Jocko Podcast - 286: The Indirect Approach is The Best "Strategy" in All Cases.

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:01:00 - The Indirect Approach. Pt 2. Strategy, by B.H. Liddell Hart.1:58:22 - How to stay on THE PATH2:12:42 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 286 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us again, Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So if you haven't listened to 285, just go back and listen to 285 right now. We are exploring some of the works of B.H. Liddell Hart.

I explain who he is on 285. He's a British soldier, World War I, military theorist, military historian, wrote, influenced. He's an influencer. He's kind of an OG influencer. And he legit was. He had a lot of influence inside the British military. He had influence in all kinds of different military organizations, including some enemy military organizations that actually listened to what he had to say. So if you haven't listened to 285 yet, go back.

to 285 and we're going to jump right back in to his book which is called strategy it's a we the last one we covered was the strategy of the indirect approach this look everything he does is tied into the strategy of indirect approach and and we're going to jump back into this his other book well he's got many books one of his other books called simply strategy b.Hlidel hart here we go Dave anything before I just jump right into this thing no let's do it okay so We're going to get into a section here called Basis of Strategy. And I think it's very interesting how this one kicks off. A deeper truth to which Falk and other disciples of Klaus Witz did not penetrate fully

is that in war, every problem and every principle is a duality. Like a coin, it has two faces. So this may remind you of another book you might have heard of called the Dicotomy of Leadership. There you go. I think I owe this guy some royalties. I didn't know. I mean, I could have called the book the duality of leadership, but I didn't. Right?

We called the dichotomy of leadership. Like a coin. It has two faces. Hence the need for a well calculated compromise as a means to reconciliation. What does that mean? Be balanced. Big shocker. This is the inevitable consequence of the fact that war is a two-party affair.

So imposing the need that while hitting, one must guard. It's just that you got to balance the dichotomies of leadership. You can't just be on total offense. You got to have a guard up. You can't just have your guard up. You've got to go on offense. You've got to be balanced.

It's a corollary that in order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard. Effective concentration can only be obtained when the opposing forces are dispersed. And usually in order to ensure this, one's own forces must be widely distributed. Thus, by an outward paradox, true concentration is the product of dispersion. So isn't this interesting?

We have to concentrate our forces, but we have to disperse our forces in order to dislocate and put the enemy off balance. So there's a dichotomy. We have to be together so that we can act effectively, but we have to be spread out so we can put the enemy off balance. What happens if we get too far spread out? Well, now we're weak. What happens if we're too concentrated?

Well, now we can't disperse the, we can't dislocate the enemy. A further consequence of the two-party condition is that to ensure reaching an objective, one should have an alternative objective or alternative objectives, plural. Herein lies a vital contrast to the single-minded 19th century doctrine of Falk and his fellows, A contrast of the practical to the theoretical. For if the enemy is certain as to your point of aim, he has the best possible chance of guarding himself and blunting your weapon. This is why in Jiu-Jitsu you have to do more than one move.

You can't just grab the arm and think you're going to get the arm lock. It's not going to work. If, on the other hand, you take a line that threatens alternative objectives, you distract his mind and his forces. This, moreover, is the most economic method of distraction. for it allows you to keep the largest proportion of your force available on your real line of operation, thus reconciling the greatest possible concentration with the necessity of dispersion. So you have to have some different objectives.

If you just grab the arm, that's not going to, if you just flank, if you're like, okay, hey, we're going to flank. Okay, the enemy goes, oh wait, looks like they're moving over there. Cool. Now we adjust our forces and now that flank becomes the front. So you have to have multiple objectives. Now, what if you go to flank and they think, oh, that's not just a, that's just a fake move? So now they don't put their forces in the world, then you attack it. But if you only have one objective and the enemy recognizes what that is, they're going to defend it heavily.

And you're not going to be able to achieve victory. The absence of an alternative is contrary to the very nature of war. It sins against the light, which Borset shed in the 18th century by his most penetrating dictum that, quote, every plan of campaign ought to have several branches and to have been so well thought out that one or the other of the said branches cannot fail of success. So you got to have multiple branches. and they should be well enough thought out that one of them is going to work. One of those branches, one of those lines of operation is going to work. This was the light that his military heir, the young Napoleon Bonaparte, followed in seeking always.

As he said, you guys want me to go French? Yeah, kind of. Fair son, fame, and du fashions. There you go. Yeah. What does that mean? It means make your theme in two ways. You've got to have two different approaches.

And it's just, you know, he calls it, it's a sin against the old dictums, right? Which was, you gotta have a focus, you gotta aim for that. Concentrate your forces in one spot. It's like, cool. What if they have a thing? enemy defunds at one spot. You're screwed in technical terms. Seventy years later, Sherman was to relearn the lesson from experience by reflection and coin his infamous maxim about, quote,

putting the enemy on the horns of a dilemma. End quote. In any problem where an opposing force exists and cannot be regulated, one must foresee and provide for alternative courses. Adaptability is the law which governs survival and war as in life. War being a concentrated, war being but a concentrated form of the human struggle against the environment. Thank you. Amplified. Intensified. But nonetheless, a concentrated form of the human struggle.

To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it. The best chance of overcoming such an obstruction. is to have a plan that can be easily varied to fit the circumstances met. I mean, I just was saying this today on EF online. Like, you've got to have a flexible plan. You've got to have a flexible plan. And you'd think that seems super obvious. But you know what?

You know what people want to control? And they want to eliminate the unknown. And how do you eliminate the unknown? You come up with a plan. Well, guess what? They're still unknown, even when you have a plan. And the more rigid you make a plan, the less adaptable and flexible it becomes, which is bad.

To keep such adaptability while keeping the initiative, the best way is to operate along a line which offers alternative objectives. For thereby you put your opponent on the horns of a dilemma, which goes far to assure the gaining of at least one objective, whichever is the least guarded, and may enable you to gain the other one afterwards. Boom. in the tactical field where the enemy's dispositions are likely to be based on the nature of the ground,

it may be more difficult to find a choice of dilemma-producing objectives than it is in the strategic field where the enemy will have obvious industrial and railway centers to cover. But you can gain a similar advantage by adapting your line of effort to the degree of resistance that is met and exploiting any weaknesses is found. A plan, like a tree, must have branches if it is to bear fruit, A plan with a single aim is apt to prove a barren pole. I'm just thinking of this idea of having multiple objectives and then the dilemma that that causes. And even just in like aviation terms, like we go out on a mission and our objective is to destroy enemy air defenses.

Sam sites or mobile sams or wherever those might be. But it's actually reliant on them to have those systems active and operating. Because how you find them. If they're shut down in the dormant, you actually can't find them. They're not radiating. not uncovered, you could fly around and not have them there. But if they don't have their SAM systems or air defense systems active, then the things that they're defending are vulnerable. So the secondary mission, we'd have these, these things called a TPL, a target priority list.

If these things aren't there, cool, go to this. Those things aren't there? Cool, go to this. And sooner or later, one will be exposed. And as you start to attack those defended positions, like bridges or roads or things that matter. Better turn on those radars. turn on the radar. It's exactly right. And that idea that we would have multiple target priorities, which all eventually are designed to lead us back to the number one priority, which might not get on that mission, but we get in the next wave or in the next wave. And sooner or later, they're stuck in a place like, well, if we don't turn these things on, we're going to lose all of our critical infrastructure and there's nothing to defend and creating that dilemma by having multiple

objectives on each flight. Yeah. And in the business world, this whole concept is we hear debates or arguments against this, right? You got to have a clear objective. And that makes sense. I tell people that. We got to make sure we understand what the objective is. That being said, we also don't want to have a single point of failure where, hey, you know what? We're going to make one product.

We're going to make one product. And if this product does, this products is the one. We're going to put all of our money, all of our birds in this basket. Is that the one? Eggs. All our eggs that are going to go in this basket. Don't do that. Don't do that.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. There you go. Never mind, B.H. Ladle Hart, whichever farmer thought of that one after his kid dropped the basket full of eggs, right? He's like, hey, kid, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Put them in two baskets. Same thing. It's the exact same thing.

Yes, sir. And yet we can get focused on one objective. And as soon as you meet resistance, if you're not ready to switch to another one, like Dave Burke flying, you know, up there and going, oh, there's nothing really to shoot at. Cool. What's the next objective? Bridges. Let's go. Rock and roll.

Okay. So now we're going to roll a new section called cutting communications. In planning any stroke at the enemy's communications, either by maneuver around his flank or by rapid penetration of a breach in his front, the question will arise as to, the most effective point of aim, whether it should be directly against the immediate rear or the opposing, of the opposing force or further back. When studying the question, so again, and I talked about this before on the last podcast is every time it talks about communications, it's telling you, hey, you better, you better keep your communication open.

When we talk about attacking the enemy's communications and that's how we cause unbalanced and that's how we kind of crush them, great. We're glad to know that. That's also a reminder to us as leaders that communication is so paramount to getting our job done. When he's got a whole section called cutting communication, guess what? That should mean to us from a red cell perspective, don't let your communication get cut. And yet we work with companies all the time where the communication isn't open and it's not flowing and people on the front lines don't know what's happening. And the people in the head shed don't get the feedback that they should be getting from the front lines.

There's not communication happening. And yet there's a whole section here. about cutting communication and you're allowing your communications to be cut when there's not even an enemy. It's not like your competitor got into your email system or got into your phone system and didn't let you call your frontline leadership. That didn't happen. You failed to do it. So where do we cut the communication?

When studying this question at the time that experimental mechanized forces were first created and their strategic use was under consideration, I sought guidance on it by analysis of cavalry raids carried out in the past, especially in the more recent wars. since railways came into use. While such cavalry raids had more limited potentials than a deep strategic penetration of mechanized forces seemed to me to promise that this difference emphasized rather than detracted from making the significant evidence

which they provided. Making the necessary adjustment, the following deductions could be drawn. And I'm going to kind of burn through this section. The overall concept is that the nearer to the force that the cut is made, the more immediate the effect. And the nearer to the base,

the greater the effect. This is common sense, right? If you kill the node at the headquarters, they can't communicate to anybody, but it's going to take a while for that impact to hit the front lines, for them to actually not know what's going on, whereas if you cut the front line node,

that immediate node is kind of messed up. So that's the general consensus that he gets into there. He goes on, to say these deductions were confirmed by the experience of the second war above all the catastrophic the catastrophically paralyzing effect physically and psychologically that was produced when gordon's panzer forces racing far ahead of the main german armies severed the allied armies communications where these crossed the far back line of the psalm and this is where you run into problems so

So catastrophically paralyzing when we start to cut off communications. So look, are you going to go into your competitors, you know, headquarters and destroy their their internet and their email? No, you're not going to do that. But are you allowing that to happen just by human nature and laziness and lack of prioritize and execute? Are you going to allow your communications to fall apart? There's a decent chance you are. We work with companies all the time that aren't communicating. they might as well have had

Panzer forces go and cut off their email between their front lines and them because there's no email happening there's no conference calls happening there's no text happening we don't know what's going on we've lost communications not through enemy action but through our own

fault yeah and and one of the ways one of the places we see that with business is that the communication is a one way communication where I am I am dictating

or directing or communicating to you, I'm transmitting. And there's no response to that transmission. There's no, the communication really isn't designed for me to hear what you have to say. It's for me to tell you what to do and how to do it and when to do it and where to do these things. Yeah, and I get that compliance, but I don't get that communication, which is a, a, a almost guarantee that sooner or later when there is friction with that, without that communication, that that plan is going to fail. even when I was just talking about communication, I said, you're not getting the, you're not getting the information of the front lines and you're not getting the feedback you need. Yeah. Which is what you just said.

It's like, hey, communication is supposed to go in two ways. That's what's supposed to be happening. If we don't let it happen, we're going to have problems. We're going to have problems. And in the, and making this relevant to to the civilian world of the private sector, the needle, the biased needle of the communication would be to be transatlantician. submit as little as possible and receive as much as possible. When I have, when I have my team communicating to me more than I'm committing to communicating to them, here's what we're seeing, here's what we're doing, here's the problems we're happening, here's how we're saying that's what

you would want. That's how you would set up the bias. Yes, the bias is if I see that I'm the, as the leader, doing 90% of the communication, I'm in, the needle is in the wrong direction. And so the ability for my people to communicate to me, for me to hear from them, what, What they're doing, what they're seeing, where they are, and I'm doing less communicating to them than they are communicating up to me, that's where I want that needle. That falls into something I was talking about the other day on our online platform. I use this term and both, it struck, I think, both you and Laif, because you've never heard me say it before I started using the term traditional leadership.

Yeah. And then like an archetypical leadership. what does that mean? Well, when we think of a leader, what do we think of? Like if you just say, oh, what does a leader do? Well, a leader gives orders. A leader talks. A leader tells everyone what's going on.

They tell people what to do. That's traditional leadership. And actually, in my mind, if I'm doing that sort of traditional leadership, I've made 47 mistakes to get to a point where I have to tell you what's going on. I have to give orders. I have to give you direction about where to go and what to do. I've made so many mistakes if I'm doing that. Traditional leadership role of like all right here's what we're doing

Does that happen sometimes and that was what I was talking about right the case does sometimes happen where we got a leadership vacuum No one knows what to do there's some confusion and sometimes we do have to take a role as traditional leader Step in tell everyone what to do this is what we're doing this direction we're having heading and A traditional leadership role I'm in charge. I'm the one that's putting out the word We want to flip the script on that to what to your point? traditional leadership is not what my ideal is. Ideal leadership is Dave's actually giving me information and telling me what's going on. And I have to give very little communication back because he already understands the commander's intent and what his roles.

And he, by the way, knows more about what's happening on his front than ideal. Totally. And he's trying to inform me, but still he's there. So that that traditional leadership versus ideal leadership is. is something to pay attention to. And if you had whatever version of a catastrophic communication failure exists, you know, it doesn't have to be the phone lines in combat, but something that prevents you from communicating,

if your people can't operate based on your intent with zero communication and just go out there and execute until somehow that communication line is reopened for whatever reason, that again, that is your failure as a leader that they, don't know what to do if you're not there to tell them what to do. So I don't, you know, in wherever world you're in, your version of a communication cutoff, your people should still be able to execute. 100%.

Next little section called the method of advanced. Until the end of the 18th century, a physically concentrated advance, both strategic to the battlefield and tactical on the battlefield was the rule. then Napoleon Exploring Borset's ideas and new divisional system introduced a distributed strategic advance The army moving in independent fractions

But the tactical advance was still in general a concentrated one This is you know we start getting into decentralized command And you know I mentioned Borset already B O UR CET He's another French general 1700s I think you Yeah Born in 1700 died in 1780

But this is another guy that That had a little bit of vision right Had a vision about decentralized command And that's kind of one of them This divisional system Where you can start to get people to move on their own And that is a better way to advance Back to the book

Toward the end of oh and by the way To Dave's point We know where we're going and if you lose if if you got your division and Echo's got his division and Kerry's got his division and you lose calms with me it doesn't matter three days later you're where he's supposed to be because you knew where you were going back to the book towards the end of the 19th century with a development of fire weapons the tactical advance became dispersed i.e. and particles to diminish the effective

fires this is when we really start to get to dispersion but the strategic advance had become concentrated this was due partly to the influence of railways and growth of the masses, partly to the misunderstanding of the Napoleonic methods. So when we started to use machine guns, well, then people started dispersing tactically, but because of trains, we are moving these mass groups together. A revival of the distributed advance was required in order to revive the art and effective strategy. Moreover, new conditions, air power and motor power point to its further development into

a dispersed strategic advance. The danger of air attack, the aim of mystification, and the need of drawing full value from mechanized mobility suggests that advancing forces should not only be distributed as widely as is compatible with combined action, but be dispersed as much is compatible with cohesion. So what they're saying is a balance that you have to have. We got to be as far apart as we possibly can, but as long as we're still a cohesive union. it. That's the dichotomy that you have to balance. This becomes essential in the face of atomic weapons. Obviously, we can't be all together because we're going to get nuked. And it's crazy

that we sit here and chuckle at that. Because for us, it's almost like, hey, that couldn't happen. But hey, and we've covered, we've covered some significant military manuals where they talk about the actual, they're planning on how they're going to maneuver when the enemy is using. tactical nukes, which is crazy to think about. The development of radio is a timely aid towards reconciling dispersion with control. Instead of the simple idea of concentrated stroke by a concentrated force, we should choose according to circumstance between these variants. Give some options here.

Dispersed advance with concentrated single aim, i.e. against one of just. Dispersed advance with concentrated serial aim, which means when we get there, we're going to go off their multiple successive objectives. Dispersed advance with distributed aim, i.e. against a number of objectives simultaneously. The effectiveness of armies depends on the development of such new methods, methods which aim at permeating and dominating areas rather than capturing lines. at the practicable object of paralyzing the enemy's action rather than the theoretical object of crushing his forces. Fluidity of forces may succeed where concentration of force merely entails rigidity,

a perilous rigidity. So at times, Bruce Lee, we want to be like water. Fluidity of force is sometimes better than just concentration of force. If you can move, Jeff Glover on the Jiu-Jitsu mats, you grab something on him,

and he's somewhere else. You grab something on Dean, he's countering. Right? But you grab something on Jeffrey Glover, he's maneuvering. Like, it's gone. It's like a piece of slime.

Sure. Yeah, a piece of slime. You squeeze one part, he pops out another part. Yeah, it's true. With Dean, you can't squeeze. Like it doesn't go anywhere. He does the squeezing case. Yeah, you're getting squeezed.

That's the way it worked. All right. Just the word fluid, and I mentioned it before. I talked about fluid mutual support. Just the idea of being fluid is it's flexibility. It's the ability to be reactive to the situation in a way that puts you in a place to be available to support as you need it, but far enough away to maneuver as you need to. And I just, I think the idea of, of, in this era, them talking about fluid, when the backdrop of World War I, and I know we've hit this a thousand times, the backdrop of a World War I was, was whatever the opposite of fluid is, which is this incapacity, the inability to, to adjust, to maneuver, to do something, that analogy you just did with like that slime thing of, I squeeze here and something pops it over there, that the, the, be.

the ability to be fluid and the inherent the way you'd want to describe your organization or your reaction to things go on in your organization of being fluid and how quickly people get to being rigid with their thought processes, their ideas, their objectives, what they want to accomplish, and how quickly it becomes rigid. So check this out. We're in World War I. Okay. We actually have a culture that views fluidity as weakness. The Victorian culture. If you want to run away from danger, you're a coward.

You're weak. Now take that and bring a thread to the boardroom. Bring a thread to the conference room and a company. And if Dave presents an idea to me and I back down because I agree with his idea. or I back down because I see some holes in my idea, I might be viewed as weak. So I'm not going to be fluid instead. I'm going to be rigid.

I'm going to stand up today. We're going to fight about it. And by the way, if I outrank you, I'm going to win. It's freaking ridiculous. Crazy. But we have this culture. And that culture, you know, look, the culture, the reason that culture exists,

especially the culture of rigidity, is directly tied to our human nature, our ego, right? because we feel like, oh, I don't want to, I'm not going to back down to Dave. I'm not going to let that happen. It's like, actually, you know what? Good call, Dave. I like your idea better.

The odd thing about this is that it makes me look stronger. It makes me look open-minded and flexible and confident to be like, you know what, Dave, like your idea. Let's roll with that. The whole room, the whole freaking conference room goes, damn, Jocco's got some confidence. He's good with whatever plan. He just wants us to win as opposed to actually,

Dave, you know what? I've heard enough from you. We're going with my plan. Everyone in the room goes, oh, he's weak. I think I'm strong. I'm being weak. And everybody perceives me as weak. Everybody presc- this is one of the hardest lessons to learn. It's one of the hardest lessons to learn is that flexibility is viewed as a strength. Fluidity is viewed as a strength.

Putting your ego and being humble is viewed as strength. And when you do the opposite, when you're rigid, it's viewed as weakness. When you let your ego flare up, it's viewed as weakness. It's viewed as insecurity. And we see this all day long. We see this all day long. Next chapter. The concentrated essence of strategy and tactics.

Do I own royalties for my book? Do I think I kind of do. At first, I was like, nah, but then now I think maybe. To the children and descendants of BHLD. Bill Hart. Unfortunately for you, this book was published over 50 years ago, so we are cleared. And I apologize, but that's where we're at. Hopefully, people will buy this book and you'll get some support. It's fantastic. This brief chapter is an attempt to epitomize from the history of war. As soon as you hear this, Dave, you're going to kind of be like, oh, here we go.

This brief chapter is an attempt to epitomize from the history of war. a few truths of experience which seems so universal and so fundamental as to be termed axioms. They are practical guides, not abstract principles. Napoleon realized that only the practical is useful when he gave us his maxims. But the modern tendency, which we cover, I'm not going to ask you, we covered the Napoleon's maxims on this podcast. You can Google it since Echo does not know, nor do I. Check.

The modern tendency has been to search for principles which can be expressed in a single word and then need several thousand words to explain them. Even so, these principles are so abstract that they may mean different things to different men and for any value depend on the individual's own understanding of war. The longer one continues to search for such omnipotent abstractions, the more do they appear a mirage, neither attainable nor useful, except as an intellectual exercise. These principles of war, not merely one principle, can be condensed into a single word, concentration. So he's saying this word, concentration, which we all learned concentration of forces.

He's saying, you could say all these principles and put them in the word concentration. Okay, let's start there. But for the, but for truth, this needs to be amplified as a concentration of strength, against weakness and for any real value it needs to be explained that the concentration of strength against weakness depends on the dispersion of your opponent's strength which in turn is produced by a distribution of your own that gives the appearance and partial effective dispersion your dispersion his dispersion your concentration such as the sequence and equal and each is

a sequel true concentration is a force of calculated dispersion so he's saying even though it's really easy to say concentration it's like oh there's a lot more going on than that. Yeah. Here we have a fundamental principles whose understanding may prevent a fundamental error and the most common that of giving your opponent freedom and time to concentrate to meet your concentration. This is why when you cover and move, you put down covering fire and then the other element moves. Why? It's that covering fire that doesn't allow the enemy to maneuver to meet your concentration. But to state that the principle is not much practical aid for execution.

The above mentioned axioms here expressed as maxims cannot be condensed into a single word, but they can be put into the fewest words necessary to be practical. Eight in all. So far, six are positive. Eight in all so far, it's interesting. He's saying like, hey, this is probably going to change, but this is where we're at. So far, six are positive and two are negative. They apply to tactics as well as strategy unless otherwise indicated.

Number one, and these are the positive ones. Number one, adjust your end to your means. Adjust your end to your means. This is another thing that's, you got to know your objective. You got to stick to your objective. He's actually saying, look, man, you've got to make some adjustments. sense. Your end may change based upon your means. And here's what he says. In determining your object, clear sight and cool calculation should prevail. Wouldn't that be nice? It is folly to, quote,

bite off more than you can chew, end quote. And the beginning of military wisdom is a sense of what is possible. That's the beginning of military wisdom. What's actually possible? And this is where, you can get into some, you know, theoretical ideas about, but if you believe it. It's like, no, and it's actually interesting. I remember the early musters I got asked about this. And I explained belief as seeing an actual pathway to victory. You've got to, belief means you can actually see an actual pathway, a viable pathway to achieve what you're talking about.

because to think, you know what, I want to be an astronaut. Like right now, I'm 49 years old. I guess I could figure out a, no, not really. I probably have a better chance of becoming an astronaut than an NBA player, right?

Same. So is there, okay, same. Thanks for the support, bro. Is there a viable pathway for me to become an NBA player? Not really. Not really. Really. So therefore, I need to adjust the end a little bit. Find something a little more feasible.

He goes on to say, so learn to face facts while still preserving faith. There will be ample need for faith, the faith that can achieve the apparent impossible when action begins. So look, we got to have a positive attitude. Confidence is like the current in a battery. Avoid exhausting it in vain. effort and remember that your own continued confidence will be of no avail if the cells of your battery the men upon whom you depend have been run down so this is a again there's very few people that would think that the military mind should focus on hey I might have to adjust what I'm trying to get to because it seems like the military is you know like we're gonna get this done like no this is the number one the number one axiom he's talking about adjust your end to your means number two keep your object always in mind now this is a dichotomy right keep your your object always in mind while adapting your plan to circumstances realize that there are

more we realize that there are more ways than one of gaining an object an object but take heed that every objective should bear on the object and in considering this just just real quick if you as a leader can understand the fact that there's more ways than one of gaining an object your life just got a thousand times more easy just got a thousand times easier I've seen countless leaders think that they know the way and want to do something a certain way and waste time and effort and resources and most important waste leadership capital to get something done a certain way when my attitude is like I don't care I don't care how you want to get this done I don't care this is what we want to get done how do you want to do it cool sounds good

it's a viable plan it's a minimally viable plan Dave's plan you know what I might do it differently Dave's plan looks like it could work too cool and by the way do we know your plan is going to work perfectly? No, we don't. Do I know my plan is going to work perfectly? No, we don't. So why am I going to invest a bunch of resources and time and effort and arguing in leadership capital trying to convince you to use my plan instead of your plan when they're both a freaking gamble? Don't waste your time. Connecting those two, those two, I guess, axioms together or those those fundamental things from a leadership standpoint of, and we even talked about this, you know, from as a leader showing people a path to the, to the end state that might not happen

today, might not happen tomorrow, but it's possible. If you're going to say, hey, let's bring it in the three of us. We're going to, we're going to be a hundred million dollar company. And I've got no way to show you how that's going to happen other than either just belief or faith or or hope for a miracle. Or, hey, this one product, this is going to be, we're going to have this magical product and this is going to work. And I could also say, hey, listen, our goal, we want to be a $100 million company. But let me tell you what we're going to have to do right now. We're not. But we're going to do this and this. And that's going to allow us to bring in this other group, maybe getting an acquisition here. And you can start to lay out this path of people. And I've seen it in those rooms

where you see the leaders lay out the path to getting there. Not the exact steps we're going to take, but what we, and all of a sudden people go, oh, oh, yeah, we can we can do that. And that's going to lead to this and then we bring in more people and we bring in more resources. We bring in another company that does this. Just laying out the steps so people in their minds understand and I'm just saying this because of the word viable. The value of people saying, oh, that's actually not crazy. What you're saying is not this magic crazy pipe dream. I can actually see how if we do this. And then I, on that second step, as a subordinate leader, understand what you're trying to accomplish. And you're not here saying turn left, turn right here, do this, and not telling

me what to do or how to do it. You're just telling me the end state that we want. Then I actually get to be the one that drives us to that goal. That is actually so much more believable now because it's viable because you lay that out and then let me, let me move towards that objective. Here's a detail that I just picked up on taking what you said when you said, what I said back to me. And I was like, oh, there's an error in what I said. When I say a belief is seeing a path to victory. What it should actually be is seeing paths plural to victory. And the reason I thought of this is because as you're sitting here talking about,

well, if I say, okay, Dave, we're going to make a $100 million company. And you go, oh, that sounds awesome. I'm in. Yeah. But how are we going to do that? And I lay out one single path to get us there. you know, that's cool and everything, but your faith in that is going to go down a little bit. But if I say, hey, listen, here's our five different lines of operations.

And here's what each one of these things are going to produce. And you know what? Chances are, Dave, one or two of these might fail completely. They're good ideas. I like them, but we haven't gone far enough down them to really understand. But we know that of these ideas, we have made some progress in all of them and we see potential. So if two or three of these paths go the way we want them to, we're going to be right where we want to be. We're going to get that $100 million.

So even, you know, going back to the last podcast, having multiple avenues of approach is highly beneficial to your belief system. Being distributed in how you go to an objective. Right. Yeah, right. Having more than one objective, having more than one pathway to that objective. Yeah. And by the way, also saying, look, we might, we might not make this one objective over here, but we're still going to get where we want to be. Same maxim here, continuing on.

And in considering possible objectives, weigh their possibility of attainment with their service to the object if attained, to wander down a side track is bad, but to reach a dead end is worse. So, especially if the dead end is the only pathway that you've got. Yeah. That's why having a couple different pathways is smart. Number three, choose the line or course of least expectation. Try to put yourself in the enemy's shoes and think what course is least probable he will foresee or forestall. Number four, exploit the line of least resistance so long as it can lead you to any objective which would contribute to your underlying object, right? Oh, yeah, it's cool path of least resistance.

but it's got to be going in the right direction. In tactics, this maximum applies to the use of your reserves and in strategy, the exploitation of tactical success. Number five, take a line of operation which offers alternative objectives. Sorry, we went a little ahead on that one. For you will thus put your opponent on the horns of dilemma, which comes from the last podcast, which goes far to assure the chance of gaining one objective at least,

whichever he guards least, and may enable you to gain one after the other. Because once you get one, like we make it in one line of operation and now we made a bunch of money, cool, guess what? We can invest in that other thing that was a little bit harder out of the gate,

but now we have the money to spend on it and we can make it happen. Alternative objectives allow you to keep the opportunity of gaining an objective, whereas a single objective, unless the enemy is helplessly inferior, means the certainty that you will not gain it once the enemy is no longer uncertainness to your aim.

As soon as the enemy knows what you're doing, your chances of success go down dramatically, unless they're helplessly inferior. There is no more common mistake than to confuse a single line of operation, which is usually wise with a single objective, which is usually futile. Number six, and the last of the positive maxims,

ensure that both plans and dispositions are flexible, adaptable to circumstances. and by dispositions, like where you're putting people. Your plan should foresee and provide for a next step in case of success or failure or a partial success, which is the most common case in war. Your dispositions or formation should be such as to allow this exploitation or adaptation in the shortest possible time. You know, people will argue and fight and struggle with trying to figure out how they're

going to task organize a group of people. Like, well, no, actually, Dave, I think this person should report to Dave and this person should report to Laf and this person should report to me. We can argue about that stuff all day long. And by the way, you're pissed. I'm pissed. And guess what? It's our company.

And I go, you know what, Dave? You go ahead. That person can report you. Cool. That sounds good. And you look up at me in two weeks and you're like, hey, this doesn't really make much sense. Okay, cool. They can report.

You know, like, you don't, it's not set in stone. You don't get a tattoo on your forehead of your task organization. And by the way, it doesn't look, quote, look bad to say, Hey, you know what, Fred, you're going to be working for Dave. And then a month later, say, hey, Fred, seems like your expertise is really going to be a little bit more beneficial to Laf and what he's got going on. We're going to shift you over there. Now, do you want to do this every two weeks? No, obviously not.

But to put someone in a position or task organized in a certain way and have it flexible, flexible dispositions, that's exactly what it is, is the smart way to do things. And obviously, it's with a flexible plan as well. The negatives. Do not throw your weight into a stroke whilst your opponent is on guard. Whilst he is well placed to parry or evade it. The experience of history shows that save against a much inferior opponent, no effective stroke is possible until his power of resistance or evasion is paralyzed. Hence, no commander should launch a real attack upon an enemy in position until satisfied that such a paralysis has developed.

It is produced by disorganization and it's more. equivalent demoralization of the enemy so cool set it up set up the move eight and the last one do not renew an attack along the same line or in the same form after it is once failed a mere reinforcement of weight is not a sufficient change for it is probable that the enemy also will have strengthened itself in the interval it is even more probable that is success in repulsing you will have strengthened immorally. It's one of my favorite coaching moves in jujitsu is, you know, do it harder. I was saying that to Kerry the other day.

Like he's like grabbing your wrist. I could grab that thing harder. It hasn't helped him for six minutes grabbing the wrist while he's in your guard. But if he does it harder, you know, that might work. That's what this is. Like it didn't work. It's not going to work. Don't do it harder.

just because you add, hey, you know what, we spend a bunch of money on advertising. We haven't seen any bump in our sales. Spend more. Let's spend more. I guess the only thing that surprised me is from the guy who's in World War I, that that wasn't number one. Yeah. Like the first thing he says is, hey, don't do what we did for three straight years. Yeah.

Maybe that's why it's his last point. Yeah. Like, hey, by the way, you freaking idiots. All this other stuff, cool. Listen, you freaking idiots. If it doesn't work, don't keep doing it. If it didn't work with 10,000 men, it's not going to work with 20,000.

You know, that's crazy. You can see how you get sucked into that, don't you? Yeah, you're like, you know what? The way you get sucked into it is when you commit yourself to the outcome of your plan. This plan is going to achieve this outcome. and if I allocate resource

I work for you hey this is a plan we're going to do I allocate resources and doesn't work well I can either abandon that plan

make me look weak like I all or I can go hey we're going to allocate more resources and more resources and more resources because I'm inflexible

to say well actually maybe I didn't connect my means to the end and I might need to do something different or regroup or reassess or come in from a different direction as opposed to saying, hey, you know what?

Hey, boss, that plan didn't work. Let me take a step back. We need to kind of see what we did here with this marketing scheme. It didn't have the effect that we want. And before we start putting in more resources, let me get a better assessment of what's going on and kind of give that to you. And it may be that we do the same thing, but we're probably going to need to make some changes. Yeah, at least quantify your efforts, right?

It's really disturbing because it really is one of these things where that is so tempting when you get close you feel like the pressure you try an arm lock and you almost got it you try it again it's like the person defended it once the person is going to defend it again

you spend that money in marketing you spend that money and you know you saw a little bit of an uptick but it's not quite what you wanted but still maybe if we just put more money into it and I'm listening to you talk about some of those things And I'm almost trying to think of what is the human nature to do that?

And I think some of it is we kind of glorify this single-minded. Yeah, I think similar things. There's like this glorification of I refuse to give in. I refuse to give up. I refuse to tap. I refuse to accept defeat. And so my answer is going to be is I'm just going to send more. I'm going to send more and more.

And I think the times that that perseverance, pays off. There's some sort of like glorification of that single-mindedness when in in reality, how much weaker does it make us look by being unwilling to say, hang on. I think there's a flaw in my plan here. Let me let me just, I need to take a step back and rethink this. I'm missing something. I'm missing something. And the weakness that that shows, and you were talking about the before is, you know, that makes you look weak when the exact opposite is true. Yeah, well, I have a section in leadership strategy and tactics called When to Quit. But I'm the big Navy SEAL.

Never quit. Actually, totally wrong. Totally wrong. When do you quit? Oh, this plan that we have is not working. We lost a guy, two guys, three guys. This is stupid. Let's go a different direction.

Now, just imagine doing that for battalions and brigades and divisions of soldiers, man. It's freaking crazy. It is crazy. Just give us a little. If we just had, if we just would have had another 10,000 soldiers at that moment, God, it's so tempting. Is it like, do you feel like it's maybe like you say glorify,

you know, never quit? Yeah, that never quit. And then they oversimplify it because you say persistence, right? Persistence always, you know, like that's the way this guy was successful. He was just persistent, you know, fail, fail. And by the way, the dichotomy, right? it's a dichotomy like you can say oh you know what it didn't work the way we wanted to

okay screw it we're gonna go do something else like so there's a dichotomy in this right you know even when I was talking about like you go for the arm lock you don't get it you go for the arm lock you don't get it there's plenty of fights where the person went for the arm lock three four times finally they get it yeah that's what I'm saying where they oversimplify it where they have all these cool sayings like you know if at first you don't succeed you know try again or you know all these things but there's more to it than that some of those yeah some of the Pacific island camp pain. Hey, we should be done with this operation in three days. Cool. 19 days later, we're not even a quarter way of where we're supposed to be.

Like, guess what? We're going to send some more resources there. We're going to get it done. Oh, man. That's why this is, even this is a dichotomy. Totally. Yes, so the persistence and the, you know, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again or whatever, the, it's persistent, not in the same exact methodology. It's like persistence, but you kind of got to make these little changes within that, but you can't really fit that in the little slogan, you know, a lot of the time. I was just going to say, I mean, in very simplistic terms, you know,

I think that's one of the differences between the tactics and the strategy is I will abandon a tactic. I will give up on a tactic very quickly if it's the wrong tactic to get to the, now, giving up on a strategy is a very different thing. But giving up on the tactic or maybe, it's not even the right word, but adjusting my tactics and adjusting the plan and getting feedback from the ones implementing the plan while sticking to the strategy or the long-term objective, again, very simplistically, but the commitment to the tactic when you see people committing to the same thing over and over and over again, as opposed to going, hey, this tactic isn't working,

is there a better way to do this to accomplish that same end goal of what we want to become as a company or as a team? That difference for me is how often we see people unwilling to change their tactic. Yeah. Well, it's so obvious that they need to. And that's the exact, that's exactly in that section in leadership strategy and tactics.

Once I explain like, hey, you need to quit what you're doing that's failing. This doesn't mean you abandon your overall strategy. That's the actual words that I use, like open it up. But that's, because that's,

that's 100% right. Just because I go, oh, you know what, this doesn't seem to be working right. Look, when, when in World War I,

it wasn't, hey, this isn't working. Let's surrender. No, it's, you know what? This isn't working. Let's figure out a different way to do this. Let's figure out a different way to attack.

I think it's also just a freaking sanity check that you need to do. It's one of these things where, look, you beat your, I used to say this on the podcast. My limit for beating my head against the wall is 47 times. Like once I've beat my head against the wall 47 times, like, okay, 44, 45, 46, Okay, 47, this isn't going to work. I got to try something else. Like, you've got to check yourself. What is that number?

How much are you, how much money are you willing to throw into marketing? How many more people are you willing to give to that leader that's failed? How many more projects are you, you know, like there's things where you've got to check yourself. Is it, have you beat your head against the wall 47 times? And if you head have, don't go the 48th time. Time to reevaluate your tactic. Doesn't mean you need to abandon what you. you're trying to do, means you need to freaking check yourself. Back to the book, the essential

truth underlying these maxims is that for success, two major problems must be solved. Dislocation and exploitation. One precedes and one follows the actual blow, which in comparison is a simple act. So it's pretty easy to hit them. But you've got to set up the hit and you've got to exploit the hint once you've done. You cannot hit the enemy with effect until you have first created the opportunity. You cannot make that effect decisive unless you exploit the second opportunity that comes before he can recover. The importance of these two problems has never been adequately recognized, a fact which goes far to explain the common indecisiveness of warfare. So we don't make decisions because we don't understand how important it is that when echoes off balance, I better

freaking attack or before I get him off balance I need to set them up so I can get them off balance The training of armies this is freaking epic the training of armies is primarily devoted to developing efficiency in the detailed execution of the attack The concentration on tactical technique tends to obscure the psychological element It fosters a cult of soundness rather than surprise it bleeds it breeds it breeds command who are so intent not to do anything wrong according to the book that they forget the necessity of making the enemy do something wrong. The result is that their plans have no result for in war. It is by compelling mistakes that the scales are most often turned. Got to make the person make mistakes. Here and there a commander has eschewed the obvious

and is found in the unexpected the key to a decision. Unless fortune has proved foul, for luck can never be divorced from war since it is part of life. Hence, the unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success. That's why we're going to surprise people. Next section. The national object and military aim.

Look, we talk. about alignment a lot and this is where inside of an organization this is this is really talking about alignment and so as you as you hear us discuss this thinking about alignment through your organization this is what we have to be cognizant of as leaders in discussing the subject of the objective in war it is essential to be clear about and keep clear in our minds the distinction between the political and military objective the two are different but not separate for nations that for nations do not wage war for war's sake but in pursuance of policy the

military objective is only the means to a political end hence the military objective should be governed by the political objective subject to the basic condition that policy does not demand what is militarily that is practically impossible so what are we trying to do in our company what are we actually trying to do inside of our company and if we're trying to do something inside of our company does everybody on the team understand what we're trying to do and are there maneuvers out there in support of what it is we're trying to do thus any study of the problem ought to begin and end with a question of policy the term objective although common usage is not really a good one it has a physical and geographical sense and thus tends to

confuse thought it would be better to speak of the object when dealing with the purpose of policy and of the military aim when dealing with the way that forces are directed in the service of policy. So I mentioned on the first podcast, we did that he kind of goes into this objective versus object. And he uses the term object. It's not, it's a little bit of an archaic way of using it. I mean, it's only 19, whatever, 30. But for us, we use objective all the time.

And we definitely use it in a military sense. but to his point, objective, we think of like airfield, right? We think of beachhead. So maybe it's a good idea. We'll go with it. The object in war is a better state of peace, even if only from your own point of view. This is a, you know, I was talking about climbing the ladder of alignment. This is the highest you can get on the ladder of alignment for war.

The reason we're in war is because we want a better peace. That's what we're trying to do. Hence, it is essential to conduct war with constant regard for the peace you desire. This is the long, long, long term thinking. That applies to both to aggressor nations who seek expansion and to peaceful nations who only fight for self-preservation, although their views of what is meant by a better state of peace are very different. History shows that gaining military victory is not in itself equivalent to gaining the object of power. policy. But as most of the thinking about war has been done by men of the military profession, there has been a very natural tendency to lose the sight of basic national object and identify

it with the military aim. So how does this happen inside of a business? We start the business, the people that are out there in the field trying to make things happen, they might lose sight of what it is we're trying to do. In consequence, whenever war is broken out, policy is too often been governed by the military aim, and this has been regarded as an end in itself instead of as a merely a means to an end. Fast forward a little bit for more than a century of the prime canon of military doctrine has been that, has been that, quote, the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield constituted the only true aim in war. That's what war is for. Just destroy the enemy.

Destroy the enemy forces on the battlefield, actually. That was universally accepted, engraved in all military manuals, and taught at all staff colleges. If any statesman ventured to doubt whether it fitted the national object in all circumstances, it was regarded as blasphemy and violating holy writ as can be seen in studying the official records and memoirs of the military heads of the warring nations, particularly in and after World War I. so absolute a rule would have astonished the great commanders and teachers of war theory and ages prior to the 19th century

for they had recognized the practical necessity of wisdom of adapting aims to limitations of strength and policy. Like how long are we going to try and fight this thing before we say you know what? This is freaking not good. We're expending all of our national treasure and we're not getting anywhere. This is a bad call.

And now we're going to start hammering on Klaus Fitz again. Klaus Fitz's influence. The rule acquired its dogmatic rigidity, largely through the posthumous influence of Klauschwitz and his books upon the minds of Prussian soldiers, particularly Mulkke,

and thence more widely through the impact of their victories in 1866 and 1870 made upon the armies of the world, which copied so many features of the Prussian system. Thus, it is a vital importance to examine his theories. As so often happens, Klaus Witsz's disciples carried his teachings to an extreme which their master had not intended. Misinterpretation has been the common fate of most prophets and thinkers in every sphere. Devout but uncompromising, oh, sorry, devout but uncomprehending disciples

have been more damaging to the original conception than even its prejudiced and per blind opponents. So what happens? We get people that take things to the extreme. And they do more damage than the people that are against the idea. It must be admitted, however, that Klaus Witz invited misinterpretation more than most. Sorry, Klaus Witz. A student of Kant at secondhand, he acquired a philosophical mode of expression without developing a truly philosophical mind. Ouch.

Sorry, dude. He's hammering Klauswitz there. Klauswitz has taken heavies. Did you guys talk about Klauswitz in a positive way in policy school? Mostly. I mean, the pull from Klauswitz of the takeaway from that was there were components inside there that the things that he said make sense. And he talks about ends and me, he talks about tactics and strategy, and is really a good tool for people to understand. And the way, the context that we use in is actually, I think.

very important and very similar to what he's saying is that the military, which has this sort of outsized recognition, this outsized status of the, instead of being a tool to accomplish the political means to what the state wants, it's almost a means in and of itself, as if the military exists for the military, as opposed to this is a tool, one of many tools that actually accomplishes the political means, which, and to just kind of bring that back a little bit when he talked about the object being a greater piece or a better piece or whatever the term that you use. And it's funny because I think I've evolved in my thinking, when I hear objective, I don't think bridge anymore. I don't think Airfield anymore. I think goals. I think outcome. So, but I understand his

point. And I certainly remember in the beginning of my military career, what's the objective? Oh, to secure that bridge or to do whatever that particular thing is. If we've got a company and our company's object, our vision, our goal is to be, you know, the premier hardware producer for a product that every company in the world needs for them to be successful. And then I've got a sales team inside there. And nobody's saying, well, sales is like the most important thing we have. We got to sell this thing.

It's the military version for this company. And you're out there running the sales team. And your objective is sell as many of these things as you can because that's obviously how we become the indispensable producer of this product that everybody is going to need and be the most reputable and reliable company in the world. But if you're out there selling this product and it hasn't been made yet because our operations team has stood up, or you're selling this and we don't have the support for the clients that are going to buy it to actually give them the tools they need. Or you're selling this and we don't have the software to update it and back it up,

you can actually accomplish your objective by selling this product that doesn't help us achieve the object. That doesn't actually help us be successful. And I'm not defending Klauswitz, but there is, the military is, somebody's got to, yeah, I don't know, it's all good. The, the military in some ways has become this tool, this means that sort of in and of itself is its own thing. Like the military exists to defeat, you know, to win wars and defeat the enemy and destroy battlefields. Was I see, no, it's one of several different ways. And, When you made that comment about the military's existence, like the ideal thing you would think for the military is I want this military to exist to deter any potential opponent from ever going to war with us in terms of like, what would I want from a military? I don't want, I would love to never set foot on the battlefield.

I'd love to never get now. Whether or not that's realistic, but I would love a military force of people, our opponents look at and go, you know what? I'm good with your plan. I like your plan. I'm here to support that plan. And you want to use our bridges and roads for commerce and maybe occupy some of my towns? Yeah, let's find a compromise to make that work as opposed to, no, this isn't going to happen. And your military shows up to compel me to do it in a way that I don't necessarily want.

But the object-objective thing, and I'm just trying to make the connection to the business world of, if you think you're out there just to do this one thing and it doesn't support the object of the company or the long-term goal, you're actually not successful. You're not winning. I sold the most product. Cool. Can we support it? No. Can we build it?

No. Can we back it up? No. Can the clients get what they want? No. Then we actually aren't successful. What happens to our reputation? What happens to our backlog?

We get crushed. And you're going to see he, he goes relatively hard on Klausowitz. He also explains some of the things that people missed, which he kind of also blames on Klauswitz. But there's a lot of things that Klausowitz says in the, that just aren't as memorable, that aren't as memorable as some of his really

kick-ass statements. And people remember what sounded cool. Yeah. And if I'm not mistaken, like I think, however many chapters are in on war, I think he wrote like the first three by himself and they're really well written and super complete.

And then several chapters were written by his wife after he died and they're like half done and like, and they've been, you know, Hart's probably wrote this in English. And Claus was those. written in some sort of Prussian version that's been translated a thousand times. So again, in his defense, yeah. And when you do that translation, if you kind of think that maybe, you know,

concentration and mass is how to win, you definitely are going to emphasize that. I think this is what he meant. And Newton. Yeah. Back to the book. His theory of war was expounded in a way too abstract and involved for ordinary soldier minds, essentially concrete. He's saying the soldier minds are concrete. To follow the course of his argument, which often turned back from the direction in which it was apparently leading, impressed yet befogged, they grasped at his vivid leading phrases, seeing only their surface meaning and missing the deeper current of his thought. Klauswitz's greatest contribution to the theory of war was in emphasizing the psychological factors, raising his voice against the geometrical school strategy, then fashionable,

he showed that the human spirit was infinitely more important than operational lines and angle. He discussed the effect of danger and fatigue, the value of boldness and determination with deep understanding. It was his errors, however, which had the greatest effect on subsequent course of history. He was too continental in his outlook to understand the meaning of sea power. And his vision was short on the very threshold of the mechanical era. He declared his conviction that superiority in numbers becomes every day more decisive. Yeah. So we kind of was a little bit late.

They didn't even a freaking tank yet. One of the classic discussions was the, what's the word I'm looking for? The relevance of cost was in the 21st century. You know, start talking about, you know, like nuclear power, nuclear weapons, stealth airplanes and things like, hey, do these maxims are these, do they hold up to the scrutiny of the 21st century of warfare or the modern warfare and a bunch of discussions on that? I kind of chuckled at the idea of like, his. disciples, the Klaus Swiss disciples who kind of aren't that smart, but really like what he had to say, you know, that'd be like me reading leadership strategy tactics and there's a chapter that says, don't care.

And me be like, hey, everybody, don't care. But getting that wrong, but the misunderstanding, like, I don't care. As opposed to I don't care how we do it. You want to do it area? I don't care. We'll do it your way, which is a little bit different than don't care. Next thing you know, Dave Burke, Jocko's disciples running around telling all the rest of his people, we don't care.

Yeah. And I don't care. And we're now a bunch of people that don't care. And how easy you could see a disciple who's, and I'll never remember the quote, but the most damage was done by the concrete brain. Well, you said the disciples that, the misunderstanding of his disciples did way more damage than the opponents. Right, right.

Because I'm running around espousing Jocco's, you know, edicts. but actually don't really know what he meant by don't care. And I'm just using that one example of trying to pulling from this book of like a great way of like, I don't care. Like, dude, that is not what he meant. I know that's what it says on paper, but that's not what he was saying. Yeah, or like knowing to quit. Hey, man, you know what? You got to throw in the towel.

Whatever. We quit. We give up. Shut it down. Yeah. So he's talking about how important. Oh, I know what I was going to say. I was taking a note when you were writing.

I only got down the two letters, MA. And then I was looking. And I was like, what hell was I going to write? I was going to write machine gun. Because for me, where the tactics sort of solidified, where you can say, yep, these things hold up, you've got to have the machine gun. That's where we start to get the modern machine gun where we can start to kill a lot of people. And how concentration is like the worst thing.

And covering move becomes totally important. And it's important in all eras, but it really starts to solidify around there. Well, you use the example of like on steroids. of nuclear weapons. You know, we're talking about dispersion, you know, versus concentration with nuclear weapons. I thought of another one, just as I was thinking of it, is hold the line.

Jekko says hold the line. Cool. Got it. We're going to hold the line. And look, what we're talking about is the story behind the book, the dichotomy of leadership. The dichotomy of leadership is chapter 12

in extreme ownership. So cool, we covered it. Why do we have to write a home the book of it? Because people still like extreme ownership. We got to hold the line. It's disciplined. It's like they took everything to the extreme. And that's why the story of the patches at muster is so powerful.

Yeah. Because people are like, oh, this is gonna be awesome. Jaco is going to hammer that platoon and destroy them for violating his direct order to never wear patches that aren't professional. And it's like, not in care. No factor. Yeah. Like wait, what? It says right there hold the line.

Yeah. It's like yeah, but actually living in the extremes isn't actually doesn't work. Yeah. Usually doesn't work. But the title of the book is a dream ownership. Yeah. Well, there you go. There's perfect examples.

That's what happened to Klaus Fitz, and he didn't even get to finish his book. He wrote frigate three chapters. And his old lady finished it up. Oh, man. Such a commandment gave reinforcement to the instinctive conservatism of soldiers in resisting the possibilities of a new form of superiority, which mechanical invention increasingly offered. It also gave powerful impulse to the universal extension

in permanent establishment of the method of conscription as a simple way of providing the greatest possible numbers. So if you want a big army, if I want to be in charge of a bunch of people, you know what I have to say, look, we need more people if we're going to win. Cool. Start drafting people. I want to be in charge of more people. Cool.

Draft more people. This, by its disregard for psychological suitability, meant that armies became much more liable to panic and sudden collapse. The earlier method, however, unsystematic, had at least tended to ensure that the forces were composed of good fighting animals. This is an interesting shot at Klauswitz. Klauswitz contributed no new or strikingly progressive ideas to tactics or strategies.

He was a codifying thinker rather than a creative or dynamic one. He had no such revolutionary effect on warfare as the theory of the divisional system produced in the 18th century or the theory of armored mobility in the 20th, which, by the way, that's what kind of Liddell Hart, like, is about, right? So he said, look, Clausewitz didn't do anything compared to the theory of armored mobility. Whoever came up with that. Yeah.

I feel bad. I actually feel bad talking about these guys, talking smart. Is that weird? I didn't know how much of a, of a hammer he was going to be on Clausus. The cool thing is I'm hearing all this, but, but, I mean, there is a lot of, I understand what he's saying. I mean, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And again, why didn't I, we're 286 episodes deep in this, and I haven't covered one of the most respected and well-known canons of military strategy.

Yeah. Klaus Witts is on war. Why is that? This is kind of why. Yeah. Oh, boy, I'm going to catch some grief for this one. Yeah. I'm going out.

You're getting crazy. Well, what's interesting is that I think if you were kind of just pulse a bunch of, it doesn't have to be historians that are civilians, but. But if you look at what the military and sort of key policymakers study, Klauswitz is higher on that list than Hart. Oh, for sure. For sure. Not even the same ballpark, I think. You may get some heat because if there's someone that's been studied and sort of kind of

lionized, Klauswitz is the guy. You know what I mean? So, yeah, there's some people out there going, hey. Well, you know, I've taken some heat over the years. I had a little guy named Colonel David Ackworth, who was a complete black sheep of the army and hated by the Navy. Totally. And I was in the Navy.

Yeah. Talking about that guy. Back to the book. But in seeking to formulate the experience of the Napoleonic Wars, the emphasis he put on certain retrogate, retrograde features helped to cause what might be termed a revolution in reverse back towards tribal warfare. Klauswitz's theory of the military aim. In defining the military aim, Klauswitz was carried away by his passion for pure logic. quote the and this this makes it really odd this starts to make it really obvious why this stuff doesn't mend with my normal way of thinking quote the aim of all action in war is to disarm the

enemy and we shall now show that this in theory at least is indispensable if our opponent is to be made to comply with our will we must place him in a situation where which is more oppressive to him than the sacrifice we demand but the disadvantage is of this position must naturally not be of a transitory nature, at least in appearance. Otherwise, the enemy instead of yielding, will hold out in the hope of a change for the better. Every change in this position, which is produced by a continuation of war, must therefore be a change for the worse. The worst condition in which a belligerent can be placed is that of being completely

disarmed. If, therefore, the enemy is to be reduced into submission, he must either be positively disarmed or placed in such a position that he is threatened with it. From this follows that the complete disarming or overthrow of the enemy must always be the aim of warfare." End quote. This reminds me of the bath party in Iraq being completely disarmed. How much did that help?

Freaking hurt, right? Maybe some Klaus Wittsy and people were saying, yep, got to disarm. him yeah completely completely good job the influence of of Kant Kant where's where's Daryl Cooper Daryl Cooper is making jokes about like he's just bringing in deep echo and I are looking at him like bro wrong crowd the influence of Kant can be perceived in Klaus Schwitt's dualism of thought he believed in a perfect military world of ideals while recognizing a temporal world in which these could only be imperfectly fulfilled so he's giving credit here's a little credit going back to

to cross words, like, hey, man, he got it, that you got these ideals, but it's the real world and it's not going to quite go that well. For he was capable of distinguishing between what was what was militarily ideal and what he described as a modification in the reality. Thus, he wrote, reasoning in the abstract, the mind cannot stop short of an extreme. But everything takes a different shape when we pass from abstractions to reality. This object of war in the abstract, the disarming of the enemy is rarely attained in practice and is not a condition necessary to peace. So he wasn't even saying what he was saying. He goes back and kind of backs off it a little bit.

Klauswitz's tendency to the extreme is shown again in his discussion of battle as a means to the end of war. He opened with the startling assertion. There is only one single means it is the fight. He justified this by a long argument to show. show that in every form of military activity, quote, the idea of fighting must necessarily be at the foundation end, quote. Having elaborately proved what most people would be ready to accept without argument,

Klaus would said the object of a combat is not always the destruction of enemy forces, its object can often be attained as well without the combat taking place at all. So there you go. He's saying some of the stuff that I do agree with. Moreover, Klausowitz recognized that, quote, the waste of our own military forces must cedaris paribus, which means all things being equal, always be greater the more our aim is directed upon the destruction of the enemy's power. The danger lies in this that the greater efficacy which we seek recoils on ourselves and therefore has worse consequences in case we fail of success. So he's got some he's got some quantifying statements about his about his thoughts and theories Out of his own mouth Klauswitz here gave a prophetic verdict upon the consequences of the of following his own gospel in World War one and two

For it was the ideal and not the practical aspect of his teachings on battle which survived He contributed to this distortion by arguing it was only to avoid the risks of battle that that quote any other means are taken. So it's like we're trying to avoid battle. That's the only reason that we're going to do anything else is because we're trying to avoid battle. And he fixed the distortion in the minds of his pupils by hammering on the abstract ideal.

And this is, here's a, I guess, I guess Liddell Hart's just going to go hot on everybody. He says, not one reader in a hundred was likely to follow the subtlety of his logic or to preserve a true balance amidst such philosophical jugglery. But everyone could catch such ringing phrase. is as and here's where he gets a the branded the the the the Klauswitz branded statements that that are a clickbait here we go and they're freaking good to go

like you hear me like yeah we have only one means in war the battle the bloody solution of the crisis the effort for the destruction of the enemy's forces is the firstborn son of war I mean come on dude if you're in the military you're eating these things up like Like a giant nice cool mulk only great and general battles can produce great results Let us hear not of generals who conquer without bloodshed right? That's a that's a quote from a guy that earlier was saying like hey listen You don't always want to go to war. Yeah, but but who remembers hey sometimes you can use other means to achieve victory? No one wants to hear that they want to hear that they want to hear let us not hear of great young generals who conquer without bloodshed So he branded himself, but man, by the reiteration of such phrases, Klaus Schwitz blurred into the outlines of this philosophy,

already indistinct, and made it into mere marching refrain, which inflamed the blood and intoxicated the mind. In transfusion, it became a doctrine fit to form corporals, not generals. For by making battle appear, quote, the only real warlike activity, and quote, his gospel-deprived strategy of its laurels and reduce the art of war to the mechanics of mass slaughter. Moreover, it incited generals to seek battle

at the first opportunity instead of creating an advantageous opportunity. Calsworths contributed to the subsequent decay of generalship. Oh, man. When in an oft-quoted passage, he wrote, philanthropists may easily imagine that there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming the enemy without great bloodshed and that is the proper tendency of the art of war. That is an error which must be extirpated. So like, hey, this idea of bloodshed, we got to get rid of that idea.

That you can have war without bloodshed. You got to get rid of that idea. It is obvious that when he wrote that, he did not pause to reflect that what he decry had been recorded as the proper aim of generalship by all masters of the art of war including Napoleon himself like everyone Sun Suh, Napoleon, everyone in between like hey man if you can win without fighting that's what we're doing and he's saying the opposite. Klauswitz phrase would hence force be used by countless blunderers to excuse and even justify their futile squandering of life in bullheaded assaults.

The danger was increased because of the way he constantly dwelt on the decisive importance of a numerical superiority. With deeper penetration, he pointed out in one passage that surprise lies, quote, at the foundation of all undertakings, for without it, the preponderance at the decisive point is not properly conceivable. So that's what we're talking about. That's cool. That's maneuver warfare. But his disciples struck by his more frequent emphasis on numbers. came to regard mere mass as the simple recipe for victory. Horrible.

And you know what? What's a similar idea of that is like my rank, right? It's a rank. Hey, I outrank you. That's my superiority and that's what I'm going to use to lead. I mean, that was, that was brutal. Yeah, that was kind of a brutal indictment. There's some little statements that we're like, hey, he also said this.

But it's like when the general reads it, when the soldier reads it, what does he want to read? He wants to read about kicking ass. Yeah. And what does he want his corporals to read? He wants his corporals to read about kicking ass. So what do you start reading about kicking ass?

Yeah. We hear what we want to hear, echo Charles. Yes, sir. We're not done yet with Klauswitz. Klauswitz theory of the object. Even worse was the effective as theoretical exposition and exultation of the idea of absolute warfare in proclaiming that the road to success

was through the unlimited application of force. Thereby a doctrine which began by defining war only as a continuation of state policy by other means led to the contradictory end of making policy the slave of strategy and bad strategy at that. You know, that's, I would say that's one of his most famous quotes, right, is that war is the continuation of state policy by other means. But he ends up taking things to a point where it's like, war is what we're doing. Like you said, what the military existence. for the military.

Everything else exists because of the military. The government is here to provide the military with the resources that we need to go fight battles. The trend was fostered above all by his dictum that, quote, to introduce into philosophy of war a principle of moderation would be an absurdity. War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds. Dude, he's getting some good quotes. They sound kick ass. unless you're a freaking soldier in World War I.

Yeah. The crazy thing is I'm just kind of picturing this. I mean, I'm asking myself now a question that I probably should have asked five years ago, 10 years ago when I was thinking about this on a more academic mind of how did Klauswitz or any of these people that are, I guess, disciples of that kind of pure logic train, how did they perceive the value of their own people? You know, because you could see the train of thought of like, Hey, this is the, the purpose of the military is the utter destruction or what, you know, those, those quotes.

Whereas the, the, you could make a very easy link of like, hey, my soldiers, they're just implements and tools. They're just resources to be expended to achieve that end state. And how quickly you could make the stretch. So like in World War I, you can almost imagine like, yeah, they're not, they're not people that are resources. Hey, just give me 10,000 more resources or more tools to accomplish this thing. Yeah. I mean, you kind of phrased that as a question. I don't think there's much of a question.

For sure. I think it's pretty obvious where these guys were coming from. And it's really scary that you had a culture that supported that. And you had, you know, it's like, it's really strange. You think about like Kipling. And Kipling who wrote these very patriotic poems that fueled this culture inside of England. and his son was killed in World War I and like the last thing they saw of him was he's blinded and he's kind of like stumbling on the battlefield before he's killed in his body I don't think they ever even recovered his body he's just lost in the mud and muck and he's got a really harrowing poem I think I know the phrase of the poem is is is my boy jack or my son Jack it's it's harrowing to read and he's it's it's harrowing to read and he's if you know what the fuck he's talking about,

which is that he, you know, he was this patriotic guy who supported England and was contributing to that propaganda, this Victorian, this, this culture of, look, look, you go over the top, it's time to go, you go. And he lost his son, and you wonder what kind of, you know, that just the impact that that had on him and and it there is an impact when you read his poems and you see before and after you see what happened

You can see that it definitely had an impact But the man man the idea that Tens and thousands and hundreds of thousands of of of people like you said like we're like okay cool That's what we're doing That's what we're doing we're going to go over there and When they say go over the top we're gonna go over the top the Germans the French they're Canadians the Americans the I mean that's what we're doing it's very very hard You know you talk about the value of life and your question around like what do they think of these people

It's like yeah what did they and how did we get to a point where Modern civilization this is a hundred years ago yeah a hundred years ago 100 years ago 100 years ago this was happening it's like it's crazy to think about and and you can kind of see I mean what's there's another good saying it's something along the lines of like old men like to send young men to fight and young men like to go fight like that's kind of a thing right and you can see how those sort of animalistic instincts that we have and tribal instincts that we have are and and the heroic instincts that we have are captured and capitalized on and by like a Klauswitz. Like when you read Klauswitz, you're like, cool, I'm down with heroic efforts.

I'm down with tribal behavior. I'm down with being brave. Like all those things just roll right into this. So if you don't want to be that guy that's sort of like, well, maybe we should think about these soldiers as human beings. Who's doing that? Apparently no one. Apparently no one. So what you have, I guess what I'm saying is you have a human instinct and a human slash animal instinct to be tribal, to be heroic, to be sacrificial, to make sacrifices for the tribe.

I mean, what is a hero? You know, I've talked about this before. A hero is someone that's not doing, not making a sacrifice for himself, right? of the hero is someone that's making a sacrifice for someone else. And that's a common, that's just the definition of a hero in any language. So when you say, hey, we've got kind of a program here that allows us to be heroic on a massive scale. This is what you end up with. And we kind of lean towards and we tend towards.

And you can see how, you can see how the contrary is that you have B.H. Liddell Hart who's saying, hey, Not smart. Yeah. Not smart. It's better to maneuver. It's better to leave. It's better to retreat.

It's better to attack on a different day. And how is he getting branded? He's getting branded. Like, what the hell are you talking about? Were you a coward? Yeah. Is that what's going on? You're a coward?

He's like, hey, bro, I went wounded three times and gassed almost to death, you fucking savages. And you don't know what that was like. You talk about, I don't know how many times this has come up. the capacity for the dehumanization of our enemies and how there's a danger in there. And there's a natural piece of that, but you've got to keep it to a certain place. But I think for me, just to reconcile the dehumanization of your own men, I understand the dehumanization of the enemy. I understand that. And I also understand that there is a limit to that too. And if you go too far,

you can undermine your own objectives. We know that. We know that. We know that. But the ability to do that with your own men, your own people is it's it. I think that's just why World War I just sits in its own category of just so hard to come to grips with with us doing that it does it's in its own category as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, right and I guess that's where we end up with these two kind of of opposing theories of war and who wants to be called the wimp who wants to be called the weak right because that's where you could easily go back to b hl d'all heart and say like he wants to run away yeah he wants to you know attack people from the rear there's a time where attacking someone in the rear shoot him in the back was like a horrible thing right it's a sign of cowardice yeah it's a

sign of cowardice to go around and you know not line up like the other team shoot him in the back yeah You know, I've been the coolest part about being on the podcast in this seat is that this is, I hear this live as you're reading it. I don't get the advanced copy. You don't like say, Dave, we're prepping this. I get to hear this. And I'm thinking and I'm trying to analyzing. I'm making connections and correlations. And I've kind of just been chuckling a little bit of like heart is just hammering Klauswitz.

But he, it's almost like I understand more now of why he's so brutal. on the attack of him when he made that connection of he's the reason why we had generals and he I think he used the word blunders which is about as nice as you can describe what those leaders did in World War I is I actually think I understand why he's so brutal on him is because of what it led to and and I don't and I think he's doing a good job saying I know Clauswood's goal was not to create this circumstance and he's defending components of that but his point was this is the outcome that he created. His words and his philosophy is what facilitated this window of warfare in our time

that allowed us to dehumanize our own men on a scale that's really hard to really comprehend. And I think I'm understanding in real time why he's saying what he's saying about him in such a brutal fashion. And I understand it. Yeah. And I kicked off this whole podcast, the last podcast, by explaining what he'd been through. And I said, this shit left a mark on him. I mean, look, it leaves a mark on you when you lose one guy in combat.

One. One guy in combat is going to leave him. You're never going to forget it. You're never going to live it down. You're never going to go a day without thinking about it. Can you imagine when your battalion gets wiped out? Yeah. Can you imagine when your brigade, when your division, when you take 60,000 casualties in a day?

That's what's going on. And the quote that you're reaching back for was, Klauswitz phrase would hence force be used by countless blunderers to excuse and even justify their feudal squandering of life in bullheaded assaults. Yeah, he's talking about exactly what he lived through. And that shit left a mark on him without question. Yeah. And this is his opportunity.

to tell a generation of leaders contemplating the impact of that guy's words with the reality of, without some logical thinking about what he really is trying to say, this is the path you will go down. And this is his way of saying, you cannot go down that path. Yeah, you want to go and read the rooftops of this guy and turn it into how you're going to fight a war? You're an idiot. You're an idiot. War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds. That's the last quote I give.

He says that declaration has served as a foundation for the extravagant absurdity of modern total warfare. His principle of force without limit and without calculation of costs fits and is fit only for a hate maddened mob. So he's not done yet. It is the negation of statesmanship and intelligent strategy which seeks to serve the ends of policy. If war be a continuation of policy, as Klauswitz had elsewhere declared it, it must necessarily be conducted with a view to post-war benefit. A state which expands its strength to the point of exhaustion bankrupts its own policy. And by the way, that's all players in World War I. Kalswitz himself had qualified the principle of, quote, utmost force by the admission that, quote, the political object as the original motive of war,

should be the standard for determining both the aim of the military force and also the amount of effort to be made. Still more significant was a reflective passage in which he remarked that to pursue the logical extreme entailed that, quote, the means would lose all relation to the end. And in most cases, the aim at an extreme effort would be wrecked by the opposite weight of forces within itself. What's the return on investment you're going to get? His classic work on war was the product of 12 years of intensive thought. If its author had lived to spend a longer time in thinking about war, he might have reached a wiser and clearer conclusion. As his thinking progressed, he was being led toward a different view, penetrating deeper.

Unhappily, the process was cut short by his death from cholera in 1830. It was only after his death that his writings on war were published by his widow. They were found in a number of sealed packets bearing the significant and prophetic note. So he wrote a note on his writings and it said, should the work be interrupted by my death, then what is found can only be called a mass of conceptions, not brought into form open to endless misconceptions. Sorry, Klaus Witz. I mean, he covered it. He did his best to cover it.

Much of the harm might have been avoided, but for that fatal. collar a germ for there are significant indications that in the gradual evolution of his thought he had reached a point where he was about to drop his original concept of absolute war and revise his whole theory on more common sense lines when death intervened. In consequence, the way was left open to endless misconceptions far in excess of his anticipation for the universal adoption of the theory of unlimited war has gone far to wreck civilization. The teaching of Klauswitz, taken without understanding largely influenced both the causation and the character of World War I thereby it led on all too logically to World War II theory influx next section

after World War one the course and effects of the First World War provided ample cause to doubt the validity of Klausowitz theory at least interpreted by his successors on land innumerable battles were fought without ever producing the decisive results expected of them but the responsible leaders were slow to adapt their aim to circumstances or develop new means to make the aim more possible. And maybe that's why, you know, when he was going through the eight items that we were talking about earlier on the earlier podcast, his number one thing, remember you're saying the number one thing was his number eight thing?

His number one thing was adjust your end to your means. And here he's saying the responsible leaders were slow to adapt their aim to the circumstances or develop new means to make the aim more possible. Instead of facing the problem, they pressed theory to a suicidal extreme, draining their own strength beyond the safety limit in pursuit of an ideal of complete victory by battle, which was never fulfilled.

That one side ultimately collapsed. That one side ultimately collapsed, so the Germans ultimately collapsed, do more to emptiness of stomach produced by economic pressure of sea power than the loss of blood, although blood, which was lost in the abortive German offensive in 1918, and the loss of spirit in consequence of their palpable failure to gain the victory, hasten the collapse.

If this provided the opposition, the opposing nations with the semblance of victory, their efforts to win, it cost them such a price in moral and physical exhaustion that they, the seeming victors, were left incapable of consolidating their position. It became evident there was something wrong. with the theory or at least with its application alike on the planes of the tactic strategy and policy the appalling losses suffered in vain pursuit of the ideal objective and the post-war exhaustion of the nominal victors showed that a thorough reexamination of the whole problem of the object and aim was needed

besides these negative factors that were also several positive reasons to prompt a fresh inquiry one was the decisive part that sea power had played without any decisive battle at sea and producing the enemies collapsed by economic pressure. That raised the question whether Britain in particular had not made a basic mistake in departing from her traditional strategy and devoting much of her effort at such terrific cost to herself to the prolonged attempt to win a decisive victory on land. Yeah, England freaking survived forever just by ruling the sea. Bertania rules the waves. That's what we do in England. Now we're over here fighting.

these people on land two other reasons arose from the new factors the development of air forces offered the possibility of striking the enemy's economic and moral centers without having to first achieve the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield air power might attain a direct end by indirect means hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it good deal dave I mean that's always been the goal whether it's Whether it's ever going to prove to be true, you could make a couple arguments, but that's always been the goal. We can do this without actually fighting on the ground.

On the ground. Yeah. At the same time, we have air power. At the same time, the combined development of the petrol motor and the Caterpillar track opened up a prospect of developing mechanized land forces of high mobility. This in turn foreshadowed a newly enlarged possibility of producing the collapse of the enemy's main forces without a serious battle by cutting their supply lines, dislocating their control systems, or producing paralysis by the sheer nerve shock of deep penetration in the air.

So all of a sudden you've got vehicles that can haul ass, not get shot up, and move a bunch of troops in a short amount of time. Mechanized land forces of this new kind might also provide like air power, though in a lesser degree, the possibility of striking direct at the heart and nerve system of the opposing country. While air mobility could achieve such direct strokes by an overhead form of indirect approach, tank mobility might achieve them by indirect approach on the ground, avoiding the obstacle of the opposing army. To illustrate the point by a board game analogy with chess, air mobility introduced the knight's move

and tank mobility, a queen's move into warfare. Analogy does not, of course, express their respective values for an air force combined with the vaulting power of the knight's move with the always flexibility of the queen's move. On the other hand, a mechanized ground force, though it lacked vaulting power, could an occupation of the square it gained a couple other things these these new these new technologies increase the range of military action against military objectives making it easier to overthrow an opposing body such as an army by parolizing some of its vital organs instead of having to destroy it physically as a whole by hard fighting if you could you could

knock out some of the key nodes that's going to be better The sum effect of the advent of this multiplied mobility both on the ground and in the air was to increase the power and importance of strategy relative to tactics. The higher commanders of the future would have the prospect of achieving decisive results much more by movement than by fighting compared with their predecessors. Unfortunately, those skipping ahead a little bit, unfortunately, those who were at the head of the armies after World War I were slow to recognize the need of a fresh definition of, of the military aim in light of changed conditions and war instruments. I mean, you should be absolutely rethinking every. Can you imagine going from not having tanks and aircraft

to having tanks and aircraft? You should be completely changing the entire way you're thinking about warfare. And by the way, this is after World War I. Right. You know, we did a piece, we did a podcast on the Boer War, and they learned all these lessons during the Boer War

and they freaking didn't capitalize on any of them. Like World War I shouldn't happen. Just based on what they learned in World War, in the Boer War, I'm going extreme. I don't want to go to this extreme. There are many lessons that they were learned during the Boer War that they could have taken back and said, we need to do things differently. And they didn't freaking adjust very many of them at all. Well, going back to the last podcast and one of the first comments he made about the natural resistance,

the automatic resistance that will happen. when you propose change. And I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact quote, but the idea that when I suggest a change to the norm, there will be, there will be resistance. You know, and to call me even an amateur is a compliment.

But I even think about, you know, the advent of air power and the resistance, even in the Navy, to the idea that air power would somehow supplant the battleship as the preeminent force and how obvious it seems now, certainly, but at the time we're thinking, hey, do you not, can you not see the, the potential advantage if we could somehow occupy this third dimension of battle exclusively and how much risk it creates and the resistance?

And my guess would be is that for the few folks that had the audacity to vocalize those lessons, oh, run out of the Navy. And by the way, remember the last podcast when I talked about 17 out of 20 advancements in naval warfare. One of them was aircraft carriers and airpower. Totally. That's one of more people here. Are you kidding me?

We have a battleship, bro. Right. Back off. Yeah. It's, it's, this book is getting harder and harder to listen to. Because, because, because I have the, the history, the hindsight of his, of, of, of what he's saying in the context of that, which he, he didn't have the future context that we all have now, but it's making it just so much more damning.

You know, what he's saying? Fast forward a little bit. Practice in World War II. When the next war came, the handful of new land forces of mechanized kind that had been created, amply fulfilled the claims that had been made for them and for their decisive effect if employed for long-range strokes at strategic objectives. Unfortunately, it's the Nazis that are just going to say. Yeah.

A mere six divisions of this kind were largely instrumental in, producing the collapse of Poland in a few weeks. A mere ten such divisions virtually decided the so-called Battle of France before the infantry mass of the German army had even come in action and made the collapse of all Western countries an almost inevitable sequel. This conquest of the West was completed in barely a month's campaign with amazingly small cost to the victor. Indeed, the bloodshed all around was very slight

And in a decisive phase trifling by a Klaus Witsian standard. I mean, can you imagine you fight those freaking three bloody satanic battles? I mean, campaigns in World War I. Just incomprehensible. And then fast forward, how many years, 20 years, 20 years, 20 years, 22 years, whatever. And it's over in less than a month. Like that's what we're talking about. And there's almost no blood check because it's just half.

happened so fast because we have maneuver on our side. Yeah, and even in between those two examples, not to marginalize, you know, what the Germans did to Poland, but it's what happened to the French that seems to me more remarkable because of what they had just been through. And then to see, I mean, the image of Hitler at the Eiffel Tower. I mean, like, that's a,

That's a, it's hard to put into words what that means for him to be standing there with, with basically no real cost of doing it. Relative. Crazy. Crazy. While this sweeping victory was attained by action against objectives of military nature, it was mainly through action of maneuver, strategic, more than tactical. So it's a different, he's playing a different game.

Yeah. Playing a different game. Similar reflections apply to the even swift or, conquest of the Balkans in April of 1941, which once again demonstrated the paralyzing effect of the new instruments of strategic application. Battle was insignificant in comparison and destruction palpably an appropriate term for the way that the decision was achieved. When it came to the invasion of Russia, a somewhat different method was tried.

Many of the German generals, particularly Haldor, the chief of the general staff, complain of Hitler's tendency to aim at the economic rather than military objectives. but analysis of the operational orders and of their own evidence does not bear out the charge. While Hitler was inclined to think that the economic aim would be more effective, it is clear that in the crucial period of 1941 campaign, he conformed to the general staff's preference for fighting battles. Thankfully, thank God, yeah. The pursuit of this aim did not prove decisive,

although it produced several great victories in which immense forces of the enemy were destroyed. Okay, went and killed a bunch of Russians. Whether concentration on economic objectives would have been more decisive remains an open question, but the reflection that some of the ablest of the German generals consider that the best chance of defeating Soviet Russia was lost by aiming to win battles in the classical way, instead of driving through as fast as possible to the moral come economic objectives offered by Moscow and Leningrad. The leading exponent, the Gordian, the leading exponent of the New School of Mechanical Mobile Warfare wished to do on this key question. Hitler had sided with the Orthodox school. Like we said, thank God.

In the series of swift German conquest, the Air Force combined with the mechanized elements of land forces in producing the paralysis and moral disintegration of the opposing forces and of nations behind. Its effect was terrific and must be reckoned fully as important as that of the Panzer Forces. The two are inseparable in any valuation of the elements that created the new style of lightning warfare,

the Blitzkrieg. So I'm going to fast forward a little bit. There's a section in here about strategic bombing and what he calls grand strategic bombing or industrial bombing. And he kind of goes into how effective it actually was. He says the actual effect, which this kind of bombing achieved in contribution to victory is very difficult to assess despite much detailed investigation. The estimation of the data is confused by partisan. assessments both by those who favored industrial bombing and those who opposed it on various grounds. Apart from the fog thus created, a correct assessment is handicapped and made almost

impossible by the amount of imponderbelia in the data even more than the evidenced about any other type of military action. Imponderabilia, meaning things that can't be determined. So he's basically saying that some of the industrial bombing may have not have been effective as we thought it was. Fast forward a little bit. Still clear is the extremely detrimental effect of industrial bombing on the post-war situation. Again, we're going to think grand strategy. We've got to think about what's happening afterwards.

Beyond the immense scale of devastation, hard to repair are the less obvious, but probably more lasting social and moral effects. This kind of action inevitably produces. a deepening danger to the relative shallow foundations of civilized life. Think about what you're doing to this civilian populace and how is that going to affect the future. That common danger is now immensely increased by the advent of the atomic bomb. Here we are brought to the fundamental difference between strategy and grand strategy.

Whereas strategy is only concerned with the problem of winning military victory, grand strategy must take the longer view, for its problem is the winning of the peace. Such an order of thought is not a matter of putting the cart before the horse, but of being clear where the horse and cart are going. And I'll tell you what, with that, we're approaching two hours right now. We're probably really close, if not at two hours. and we have a lot more to cover. So,

Echo, is it cool? We wrap this one up for now? Sure. All right. So we'll come back to you. One more podcast about this book. And, well, I've got about these books.

Until then. Until then. And look, we're going deep right now. We're drinking some drinks. We're getting after it. How do we get these? drinks we're drinking what are we doing you just cracked another one open sure what we got actually real quick I had I thought the so Klaus wits and Liddell Hart they're

kind of like you ever watch Karate Kid yes the OG original karate kid John Kreese mr. Mayagi okay yep so Klaus Wits Klaus Wits or Klaus Wits depends on what kind of an accent I'm kind of like attempting but gotcha so he's John crease strike first strike No mercy like kind of that philosophy. Wait, that's Mr. Miyagi? No, that's John Crease. Oh, okay, okay, okay.

You know, kind of the bad guy, but he'll get you fired up. He'll get you fired up. He'll get you fired up to fight and destroy. Let's face it, we all want to say no mercy in this dojo. Yes. We kind of like that. Fear does not exist in this dojo.

Check, right? All this stuff. So it gets you fired up, you know, but Mr. Miyagi, 442, by the way. Oh, really? He was in 440. No. Oh, okay.

In the story. Yeah, got it, got it. I got it. I got it. book about the 442nd, I gotta get a better one. I got one of it as a history book and it was cool. And somebody sent it to me and I was kind of stoked like, yeah, but it was a history book.

Wasn't a lot of first person. I was like, cool, we can do a history book as long as a bunch of first person counts. It really wasn't that many in there. I got to get on the 442nd. I dig it. On the last, Mr. Miyagi, his whole thing was balance, right? Takes Daniel's son out on the river or in the lake and he has them on the boat, right? Balance first before.

He's like, when do I learn out of fight all this stuff? What else did he say? Why learn karate? And he was like So you don't have to fight whatever you see what you're saying the balance man It's what it seemed like to me I don't know There you go provided some more understanding here I am reading these books and you're just getting it from a karate kid You could have figured it all out a kid yeah that's true Nonetheless you are right we are here drinking discipline go Sometimes you got to drink discipline go yeah it's good unless last time I was saying how now the path is a little bit easier

thing is I don't know if the path is actually easier because easy easy is not the right word maybe it's comfortable okay that doesn't sound like the right word either because like comfort you want to be capable or you want to be comfortable nonetheless it's more pleasurable how about that we're drinking discipline go it tastes good it's good for you it's a win win strategically and tactically okay I think all this stuff is bringing it all along those lines all right same thing with milk. You can have some of that tastes really, really good plus provides protein, plus it's healthy. Boom. This is all the Jocko Fuel stuff. So also we got your joint stuff, your immunity stuff, joint wirefers, super cruel oil, vitamin D3 and Cold War. It's true. Get these things at

joccofuel.com. Get the Displingo energy drinks. I'm just going to call them energy drinks just for, because that's what we're doing. Drinking the energy drinks. Get those at Wawa and vitamin shop. Actually, you can get everything from vitamin shop. Also, yes, or at joccofuel.com. Get the subscription. If you don't want to get, if you don't want to forget about, you know, restocking. Check it out.

If you subscribe to whatever you want from Joggle Fuel, shipping's free. And shipping can be expensive. Let's face it. And we want to not expend resources that we don't have to. That's true. A little indirect attack. Get subscription. All of a sudden, shipping's free.

It's true. Your resources are spared and can be utilized for other offensive operations. Yep. That's kind of like a kind of badass way of saying that, right? Yeah, kind of. I agree. I agree. Yeah, yeah, fully.

Also, speaking of operations, origin, USA, American made stuff, durable goods, clothing. What that means is you want to get some American made jeans, made out of American made denim, made out of American made cotton. Origin USA, that's where you can get this stuff. Also has athletic wear some jiu-jitsu stuff, geese, rash guards, belts, wallets, boots. I still have your boots, by the way. Oh, I think I'm going to need those soon. Yeah, don't worry, they're downstairs in the car.

So you're all good. Nonetheless, origin USA, that's where you can get this stuff. Real good stuff. It's a big deal, too, made in America, the way it is made in America from the beginning all the way up into the final product. Yeah, we have a factory full of it. of awesome American people up there creating this stuff, sewing it, printing it. I mean, just every aspect cutting it, sewing it,

it's just legit. And if you follow that, if you pull the thread on a pair of jeans, you're going to end up in a cotton field in Texas. Mm-hmm. Or in Georgia. Like, that's where it's coming from. So know your roots.

No, your roots. It's true. Speaking of roots, also, Jocco has a store. That's his. roots. It's called Jocco store. That's where you can get the discipline equals freedom or good or get after it all you can get the shirts the hats, hoodies, some rash guards on there. Stuff. A bunch of stuff anyway. Yeah, check that one out. It's at jocco store.com and yeah, if you like something, get something. We also have a subscription situation there called the shirt locker.

you want a cool kind of off shoot conceptual designs. I don't think you've really figured out how to describe your designs yet. No, it's a work in progress. You see what I'm saying? I see, but each time you've got to progress. You haven't progressed your description. Yeah, but just like, what do you call, warfare? Yeah.

You know, you're not always progressing. You see what I'm saying? But you want to be. Sometimes you go forward, sometimes you go backwards. You know, hopefully the whole grand, what do you call, freaking grand strategy yeah long run hopefully I end up forward hopefully I end up achieving

the goal of explaining how cool the shirt locker is you already did a better job right there you just needed a little help a little help okay good I needed some some criticism some direct feedback about your weak ass repetition I'm over here trying and you know and I think the people are responding

you know people seem to like it I got to admit when I was at the muster and I saw some people that had, you know, Sherlocker shirts on. Totally representing. There's an extra level of connection. Yep. I agree.

I felt the exact same thing. Anyway, yeah, shirtlock. That's at jocco store.com. So yes, sign up for that. If you're down, you like it. And you can subscribe to this podcast too. We also have Jockle unraveling podcast that I'm doing with Daryl Cooper. Who knows what's going to happen.

We're getting crazy on that thing. We've got all kinds of topics we're digging into. We don't always agree on stuff. It's come to find out. in D.C. Sometimes it gets a little hectic in the podcast room. Check out that, the Jocko Unravelling Podcast. Check out the Grounded Podcast.

Check out the Warrior Kid Podcast. You can also check out. We have another alternative podcast called Jock Underground. You can go to jaco underground. If you want to hear some amplifying information, if you want to hear some other topics that are adjacent to, yet not fully embedded with Jocko podcast topic, But look, even though I think about leadership 20 hours a day, there's other things I think about

like psychology, like sociology, like questions, answering questions from people. So there's a lot of stuff going on to that. Also it gives us the opportunity to have an alternative platform besides the mainstream platforms, which we do not control. We don't mind, you know, being on those platforms. But they could make moves that. would we would mind that we would not appreciate and we know you wouldn't appreciate so in order to prevent us from being in a situation that we have lost

total control we have some contingency plans it's called jocco underground jocco underground dot com you can join we'll get you this little extra podcast cost eight dollars and eighteen cents a month that way we have it if we need it and if you can't afford it it's cool we still got your back you know email assistance at jocca Underground.com. We've got a YouTube channel where I am the assistant director from many of the videos and hence some of the videos have very high quality. Some of them that I don't work on, a little bit subpar, but cool. Echo's working on it. He's working on improving. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So there you go. Psychological warfare. It's an album, Jocko album with Jocko tracks where, you know, if you want to

skip the workout, you want to cheat on the diet, when you have those feelings, you need some help. Boom, Jocco's there to help. Get you through those moments. the weakness sort of play the tracks boom and around we go you can get those anywhere you get mp3s that's where you can get them amazon google play all those places don't forget about flipside canvass dot com if you want to hang some cool stuff on your wall which you probably do things that remind you of the path sure go to flipside camus dot com Dakota mire imagine having something from Dakota mire's hanging in your house it's freaking just legit yeah true if you think about Dakota Meyer, you'd just be like, cool, I'm going to get after it.

That's true. Right? That's what I think. Yeah, fully. You know what's funny? Dakota, Dakota and I, when we talk, we will have conversations and that we will be laughing hysterically about stuff. That is not surprising.

He actually makes me laugh harder than anyone currently in my regime of contacts. Interesting. Yeah. Theo Vaughn, huh? Theo can crack me up too. That's true. Yeah. That's a good point.

But it's a different kind. Yeah. Yeah. It's different. Yeah. It's true. You know what? Theo will get me laugh, get me laughing on a tactical level.

Sure. With, with Dakota, man, sometimes we're laughing at a strategic deep level. Yeah. So we got that. Flipside canvas.com. Dakota Meyer.

We also got a bunch of books. Final spin. It's a book, poem, manuscript, transcript, new format of literature. Sure. Notice how I said that? Sure, I did. New format of literature. My wife says literature because she's British.

Literature. So a new form of literature, which I invented. The text. Text. Oh, yeah. If you want to observe the text. That's the high brow. Yeah.

Did I teach you that? No, no, you don't know about that. Yeah, you told me that. Did I teach you that? That's what they say. Did they say that in, uh, when you went to get your masters, and they say, if you, if you, if you reference the text in this situation, like they don't call it a book because you're just like a loser if you just have a book.

You have to refer to the text. Yeah. The text. Yeah. We don't like that. Anyways, if you want to check out the text, you can check out final spin. You can pre-order it right now. Also, leadership strategy and tactics field manual, the code, the evaluation, the protocols.

Discipline equals freedom field manual. way the warrior kid one, two, and three, Miking the Dragons about faced by Hackworth, extreme ownership in the dichotomy of leadership. Just all the things that we're talking about when it comes to leadership in all these different books. Also speaking of leadership, we have a leadership consultancy.

What do we do, Dave? We solve problems through leadership. But what about problems that aren't really leadership related? All your problems are leadership problems. Isn't that crazy? It's true. If you want us to come and help you inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. We also have an online training program, eFonline.com.

It's Extreme Ownership Academy. We have courses on every chapter. We have live Q&As that we do. We have leadership primers. We have questions today. We got all kinds of forum on there. We got all kinds of stuff on there. To help you with the most important skill that a human being can have, which is leadership.

Leadership can prevent things like freaking the Battle of the Sol. Check. Muster, 2021. Orlando, done. Next up, Phoenix, August 17th and 18th. Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. These are our leadership conferences. Come and get it.

We also have the FTX where you get your gear on, get set up, with a high speed laser tag gun, get taught some of the basic tactics, military tactics, and then you go with your team and you conduct operations. You put these strategies and tactics and principles that we talk about all the time. You put them to use and you see how they work out

and you learn and you get debriefed. So if you wanna do that, check out the FTX, San Diego, July 12th and 13th, go to Ashlamfront.com. If you wanna help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, you can check out Mark Lee's mom-a-lee, she's got a charity organization.

And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want more of my exhaustive explanations or you need more of Echo's disjointed delirium, perhaps you need more of Dave's exhilarated expositions. You can find us on the interwebs on Twitter. On the gram and on Facebook, Echo is at Echo Charles. Dave is at David R. Burke, and I am at Jocko Willink.

And to all the military personnel out there, thank you for taking these tactics that we are talking about and putting them to work around the world to keep us free. And the same to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrols, border patrols, Secret Service and all first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe here at home. And to everyone else out there. Well, if you know the way broadly, you see it in all things. So I've got an idea. Try your best to open up your eyes.

Look around and see the way in everything that you do. Until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jocko. Out.