thing is, it's universal. I feel like it's universal, yeah, because it's kind of like our need for balance. So you get like someone who just starts out their starting point as an underdog, whether it be in a movie or in life or just in any situation that you're presented with. If someone feels like an underdog, it just feels like an imbalance of some sort, power imbalance, whatever kind of imbalance. So we kind of, part of our mind, I think, anyway, is what it feels like.

when I into experience it. Part of your mind kind of wants it to be more balanced. We want him to get out of that underdog situation. So when he does, it's like it's almost like a feeling of satisfaction, you know. It's almost like it feels like justice or something like that. It's like it feels so unfair, unbalanced at this, the empire is. We just like seeing the underdog win. Yeah, that's what it is, what, why it is, I think.

It's what it feels like. I guess that's the traditional heroic. That's what it is. That's the traditional, it's one of the traditional, whatever there are for heroic journeys. One of those heroic journeys is, you know, David and Goliath. The little guy stands up to the big guy. And we all appreciate that. You ever see Rocky Four?

Drogco. Is that Drago? Yeah, yeah. For my house, a good one. Dynamics of an insurgency. You've got leadership objectives, ideology, environment and geography, external support and sanctuaries, phasing and timing. leadership we know about and one thing they say

is extreme decentralization results in a movement that rarely functions as a coherent body. So usually insurgents insurgencies are super decentralized which means they have a hard time sort of coordinating mass mass movements together.

Objectives, they got to have clear objectives. They got their ideology and narrative. Narratives are a word that gets thrown around all the time what's the story that we're telling right and how do we fit everything into the story that we're telling ideas are a motivating factor in insurgent violence insurgencies gather recruits in a mass popular support through ideological appeal recruits are often young men suffering from frustrated hopes

and unable to improve their lot in life it's what I just said yeah the insurgent group provides them identity purpose and community in addition to physical economic and psychological security I mean how just blatantly obviously is that. The movement's ideology explains its followers tribulations and provides a course of action to remedy those ills. Yeah, man, I think again, back

to that balance thing, you know, where we kind of want that. Like, think about this too, where, okay, there's this place, I don't know where, Ireland, it wasn't Ireland, I don't think, I don't know. It was somewhere where you get, like, criminals, bad criminals, murders, like rapists type guys or whatever. And in jail, and it's not even called jail, I don't think, it's essentially a rehab center.

But in the rehab center, this is what you get. You get like pets and you get, it's essentially like for therapy to rehabilitate them. So there's punishment and then there's rehabilitation, right? They focus on no punishment. It's just rehabilitation. And apparently from what I read or whatever, it's like pretty successful. That's good. Here's the thing, though, with that, it feels super unsatisfying.

Because you get a guy who raped, you know, a lady killed her and then killed the husband or something like that, for example. He goes no punishment. He goes to this place where he gets pets. He gets, he can hang with girls. He can, he makes friends. He gets like, um, he learns like stuff, skills and stuff like that. He doesn't, he's not locked in a cell. He's at a, like a little resort kind of thing.

Even, even murderers? Even murders. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So, yeah, there's no punishment part of it. So what, so where's the no satisfaction come in? But if that the person, the victim of this criminal is like your wife or something and this guy gets to go to a resort.

Oh, you're saying the victims have no satisfaction and seeing this rehabilitation take place. Exactly right. They just want to go blood for blood. Yeah, it seems like that imbalance still remains because this guy gets to improve his life after he killed my wife. Meanwhile, are you sure it's murderers and everything? Yeah, that's what I read. That's why Timmy was so impactful. I don't know how well that would work here.

Yeah, it would get some, you get some vengeance going to. down. Oh yeah. But here was the thing in the point of the article was that there was um like the what do you call it when you go back to like you go to jail and then you get out then you go back to jail it's like recidiv going back to the jail. I was going to say it's like relapse kind of thing. Um, the rate was so astronomically good that no one went back to jail. It was like that. It was like it was so effective at rehabilitating the person. But meanwhile, when you think about it man there's still this massive imbalance it's like people wouldn't be very happy with that you'm saying yeah but as a society like as a whole as far as groups as far as criminals getting

rehabilitated which I mean how can you be against criminals being rehabilitated it's hard to be against that you know but we still don't get that satisfaction we need that you know it's like that imbalance yeah well I I just back to this here just this idea that you have and it it says you know young men You know, that's who we're talking about. We're talking about young men that are, that are unable to improve their lot in life. And this is how you end up with these people get drawn into these super,

usually extremist type organizations. The most powerful ideologies tap latent emotive concerns of the populace, such as the desire for justice, religious beliefs, or liberation from foreign occupation. Ideologies provide a prism including a vocabulary and analytical categories through which the situation is assessed. Thus, ideology can shape the movement's organization and operational method. You know, it's interesting, you start tracking on that, what did they call it here? Just vocabulary is what they call it.

But, you know, you track any sort of organization that's out there that sort of has a, you know, you look at some things. You go, that's kind of got a weird culty feeling to it. One of the main things that gives something a culty feeling is when you hear the vocabulary that's all being used and it's all Not just used, but it's used as like This weird kind of way to answer any questions and circular arguments and always comes back to these things and you're like Well, this is getting kind of funky over here Yeah, yeah

Very strange Um Environment geography, external support and sanctuaries, these are all just really getting into some of the details. I will stop at this one, though, phasing and timing. Insurgencies often pass through common phases of development. Not all insurgencies experience such phase development and progression through all phases is not a requirement for success. So there's different phases that you can go through. And like I said earlier, in this way you've got to pay attention. You don't have to go through every phase. You don't start at phase one, go to phase two, then phase three. And then you defeated at phase three. No, you can, still go back to phase two. You defeat phase two, they go back to phase one. Then you think, oh, I think we're under control. Then they go to two again.

So they go back and forth. You've got to pay attention to that. Talks about insurgent networks. Here's some of those insurgent vulnerabilities. Secrecy. Because they got to keep a secret, sometimes they have trouble getting the word out there. Mobilization, it can be hard for them to mobilize support for a couple reasons. One of the things they talk about here is to mobilize their basis support insurgent groups use a combination of propaganda intimidation and they may overreach in both.

Counterinsurgents should be able to use information operations to effectively exploit inconsistencies in the insurgents message as well as their excessive uses of force for intimidation. So definitely in Iraq, the insurgents went overboard in trying to intimidate people and it pissed off the local populace. And it definitely pissed off the shakes in the Battle of Vermont like they got pissed and some of them left fled. Someone got scared, but someone got mad. And the local populace was saying we're not as soon as they saw that there was enough American presence and Iraqi government presence to say, okay, thank you for being here. We'll help you get these bad guys out. They were on board. Financial weakness.

It's tough for them to find funding. Internal divisions. This is an important one to pay attention to. counterinsurgents must remain alert for signs of divisions within an insurgent movement. Again, when you're dealing with a group of people and they're all masked against you, look for those cracks, look for ways that they're not sort of in unison. And if you can exploit and expand those cracks, all of a sudden you can break down their unification, which is a positive thing.

And isn't it weird? Again, I have this little guilty thing in the back of my head that's like, I don't want to break down, you know, the rebels. Right. Because I've been programmed by Star Wars to support the rebels. And by the American Revolutionary War. That's who I identify with. We identify with the rebels.

Yeah, I'll tell you an example of that. You've watched The Matrix, and I know this is, I know I'm real movie heavy this episode. I've watched it. I like saw it one time in the theater, so I don't remember much about it. So there's this guy, I forget his name. The guy from bad boys Anyway, you know him, he's actor

I definitely know him then What is his name? Not Apoc. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So basically he's So you know what the Matrix is about, right? Everyone's plugged in the Matrix. And then meanwhile, Morpheus, Lawrence Fishburn,

Morpheus saves all these people from the Matrix, right? And the real reality is tough. You know the only thing I remember this whole movie is when I think the main character says, Jiu Jitsu. I know Jiu Jitsu. That's what I remember. Yeah, trying to get that download.

Yeah, you got that, yeah, for sure. So Morpheus blocks everyone out of the Matrix. Matrix is like everyday life, you know, just look at a job and whatever you're living life or whatever. When you get plucked out of the Matrix, the real reality is a straight up dystopia, straight up, machines running everything. You're living in, you know, in post-apocalyptic times.

So this one guy, it starts to weigh on him, apparently, and he's like, bro, I don't even like this. I kind of liked it better in The Matrix being ignorant. So he ends up teaming with the agents, which is like the agents of the Matrix, the guys that roll around and betraying the rebels. That's what that is right there, that when you find little slight divisions and then you exploit them, you know? And he ran the risk of bringing down the whole team. See what I'm saying? Wait, which team?

you know, Morpheus and the team. But he wanted to do that, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he didn't run the risk. He could have. Yeah.

Wasn't a risk to him. He wanted to. Yeah. Yeah. So does he take the blue pill? Is that right? No, he wished.

He said, and this is what indicates that there was a fracture in it, just a little bit of a division. When he, it was like one of the early scenes with him, he was talking to Neo, the one, the main character.

And he was like, you're thinking this along, I'm paraphrasing. He's like, why didn't I take? take the blue pill. He was like saying like, oh,

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking that. Meanwhile, I don't know if that was what he, you know, the blue pill is like you stay in the matrix. Right.

Red pills you see, you know. So basically he was indicating that he was sort of thinking of like that he regretted it a little bit kind of thing, you know, that was like the little fracture

that they showed in the story. Got it. But then, yeah. So yeah, they almost lost. But, you know, Matrix or Morpheus, Neo,

they're very powerful. They were able to keep it real. Yes. This is the Hollywood podcast with Echo Charles and Echo Charles. Aspects with counterinsurgency. This is, so all that kind of, I hate to say that was like the introduction, but this is where we get into aspects of counterinsurgency. So this is how we actually overcome the insurgency. In almost every case, the counterinsurgent faces a populace containing an active minority supporting a government and a

similar militant faction opposing it and they kind of lay out oh look it's pretty much like a bell curve whatever the cause there will be an active minority that totally supports the cause there'll be a neutral or passive that's the majority of people are just hey we don't really care and then you've got an active minority against the cause which this is something important to think about in life especially in well like right now in america yeah who do you hear from you hear from you hear from the two way far extreme ends of the spectrum everyone else is just hope you know just trying to live a life and do the right thing and feels you know considers things sort of as a group you know like all pretty much the same yeah this is this is yeah this makes sense this doesn't make

sense yeah this is smart this isn't smart and then there's people on the spectrums i mean on the outside of the spectrum that are jumping up and down screaming and getting crazy they are not the majority of humans. They're a small number of people. But boy, they make a lot of noise. They call them what the vocal minority? Yeah, yeah. The silent majority. Yeah. I think silent majority was Nixon originally said that. Yeah. Upon assuming coin mission, soldiers and Marines must not only be prepared to identify their opponents and approaches to insurgency, they are applying. counterinsurgents must also understand the broader strategic context within which they are operating. So you need to think about the bigger picture, obviously. Historical principles.

Number one, legitimacy is the main objective. The primary objective of any counterinsurgent is to foster the development of effective governance by legitimate government. All governments rule through a combination of consent and coercion. Now think about that from a leadership perspective. All leaders, just think of I said, all leaders rule through a combination of consent and coercion. That makes sense, right? You're coercing people to do and they're consenting. They're saying, okay, we'll do it.

Governments described as legitimate rule primarily with the consent of the governed. While those ruled as illegitimate tend to mainly rely on coercion, like, making and forcing people do things, which you probably heard me say this at echelon front events, you know, when I'm always saying, well, I never really had to order anyone to do anything. We would just kind of talk about it and things would happen. Why? Because I was legitimately in these positions. I wasn't there just, hey, I got, I have the rank and that's why I'm this position. Like, no, I have some experience. I listen to other people. like that's what's good.

Citizens obey the state. Oh, this is talking about the illegitimate. So if you're an illegitimate leader, the citizens obey the state for fear of the consequences of doing otherwise rather than because they voluntarily accept its rule. A government that derives its power from the governed tends to be accepted by the citizens as legitimate. So if you're elected, right? If that's where you got your power from, then it's usually considered legitimate. It still uses coercion, for example, against criminals, but the bulk of the population voluntarily accepts its governance.

In Western liberal tradition, a government that derives its just powers from the people and response to their desires while looking out for their welfare is accepted as legitimate. So that's your goal as a leader. And any time that you rely on a leader, on your rank, on your authority, on your power, anytime you're doing that, you're taking away from your legitimacy. Legitimacy makes it easier for the state to carry out its key functions, which include the capability to regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways. Governance that is not legitimate is inherently unstable because as soon as the state's coercive power has disrupted, the population ceases to obey it. This is when you hear me talking about, hey, you might be, you know, if I bark and if I'm your boss.

And I say, echo, you better wear your gloves when you're in this compound. Or I'm going to fire you. Right? You're going to do it. But when I'm not there, you're not going to do it. So this is why that type of leadership doesn't work. Coercive leadership, threatening people. That's why it doesn't work.

It's not freaking legitimate. Five indicators of legitimacy can be used to analyze. frequent selection of leaders in a manner considered just and fair by a substantial majority of the population. That includes promotions, right? If people are getting promoted for good reasons that makes sense, then they're considered to be more legitimate. A high level of popular participation in or support for the political process, a low level of corruption. When you as a leader do things that you know are, make little maneuvers that you shouldn't be making. And guess what?

Your level of legitimacy goes down. You need to maintain the high ground. A culturally acceptable level or rate of political economic and social development, a high level of regime acceptance by major social institutions. Governments that score high in these categories probably have the support of an adequate majority of population. As leaders that score well in these areas are also going to have a high level of support. Military action can address these symptoms of a level. loss of legitimacy. However, restoring legitimacy can only be accomplished using all instruments

of national power without the host nation government achieving legitimacy. Coin cannot succeed. So you can beat people down all day long. That doesn't give you legitimacy. You can solve tactical problems with military might, with brute force. Doesn't help you. Do you can't win? You can't You can't win with that. Isn't it crazy to think this big military manual? You cannot win with just military force. You cannot beat someone into submission. It doesn't work.

Well, it doesn't work on a long-term scale. A couple other things here. Unity of effort is essential. That's true with any leadership. Political factors are primary. One of the generals from Mao Zay Dung's central committee. once stated that revolutionary war was 80% political action and 20% military action. 80% of it is political action.

80% of it is maneuvering. Understand the local environment. You have to do this. Here's a couple. The local population is critical center of gravity of an insurgency. Successful conduct of counterinsurgency operation depends on thoroughly understanding the society and culture within which they are being conducted. Soldiers and Marines must understand the following about the population area of in the area of operations How key groups of society are organized relationships and tensions above them

Ideologies and narratives that resonate with the groups group interests and motivations Means by which groups communicate the society's leadership system and what's so funny about this is At Eschelon front when we go and consult with the company these are the things that we're trying to figure out during our assessment phase we're trying to figure out how they're task organized what's the what are they set up like then we start going one of the relationships where are the tensions then what narratives resonate with the group with the different groups right you got the frontline leaders that are saying oh they never do that you got the senior leadership that's saying oh what would

they know you see what I'm saying there's little narratives that we're trying group interests and motivations you got to know what those are means by which the groups communicate. How do they actually talk to each other? Is there an open line of communication? So these are all things that we look at to figure out how we fix leadership inside of a company. Do you do that because, like, did you get that straight from here?

Or do you just happen to do that and boom, there's a parallel? Well, we don't just happen to do that in order to solve the problems inside of a company. You have to understand these things. Right, right. But you, you know, you knew that for sure. Yes. Yeah, but did you get it from there? I get what you're saying?

No, I didn't get it from this. But when you know the way broadly, you see it in all things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm sure as I worked with companies, you start saying, well, how's your relationship with that department over there, you know? Yeah. And, hey, so explain to me what you think, where you think the company's going, right? What's the narrative?

It just lines up. Yeah. Because you have to figure these things out. Do you go in kind of like good cop bad cop? You don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to have good cop, bad cop. Because everybody knows that we're there to help.

Yeah. There's no, we're not trying to bust them. We're trying to help. Right. And so people tell us everything that they, you know, they're very open and honest with us. Yeah. Do you ever do like little sly things? And I guess I shouldn't say sly.

Because you know how like if you're really trying to ask this question. But you can't just come out and ask that question because you can't expect them to just come out and give you that straight, dope answer. So you kind of ask these other questions to kind of get afraid. What you want to know is, are there interrogation tactics that are being utilized when they're interviewing the personnel that we are consulting? That's your question. Yes, sir. Of course. Yeah.

You know, but I mean, it's not there. You're right that they're not sly. Right. It's like we're getting information from people that they want to tell us. It's not, it's not, we don't have to set. them up or coercism to say things or we don't have to we talk to him yeah here's what the advantage that we have is people want their company to be successful yeah yeah and so when you ask them hey what works well they tell you when you say hey are there any issues they tell you because they

want they want to have those issues fixed this isn't the easiest part of the job is gathering this information knowing what information to gather is important but the easiest part of the job is gathering this information because people are over they're just they're just more than happy to tell us what's going on yeah yeah makes sense couple things that are required of soldiers and marines at every echelon when you're when you need to know about the cultural context you've got to have a clear nuanced and empathetic appreciation of the essential nature of the conflict so you got to hear and listen to both sides. Wouldn't that,

doesn't that make sense? Yeah. And essentially, like, have some understanding. Yes. Like, hey,

you know, empathy. Yeah, yeah, like I can see how you'd think that. I could see how you'd think that. I can see where you're coming from. Yeah.

That's a good idea to have in your head for life for living for being a human. It's so true. Like the idea that like someone just doesn't get where that person's coming from. It's almost like, brother, that's just because a lack of effort, you know? Yeah. And here's the deal. You're missing out.

You're missing out. If I argue with you and I don't listen to what you're saying and I don't see what your viewpoint is, there's no way I can defeat you in an argument. I don't understand you. How can I defeat you in an argument unless I understand where you're coming from? And not necessarily even defeat you. How can I find a solution if I don't understand when you're coming? Because I'm not looking to defeat you in an argument.

That's what you do when you're 20. That's what you're doing your 23 defeat people in arguments. When you're hopefully by the time you're 48 like me, you actually don't want to defeat someone. You want to find a solution. There's a lot of arguing that happens just broadly. Yeah. I mean, right now we're seeing it all day long every day in the emotional media,

social media, mainstream media. It's just total. No listening, all talking, no perspective, no empathy. it's well I shouldn't say no because there are a lot of people that are actually listening trying to figure out what the solution is but but many people they don't want to try and figure out what the solution is they want to defeat the other person in an argument which is so pointless so then you need to understand the motivation strengths and weaknesses of the insurgents that's obviously important you want to conduct intelligence drives driven operations meaning we want to actually pay attention to what's going on to gather good intel, isolate insurgents from their cause and support.

Smart move. Established security under the rule of law. The cornerstone of any coin effort is security for the civilian population. And this is probably the number two line that I stole from this. Thank you, General Mattis. Thank you, General Petraeus, because when I had to start discussing up the chain of command, what we were doing, why we were doing it. It was this line right here.

The cornerstone of any counterinsurgency effort is security for the civilian populace. Because what we were doing, tasking a bruiser, was going out and killing bad guys in order to protect the civilian populace. And that right there is the cornerstone of counterinsurgency. So we were able to just get all of our missions approved up the chain of command. because what we were doing was in support of the cornerstone of of counterinsurgency. Thank you for getting those chapters out early enough that I had this to lean on. Illigimate actions, this is just so illegitimate actions by government officials, security forces, and multinational partners are those involving the use of power without authority.

Oh, wow. Power without authority. When you use power without authority or you abuse power, you illegitimize yourself. Every action by counterinsurgents leaves a forensic trace that may need to be used in a court of law. Counterinsurgents document all their activities to preserve wherever possible a chain of evidence and more importantly as a means to insurgent propaganda. This is epic and I'll tell you why. Because inside businesses, you make some little move.

You make some little move, and you think no one's going to know it. But it leaves a forensic trace. And that's just a different way of saying, you know, I am always telling people, everyone's watching you. And if you try and lie to them, they know it. That's what's happening. That's 100% what's happening. You try and lie to somebody? They know it.

You try and make a maneuver on somebody, there's a forensic trace and they know it. Don't do your little maneuvers to try and take care of yourself. Prepare for a long-term commitment. Back to that protracted war idea. Here's some contemporary imperatives of counterinsurgency. Manage information and expectations. Achieving steady progress towards a set of reasonable expectations can increase the population's tolerance for the inevitable.

inconvenience entailed by ongoing counterinsurgency operations. So just setting good expectations, setting good realistic expectations and then moving towards them so that you can look around at the team and say, hey, look, we're making progress. This is where we're going and this is how we're getting there. We're making progress. Both the counterinsurgent and the host government ensure

that their deeds match their words. Do what you say. Say what you do. Here's the other thing that triggers. me into talking about this use measured force any use of force generates a series of reactions there may be times when an overwhelming effort is necessary to intimidate an opponent or reassure the populace but the type and amount of force to be applied and who wields it should be carefully calculated by a counterinsurgent for any operation an operation that kills

five insurgents is counterproductive if the collateral damage of of the creation of blood fuels or the creation of blood feuds leads to the recruitment of 50 more now this was a little bit strange because there was some of that idea that oh every time you kill an insurgent you create five more I've I would definitely hear that I didn't see it what I actually saw was the opposite when we would kill an insurgent the local populace would be like okay it was it was they got emboldened they got braver they got tougher they gave us more support why did they say that in the war or what was their thought the thought is hey you know and you know if you know if you know they see you kill you uh you know some kid some some some some some some

family member right some family member gets killed and you think okay well we just created you know it's five brothers right they're mad and now they're mad but actually oftentimes it was like, hey, don't follow what Freddie did. We know he was doing bad stuff and he got killed. And they kind of got it. And I'll tell you what, they also, to a huge extent, understood collateral damage. The local populace understood collateral damage. So if we blew up a building or blew up a door and we entered a building and it shattered

the windows and it turns out that we you know it was either the wrong building or whatever and we'd say okay you know what hey here's a bunch of we'd give him a bunch of money we'd apologize we'd say what happened explain to him and they would be like yeah well you are at war yeah you know they and they would and this is how I know that this is real is they'd give us information yeah they'd say oh yeah you I know who you're looking for you're looking for that guy yeah he's he's been gone for two weeks yeah and then we'd say yeah thanks we know it's our fault here's some money yeah it's weird how like to hear it you know because you know you get

whether it be reports or like it usually from someone someone who has a different i don't want to say agenda necessarily but you know like if someone's like against the war or something like that's kind of their their their deal you know so they're kind of trying to input not impot they're trying to convince that and i don't want to paint this you know beautiful picture because obviously there's there's obviously times where you know the there's one of those brother gets killed and one of the other brothers says, I'm going to go avenged, you know, go avenged. But you know what?

Think about it. In a family, right? The mom and dad, there's four brothers. One of the brothers is out doing insurgent stuff. And he gets killed. The mom and dad are looking at the other brothers going, hey, do not go and do what your brother. Does that happen all the time?

No, not all the time. Sometimes the, you know, The dad says, well, avenge, you know, go avenge your brother. Right. Not usually. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then, yeah, the point is, too, where you, from the outside, you kind of hear

someone's argument and you kind of like, well, that makes sense. Yeah, just like how you said, where it's like, yeah, the brother got killed. If your brother got killed, you would at the very least have some feelings of vengeance, at the very least. Not to mention people who live in a war zone who are down for the fight a lot of the time. Right. They're going to see their brother get killed. They're going to be like, hell, yeah, I'm going to come avenge.

That doesn't stick out as a lie to me. Yeah, and it is true. The problem is it's very simplified. Yeah. Right? Because what's really happening? What's really happening is the dad is going, hey, do you remember Saddam Hussein? He was horrible.

These Americans came and kicked his ass and got him out of here and now we're moving in the right direction. Now you want to go fight them? What's wrong with you? And then that guy ends up getting killed. And he goes, looks at his brother said, you see what happens? Yeah. Yeah. And see, and when you explain that, you're kind of like,

whoa, that makes a lot of sense too. It's real easy just to stereotype and throw everyone with a broad brush and say, oh, they, everyone thinks like this. Yeah. It's totally not true, man. Even in a family, there'd be some kids would be insurgents, some kids wouldn't. Yeah. And that's not to mention, like, some of the terror that these normal families have been, you know, like, inflicted on them.

And then it's like, yeah, okay, when you say they understand collateral, damage is kind of like you the way you said is almost like and which is actually correct from my perspective where it sounds obvious everyone understands collateral damage you know like everyone kind of understands that you know but so why would we assume that they don't like everyone should understand exactly so when you say it's like well of course we we dehumanize yeah humanize the local populace and think the oh they're just there's a common emotion you blow up my door I'm mad right right I'm going to you now when it's really when actually dealing with human beings and we've people forget that we're dealing with human beings that are smart right and they think oh you blow up their door now they're gonna want to plan a roadside bomb no actually when you vote their door and you say hey we were looking for this guy and he wasn't here do you know where he is yeah he's been gone for two weeks hey sorry about your door here's some money by the way we're gonna set a team out here and hang a new

door for you which we did yeah and they go yeah appreciate it you know please please let your friends know that there's no bad guys that live here. And by the way, the only problems we've had on the street is that building down there. There's been some people in and out of there. You might want to keep an eye on it. Okay, cool. Thank you.

Yeah. And see, even hearing that, it's like, brother, that makes sense. In fact, that sounds more likely. If you were in that situation, you'd feel that way. That's what I'm saying. So this idea that every time one, you know, you kill a person, you kill a bad guy, that now five more, it's totally untrue. And not to mention there's some people that are like, oh, sheesh, I don't want to go get involved

with that. Right? Yeah. I mean, that's what they see. There's a high deterrence level. There's a very strong deterrence level because what people miss out on is just the, like you said, and the way I always explain Iraqi families, I'm like, oh, you want to know what Iraqi family is like? They're like a family. Yeah. They're like a family. And there's be, you know, the dad's got this and the mom's got this going on and the kids and they, you know, they've got a rebellious kid, right? You go into one of the rooms and there's like weird pictures of whatever you know, Iraqi movie stars.

I mean, you know, music stars and like, it's, they're just, they're just people. And we just paint them with this broad brush

of how we think they will react or how we've been told that they'll react. And it's just not true. Got to learn and adapt. Oh, before I go there,

who wields force? Who wields force is also important? Providing the police have a reasonable reputation for competence and impartiality, it is better to let police, and these are police that are local police, handle urban raids rather than soldiers and Marines, even if the police are not as well armed or as capable as military units, since the populace is likely to view that application of force

as more legitimate. So you want the Iraqis to handle their own problems. Now, in Ramadi, there was what made it tricky is a lot of the Iraqi army soldiers were Shia and the local populace in Ramadi was Sunni. That's why as quickly as we could, we got the Sunni policemen, Iraqi policemen that were from Ramadi to start doing these kind of things. Because there was more, in some cases, not in all cases, in some cases there was more tension between the Shia soldiers and the local populace than it was between the Americans than the local populace. Learn and adapt. An effective counterinsurgent force is a learning organization.

Right back to our podcast we did with Dave Burr. Good deal, too. Empower the lowest levels. Mission command is the conduct of military operations through decentralized execution based upon mission orders for effective mission accomplishment. What does that mean? It means higher commanders empower subordinates

to make decision with the commander's intent. They leave details of execution to their subordinates and require them to use initiative and judgment to accomplish the mission. Decentralized command. Thank you. support the host nation and what the little part I wanted to pull out of this support the host nation thing is American forces committed to coin are there to assist a host government the

long-term goal is to leave a host that is capable of standing on its own two feet two feet in that end the host nation has to win its own war achieving this requires the development of viable local leaders and institutions US forces and agencies can help but host nation elements must be able to accept responsibility to achieve real victory. And then it goes on to warn that you can't, you can't be the easy button. When something needs to happen, you can't say, okay, well, where are Americans we can make that happen? No, you need to actually not be the easy button. And this is one of the last sections here.

It's called paradoxes of the counterinsurgency, which if I would have named this section, it would have been called the dichotomies of counterinsurgency. But you know what we're saying. Principles and imperatives discussed above reveal that coin presents a complex and often unfamiliar set of missions and considerations for a military commander in many ways the conduct of a counterinsurgency is counterintuitive to a traditional American view of war. And that right there, that statement is why I'm saying if you're going to start to overlay warfare principles in your business in your life, you need to also include counterinsurgency in there. because sometimes they're counterintuitive. Sometimes they're different than traditionally the way you think of war.

And I think this attitude, this whole attitude is so important to be able to take war fighting and overlay it into other scenarios. If you only know how to fight a conventional war of attrition, you can't overlay those principles over the rest of your life. They won't work all the time. They're not nuanced enough. They don't understand. they don't understand the complexities.

And one of those complexities is there's paradoxes and there's dichotomies. Number one, the more you protect your force, the less secure you are. What does that mean? You have to take risks. And when you take risks, when you get outside the wire, when you go work with the local populace, the more secure you'll end up being. So as a leader, if you stay locked up in your office, you feel like you're safe in there because you're not out there, you know, getting engaged with people, not getting asked tough questions. The less secure you are.

You need to get out there. Next one, the more force used, the less effective it is. Boom. When you're barking orders, when you're, you know, yelling at people, when you're when you're saying you better do this or I'll fire you. Whatever those things are, the more force you use as a leader, the less effective. effective it is when you use the minimum force required that's the most powerful The next is the more successful coin is the less force that can be used and the more risk that must be accepted So as you proceed down the path you need to use less and less force and you have to take more and more risk which is crazy

The initial reaction to the counterinsurgency push in Ramadi was enemy attacks are going up and American casualties are going up And guess what? It was true. So some people up the chain of command, not my chain of command. Well, yes, all up the chain of command. Everyone was saying, wait, there's more. What's happening? There's more enemy attacks.

There's more American casualties. This isn't working. No, actually, that's exactly what's going to happen. Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. Often an insurgent carries out a terrorist or guerrilla act with the primary purpose of enticing the counterintuitive. insurgent to overreact or at least react in a way that can be exploited. If a careful assessment of the effects of a course of action concludes that more negative than positive effects will result, an alternative should be considered potentially including

a decision not to act. Now, this is, you know, default aggressive. This is not default aggressive. Bias for action. This is not taking action, but default aggressive and bias for action. Bias for action is what the Marine Corps says. They want Marines to act. They want them to have a bias to actually do something.

They want a bias to take action. Default aggressive is an echelon front. This is me telling young junior officers in the SEAL team, hey, your default has got to be go take action, make something happen. But both bias for action and default aggressive, neither one of those say 100% go. No, it's default, meaning that's what your default is, but you might have to adjust it.

Bias for action doesn't mean you take action. It means you lean towards taking action. Sometimes you need to look at the situation and say, what's going to help here nothing the best weapon the best weapons for coin do not shoot counterinsurgents achieve the most meaningful success by gaining popular support and legitimacy for the host government so how often is it that you as a leader can make more progress by instead of telling someone know we're going to do it my way instead of shooting them in the face with that you say okay your way sounds good you make

you increase your legitimacy as opposed to decreasing it when you fire one off in their face the host nation doing something tolerably is better than us doing it well hey as a leader when you got a subordinate leader you know you can do it better than your subordinate but it's oftentimes better to let them do it good enough if a tactic works this week it might not work next week if it works in this province it might not work in the next you got to keep it. an open mind. You got to change. You got to adapt. Tactical success guarantees nothing. When Colonel Harry Summers allegedly told a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975 that, quote, you know you never defeated us on the battlefield.

End quote. The reply supposedly was, quote, that may be so, but it is also irrelevant. end quote. Military actions by themselves cannot achieve a success in coin. Tactical actions must not only be linked to the operational and strategic military objectives, but also to the essential political goals of coin. Tactical success guarantees nothing. As a matter of fact, it's irrelevant, according to this North Vietnamese colonel. Last one.

most of the important decisions are not made by generals. It's the competence and judgment of soldiers and Marines at all levels. Senior leaders must set the proper tone for actions by their organizations with thorough training and clear guidance and then trust their subordinates to do the right thing. Preparation for the tactical level leaders requires more than service doctrine. They must also be trained and educated to adapt their local situations, understand the legal and ethical implications of their actions and exercise subordinates initiative and sound judgment to meet their senior commander's intent.

You had a company in an organization as the CEO, as the C.O, as the president, as the guy in charge, most of the important decisions are not made by you. They're made by someone out there on the front line, so you better lead them correctly. Little section on successful practices and unsuccessful practices. I'll read some of the unsuccessful practices. Place priority on killing and capturing the enemy, not on engaging the population. What does that mean? That means when you have a problem inside your team and all you do is attack like

whoever you think is doing it, that's where your priority is. Instead of building relationships with the group, you're wrong. so when you're a little kid and someone I don't know broke the water heater and no one wants to fess up so when your dad comes and says someone tell me or else you're all

you'll all get punished is that sort of the same thing like you shouldn't do that that's collective punishing and it's I don't I don't really agree with collective punishing there are times where it's used For instance, in team building exercises like seal training. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you're going to get that all day long.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. One person makes a mistake. They're going to make everyone pay. And they're doing that actually to create some sort of friction, right? What's wrong with you, Echo? Keep your head under the boat. We're going to keep doing this until Charles gets his head under the boat.

Come on, Echo. What's wrong with you? Yeah. It's kind of like a two little pronged effect, right? One, you want to put more heat on that guy because, like, letting the team down a lot of times is more punishment than letting yourself down, especially when they're all right there. And then the other part is, yeah, that friction.

Put some stress on everybody. Stress everybody out. I remember in football, we, there's like, okay, so, you know, when, okay, in football, you say, you know, you say what's called the cadence, you say, set down, hut, or go or whatever, right? The quarterback says it, whatever. So if you jump, if you start before the actual,

count, you know, you call for false start, off sides, yeah, depending on office defense, you know, people call different things sometimes. So anyway, there are certain drills, like to drill that in your head. And it's always, it's like an ongoing drill anyway. So if, so if we're going to do like some conditioning or something, it'll be in the conditioning. So everyone will line up, let's say it's wind sprints, they'll be like, okay, the count is on three. So they'll sit down, hut, hot, hut on the third hut, they go.

Some people still jump off sides during the condition. You see what I'm saying? It's like a drill that constantly goes. So if one guy jumps off sides, everybody pays for it. And sometimes the guy who will jump off sides doesn't pay for it. Oh, yeah, they'll call them out. Be like, you just go ahead and sit down, Charles. Yeah, or basically in a wind sprint situation is a common thing.

In our situation would be like, okay, let's say it's a 50-yard wind sprint, right? You start at the zero yard line and you run to the 50 or whatever. So it's the counts on two sat down hot one guy jumps off site Echo jumps off site Echo stays there everyone else goes five yards back So now they have a 55 yard wind sprint I only have a 50 I do it again they go five yards back again See what I'm saying so it's like it puts way more pressure on you to get it right

So you so you do learn I think but some people can get into this weird Downward spiral because they're so stressed about everyone mad at them now so they don't even think so they can't like get their get their act together it's funny but it's a good way to create stress yeah some of the successful practices the other unsuccessful practices are you know very sort of military base conduct battalion sized operations as the norm that's too big concentrate military forces in large bases for protection we know that that's not going to work focus special operations forces primarily on raiding like hey we're to go capture kill bad guys that's not where you want to put the focus.

You need to do it for sure, but it can't be the focus. So then some of the successful practices are emphasize intelligence, focus on the population, their needs, and security. Focus on the population. Focus on the people. Establish and expand security areas. Isolate insurgents from the population. So those are the kind of things that help out. place police in the lead with military support.

We absolutely tried to do that. We put the Iraqis. We brought the Iraqis with us. We put them in the lead. So those are some solid successful practices. And here's the summary from this first chapter. Counterinsurgency is an extremely complex form of warfare. Truly war at the graduate level.

At its core, counterinsurgency warfare is a struggle for the support of the population. Their protection and war, Welfare is the center of gravity of friendly forces. And the decisive terrain, this is something that I stole. I think this is the third, like, big thing that I stole from this to sort of start selling counterinsurgency up my chain of command was this idea that the center of gravity, the decisive terrain in this fight was not an airfield. It wasn't a part of town.

It was the people. If we got the people, like, you know, when you storm a beach, once you get the beachhead, you know, once you get a foothold, that's the, that's the decisive terrain. If you're taking an island, you want to get the high ground. Here it wasn't the high ground. It wasn't the beachhead. It wasn't the airfield. It was the people.

Gaining and maintaining that support is a formidable challenge. There are a host of non-military agencies whose efforts must be synchronized and coordinated with those of military to achieve these aims. And this thing closes out. Insurgents are also fighting for the support of the population, but are constrained by neither the law of war nor the bounds of human decency. They do anything to preserve their greatest advantage, the ability to hide among the people.

These amoral enemies survive by their wits, constantly adapting to the situation to defeat them, It is essential that counterinsurgent forces develop the ability to learn and adapt rapidly and continuously. So learn and adapt rapidly and continuously. Seems to be a common theme here on this podcast in the books that we review, in the people that we talk to, in the lessons that we learn. We seem to hear it over and over and over again. as one of the primary and most important attributes of winning. So I think it's pretty clear that you need to take lessons like this.

And if you can learn to apply them, and you can't universally apply them, right? And it says in the book, it says you can't just universally apply these things. You always have to be smart enough to pay attention, can run a feedback loop, see what's actually happening, and adjust. And you can only do that, by the way, if you're humble enough to actually listen to the feedback loop.

Everything is related. Everything is connected. And you can overlay these things into whatever part of your life you need to, to counter whatever insurgency that you're facing, whether. you're on the battlefield, whether you're in business, you're a leader, you're facing an insurgency in your own family. Sometimes. And we also have to pay attention to the fact that we might have an insurgency going on inside of us. An insurgency of weakness.

And slough. Trying to bring us down. Echler-Charles. Yes, sir. Do you have any recommendations how we could fight the internal insurgency that we are facing every single day? Bro, it's there. 100% there. You know, when you got a workout planned?

Mm-hmm. And then, boom, you feel the battle going on inside. All the reasons why today should actually, you know what? Think about it. Today should be a rest day. That's the one side, you know. And the other side is like, nope, shouldn't be a rest day. In fact, you're weak right now, and let's get stronger.

Let's push the, there's a lot of physical benefits. And if you overcome this feeling of not wanting to do the workout and you do it anyway, that's even now you're getting stronger mentally too. And now, you know, but meanwhile, it's like, boom, it's a little battle. The other side is like, but you got all that other stuff you could be doing that you need to do. You got this stuff to do. If you get that done, boom, you'll be way better off. I'm just saying you'll get some recovery, you know.

So it's like two battles going on. Insurgents are in there. Oh, yeah. And it's like that, when you said the insurgency on the inside, it's that. It's the weak part of, it's not been to me before. Oh, go ahead and go ahead. Let the cat out of the bag right there. So if I'm working on something, right, whatever it may be.

And it's time for the workout or whatever. Like that part of me would be like, God, just do it tomorrow. Do the workout tomorrow because look, you got this thing that you're in the middle of. Getting that done is actually better right now where it's beneficial, you know? that insurgent is trying to win the heart and mind of my whole actions. See what I'm saying? It's like showing me the benefits, you know, of like skipping the workout, but it's kind of evil in a way, you know?

But yeah, we got to fight against that. Anyway, so, yes, so what are we doing? Boom, we're working out. Yeah, for sure. Don't skip the workout. Don't skip the workout. If you're injured, skip the workout. Today was today, this very day.

Sure. I knew looking at my week ahead, because what is the day of the week? It is Saturday right now. Yes. So I looked at the week ahead and looked at tomorrow. I'm pretty booked up tomorrow, and the whole week is kind of crazy.

And I know that we needed to get this done. So my first thing, you know, I always wake up early in the morning and work out, but I knew I had to prioritize this. And I actually got it done pretty quick. You know, I had already read it so now I was going through making notes and whatever. But I woke up and did that first.

Before the workout. Before the workout, because I had to prioritize and execute. Yes, sir. So now it's like, you know, I spent like three or four hours, finishing the reading, looking a couple things up, and then I was going through, you know, highlighting. So now it's like 10.30 or something like that. I had a little food, and I had all kinds of excuses.

Locked and loaded. Especially after you eat, that's... Yeah, so... So what I did was, yeah, I had a little insurgency going on. Yeah. And then I just texted you and said, hey, one o'clock, let's do it. And I said, as soon as, if he's, I don't care if he responds or not, I'm just going to go get after it before I eat a, like, legitimate food. Yeah.

Wait, get up that's a little workout. Oh, yeah, just went and knocked out a workout. Yeah, yeah. Just did sort of a combo workout. It took me 40 minutes. You know what I'm saying? Still solid for you. But I just had to get it done.

You know, had to get it done, had to overcome that. Oh, yeah. Insurgency situation. Because sometimes those insurgents can make good points. They're making good points all the time. They know what they're doing. Yeah. They absolutely know what they're doing.

That's why you've got to be able to counter them. Man, I was thinking this. Let's face it, insurgencies are successful often. Yeah. Yeah, they're not. If you don't know how to counter them, you're going to be in trouble. Big time. What, so I was thinking this yesterday when I was working out.

Same way you were, that one time you're teasing me about. squats or whatever you were like oh I wonder if echo scott remember you're saying that okay so I was kind of the same inverse reverse whatever scenario where I was like I wonder if jocco could do this workout like what if me and jocco traded workouts whatever given day and we had to do the same workout same weight everything if you can't do it oh there's an indicator you can't do it kind of thing right so if you can't do it it's an indicator that you can't do that I'm saying that I'm saying I'm saying That's the purpose of trading workouts. You know, like, you always wonder, like, I wonder if I could do that guy's workout.

I wonder if I could do the, you know, that football players workout, whatever, you know. You kind of wonder that every once in a while. Especially when you see guys working out hard, like, I wonder, you know, these CrossFit guys or whatever. So that's what I was thinking. I was like, I wonder if I, I wonder how I would fare with Jocco's workout. Because there's two kinds of, like, roadblocks, if you will. One is like, if I just can't do the weight. Like, let's say your squat is just, it's a bigger squat than me, you know.

So if you got a set of 20, a set of 15, a set of nine, and a set of however that goes, and you're, again, I got to use your same weight. And I simply can't get 20 reps with that weight. I just physically can't do it. It's kind of, okay, there's that. That's one. Then the other one is like, this is like, I got to tap out.

This is too hard for me. I got to rest more or I got to, like, not do 10 sets. I can only do like five or whatever. You see what I'm saying? There's that too. So both of those, and probably there's other stuff too, is like you wonder how would I fare in that exact workout same you know weight like we're now work a similar weight as far as body weight or whatever so it's like I was wondering that

like I wonder if I wonder if I could do joccos then I was like then I was thinking I wonder if he could do mine I don't think I could do yours I think that there is be a Venn diagram where there'd be an overlap in the middle where we could both do each other's workouts then I have some workouts that you wouldn't be able to do and then you have some workouts that I wouldn't be able to do because of our specialties right yeah the the the met cons I feel like I don't know because yours are more extended right your met your your met cons they're like probably like what 15 20 minutes or something yeah or more yeah see so but they're going to be less intense though depends whatever right

Nonetheless, I was wondering that. So maybe one day we're going to see. We should straight out have the workout. I have rest periods built in too, by the way. That's one thing is years seems more structured. Yeah. You know, I guess not really, but I just basically, I don't have rest periods. Yeah.

Generally, most of my workouts don't have like a rest, like a time where you're like three minutes of rest. I don't generally have that. Yeah. Yeah, I do for sure. Because what I'll be doing is some other exercise during that period. Yeah, which. just yet another type of like workout, you know, like stimulus free. Because let's say you're just, okay, let's go basic example.

If you go, you know, five sets of 12, we'll just say, right? There's a way, there's a huge difference with not only the weight you can do, but just overall what you're doing to your body for that workout. If you go one minute rest in between those sets and three minutes rest in between those sets, you're doing like essentially you're doing two different things to your body. Yeah. You know? So it's like, all right, which workout am I doing?

Then that's what, that's why rest. is kind of set in there. But then if there's no rest in between the sets and you program it like, oh, I need to get 500 pull-ups. I don't care how I get them. I just got to get them, I don't know, as fast as I can, I guess,

or whatever. Or you just got to get 500 pull-ups. It's kind of, that's part of the workout too, you know? So it's like, it's almost like, it's, you're doing a specific thing to your body there too, you know? So it's like that fits, you know? You don't have to have rest periods. I program him in for a reason.

See what I'm saying? Yeah. No, you have a specific purpose. But nonetheless. Oh, yeah. Nonetheless. I forgot.

Yes, I'm going to tell people how we can stay on the path. Effectively, healthy, and, you know, effectively and healthy. Anyway,

yeah, so when you're working out, you can eat, need fuel, eat good. 80-20 is good. 80% clean, 20% freedom.

80% discipline, 20% freedom? Yeah. Well, diet lines. That's recommended. You can go 90-10. You can go 90-10. You start going 70-30, then you, that's a slippery slope. That's what I think.

Nonetheless, you want supplementation for your joints, for your brain, for even protein supplements. Boom, we got you joccal fuel supplements. Joint warfare. Rejoint, obviously, krill oil, omega-3s all day, and antioxidants, by the way. Also, discipline and discipline go, which are essentially, same thing different delivery systems cans and powders it's true and pills and what are they called capsules yeah capsules because I told I told B little at the beginning so we started making discipline I said hey man this is really good stuff yeah I this is exactly what I this is what

we want right I said but I talk for long periods of time for living and if If I have to drink this to get my, get that hitter. If I have to drink this before I go out and start talking. And then all of a sudden I gotta go to the bathroom. I said, I need a pill. I told him. I said, I said, put the stuff into a pill. He goes, okay.

And he made a, what is it called a, it's a compressed, not a capsule, but like a compressed thing, whatever. And I don't really like those. Oh, bro. So then I had to send him back by the drawing board. I was like, bro. And he goes, he said, you. He said, you said, pill.

And I said, I thought that a capsule was a pill. To me, that's the same thing. You take a pill, right? I didn't know that a pill was, whatever that compressed thing is. And a capsule is something different. Yes. But if you need that little, like you need it, boom. You can take the capsule discipline.

Not a pill, not a gel cap. Which actually this stem from. So I forget what happened in the world, but there was controversy about, veterans and drugs and someone was saying something like you know what do you expect to happen when he put all these vets on drugs put on amphetamines

and I said I said we're not on amphetamines and he goes pilots take amphetamines and I said I texted Dave Burke yeah good deal too yeah and I said I said do they give you guys amphetamines to take and he goes no I mean, this is all within, this is, this is on Twitter. This is probably two years ago.

He goes, no. And so I go back to the guy, I go, no, they never give pilots and fetid beans. And then I get it. As soon as I tweeted that, Dave Burke. Good deal. Yeah. He goes back, he goes, bro, I just screwed you. He said me a text.

He's like, bro, I just screwed you. And I was like, what? He goes, they definitely give it to us tonight. And I was like, and I was like, Roger. I said, hey, I was wrong. But guess what they call him? What? Go pills.

Okay. So that's what I was saying to be little. I'll say, hey, man, we need go pills. We don't need amphetamines in them. In fact, we do not want amphetamines. No, sir, we do. But we do want the feeling that discipline and the discipline powder gives you. Yeah.

A little cognitive kick. Yeah, a little get up and go. Yes. That's why we call it discipline go. Anyways, there you go. That's a little information behind that. We got jaco white tea. We got mulk, strawberry, chocolate.

For kids we got mint peanut butter the whole nine yards It's true and all the stuff is available to vitamin shop or it's available at Origin main Okay, speaking of origin main other things on there besides Jocco feel like Gis and Rashgarts for Jiu Jitsu one we go back to Jiu Jitsu if we haven't already We're kind of getting back there boom I think there's a Underground moment there's definitely people training that's JP's training.

Texas is open. Yeah. Yeah, there's, I think, I heard a thing that gyms are opening June 15th or something like this.

They opened with a bunch of restrictions. Yeah. So, yeah, but we're getting there. Yeah, coming out from the underground, for sure.

So you gotta need a new ghee. Yep. Origin ghee, best ones factually, in the world, by the way. And fully in America, of course. Made in America.

Yes. Of course. Which is kind of important right now. Big time. You want to get your stuff that's made. in America not made in China.

Yeah, that's my recommendation anyways. I agree. Don't forget about jeans. Don't forget about boots. Don't forget about t-shirts, hoodies, and don't forget about joggers. Unless you're me. If you're me, don't get joggers.

Yeah, just forget about them, actually. There's a whole, a whole just, a whole, there's a whole just plethora of reasons. Why if your name is Jocko, don't get joggers. They just don't work. Yeah, don't get them. Not meant to be. Don't put them on.

If your name is Echo Charles, all day. All day. Joggers, all day. Oh, yes, sir. Yes, orjibay.com also. Jocko is a store. That's called jocco store.com. That's where you can get your shirts.

Custom shirts. Maybe you stretching that word custom for, but nonetheless, you can't represent. Discipline equals freedom. Good. Take the high ground. The high ground take you. Get after it.

It's a good one. Anyway, shirts that will rep, you can represent on the path while you're on. Path. Good stuff. Anyway, get some hats on there. Some other cool stuff. So yeah, if you like something, get something.

We have an email list. Here's the thing. I always feel kind of odd, for lack of a better term, saying, hey, sign up for our email list. It feels weird saying that. Well, that's because you have been conditioned in your life that every time somebody told you that and you did it,

you got a bunch of junk. Yes. And I don't want to say spam necessarily, but yeah, it's one of these things where, and I'm down. I am down for the email list 100%. If I'm like, oh, wait, I do want updates on this stuff right here. Like, I'm down.

I'm not conditioned necessarily against it, but here's the thing. I have felt the sting of signing up for the email list, hoping that I'll be updated. with like new cool stuff that they offer or whatever but meanwhile they're sending me like oh happy valentines day from xyz dot com it's like brad i don't care about you wishing me happy valentines day in my email inbox which let's face it our email inbox for most of us for some of us will say i think most of us but whatever our inbox is kind of sacred like bro stay out of there if if you don't

have something significant that's the way it should be yeah so anyway my point there is if if you sign for this. So you're saying all this, now you're going to tell everyone that should sign up for the email list. I'm not saying anyone should do anything ever, maybe not ever, but I'm not saying in this case, but I'm saying we do have an email list. If you do want updates and here's basically what I'll send out is like if there's a new design or a new hoodie or a new whatever, that's it pretty much for the store with the occasional. And when I say occasional, I mean very occasional exception where if there's like some important announcement and important is like very it has to be very important what's an example of an important announcement that's come out on the email list

because i'm on the email list yeah none okay that's what i was going to say i haven't got any more yeah i'm just saying that no no no the email list none have been but i'm saying if there was like hey freaking no podcast for one month or you know something that like i would anticipate a bunch of people trying to email me or you about then maybe but I mean I can't think of anything offhand specifically but it'll be real important I think I will firmly believe that it's important anyway otherwise you're just going to get new stuff every what once a month maybe once every two three months yes maybe so anyway I'm not gonna abuse you that's what I'm saying I realize that everyone's inbox is sacred where I'm gonna

let's get to okay where do they sign up for this email address list thing on Jocco store.com at the bottom. Should I make some kind of an email? Hey, no, man. I don't think so. You know, leave everybody alone. That's like what people are all into. Like, oh, you should do you.

Yeah, you know, and I dig it. That's like the, what do you call it? Have you ever got an email from somebody that's like, like you sign up for an email list? And then you get an email. But it says it's from like the person you go, oh, it's from so and so. But then it's just a mass email. Yeah. Well, because sometimes it is from that person, but it is a mass email.

Okay. But sometimes it's from like their marketing company or whatever. That's those the ones. And I go, come on, man. Yeah, bro, I felt all good. But well, this one is good because this is actually from me. Yeah. So I'll try to make it look cool and official.

You know, with some cool pictures on there. But yes, it is coming from me. I have friends. Yes. That, you know, kind of have email. list, right? Yeah, sure. And, and I'm on their email list. But then I'm also have, you know, we'll exchange personal emails, right? About whatever topic. And like I'll get an email from, like an email will show up and I go, oh, that's cool. So and so. And then I open it up and it's

one of those things. I was like, oh, dude, that's a bummer. Yeah. What do you mean? Like Sam Harris? Just whoever. Yeah, you name them. I signed up for Sam Harris's email list, but it was happened to be at the same time where I sort of like met him and sort of like noam and then I seen it like from Samara. I was like yes Sam Harrison is emailing me and then it's like his podcasting. I was like I felt that it was cool. I signed up for a reason so I was like but that expectation that it's actually him emailing you be like hey great to meet you or something like this. Yeah. That's funny. No I get I get you know quite a few friends like that where and you know I don't I'm not a big communicator and I don't have a ton of friends anyways

So when I do get emails from my friends it's always because I get a lot of business emails obviously But then when people email my personal email You know and I go oh And then I see that it's a form email like oh well But sometimes it has spurred me to email them Right I've gone you know and then they email me back and we have a cool something you know but it reminds me. Yeah, yeah, I say why What gave me that feeling like, oh, that's cool to hear from this person or that person? Maybe they were thinking the same thing.

Why am I not email them? Who am I supposed to not take any initiative here? So then I'll take some initiative and say, hey, I listened to your last podcast or, hey, I saw you do that thing. And they go, oh, cool. You know what I mean? Yep. So it's a little indirect prompt to kind of relate to people. Yeah.

Reach out, man. Yeah. Can't pick up a phone. Yeah. It's true. All right, well, nonetheless, there you go. So yeah, jocco store.com, that's where all this stuff is. Also, if you want to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes,

I know sounds kind of weird because you probably already are subscribed. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I am. Yes, I am. Yeah, you, of course, yeah, me too, Jocco. But if you're not subscribed, you want to subscribe, boom. Let me remind you that that option is available for you.

We also have some other podcasts. We have a podcast formerly known as the thread, which I was this close to renaming and I didn't like it. And then I found the ultimate new name for it. And there's already another podcast which I can't even believe exists with this name that I can't believe has already been taken. So I'm still in the midst of finding out a new name for that. Well, what was the name? I'm not going to say it.

Why not? Because it's just, I'm not going to say it. We're just so. You were so let down. I was so disappointed. And also, I want to see. there's a way that I can still manipulate the name enough to use it. Oh, right, right, right, gotcha.

But I don't want to give it away. Grounded podcast where we talk about Jiu-Jitsu, which we talked about Jitsu today a lot anyways. So, but we talk about it even more. And we talk about life and we talk about everything else on the grounded podcast. We got the Warrior Kid podcast for your warrior kids. We got Warrior Kids soap from Irish Oaks Ranch.com, a young warrior kid making soap.

So that everybody out there in the entire world, D. Can stay clean. We got a YouTube channel, which is where Echo takes videos and he puts them on there. Sometimes he puts modifications. I said last time that he should put enhancements into just the podcast. So when I talk about counterinsurgencies,

when I talk about weapons, some things should happen in this. You didn't do it. Whatever. Total lack of initiative. But it's all good. I'm sure there's someone out there that would love to modify these things. Yeah, well, you know, to me the jury is still out whether or not that's a good idea.

So, you know, I'm going to think about it. Why don't we test it? Why don't we see? Next time when we do this podcast, you know, you make your little notes. You make your little notes. You should be like, oh, when I talk about, oh, there was this massive explosion. You could just make a little note that says one hour and 37 minutes. Explosion.

Here's a thing. for somebody that freaking just puts explosions everywhere. Yes, sir. Yeah, and I'm an explosion advocate as far as video goes, 100%. But here's the thing. Here's the thing with that. So let's say I put a cool machine gun sound, explosions,

you know, whatever we put. And one single person on YouTube with one of those ghost accounts that like, you know, no profile picture, one of those guys says, that's corny. brother, it's going to like devastate me, I think, us. Okay. And we can't do it. That's an indicate.

Bro, you need to harden up. We need to toughen up. Also, we got psychological warfare, a bunch of me talking about your moments of weakness, a little psychological hitters. We got Flipside Canvas, little visual hitters. Flipside Canvas.com. Support Dakota Meyer while you're at it. We got a bunch of books.

The code, the evaluation, the protocols. Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual. Way the Warrior Kid, one, two, and three. Mikey and the Dragons. Discipline equals freedom field manual. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. Check out those books if you like what we talk about on here. Eschalon Front, that's our leadership consultancy.

I talked about it a couple times today. We solve problems through leadership. That's what we do. Go to echelonfront.com. And by the way, if you want me to come and speak to your company, don't go to a speaker's bureau. and don't Google jocco speaking just go to ashlawfront.com

that's what we do we have EF online which is revamped come and check it out it's online courses it's online not just online courses it's online interact if you want to talk to me if you want to talk if you want to

hang out with me in a Zoom meeting get on to EFonline.com and you will get to I will be sitting there answering your question muster our leadership seminar event gathering Phoenix out Arizona September 16th and 17 we're doing it Dallas Texas December 3rd and 4th we're doing it every gig we've ever done has sold out extreme ownership dot com if you want to come to that and if you need leadership in your organization go to eF overwatch dot com we got military prior service military personnel that understand the prince we talk about and they're ready to come to work at your team. Also, America's mighty warriors.org. Mama Lee, Mark Lee's mom, she's out there on the grind,

helping in a multitude of different ways, service members, active duty, their families, gold star families around the world. That's what she's doing. You can go to America's mighty warriors.org to either get involved or just donate. And if you haven't had enough of my protracted discourse, or you need more of Echo's arbitrary tales, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Echo is at Equit Charles. I am at Jocco Willink.

And thanks to everyone out there in uniform right now, trying to keep order from becoming chaos and you're doing it voluntarily. us and a massive thanks to police and law enforcement out there, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, you do some of the hardest work in the world. You don't make a ton of money. You do it with massive risk for yourselves and you do it to keep us safe and we thank you. And to everyone else out there, and there are lots of insurgencies going on. Lots of insurgencies happening in your life, in your business, in your relationships, in your family, in yourself.

And it's really easy just to say, hold the line. It's real easy. I say it all time. But you got to remember all these complexities. You got to remember that more than just brute force, you have to use your mind. You can't just out maneuver. You have to outthink. you have to give and you have to take you have to think strategic and you have to play the long game

and it's not easy but that's how you win to go out there and get after it and until next time this is echo and jaco out