Lex Fridman Podcast - #197 – Jocko Willink: War, Leadership, and Discipline

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Jocko Willink is a retired Navy SEAL, co-author of Extreme Ownership, and host of Jocko Podcast. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Linode: https://linode.com/lex to get $100 free credit - Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit - SimpliSafe: https://simplisafe.com/lex and use code LEX to get a free security camera - Ground News: https://ground.news/lex EPISODE LINKS: Jocko's Twitter: https://twitter.com/jockowillink Jocko's Website: https://jocko.com/ Jocko's Podcast: https://jockopodcast.com/ Extreme Ownership (book): https://amzn.to/3qYmcgh Discipline Equals Freedom (book): https://amzn.to/3hFXOMa The Dichotomy of Leadership (book): https://amzn.to/36ehH7C PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (09:01) - The beauty and tragedy of war (14:35) - Soviet Union in World War II (20:54) - What makes a just war? (34:30) - Jordan Peterson (37:42) - Fear of death (41:53) - Autonomous weapons systems (53:28) - What makes a great leader? (56:15) - Elon Musk - a leadership case study (1:10:03) - Steve Jobs - a leadership case study (1:20:16) - Sundar Pichai - a leadership case study (1:27:15) - Young Jamie (1:31:23) - Discipline (1:34:15) - A day in the life of Jocko (1:40:30) - Jiu Jitsu (1:56:18) - Books

The following is a conversation with Jocco Willink, a retired US Navy SEAL co-author of Extreme Ownership, Dacotomy of Leadership, Discipline Equals Freedom, and many other excellent books. And he's the host of Jocco Podcast. Jocco spent 20 years in the SEAL teams. He was the commander of SEAL team 3's Task Unit Bruser that became the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq war. This conversation was intense and to the point. We agreed to talk again probably many times, and what I find very interesting aside from the talk of leadership is the conversation about military tactics of specific battles in history. Quick mention of our sponsors, Linnode, Indeed, Simple Safe, and Ground News. Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

Since it's the 4th of July, a holiday in the United States, let me say a few words about what this country, my country, the United States of America means to me. First, by way of background, I was born and raised in the Soviet Union just long enough to get a bit of the Russian soul, an appreciation of Soviet history, music, culture, of resting in mathematics, of engineering and philosophy, stoicism and humor, tragedies, and triumphs of war and revolutions, all in ways that are uniquely Russian. I do happen to at times mention that I'm Russian. This is what I mean, that I got a bit of that Russian soul.

But of course who I really am is an American. This country gave me the opportunity, the freedom to become and to be who I am, to stand as an individual. This seemingly simple freedom to be a sovereign human being in the face of all the beauty and cruelty of life is why I love this country. Much of life can be unfair, unjust, even tragic. But this is the country where if I'm clever enough, or hard enough, just get lucky enough, have a chance to dream big and make my dream a reality. The United States welcomed me, my family, and millions of immigrants throughout its history

so that we can make something meaningful of ourselves, to love, to dream, to create, to find joy and meaning. It lets me be the weird kid I am. Who wears a suit, talks about love, and has a fascination with robots. I know some people these days have an aversion to pride and love for their country. I don't. I love America. I also love humanity.

I believe these two, patriotism and humanism are not in conflict, much like loving your family and loving your country and not in conflict. There are all manifestations of the human spirit, longing to strive for a better world. I was born in Russia, but I believe I'll die in America. I'm proud of American. Hopefully not too soon, but life is short, I already had one hell of fun journey, so I'm ready to go when it's time. As usual, I do a few minutes of ads now, no ads in the middle, I find those to be

annoying as a listener, I think they get in the way of the conversation. I also do give you time stamps, I hope you don't skip because I try to make these interesting, but if you do skip, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It is the best way to support this podcast. This episode is sponsored by Linode, Linux Virtual Machines. Any time I mention Linux anywhere, brings joy to my heart. Linode is an awesome computer infrastructure that lets you develop, deploy and scale what

applications you build faster and easier. This is both for small personal projects and huge systems. Both things I hope to be involved with in the future. It's lower cost than AWS, but more important to me is the simplicity quality of the customer service with real humans 24, 7, 365 that's supposed to all the fake humans trying to pass the touring test on Twitter. I honestly think computer infrastructure done well both customer service ease of use the bugging maintenance Understanding the pricing structure all those things. That's essential. I really like what Leno does doing Also, it's competition for AWS. It's very good competitions always good

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This show is also sponsored by SimplySafe, a home security company. It was designed by Chad and Eleanor Lawrence to be simple and effective. I don't know why they ask me to mention the names of the creators, but I think the point is that there's real human beings that really care behind this company. And that actually when it comes to security systems is very important. It is indeed simple, takes 30 minutes to set up. You can customize the system for your needs on simplysafe.com slash lux. I have it set up in my place and I love it.

I do try to live life, not paranoid, because I think minimization of stress versus maximization of safety is the more effective way to live life for me. But I do make sure I make intelligent decisions of how to protect myself, how to protect my data, how to protect my physical safety, especially as my platform grows and gets trickier and trickier. Because I do want to keep myself open and fragile, all the people I meet on the street that recognize me from the podcast are just incredible people. I really enjoy those conversations.

So I never want to close myself off from that. Anyway, go to simplysafe.com slashlex to customize your system and get a free security camera plus a 60 day risk free trial. Again, that's simply safe.com slash Lex. This shows also sponsored by Ground News, an eight political news website that helps me get all perspectives on a story and analyze my blind spots politically. They draw from 50,000 outlets across the world and across the political spectrum.

The point is to see every side and come to your own conclusions. I think this approach is the future of news. That's why I'm a big supporter of ground news. That's why I took them on as a sponsor. I see my membership there as support for the ideal of what they stand for, not just this particular company. Hopefully you can see it the same way. It's been said before, but probably can't be said enough is that clickbait journalism is truly damaging our ability as a society to have difficult long form conversations as we strive towards the truth. Truth is not an easy thing to arrive at. It requires understanding context. It requires understanding history. It requires understanding lived experiences of different people to be empathetic to be data-driven to be rigorous with your analysis all

of those things and clickbait journalism is completely empathetic to that. So that's why I think you should support ground news and other companies of that kind. Anyway, try them out by signing up at ground.news slash lex. It's inexpensive, so it's definitely worth it but like I said it's also a good way to support all the different efforts that try to fix our current state of journalism in the media. Go to ground.news slash lex to sign up and show you support. This is the conversation with Jocco Willink. Music Is it tragic or beautiful to you that some of the closest bonds that have formed between people are through war often?

I think it's both tragic and beautiful and for the obvious reasons. What are the obvious reasons? Why is it so obvious? Well, it's tragic because a lot of people die and it's beautiful because you form bonds with people that are very difficult to break once you've been through them. What is it about the trauma of war Is it about the trauma of war that makes bonds difficult to break? Because what you realize when you're in war is that the people that are next to you, you rely on them and they're relying on you to survive. And without them, you will not survive. And when you realize that you need to work together as a team to to live, that forms a very strong bond. And there's nothing like that team outside of the

realm of war. I don't know because I've there's a lot of things that I haven't experienced in my life, but I think the pressure and the consequences of war, there could be similar situations in survival scenarios, in various atrocities where people need to work together in order to survive. And I think you could probably get something that was similar. There's a very particular nature to the kind of war that World War II was, especially for the Soviet Union, where it didn't just influence the lives of people who created culture, the music, the poetry, the literature.

It's in the way people think. It's in the way people see the world. It's in the way they talk, even still to this day. And of course, I was talking about the directly relationship between two soldiers, but there's something about the depth of human connection that results from the almost like reverberations of war. Like generations later, you're still close to other humans. You're, there's a coldness towards other humans in Russia,

but once you open up, it's depth. You seek depth of connection versus like breadth of career, kind of thinking, how can I make friends with this? I can move into this direction. What can this person benefit me? Instead, you seek adapt to human connection and appreciation that brings a lot. And maybe I'm romanticizing war here, but it feels like that's inextricably connected

to World War II for Russians. Is there, doesara's needed all? So if you look at military training, what they do is they take people in the military from the civilian world, they bring them into the military and they put them through boot camp, which is the stereotypical thing that you see on TV. You're going to get yelled at. You're going to get screamed at. You're going to get you're going to get put in the mud and you're going to

be made to do hard things together. And what does that do with those civilians? Well, it gives them a common background. It gives them a common suffering that they've been through together. And they form some sort of connection, some sort of bond. Now, to make that bond a little bit stronger, after you get done with boot camp, they send you to advanced infantry school.

And you suffer some more together. And when you suffer more together, now you're in a smaller group too, because now it's infantry, it's not supply people anymore or low justitions. It's strictly people that are going to fight their infantrymen. So they go through a school together and now they get a

little bit tighter. Get done with that and maybe you go to an airborne division. So you go to airborne school and now you all overcome this fear of jumping out of an airplane together and you celebrate surviving that. Then maybe you get done with that and now you go at an airborne division, now you're an even tighter group because you've suffered together. What comes next is special forces training or range of training and what they do is they

put you in these situations where you're going to suffer together and you're going to build these bonds because as I said earlier, you have to rely on each other to survive. And by the way, not everyone does. Not everyone makes it through this training. So you sort of have these memories of people that didn't make it. You share that connection as well. And you can keep going down this road until you go into combat with a military unit and military units that go through combat haven't even tighter bond. And the harder the combat that they go through, the tighter the bond is going to be. So I think when you talk about what the Soviet Union went through in World War II, there was a shared suffering to survive. And so the entire nation has that common thread. and that's probably the thing that you sense

or feel when you refer back to the bond that resonates all the way back to World War II. So in your podcast and your writing, you talk about some of the most fascinating things I listened to you talk about in terms of military conflict is tactics and sort of the most fascinating things I listen to talk about in terms of military conflict is Tactics and sort of the details of combat But allow me to stick on World War II for a second There's a particular aspect to that war. I don't know if you could speak to it where Twice the number of civilians died in the military personnel

So the Soviet Union especially You know my my grandfather was a machine gunner on the in Ukraine as the Germans were marching towards Moscow. There's this main, there's this important push in 1941 where they were trying to get before the winter to Moscow. And what Stalin was doing is he was basically throwing bodies at, at, to slow the attack. And what that meant is everybody understood that you that your job was, you have this heavy machine guns. It's very, it's almost unreasonable to be able to be mobile and you kind of weigh

with them. So you're throwing at the front and you just non-stop shooting and, you know, 95 plus percent of people are just dead. All the soldiers are just dead. And then you just go back and back. And you're trying to protect as many civilians as you can throughout this whole process, but you don't. And so you have millions of civilians that die along the way into this march. Is there something you can say about this complete, perhaps it's naive of me to say, but to say, but a war that lacks tactics, that lacks strategy and is purely about just no consideration of human life and just throwing bodies and bullets into a mix together where millions die. And that in particular felt much less like conflict and much more like torture or suffering.

It didn't come off as torture only that interestingly enough as you probably know. My grandfather, including everybody else, volunteered. They were proud to do this. They were proud to march to their death for country, for love of country. But the question on the civilian side, when more civilians die of the military personnel, what do you make of that? It's awful. It's awful when a soldier dies.

It's awful when a civilian dies. It's awful when 10 civilians or 10 soldiers and it's even more awful when millions and millions of soldiers and civilians die. I think it's safe to say that the Soviet Union was facing an existential threat to their existence against the Nazis. So to not fight would be to die as well, maybe die a death a few years later, maybe die a different way, but the choice was die now, trying or die later on your knees. And I think the choice was pretty clear as far as the tactics go. I mean, there is, this is a traditional warfare. That's what that is. We are going to keep, you know, you said throwing bodies at the problem.

That's a Trish and Warfare. And the Soviet Union had a lot of bodies more than the Germans. And when you fight with a Trish and Warfare, whoever has more men in material will eventually win. It's an awful, it's an awful way. But that's the, that's, that's what the strategy was. You often talk about leadership. Let's put the evils of Hitler aside.

The boldness of Hitler in making some of the strategic decisions he did was considered by many military historians quite brilliant early in the war or insane and brilliant. Stalin, on the other hand, I think, University has seen as somebody who is terrible military strategist, especially early in the war. He did not see all the possible trajectories that the work could take. Is there something you could say about failure of leadership, Stalin, also the United Kingdom before Churchill, and also FDR in the United States side who basically was trying to turn a blind eye to everything that was happening over there

with a perspective of we just want to make, we wanted to keep America's interest as the primary interest and everything else to let other countries work out their problems. You know, I think one of the things where Hitler was in the beginning of the war, he listened to his advisors, he listened to his generals, and therefore they did pretty well with that. I think as the war went on, he believed that he was smarter than he was and made decisions that were bad that cost him dearly. You know, I mean, case in point, as everyone knows, going and attacking the Soviet Union, while you're still fighting a war on the other front is not not a good move. There's an example

of, yeah, bad leadership, letting your ego get in the way, believing that you can do things that are beyond your capabilities. But, you know, as you mentioned in the beginning with Blitzkrieg, those were really dynamic and bold moves, and they worked. And what does that do? That fuels your ego and makes you think that you can win. Many people consider that war a just war. What do you think makes a just war?

I think you have the Nazis and the imperial Japanese trying to impose their will on other nations and other peoples. And when that happens, I think on a grand scale, people look at that and believe it's just to step in and do something about it. Is there some gray area here? There's nothing but gray area. The United States has been involved in a lot of military conflicts since then. How do you draw the line through the gray area? What war should we engage in and not?

I know you don't get into politics much, but what the decision to go to war? You have to look at the situation that you're going into and you have to make sure that you have the will to go to war and the will to go to war means that you are willing to kill people and When I say people I don't just mean enemy because in war civilians are going to die women and children are going to die Every a lot of people are going to die and so you and you are going to kill them Doesn't matter what kind of smart munitions you have doesn't matter how disciplined your soldiers are when you go into a war civilians are going to die and you have to understand that and the other thing that you have to understand is that

going to die and you have to understand that. And the other thing that you have to understand is that your troops are also going to die. And it seems like sometimes we're a little bit naive about the calculation of what that's going to look like. And maybe we think, well, not that many civilians and maybe not that many of our personnel are going to die. And that's where you get into sticky situations. And you know, another thing when you were talking about the Soviet Union versus the Nazis, that's total war. That's what that is. And we don't engage in that very often. It's total war.

It's we will do absolutely anything to win. And America doesn't fight like that very often. In fact, the last time we fought like that was World War II. It was total war. We will do whatever it takes to up to and including the atomic bomb to destroy the enemy. So those are the kind of things you need to think about before you go to war. And I don't think we think about that very often. You know, even the United States, the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons is an interesting one

because there's a lot of, there's a lot of hesitation on that. There's a lot of critics of that decision as it was happening. So even America, you can imagine other countries like Germany would not be so hesitant to use nuclear weapons. It's interesting to think about in deciding military strategy to inject ethics into it, into morality. It's not just about winning the war, but should we do this, and doing the calculation of human life. Usually those decisions are made by leaders, not by the soldier that's going to be implementing that decision. Do you put some responsibility, I should even say blame on the leaders and not doing that kind of calculation here?

You could say that you could say the both of you now war or you could say that about even the war that you're involved with in Iraq, is there some criticism here that you could apply to leaders for failing not to consider the broader moral questions. Yes. Natural, like all leaders will make these mistakes or should leaders not make these mistakes. Leaders are going to make mistakes. It's impossible to know what's going to happen in war, just like it's impossible to know what's going to happen in life.

You make decisions based on the information that you have at the time. And you will make mistakes. And if you fail to admit that you made a mistake, that's where I have a more significant problem than someone that makes a mistake and says, hey, this is the mistake that I made. This is the intelligence that I thought we were utilizing. And it actually is not what I thought it was going to be. And here's the new direction that we're going in.

We don't have enough of that type of ownership in in leadership globally. So, saying, I made a mistake that resulted in a loss at scale of human life, being able to say that. And when you don't say that, you end up with a more loss of human life. Can I ask you about the loss of human life? How does killing a human being change you? What does it mean to kill a human being? What does it feel like to kill a human being? Well, I mean, I guess you'd have to look at what circumstances a person's in when this is taking place.

If you've got someone that's in a fit of rage that goes and kills somebody, you know, they're going to come out of it and think, wow, I just really messed up. If you've got someone that is a sociopath, right, they're not going to feel anything and that person deserve to die and that's why they died. If you've got a soldier who feels like they're trying to protect their friends, they'll move through that. If you've got a soldier that's doing it because they want some kind of Personal glory. They'll probably Not feel good about it later So I think it depends on the situation. I think it depends on the psychology of the individual. Let's go in through it

He said move through that Is there some calculation here that a soldier He said, move through that. Is there some calculation here that a soldier, when they kill another soldier, a realization that is just another human being? I mean, is there some heavy burden to that aspect? That it's ultimately just human on human. I think it depends a lot on the scenario. I know that when I was in Iraq fighting, we talk a lot about the dehumanization of the enemy. And it's something that the governments will do. I mean, governments will do that to each other. I mean, governments will do that to each other.

I mean, the Japanese dehumanized the Americans, and the Americans dehumanized the Japanese, and the Americans dehumanized the Nazis, and the Nazis dehumanized the Americans, so that to remove as much of that human-owned human killing aspect that you're talking about, and what I've said is that in when we were in our rack, we didn't have to dehumanize the enemy because the enemy dehumanized

themselves through their actions, through their behaviors, when we know that they are torturing and raping and murdering the local populace. They've been dehumanized. And so as far as looking at them and thinking, oh, this is a human, another human that's on the level of, you know, my uncle or my brother. I didn't think of them out that way. I thought of them as my brother. I didn't think of them out that way. I thought of them as as murdering, raping, evil, subhumans. Yeah. Iraq is different. An America's position is different. You're

right. That America's not been involved in a war where it's quite like two humans fighting like teenage boys fighting against each other. And you've got to remember, I mean, we're we're seeing these Iraqi kids that are living under this sadistic sadistic terror, the Iraqi women that are being raped and abused by these insurgents. And so on the one side, we become the Iraqi populace is very humanized to us because we're talking to them, we've got interpreters, we understand, we're seeing them day after day, the same individuals and so we form a bond with the local populace and yet we see what the insurgents are doing and so it's again not difficult to dehumanize people that behave in that manner. Yeah, I suppose I worry about the dehumanization

at a much larger scale when it's not the kind of case that you're talking about. Even now, hopefully I'm not fear-mongering, but there's a sense in which there's the drums of war slowly starting to build with China. to build with China. They're in the best case, it would be a cold war, of there's a dehumanization aspect that's happening with China currently, which is they're the other, and they're after stealing all of your data. There's a cybersecurity, it starts with cybersecurity, and it worries me, because it creates the other

out of a very large population that may ultimately lead to conflict, in the worst case, hot conflict, that would no longer be the situation you are in in Iraq and more similar to the Soviet Union conflict with Germany that it's kids and then they're dehumanized to where you're at scale slaughtering them or at least hurting their quality of life in a way that's, you know, suffering has many forms. It doesn't have to be through just a hot war. It could be through starvation, through camps, all those kinds of things. And I worry about that. We kind of tend to think that these wars are behind us. And I'm not always so sure that's the case. And at least in the way that it ultimately starts with hate. And again, hopefully I'm not being too dramatic. But I see that there's a kind of brewing of, it starts with dehumanization that turns

the hate of the other. You see that with China, you see it a little bit with Russia. And you have an early podcast between the where you break down the tactics of the Chechen war versus Russia. It's fascinating. But that's the kind of conflict I'm referring to. And I don't know. There's a, I know you're a bit of a musician. I love, I love Dio Straits song called Brothers in Arms. I don't know if you know that one. And there's a line in it. I think they play it quite often in military funerals, which I just recently learned. But it's this powerful song that has a line where fools to make war on our brothers and arms. Do you think there's some sense in which

at the leadership level, but just as human beings were perhaps foolish and engaging in military conflict as much as we have, or as full of an inappropriate word here. Well, I think that using the term brothers and arms means the people that are on my side, right? So it doesn't make sense to start wars with people that are on your side. So that might just be the way the lyrics are written so that it fit the song or whatever. I think probably what you're asking me is, is war foolish. Yeah. And I would say the answer is yes. And if you can avoid it, you absolutely should.

But if there is a bear or a wolf that is trying to get into your house, is it foolish to shoot that bear or shoot that wolf? I think the answer is pretty obvious. So when you're threatened or your family is threatened or your way of life is threatened, then you have to do something to try and defend your family, your way of life. It should be the last resort. It should be the last resort. You had a conversation with Jordan Peterson where he asked you a question

in terms of war being last resort, whether you would like your kids to grow up in peace in a time of no war. You said yes, but, and so happens Jordan didn't let you finish. Can you elaborate what follows the but? Well, you and I have been talking about the fact that struggle brings people together and brings out the worst in people. War brings out the worst in people.

So would you want your kid to go and enter in a wrestling tournament where you paid all the other kids off and your kid won. Or you enter them in a Jiu-Jitsu tournament where they're purple belt and you know that everyone that they're going to fight against is a white belt. And so they get the big W. They get the win. But they don't really get tested. And they don't really struggle. And if you don't struggle, you don't grow. So that's the but, right? The absolute best times of my life were in combat. And the worst times of my life were in combat. And so even though I wouldn't want any of my children to suffer through the worst of times,

at the same time, the bud is, I would want them to have the opportunity to feel that bond that you're referring to earlier, and to see human beings that are willing to sacrifice their lives for their friends. You mentioned the worst. What are some of the worst aspects of when you were in Iraq? What are the things that the hardest on you. Have my guys killed? Is there absurd cruelty to it? Was it due to mistakes or natural consequences of fighting? Is there any difference? Is that at the end is just losing those or brothers and arms? There's a million different ways to get killed,

Moore, and you can go out in an operation and you can do everything wrong, and you can survive, and you can go out in an operation and do everything perfect, and you can get killed. Is there some aspect which makes it worse when there is mistakes made? Well, yeah, if there's mistakes made, then you're going to sit there and beat yourself up eternally for mistakes that were made. But to you, the things that hurt is just losing, losing people close to you. Yes.

Are you yourself afraid of death? No. Do you think about it? Does it make sense to you that this thing ends? Like you, the Stoics contemplated death. It gives flavor to life. It makes you appreciate there's something about finiteness of life that makes it, that makes it, this uh, jaco discipline go drink sour apple that I'm enjoying is delicious. It makes it taste better because I'm going to die one day. And I think about that a lot. Do you think about it? Do you think about it? Other than I know that it's gonna end, but I don't think about it on a daily basis. I think about... It's just the fact. I think about... I know that I'm lucky to be here. I know that many people sacrificed to give me this opportunity to be here. So...

But I don't dwell on it. here. So, but I don't dwell on it. What about when you were in combat? Nothing. There's there's tactics, there's strategy, there's the mission, and then your mortality is not part of the calculation. I think you get to a point where you accept the fact that you can die. Like I said, you can do everything right. You roll out the gate, you hit an IED, a triple stack subsurface IED, and you're done. And there's nothing that's going to stop that.

It's going to happen. And I think if you're scared of that or you're thinking about that, it's going to inhibit your ability to do your job properly. And I think it's also gonna drive you crazy. The thing that I thought about more was that happening to my guys. And that's the gut-wrenching terror that you feel when operations happen.

Can I ask you about love of country? It continues to... Just how much I've studied Stalin recently in the past few years. It continues to surprise me, not surprise me. It's just tragic in some kind of way. I'm not sure exactly if I could put words to it, but how many people still do, but at the time, we're willing loved Stalin and we're willing to die for country, for the love of country. And I too, maybe because I was born there, and now I am a red blooded American.

I love nationalism is a bad word, but I love the love of country. It somehow gives meaning, like a brotherhood, like we're in this together. I love that's why I love the Olympics. That's just the unity of it. It takes a step out of the selfish pursuits of anyone particular ant. And looks at us as a big ant colony. And it's inspiring, it's exciting. But at the same time, it seems to get us to do horrible things if manipulated by charismatic leaders. What do you make of this level of country?

Is it a bad thing? Is it a thing that gets in the way? Or is it a good thing? Well, I think like anything else, if it's balanced correctly, it's great. And if it goes to some extreme level, then it becomes a negative. And I think it's probably sourced in some sort of animalistic tribalism that we all have to be part of a tribe. And this is a real big tribe that you get to be a part of. And all you have to do is kind of show up.

And so when someone says, hey, we're gonna play hockey against the Russians. Well, we're going to cheer for the American boys. So my my area of work is artificial intelligence. It'd be interesting to ask your thoughts about something, which is autonomous weapons systems. US has now officially released the report saying that they're open to not open, they're engaging in adding more and more autonomy and artificial intelligence into its weapon systems because China is doing it. So these are the first steps in something that AI folks worry about which is a race

An AI race in the space of autonomous weapons that can run away too quickly. Is that something? I don't know if in general if you have thoughts about weapon systems that make autonomous decisions thoughts about weapon systems that make autonomous decisions at the small scale of just targeting where to shoot and at the largest scale of military strategy of just being given a mission of destroy this particular target, this particular, say, terrorist human being and then figure out what is the right bombing campaign on your own to accomplish this task that minimizes civilian death. And they're just loading that in and letting the AI system automatically decide that. What are your general thoughts about it? Do you worry about it?

Because as the positive effects that in the best version of that world, you kill fewer civilians, you kill hurt fewer of your own human beings. But at the negative side of that, you might lose the the thing we kind of talked about, which is the basic humanity, even in the individual soldier of what is right and what is wrong, and not making huge mistakes that hurt thousands or millions of people. I guess what you're asking me is if they could make a machine that could do more surgical attacks on enemy individuals, would I be for it? Yes, I would be for it. The problem is if you've ever used machines of any kind, their initial design may not be there, there's unintended consequences.

There's there's ways in the machine actually behaves that you realize there's bugs in this thing. So do we not put protocols in place to prevent something from going too far outside the boundaries of what we want to execute? You do, but the question is this is the first time in human history you can create things, machines, toaster, microwave oven, that's smarter than you in this particular task. I mean, it's not yet there. What you're learning a lot with military strategies, humans are actually really damn smart.

It's very hard to improve on a human. And so most actual drones that are on manned are still piloted by humans. It's very difficult to do every aspect of war. But it's not out of the realm of possibility that machines will start doing those things better and certain things, certain more precise targeting of the enemy. The question is, so what happens when you start to rely on the machine to do some of the task is you get lazy. You forget what it is like to do that task,

or more importantly, you lose the knowledge of the intricacies of that task, and you forget the ways you can go wrong. So the protocols may not be sufficient to constrain the power of the ways that things go wrong, especially when things are moving really quickly, especially when the ethics of the two sides aren't perfectly aligned. When people are some certain sides, like on Chinese side, maybe more willing to take risks for dangerous consequences than others. So what happened on the bio-weapon side is internationally, maybe you can speak to this

more, but my sense, I was told there is a sense globally that by weapons are not going to be used. They're unethical. There's a sense like we're not going to engage in this and with AI currently China and US said Green light All go ahead. It's it's totally ethical if if it can decrease the loss of human life Why not? And my worry is that

It's much more it's it's much easier to design weapons that are effective Then design weapons who have the depth of ethics and morals that humans do. Which I think we don't assume in beings, don't acknowledge enough that even like the cold calculated killing of others, like precise, effective execution of a mission, still has ethics in it. At every level, you know what's right and what's wrong. And I don't know if you take that away, you're not going to make huge mistakes that you regret. Is that something you don't worry about?

I don't really worry about it. But as you design something, like I said, you put protocols in place. And from what I am hearing you say or trying to hear you say, there is be a point where our protocols wouldn't be sufficient to stop the machine from doing something that was unethical. I'm kind of worried that this is something you don't worry about because a lot of people I respect don't worry about it and I don't know what to do about that. A lot of generals don't worry about it. A lot of people who know

much more about war like you than me don Don't worry about it. And that worries me. Well, that's because you have a vision into the shortfalls of AI. And I don't, I don't have a vision of the shortfalls of AI. I don't know enough about it. As far as I'm concerned, you put a on off switch somewhere, you put a, a kill switch on a system. And if it starts going to rye, you hit the kill switch and that's it. So if, you know, when you look at me and say, well, there's no possible way to put a kill switch,

that would be 100% effective. And here's, you draw those concerns to me. And we could talk through it and say, okay, well, here's where we should draw the line. Yeah. I mean, it's like, again, for the Soviet Union, Chernobyl meltdown, there was always the ability, I believe, to have a kill switch. The problem is the more power you give to the machine,

the more opportunity you give to the, to the human supervising that machine to make a mistake and not shut off the switch at the right time. So yes, the solution, I mean you're putting the responsibility still in the human hands and I think that's the correct place to put it. There should be good protocols, good leadership, good execution, competency all around. Your protocols should consider the basic failures of human nature, the human factor of how things go wrong, so there should be multiple people supervising the system, all those things. But I am just very skeptical of greater and greater power in the machine

that can create war, that cannot lead to death. Yeah, and that's why, like I said, you just said you have protocols in place that are a kill switch and if you think about the amount of Nuclear weapons that we've had on planet earth for the past however many years and There's been you know no Rogue element that said you know what I'm gonna shoot this thing. There's been no Protocol that took place where all of a sudden we said, oh, no. I mean, there's been, there's been escalations, but the protocols worked have worked so far. Now, that's a scary thing to think about that we rely on these protocols to stop some rogue element out there from launching a missile that could kill millions of people and trigger

a global war. So yeah, the protocol should be strict. Okay. Casca, Jaco Manque, or Dick goes question, if human civilization goes extinct, will be the reason you mentioned new clear war. Do you worry about this? The reason I bring that up, a lot of people in the AI community worry about artificial general intelligence. So super intelligent AI systems creating a lot of damage. Autonomous weapon systems is one possibility. A lot of folks recently especially with this pandemic. If you want to be terrified, listen, somebody I talked to recently, Sam Harris did a four-hour podcast on how bioengineering of viruses is likely to destroy human civilization.

I recommend that highly if you were too optimistic about the future of the human species. So apparently, in the space of bioengineering is becoming easier and easier and easier to engineer viruses, engineer pathogens. This is the world's most depressing question. What is, do you, is there something in particular you worry about, like that we should be thinking as a human species about? Yeah, I'm sorry to disappoint you again with my lack of worry for all these problems, but I don't worry too much about it. You know what, we've made it through a bunch of wickets so far as a species and We'll make it through some more or we won't and if we don't make it through some of these wickets and

Someone decides that what they're gonna do over the weekend is create some crazy virus that spreads and kills everybody Yeah, you know, I'm usually extremely optimistic about the stuff. I am now. I'm with you except though we won't Well, there's always a chance we won't but I have a sense that human first of all I Believe that most people have much more capacity for good than evil all of us are capable at evil I believe but most people are much more capable of doing good and want to do good. And I also believe in the resiliency of the human species that we're in an innovative bunch and we can respond to tragedy, especially we respond more to tragedy as the scale of tragedy grows. And our response is much better.

So that's why I'm not worried about it, bro. What makes a great man? Let's start at the individual. What makes a great man? What makes a great woman? What makes a great human being? Somebody that puts others above themselves. What makes a great leader of humans? Same thing. But that sentence does a lot of work. When you're a leader, there's a lot of egos, there's a lot of tension, there's the humans, the human factor. There's people who are timid, there's people who are assholes, there's people who are incredibly competent,

but self-obsessed, I don't know. There's complexity, human nature. How do you get all those people to do, to be the best version of themselves and to lift up everyone else around them? Okay, so now that question is a little bit different now. So now it's getting into a more specific question, but at the same time, a more broad question of what elements does it take to make a good leader? Yes. So you're right, that different people have different personalities, different tendencies, different levels of ego, and the way that I try and explain this is like a video game, and I'm not even a video game player but I've seen this

before where video game characters have various skills, various strengths and weaknesses. So maybe they're strong but they're dumb or maybe they're strong and smart but they're slow. They're just giving these ratings. And so that's where human beings are. And that's the way leaders are. And you can have different leaders with different characteristics. And depending on how all those characteristics match up, you can have somebody

that is very introverted, but they're, but they're still a very good leader. Because when they do communicate, they do it in a clear, simple manner that everyone understands. So even though they're a little bit introverted, people still respect them and listen to them because they communicate in a clear way. You could have somebody that's extremely charismatic, extremely charismatic, and everyone looks to them, but they're slow in making decisions. And so now we've got someone that can't really make decisions when decisions need to get made So even though they're charismatic, they're still not a good leader So depending on the human being that we're talking about and you just mentioned earlier that human beings are you know more complex than anything and do a better job But just about everything then a robot. So that's the same thing with leadership

You've got all these different characteristics and you match them or mix them together and depending on where the ratings come out, depending on how that thing does in the end. Can we almost like as a case study, look at a few people in the tech area that I'm familiar with and I know well. We can, the only caveat being that I may have no familiarization

with them whatsoever. You may have to brief me on them. Yeah. So I'll do my best to brief. I'll do my best to reduce human beings into simple descriptions. And then you can give me insights of why the hell there's such effective leaders based on my description, not based on your actual deep knowledge of the human beings. So that caveat of my inability to speak both English language and describe humans well. Let's talk about first Elon Musk. So he's known as being quite harsh in the sense of first of all a very high bar of excellence and also willing to what he calls the kind of first principles thinking of asking the questions that hurt, which is why the

hell are we doing it this way? Why can't it be done a lot better? Not just better, but a lot better. So, so let's, I don't wanna hear this whole character, I'll go one section at a time. So we got a guy that's harsh. Yeah. And asking the really hard questions. How can that be good or why is that good? Well, first of all, it can be horrible.

And there's leaders out there that are harsh and they're hated and no one likes them and no one wants to work for them and they never do anything. So what is it that Elon Musk does that makes gives him the ability to be harsh? So I was hearing a description of me when I would give feedback to young seals that had made mistakes during training operations. And the description was that I was the same thing,

like this harsh blunt force trauma and just totally direct sledgehammer of truth that I would hit guys with. But it's interesting because I always talk about, you know, building relationships and making sure you're not offending someone. Yeah. So how do these things match up?

Well, I can tell you how they match up. When I was being harsh, the guys that I was being harsh with, knew without one shred of doubt that I cared about them more than anything else. And that the reason I was giving them this feedback is because I wanted them to be able to lead their troops. I wanted them to be able to go a comp submission and I wanted them to be able to bring their guys home from war. So I wasn't being harsh because it elevated my ego. I wasn't being harsh because I wanted to denigrate them. I was being actually being harsh because I wanted them to accomplish the mission. So if that's where Elon comes from, Hey, listen, we got to make this happen. This is for this is for the good of the world to do this.

And people know that. Then it works. I'll bring this point back up with another guy, Steve Jowse. But let me stay on Elon for a second. The, uh, the other thing he does, which is interesting. I see the value of this, it'd be great to hear you speak about it. It's unlike many other CEOs, very rich billionaires involved in leading a lot of people, he puts a lot of time into making sure he's on the factory floor. He famously sleeps on the sort of like in the middle of things. And he puts a lot of effort.

He's also very good at it is being a low level engineer. So like whatever the task is, he wants to understand the details. And he'll talk to the lowest level person in terms of like, you know, somebody who's like working literally on putting parts together. He wants to understand what the problem is, what the challenge is, if there's an emergency, he wants to understand the actual details of the problem, not like delegating to a manager, but like, because a lot of CEOs, a lot of managers will talk about sort of the power and the importance of delegation.

Here he wants to know if there's a big problem, he wants to know the exact detail, he wants to know the exact problem he wants to, at the fundamental level, understand how to solve that problem. What they have to do with materials, what they have to do with the actual manufacturing, the mechanical engineering aspect,

we're talking about engineering. This is a guy who wears a suit, there's a CEO, tweets about a Dorish coin, but like an actual job, he's low level engineering. And that, to me, was always inspiring to see somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing. That's what,, like he gains the

respect of engineers at the lowest level. I don't know if that's scalable, but that's always been inspiring to me. And I wonder how many people it's inspiring to. Maybe you could speak to the value of doing that of, no matter how high their level of leader is, to be able to do the low level shit. Yeah, and that's a common trait that good leaders have. And maybe he doesn't necessarily know how to do everything a good leader, but they go down there and talk to the front line troops and say, hey, what is the issue that you're dealing with, or how can I support you? How can I give you help? And one key point that you said is he said, when there's a problem, he gets in there.

So there's things happening at his companies that they're working. And so he doesn't have to die, I'm not saying he never does, but he doesn't have to spend as much time working on or looking at some subsystem that's functioning well. He's got a good leader in there that's handling it and he checks in with that leader and the leader says, yeah, it's working perfectly. He says great. When there's a

problem, that's when he might have to get down there and dig into some details so that he fully understands it, so that he, when he digs down in the details and this is important, he's coming from an altitude where he has a better, bigger perspective, not necessarily better, but a bigger perspective. So if you sit there and work on a problem, whatever, for eight hours and you're staring at, you know, if you were planning a mission and you were, you were planning it for eight hours. You're staring at the, the maps and the charts and you're figuring out where all the

troops are going to be located. And I come in after eight hours and I look at your plan from a distant perspective, there's a good chance I'll be able to see holes in your plan that you couldn't see because your perspective was too close. So that's good for me to be able to come in from a higher perspective and have a look at it. But also, there's times where I need to get down there and actually look, you know, if you're looking at a problem and you say, look, I can't figure out boss, I can't figure

out how to get to this target. And I'm looking at it from a distance and I don't see, I might need to start digging in and looking and saying, oh, here's a route that we can take that actually makes sense. Let's try that. So I think it's a good example of someone going up and down in altitude to look at problems, understanding what's happening with the front line troops and at the same time being able to go back to the strategic level. And I can, it's probably this way. The reason that he's successful is because he doesn't get stuck down there. Because if

he felt the need to micromanage each and every part on a Tesla, it wouldn't be, it would be very unlikely that he would have the capacity to do all that. Now, he can hand over some broad chip design and say, Hey, this is what the function needs to be. And he gives it to Lex and Lex goes there with your team and you figured out and you make it happen. If you had to actually do that all himself, most likely not possible. So that's what leaders should be doing. They should go elevate and and and and then get down in the weeds when they have to and then go back up. The sad thing. This is the part that makes me not want to do a startup is basically his

whole life is dealing with emergencies. Just like you said, he's not dealing, this is not shooting the shit about details of engineering, it's dealing with like in the case of a company, life and death, something that can just completely damage the production line, right? So he's constantly dealing with emergencies, putting out fires. And I don't know if there's something to be said the production line. Right. So he's constantly dealing with emergencies, putting out fires.

And I don't know if there's something to be said about the psychology of that, of how, like he, he's spoken himself that he's worried whether his mind can hold up much longer. So hopefully in the near future, he will start to form more decentralized command where he has some subordinate leadership that he fully trusts and most important that he has properly trained so that they can handle these day-to-day fires at least 80% of them. So only 20% of the time does he actually need to go and solve a problem. If he's not doing that right now, then that's going to end up being a problem. Anytime, so I work with companies all the time, and that's what's interesting about this,

is I go in work with a CEO or with a C suite of a company, it takes a little while to figure out what's going on. I'm kind of going off of the things that you're telling me, almost anecdotally, right? Yes, but let's say that what you, and also I don't know how familiar you actually are with the inner workings of his companies, but if we were to assume that

what you're saying is accurate, then my advice would be, hey, listen, you need to start putting a little bit more time and effort into training up some subordinate leadership that has the trust, knowledge, and expertise that you will be able to turn over some of these details to. For two reasons, number one, so you can let your brain, you can survive a little longer as he put it, but also all the time that you spend as a leader looking down and into your organization

is time that you're not looking up and out. So when you're not looking up and out, you're not seeing what the competitor's doing, you're not seeing where the market's going, there's problems that can come from that. So if right now he's spending too much time looking down and in, and you mentioned, you know, you said, I don't know if I want to do a startup.

When you do a startup, you're going to be looking down and in for a while. It's going to take a while. You're going to have to do all this work yourself. You're not going to have the finances to put people manpower behind these things. So that's probably, maybe he's in that mindset a little bit because he's done so many startups over the years and so he's in the he's habitually in the weeds. So my advice would be

all right, let's start looking at formulating some subordinate leadership that has the like I said, the expertise, the trust that you can you can start to turn over some of these more minute details to them so that you can start looking up and out. Yeah, I think he's done that more success in some places than others. SpaceX, a lot of people give the credit to Gwen shot well for the CEO, the COO of SpaceX as a very successful person that runs shit, but in Tesla, not as much. So I wonder if you can comment on something

a lot of people worry about, and this applies to a lot of tech companies, which is a lot of people worry about that if Elon disappears, the innovative spirit, the company as we know them today will collapse, we'll stagnate and we'll basically fail to do what they've been doing for so many years successfully. Is there some aspect to what makes a good leader that if you disappear,

the things still lives on and not not just lizzon, but thrives. Yes. So what we have to do in those situations is we have to establish a strong culture inside that organization. And if you're there's there's there's reasons why this happens, right? If I have a big ego and I form a company and I love the fact that everyone looks at me and says, Oh, Jocco made this company and he's the creative force behind this company and that fuels my ego and it makes me feel good.

And, you know, I'm working with you, Lex. And every time you come up with an idea, I say, Lex, you need to stay in your box. Yeah. Right? So I'm not creating a culture that rewards that sort of creativity. And eventually, when I I die I won't have Educated my team on how to maintain that creative aspect. So again hopefully

Inside that organization he's he's encouraging and growing that culture where creativity is rewarded where where it flourishes even when he's gone. That's what we have to hope for. He is, but I also seem to notice that there's not many people like him. People become complacent too easily. I've been disappointed by people a little bit. Like success makes people soft. Now with Elon, it seems like success doesn't have any effect. It's like the reverse effect.

It doesn't, it's like, it's always like, what's the next big of thing, right? He's living that exponential growth, which I think that's the problem that you have to have somebody who's constantly trying to find the 10x solution, like trying to constantly improve things and restlessly. That I mean, that probably has to do with finding the right people, not just creating the culture, but creating the culture with the right set of people. Speaking of which, Steve Jobs,

with the rights of people. Speaking of which, Steve Jobs, there's two things I want to mention there. Once again, the harshness, but a very different kind, and the second is team building. So on the harshness, he is much harsh than. In the following way, and I'm having a sense that you will not like this, but I'd like to defend it. Is he loses his shit quite a bit. He was famously at least, especially early on being very emotional. He was letting passion dominate the discussion. There'd be a lot of firings. There would be a lot of mean things said to people. I don't know what you make of that. How much is a leader? Are you allowed to just lose your shit in your love for the thing you're doing? And how effective is that?

As a leader, you shouldn't be doing that very often. So you can look back at me and say, well, Jaco, here's the most profitable company that's ever existed, and so you're wrong. Well, going back to that multitude of characteristics that human beings can have, what's the same thing with businesses, it's the same thing with companies. Steve Jobs was off the charts in some of his traits, his ability to understand design, his ability to understand human interface with computer systems. So so far off the charts that despite his bad temper, emotional behavior, the company still thrived. That can happen.

You can have people that are horrible leaders that develop something that's so universally outstanding that you end up with a company that's successful. I mean, I get asked that a bunch. People always ask me, because I say, look, you shouldn't be losing your temple as a leader. Well, what about Steve Jobs? He used to yell and scream all the time. Great.

When people say that to me, I say, oh, okay, are you as good as at design as Steve Jobs was? Are you as good at marketing as Steve Jobs was? He had a certain amount of skills that were off the charts. So he was able to be successful despite the fact that he would lose his temper, treat people horribly. That's not good. It's not good. And it would have been even more successful if he wouldn't have those characteristics. Now, you might say, well, his anger is what pushed

things. Well, let me ask you this, what leader wins? The leader whose team is afraid, the team who executes the mission because they're afraid of their leader or executes the task because they're afraid of their leader or the team that loves their leader so much that they don't want to let them down. Which team wins? You're implying a confidence that love is more powerful than fear, but I'm not so sure. This is the Muckia Valley question. You're saying ultimately it's always better to lead by inspiration and love than by putting the fear into the team.

What I'm saying is that I've seen countless times is me leading through my authority leading through my rank leading through punitive measures is infinitely worse than me and you working together as a team to win. On the second point is Steve Jobs is he has this idea of philosophy of eight players where He has this idea of philosophy of A-Players where you have a group like the power and the productivity of a group of what he called A-Players is invaluable. So you want to get a team of people who are the best at what they do but the most important aspect to him was that a single

quote unquote, be player on the team destroys the entire productivity of the team. Is there something that brings true to that? So he was, this could be a temper thing, but vicious about firing and removing the what he felt was a toxic B player and a team. So A players feed off of each other, unless there's one B player present. depends on the nature of the B player. Is the player is the player a B player? Because he's a little bit lazy, is he a B player? Because he doesn't have good vision? Is he a B player? Because he doesn't have good vision.

Is he a B player because he's got a big ego? And always thinks he's right. And now creates conflict in the team. So there's a bunch of different B players. Look, if you're working for me and you're kind of a B player, but guess what, you're a grinder and you get stuff done, I want you on the team. You might not be the smartest person I have,

but I know that you want you on the team. You might not be the smartest person I have, but I know that you're committed to the team, and I want you on the team. So you're a B player, but that's okay. Now, if you're Lex with a giant ego, I'd rather have Lex that's not quite as smart, because I got other people that are smart. I got other people that are smart and team, look,

you're gonna need some smart people on the team But a team is made it's a team and so you take these different components of a team and if you have Complementary components you'll end up with a superior team Then just basing it on the level of and what's an a player? Sometimes in the seal teams They would get something called the stacked platoon. And what that would be is someone, you know, some senior person in that platoon would manipulate and maneuver to get the quote, best guys that he could in that platoon. So, you know, the most experienced guys, the person that had great, great reputations. And sometimes those platoons would be great. Sometimes they would

implode because what you end up with is a bunch of a players. And now no one wants to follow anyone else. No one wants to agree with anyone else. Everyone wants to do it my way, not it's my way, not Lex's way, Lex is stupid. No, you're stupid. We end up with problems. So can one person derail a team? Absolutely. Under good leadership, one person should not derail a team. This could be a tech thing too. There's some multiplying effect

of just pure excellence, no matter the personalities. I think for Steve Jobs, ego doesn't matter, none of that matters. What matters is the quality of the output, the genius of the result. And that somehow multiplies itself. And the ego's actually, like one of the problems with egos is like, what

does ego usually say? It says, I'm much better than you. When you have people that are really good together, it's very hard for the ego to flourish because you're like constantly being shown that you're not as good. And there's a competition. So like, I think to his, his idea was that like, if you get people that are really good at what they do, it turns as opposed to you being complacent and not doing much and thinking you're better than everyone else and your opinion is better, is you almost getting in that competitive race. You know that magic that happens when you're at the end of a marathon and you're just like, head to head, like you're just going full steam with a person that is as good as you.

There's no place for you go there. Which is great. Which is great. Let's use that example. You and I are racing. We're at the end of the marathon. Yeah. We're both highly competitive. Highly competitive. We have massive egos and we both want to win. We both want to win so bad that we give everything we've got. That's totally positive, right? Isn't that totally positive? Now imagine this same thing. We're in a race, we're in a marathon, we're in the last 100 meters. It's you against me and our egos are huge and we're pushing to win. And you start to pull ahead of me. And my ego is so big, and I hate losing so much

that I somehow accidentally push my knee up against your foot on a backstried and throw you onto your face. So, that's what ego is an awesome driver, unless you let your ego control you. And you let ego ego control you. And you let ego drive your decision making process, in which case it turns into an incredible problem. So, you might have someone that is excellent. You might have someone that's outstanding.

You might have someone that's tens across the board, but their ego is so big that they can't work with other people. They can't accept anyone else's ideas. They can't compromise on something because they think their ideas better all the time. And that is going to be problematic. And I don't want them on the team. Now, as a good leader, guess what I'll do? I'll put them into a situation where I can utilize their best aspects, but not have their

ego destroy the team. So I might say, hey, Lex, you know what? I actually want you to take lead on this part of the project over here. And since you're so smart and you work so hard, I know you're going to pull ahead of everyone else. So you grind on that. Once you get that result, give it to me. And I'm going to disseminate it to the team. So I isolate you from wrecking yourself and the rest of the team with your giant ego. So then looking at a completely opposite person who's the fascinating person to me, a Sander Pachai, who's the CEO of alphabet, CEO of Google. I admire the romantic sense, the madness

that is Steve Jobs and Yom Musk. So to me, the opposite of that is Sandra Puchai, who's like everybody loves him. And he's also a great listener. So he always brings people together. And so the energy of that person in the room is like, the basic energy if I were to summarize it is like, I want to hear all the voices in the room.

That's the energy he brings. And it's almost like he doesn't want to impose a final decision. He wants to hear all the voices and somehow always the decision just falls out. I don't know what to say about that style of leadership, but it's always surprising to me how that love brought a lot of people together. And still, I mean, some of the greatest things Google has done in the over the past several years could be attributed to that. Continue innovation, bringing out the best out of people. There's of course bureaucracy, which I could criticize the end of the day, which always happens with big companies.

I would argue actually the dictatorial style of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk help fight the bureaucracy, which is one criticism I would give of being a listener and being kind. It's sometimes you can't cut through the bullshit as effectively. But he's one of the only people I've ever heard of who everybody loves. He's inspirational figure to millions, especially in India. He's a celebrity in the best kind of way. Is there something you could say about that kind of leadership where you're never the asshole. You're never the dictator. You're always the listener and the compassionate, empathetic, glue that brings the team together. Basically, we love.

Yeah, that's great leadership. If you have to choose for Google, uh, for large companies, is there something to be said about what is more effective? The dictator, the ruling by love or the ruling by fear? First of all, everything's a dichotomy, right? And so to think that all the time you're always gonna be able to Just bark orders at people and they're always gonna listen to you and you're always gonna get the best result That would not be smart to think that every single time you're gonna come to a 100% consensus amongst the troops and that decision is going to reveal itself without you nudging it along, that would also be

shortsighted and naive. So what a good leader does is they stay balanced. And as much as they can, they listen to what the troops have to say. They take that feedback. Maybe they quietly nudge things, and I'm sure he does that. I'm sure he does some nudging that maybe no one even picks up on. I like to say the best forms of leadership is leadership with minimum force required. So if I can go into a room as a leader and not say one single thing and the team can come

to the right consensus and move in that direction, that's my preferred method. Maybe I have to give them a little bit of a nudge, a 10% nudge in one direction. Okay, that's better than me walking in there and giving them 100% dictatorial direction of exactly what I want to have happen. Now occasionally, if we have an emergency situation, people are starting to be frazzled and they're not sure which direction to go. Then sometimes as a leader, you have to walk in and say, all right, everyone, here's where we're going. And people get on board. Why?

Because for many years or months or however long, you've trusted them to come up with a plan. And when you as a leader trust your team to come up with a plan, the team starts to trust you. And you get leadership capital. And as you build leadership capital, occasionally you need to cash in some of that leadership

capital, you need to spend some of it. And maybe it is, hey listen, here's a direction we're going right now, we'll debrief it later, but we got to make a move. And the team who trusts you says, Roger that boss, we got to make a move and the team who trust you says Roger that boss. We got it. And all of them actually do this interesting thing. I'd love to hear your opinion on it. Sander certainly does it to a large degree, which is it's in the process of delegation. Trusting a person to do a really difficult thing.

Like tossing it up and saying like, I trust you can get this job done. For some, even if your resume does not support that, I'm actually kind of amazed the human beings when they're given the trust to get the job done, they step up very often. That's kind of an amazing property of human nature. People often ask me issues about leadership and I always say that one of the best tools for teaching leadership and for teaching a bunch of other lessons is leadership itself. So when it happens all the time, when you elevate someone into a leadership position, they do step up and they do make things happen. So that's not surprising to me. You do have to mitigate risks. So saying, Hey, you know, Lex, I know you're, haven't been

in the military before. I know you have very limited weapons experience, but I want you to run a target assault on a real mission in whatever country, that would not be good. That would not be a good move on my part. Now, if I said, all right, Lex, you know what? I want you to get some leadership experience. I've got a training mission, and it's going to be using paintball, and I'm going to put you in charge of it.

I got no problem doing that. Some of that is judging human character. It's like there's potential. There's something in this person that they are, they have enough demons or whatever the hell it requires to have that fuel, they'll figure it out. They'll hate themselves if they don't, and they'll find the right, the fine, the tools they'll find the path they'll to achieve the whatever the level of perfection they can. It's been really surprising to me. It's been making me rethink the whole hiring process because I often now I'm thinking

looking, so I'm looking for people, both for the startup, but just for my own life, or help. And I almost want to see evidence of excellence, but maybe you want to just based on just judgment of human character without evidence of excellence. Have people step up. Like Joe Rogan with Jamie, it's a funny side of me. I didn't understand how little Joe knew about Jamie

when he hired him and Jamie stepped up and now runs one of the most successful Podcast ever and that's an incredible kind of And he's one of the best producers in the world now Not to let it get to his head and by the way the funny thing about him and one of the best Googlers in the world The best Googlers the the funny thing about Jamie This is okay, you might not like this, but what I what I like, I'm constantly exceptionally self-critical to a point of night self-hating sometimes. I deeply appreciate every single moment I'm alive, but

everything I've ever done, I feel like a shit. And when I talk to Jamie about everything he's done, he's just in every way he cares himself, he's so self-critical, he's so worried that it's wrong, it's bad, that anxious energy, I love it. Because that's how you lead to growth and progress. Like you might, like a therapist might say, that's probably not good for your like well-being. Fuck it.

It's good for the, what's good for your well-being is to create awesome things. That's ultimately what leads to happiness. It's to create the best thing you can in your life. And so when I see that in somebody like Jamie or anybody I talk to, when you're really self-critical, that's a good side to me. I said, ridiculous.

It's not ridiculous at all. And it goes back, you know, you were, the way you were phrasing these questions about what makes a good person and what makes a good leader, the way you phrased them kind of eliminated the normal answer that I give. The normal answer that I give,

you ask me what makes a good leader, what makes a good person, is being humble. So when you're going to hire someone for your startup or whatever company you're creating, that is a key characteristic to look for. Is someone that has the humility, like young Jamie, to say, yeah, I could have done this better and here's what I can improve and here's what I need to work on. When you have somebody that thinks they know everything, um, out of the gate, you're, you're already got someone that's going to be hard to deal with. They're going to be hard to coach. They're going to be hard to mentor. When you have somebody that's truly humble, you barely, again, it's minimum force required because when you say to Jamie after show, how do you think that?

When he says, well, you know, I did this wrong and I didn't have this set up in time and you don't barely have to do anything because he's got the humility. If you got someone that's a big ego and you say, hey, how did that show go? He goes, I went awesome on my end. Now guess what you have to do. Now you have to start applying force as a leader,

which is expending leadership capital, which we don't wanna do, because we always try and conserve our leadership capital as much as we possibly can. And when we have to expend it just to get Jamie to make some improvements, that's bad. So when you go looking for people, look for people that are humbled.

Now, does this mean you look for people that don't have any confidence? No, that's not what I'm saying. There's a balance to all these things that's the dichotomy of leadership. You but people tend towards, and look, I work with a lot of military troops in the past. Now we work with companies. The reason I talk about humility all the time is because for someone to get into a leadership

position in the military, they have to have confidence. So the tendency is that their confidence is going to outweigh their humility at some point. Same thing with civilian companies. If you get to a point of leadership inside of a company, you have to have confidence to get there. You don't get to a position of leadership inside of a company lacking confidence. So the tendency is for confidence to grow a little bit too much and we have to put that confidence into check. We have to put that ego into check.

Really good leaders, they're confident, but they're humble. That's the balance of the dichotomy. Here that Jamie don't get cocky. On occasion rarely you talk about discipline. What does a discipline life look like? Doing what you're supposed to do? What if I went in a lane on the couch and eat Cheetos and watch soap operas? That's That's not that doesn't feel like discipline. Do you think you're supposed to do that?

Well, you know, you could argue from a sort of Do you think you're supposed to do that? Well, you could argue from a sort of meaning of life perspective that perhaps happiness is the most important. And if it makes me happy, perhaps that's... If it's fulfilling, of course eating cheetos and watching some proper, this fulfilling for nobody whatsoever. Next question. But there's something about discipline that's more than that, which is like the rigor of habit, right? You wake up early in the morning all the time. What does Jordan Peterson talk about?

Make your bed. Just one place where we probably agree with Jordan People ask me if I make my bed. I don't And I never know there's a disagreement with Jordan. Yeah, there we go You know when I was a younger before I was married I didn't make my bed because I had one Sleeping bag on it and I would get out of the sleeping bag. There was nothing to make. Now I'm married and I can't make my bed because my wife's in my bed. So I don't make my bed. Okay, so what in your life maybe we can talk about the one that's most publicly facing, which is you wake up at four o'clock or around four o'clock in the morning. You post

on social media a picture of your watch. It being early just to remind people that you are a man of your word. What's that about? What's the philosophy of the four o'clock? What role does that play in a discipline life for you? Okay, from that perspective, what role it plays is getting a jump on the day. And when you wake up early and you get a jump on the day and you've got your workout done and you've got a little bit of work done by the time normal people are getting up, that's a win. That's a psychological win,

and it's not just a psychological win, it's an actual win. It's an actual win. So that feels great. It doesn't feel great, maybe when your alarm clock goes off, but by eight o'clock in the morning and you've already accomplished some of the major tasks that you have,

some of the most painful tasks that you have for the day You're off to a great start and it's gonna feel great Let's break this down then what does then the rest of the day look like what is the perfect productive Discipline day in the life of jacke willink look like Wake up work like wake up workout wake up when 4 4 30 workout when 5 5 to 6 or 7 no eating no and then what does the workout look like depends on the day on the day. What's the perfect we're talking about? Body weight, lifting, cardio, heavy bag,

jiu jitsu. Okay, yeah, when I say workout, I mean no jiu jitsu. So jiu jitsu doesn't, jiu jitsu comes later in the day. This is just you alone? This is me alone working out, yep, and I'm going to be doing over wide variety of things. This is the thing alone. This is me alone working out. Yep, and I'm gonna be doing over wide variety of things This is the thing that has the pictures of the aftermath Yes, this is the thing some sweat at the so the goal is to do whatever the hell results in some sweat Mm-hmm, and that takes an hour Sometimes it takes 12 minutes. Sometimes it takes three hours depending on what kind of Moody I'm in. You got some demons to work through.

Or is this just, is this just work? Like, uh, are we, uh, so you got the David Goggins who's like, who clearly has demons screaming inside of his head that he's trying to work through? Are you just getting the work done out of the discipline? Or is this, uh, I think Joe is a little bit with David Goggins is like, there's some ego, there's some bullshit that you're trying to get out through some of the exercise. That's a good way to kind of humble use, just doing that exercise. Well exercise is certainly humbling.

I mean, it's, but it's physical conditioning, right? It's preparing your body so that you can handle whatever it is you're gonna do. Perfect. What does, what do you do after? Let's talk about food. Hopefully surf if the waves are good. Surf for how good are the waves?

Let's say they're good. This is a perfect day. It's a perfect, perfect waves. Why do you surf? It's fun. Okay, this is fun. Okay, man, man, and nature, which is like what surfing is ultimate is the power of the, the infinite power of the ocean versus a little silly looking man on a board. You could say it's the infinite power of the ocean versus a silly looking man on a board, or you could say it's fun.

Cause it's Russian and Romance. Okay, this is for fun in the morning, beautiful. And this is you're still having eaten. No. Okay, so when do you eat? I'll usually start grazing around 11 o'clock. And grazing, what's the diet? Is there a perfect diet or do you graze?

I'll eat some nuts, something like that. I usually start grazing, maybe I'll have a little piece of meat or something like that. Does work entering this? I'm sure you have a lot of people that want your attention. Yeah, yeah, no, Work is about to happen. Because you know, even if I woke up at four, worked out from five to six, served from six to eight.

Now I'm starting to work. Writing, recording, reading, talking to clients. Is there parts of the day where you try to find moments to think deeply, to read deeply, to sort of really focus? Because this world wants this full distractions, right? Even talking to like even work stuff, the emails and all those kinds of things that can they can scatter your mind. Is there times you seek to have that focus? Well, I read a lot of books and so usually when I read I'll be reading for a chunk of time,

maybe an hour at a time, maybe a little bit longer, and I might do that twice a day. So I don't know if that counts as what you're describing, but then same thing with writing, when I'm writing something. I mean, I just that's what I do. I write usually usually write for about an hour. I can get about a thousand words an hour out of me. So that's that's sort of what I do. What is the rest of the day look like? Just a lot of work, but ones that you get. So I want to find out about the jiu-jitsu. So work but ones the jiu-jitsu I want to find out about the jiu-jitsu. So round 4 30 or 5 o'clock at night. You train. Yep. And how hard? You still, how are you doing body wise? You still, the old man still got it or? Are you talking to me? It would be good for viewership or ratings if I die before the end of the podcast.

I still train with the same guys and I'll train, you know, so I've been very lucky when it comes to getting injured and stuff like that. So I've had some injuries, but they're healed. And so yeah, I train. And food wise, you mentioned grazing of some nuts of very light kind of things. Is there a main meal here? Yeah, at night. At night. Yeah. High in protein, or is it anything? Yeah, I'll have like a steak in salad. I'll usually have for dessert, I have like a protein have for dessert, I have like a protein shake. So is there a thing where at the end of the day, you like, you have like a summarize

sword and you meditate on a death. And all those kinds of is a some weird ritual you are taking. No, I just go to bed when I get done with the end of the day, I might read a little bit more. Just more. Yeah, because we read early on and read. Reading makes me tired, usually. So I'll read a little bit more. Is there a key to you that you can speak to that makes for

productive day, just the way you approach it mentally? Yeah, right down what you're supposed to do, wake up early and start doing it. I then get it mentally. Yeah, right down what you're supposed to do. Wake up early and start doing it. And then get it done. Yeah. And it's a miraculous trick. Can I ask you about Jiu Jitsu? By all means. What have you learned from being a practitioner

you're a black belt? What have you learned from this journey of being a martial artist? Jiu Jitsu for me was the connective tissue that started a join my mind together with all the different aspects of my life. And so Jiu Jitsu for me was was really important and I don't think I would be doing anything that I'm doing right now if it wasn't for Jiu-Jitsu. So there's various aspects of my life that were in existence, but I didn't understand how they were connected until I started training Jiu-Jitsu. The primary things are interacting with other human beings, and combat tactics and strategy and Jiu-Jitsu. And all those things are connected.

They all follow the same guiding principles. And I wouldn't have recognized those guiding principles if I didn't do Jiu-Jitsu. Can you elaborate, because you've trained for many, many years. What is it the hardship? Is it the humbling nature of just being tapped all over non-stop? I don't actually don't know how many times I've tapped more times than you. So good. Is it just the hardship of physical training, the honesty of the mat in the sense that

you know what works and what doesn't work, which aspects were the most impactful for you? All aspects. So yes, from a humility perspective, when you realize, you think, when you think you know what you're doing, when you think you have certain skills, and you realize that there's always somebody better than you and you realize that,

hey, maybe I don't have all the answers all the time. And you bring that to a leadership perspective, and you walk into your platoon and you realize that maybe you don't have all the answers all the time and maybe you should listen to what other people have to say. You bring that to a combat situation and you realize that you think if you sit there and think that you're smarter than the enemy, you're going to be complacent, you're going to make mistakes. So there's one aspect out of the gate as far as You know if I if I'm going to try and get your arm do I attack your arm?

Maybe not directly unless I'm a white belt exactly. What do I do? I attack your neck and when you reach up to defend your neck That's when I get your arm. Well if I'm out on the battlefield and there's an enemy position Should I attack frontal assault into that position? No, no, I shouldn't. I should put down some covering fire and I should maneuver around to the flank. It's the same thing. If I'm dealing with you and you're my boss and you've got a giant ego and you've come up with a plan and I don't like your plan, should I walk up to you and say, hey, Lex, your plan isn't good. No. Or should I say, hey, Lex, can I ask you some questions

about how you want us to execute this? Cause I want to make sure I understand your vision. So all these things are connected. Yes. And I wouldn't have realized that we could sit here and do this forever. We could, I could tell you these comparisons forever. Yeah.

But this, all this connective tissue bringing all these things together, I wouldn't have seen it without, I don't think I would have seen it without Jiu-Jitsu. So Jiu-Jitsu to me had a, had a incredible life impact on me. Not, look, the physical part, Yes, absolutely. Does it, does it keep you humble? When you know that there's a 145 pound individual that can tap you out when you're 220 pound, 25 year old guy, and there's 135 or 140 pound, you know, 46 year old guy that can make you tap out, that's humbling. And what do you do with that? Do you run away from it or do you continue to pursue it? Same thing with life, same thing with anything.

So Jiu Jitsu is an incredibly powerful, not just physical aspect, but it's a way to understand. It's a way of thinking. You've also competed. Is there something you can speak to the value of competition? Obviously, you've been through combat, actual military combat is many, many, many orders of magnitude more high stakes than competition in a silly sport like Jiu-Jitsu. Nevertheless, it still has some of the echoes of the same challenges. Is there something you can speak to the value of competition for you?

Yeah, competition will reveal weaknesses in your game that you can then go back and train to rectify. So that's very useful to sort of, yeah, as a testing ground. Of course, training can be that testing ground as well or that feedback. Yeah, but as you and I both know, if you and I train together all the time, you and my game, I'll know your game. And even if we have five other people, we all kind of understand each other's games. And you're not doing something to me that I don't expect. So when I go and compete, I'm good. You're, you know, this random person has a game that I've never seen before.

I'm, and I may or may not know how to deal with that game. If I know how to deal with it, great. I get the victory. Maybe I don't learn as much. If I don't know how to deal with their game, I get the loss and I get the win of learning what some weakness in my game is. So you mentioned offline that your friends and you work with Dean Lister and Dean Lister

is one of the people that inspired John Donahoe who I've very much been, I've got a chance to talk to quite a bit recently. I don't know what you think about this. This is not a therapy session, but... Or maybe it isn't in the one. It's turning into one. He's a fascinating person, John Donahe, in terms of creating almost a science of jitsu

to a level that I haven't seen before, which is systems thinking about, like you could think about military combat as tactics in a particular situation, but then you zoom out and you want to create entire systems of tactics in all situations, right? He's very kind of wants to keep zooming out and creating giant systems. And which I appreciate that, even though the task is probably impossible to do completely, but there's something that's in terms of competition that he kindled the fire in me that I want to get back out there. He has a particular thing that did it, which is very different from my personal journey

in Jijitsu, which was to degree that people I worked with cared about competition, it was always about winning. And or doing well, all those kinds of things. For John, it's about winning, like winning is not even the thing that's important. What's most important is winning by submission, is, or dominance. Right. And, uh, and not just the end is the entire time competing such that the only thing that matters is that kind of victory. And that's a very different level of competition. That's actually liberating in a certain kind of sense. I would, I remember so much of my competition was about kind of fear of not taking risks. You know, you get up on points or you hold a strong position, you kind of advance and you get more points.

Maybe you chase the submission, but there's always a fear of risk. And for him, you embrace the risk. You should not be competing out of fear. You know, live and die by the sword versus stay in safety. I don't know if there's something to be said here. Well, I mean, this is not, you said it's novel to you. It's not novel to me. The entire, my entire journey on Jiu-Jitsu in Jiu-Jitsu was only about submission. And, you know, as you as you mentioned, Dean, Dean Lister is my coach and my main training partner for 20 something years.

And if you ever watch Dean train or fight, that's what he's trying to do is submit as everyone. That's what he's always done. That's what he always will do. He, you know, he has the highest. I think he has, I'm back back I know he has the highest submission victories in ADCC. He, that's what he does. So this is, in fact, as Jiu Jitsu got more popular and we started seeing people competing to win by points, that was what was novel to me in the beginning. Now it's the standard. So it's not novel to me in the beginning. Now it's the standard. So it's not novel to me.

I love the fact that John Donner, her and all of his troops go out and they try and submit people. I think it's awesome and I think that's what Gigi-Zoo is. All right, let's ask for some advice for Whitebelts. There's a lot of Whitebelts who listen to this. What advice would you give? You've been in Gigi-Zoo for many years in terms of a

Successful journey through jiu jitsu. What advice would you give them people just starting out? Just keep training keep your ego in check don't freak out trying use the techniques that you learn and all the stuff I'm like saying it you know, notice how I'm saying it. Yeah, hey tap out keep your ego in check and everyone But the thing is everyone says it's all time And White Belt still start off by going completely nuts for at least three to six months of, I'm not gonna let this guy tap me out. And they're gonna, and I'm gonna tap this guy out, not by using technique, but by just using strength. And it's just inhibiting your learning.

So as much as you can, I know you gotta get it out of your system. I know you don't wanna tap, and I know you want to tap somebody. But as soon as you get get that off your chest, then try and try and relax and try and learn the techniques. It's perhaps counterintuitive and never was to me, but it's counterintuitive that to to start on the journey of really sort of mastering the Jets or whatever or improving is you have to relax. And that seems to be a very counter to you, Vanessa. I learned that early on with, that was thanks to the Russian system. I played piano and music. But basically, actually,

this is true for basically any sport that includes the human body is like relaxing is the way you start learning stuff. You have to learn, you have to literally, and most people don't seem to understand this, is like, you have to learn what it means for the human body to relax. Like, I guess you have to have enough knowledge of all the muscles involved to know what it means to relax those muscles. So for piano, you have to understand what it means to relax your wrists and your fingers in order to learn how to move them. Like if there's tenseness in the fingers, you're not going to, like, you have to learn how to try hard

while relaxed. The, I guess the beginner, if you don't internalize this lesson, will try hard by tensing up hard, and like trying hard, tensing up more, as opposed to relaxing more. And that lesson cannot be conveyed through words, I guess. I've had the great fortune of having dictatorial teachers as they do in Russia, for piano and so on, we get like hit if If you don't learn to relax, which is a cognitive notion, but it works

Yeah, this brings me to one of my favorite pieces of coaching advice that I will tell white belts while they're struggling on the mat I'll tell them to relax harder That's beautiful. For somebody who studied war, who participated in war, what do you think is the best martial arts? for Let's call itself defense For hand-to-hand combat outside the constraints of sport. So it's not one answer. The answer to me is

Gijitsu, boxing, wrestling, Moitai, Judo, Sombo, and on down the list. I definitely start with Gijitsu. The reason I start with Gijitsu is because in a self-defense situation, if you are a big monster human and you want to fight me and you square off with me, guess what I'm

going to do. Run away. Because I don't want to get involved. Even if I see skinny little lex out on the street and you start yelling at me and saying you want to fight me, I don't want to fight you I don't it doesn't matter. I don't care if I can beat you or not What if you stab me? What if you sue me after I get done throwing you onto the concrete? There's a million bad things that can happen and almost nothing good

so For self-defense my first self-defense is my feet to get away from you And if you square off to punch me I can run away from you if you square off to kick me I can run away from you if you push me I can run away from you So great. I don't need to know how to box to run away from you where this all changes is When you grab me And now I don't have the option to run away anymore Now I actually have to know how to get away

from your grip. And that's where Giu-Jitsu comes into play. So especially if you get me on the ground, if you if you grab me and get me on the ground, now I need to know how to get you off of me and get up and get away from you so I can run away. So that's why I say start with jujitsu. And from there boxing, wrestling, judo, samba, moi tai. Yeah, there's, there's in the standing position, I mean, I'm a judo person as well. And the judo is very unlimited in their understanding of the full grappling spectrum, even though they do all the things on the ground as well, but it's so focused on the feet, but nevertheless it's important to understand. The thing that Judo has as a sport, and it's good to practice, that Jjista doesn't, is

that just doesn't is not just the skill of grappling on the feet, but the skill of explosive aggression that sometimes you just use more about in terms of tactics is more about patience. It depends how you practice it, but because so much is about control and technique that sometimes you don't get to practice like aggression explosive aggression and judo is so much about Aggression implemented in such a way that the Demonstration of powers effortless, right? That's the beauty of jesus. Yeah, and same thing with wrestling resting Also has a high level of intensity and aggression as well. Yes. Yeah. So that's where that's where I agree judo and wrestling. Absolutely. Awesome. Get some and striking boxing moitai. Yeah. You know, like the you should train all these things. Are there books and movies in your life long ago recently that had a big impact on you. and movies in your life long ago recently that had a big impact on you.

Yeah, the main one is about face, which is sitting right here. There you go. This is written by Colonel David Hackworth. It's the book that really had a massive impact on me from a leadership perspective. And I ended up, I talked about it enough that it started kind of coming back and started selling well and they contacted me and I wrote a forward for it. So that book had a huge impact on me and I still, when I read it, I still get lessons out of it just about every time. This is it getting on more. And career. And career.

And he got in towards the end of, right at the end of World War II. So he was kind of raised by the soldiers that fought in World War II and then he went to Korea and then he went to Vietnam. An exceptional warrior, a soldier soldier. If you can give a little anchoring, what made him a soldier soldier? So, he died in 2005, so I never got to meet him. And I had a guy on my podcast who worked for him in Vietnam, a guy named General James Mukayama, and luckily his son had reached out to me and said, I think you're talking about my dad because I read some passage in there that that Jim Mukayama was young

captain, young captain Jim Mukayama, company commander in Vietnam. He said, I think you're talking about my dad. Would you want to talk to him? And I said, absolutely. Well, here's the thing that I didn't really understand and you read one quote, but there's all these quotes in that book that talk about how great hack worth was and what incredible leader he was and how he was the best combat leader and anyone had ever seen. And all these just really complimentary things that are said by a bunch of different people. And when you read the book, you're reading this guy's account of what he went through. But I never really knew if that was all true, or did he just cherry pick his friends quotes

about him and cherry pick the stories that he wanted to tell. And so it was very interesting for me when I met Mukayama, General Mukayama, who he became a general eventually, when I met himayama, General Mukayama, who he became a general eventually. When I met him and we were talking about his life. And I was very curious and I was a little bit nervous going into this interview because I was thinking, maybe my hero, my mentor, this guy that I've never met before, maybe he's just an arrogant jerk that talked,

talked himself up in this book. So I'm sitting down with General Mukama, and I finally got to the part where he's meeting hack worth for the first time. And I said, did, you know, did you know who hack worth was when he showed up? So he was, Muk, Muk, Muk, they call him Muk, Muk was the, was the, like the Mook, Mook, Mook, they call him Mook. Mook was the, was the, like the adjutant to the, to the general that, that was going to, that, that hack worth was going to be working for. So when hack worth comes into the office, the first person he meets is this guy, this guy, Cap Mook, Mook, Mook, Mook, Yamma. And so hack worth walks in and I said, when hack worth walked in, did you know who he was?

And Mook, Yammaama says everybody knew who he was Mr. Infantry and so he ended up explaining that Everything that is written in there about hackworth They they just love them they adored him Up the chain of command it turned out a little bit different and you know the title of book is about face And if you're familiar with familiar with military drill about face, when you turn around 180 degrees, and at the end of the Vietnam War towards the end of the Vietnam War, he was so disgusted with the way that the war was being fought.

He was so disgusted with the decisions that were being made by the leadership that he did in an interview. He was the first colonel, first senior officer to do an interview that spoke out against the war that was happening. And this is while he's in Vietnam, by the way. So he got drummed out of the army and he was forced to retire and that was that. So there's an element of rebelliousness to him. And you know, when you talk to me about, are there times when the leaders making the leadership, this absolute senior leadership, the civilian leadership is doing the wrong things, yes. And there's times when people speak out against it. And there's an argument foreign against that too, even with Hackworth. You know, did he, when you get, when you quit your job or you do something that gets you fired,

which is what he did, you immediately give up all your influence over what's happening. So they get another, they get another battalion commander to take his place. They get another colonel to step in and take his place. That's what they do. And now he can't help anymore, he can't help his troops. But at that point in the war, he loved his men so much

that he was sickened with the situation on the ground and he spoke out about it. So that book had a huge impact on me. And like I said, I still read it all the time. I reread it all the time. I reread it all the time. And I always take lessons from it. Let me ask you about love. This is not usually associated with Jaco, but what role does love in terms of friendship, in terms of family, playing a successful life in life in general? Again, this is putting other people above yourself.

Do you see that as love? That's ultimately the implementation of love. I would say yes. Jocco, I've been a huge fan of yours. You're somebody who inspires me to get up early, to get shit done, to be disciplined about my life, and to be the best leader, I can be. It's really truly an honor. And thank you for wasting all your two valuable time with me. I don't know what you were thinking, but thank you for doing it. Well, thanks for having me on. I can guarantee you, not as cool as you just made me sound.

I'm just out here, like I said, trying to help people out. And I think you're helping a lot of people out with your podcast. So thanks for having me up here to share some of my experiences. And hopefully I'll see you on the mat one day. For sure. Looking forward to it, could be sooner than you think. And it sounds like a threat.

I love it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jocco Willink. And thank you to Lynn Ode, indeed, simply safe and Ground News. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. And now, let me leave you with some words from Jocco Willink. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.