PBD Podcast - Blackwater founder Erik Prince | PBD Podcast | Ep. 372

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Starting point is 00:03:03 Some hate him. Some say he's misunderstood, but regardless of what you say, he served in the military as a Navy SEAL. When he got out, he started a company called Blackwater December 26, 1996. In 2010, he ended up selling the company. During that time, he was awarded $2 billion of government security contract, of which $1.6 billion of it were unclassified, federal contracts from 01 to 09, the CIA awarded them up to $600 million

Starting point is 00:03:31 in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates. Aside from that, during their course of 40,000 Blackwater personal security missions, I've heard you say 100,000, but here I'm reading 40,000, only 200 involved guards firing their weapons stating no one under Our care was ever killed or injured. We kept them safe all the while we had 30 of our men killed I think the number ended up being 41 if I'm not mistaken this number may be a little bit out of date And then aside from that he is also from a very special family the prince family

Starting point is 00:04:01 Father, uh, I believe edgar prince had two kids one is eric prince the one we're going to talk Edgar, Prince, had two kids, one is Eric Prince, the one we're gonna talk to, he had more than two kids. Four kids. He had four kids, okay, father had four kids, two out of the four, one is you, super successful, you've done well for yourself, and you're somewhat involved in politics. I was the unexpected blessing.

Starting point is 00:04:18 You were the unexpected, okay, you're the fourth one. I have three much older sisters. Okay, got it. Is Betsy the oldest, or is Betsy older? Betsy's the oldest, she's 12 years older. My next sister is 10 and the next one is nine years old. It is four, so four kids. But the oldest and the youngest took it to holder

Starting point is 00:04:35 from level, Betsy DeVos, who is, I believe, married to Dick DeVos. I know the father, Rich DeVos, he founded Amway, very, very successful family. Loved and admired by anybody you ask that's been close to him, has nothing but good things to say about him. My kids go to school that he funded a baseball field

Starting point is 00:04:53 that we have. She's successful, you're successful. She becomes US Secretary of Education. I don't know what your father did, aside from that he got 12 kids. When somebody has 12 kids, you have kids only if you believe the future looks bright. I wanna only if you believe the future looks bright. I want to know if you think the future looks bright.

Starting point is 00:05:07 And I got a bunch of weird questions for you. I want to ask, you know, I asked a couple of friends, hey, I'm talking to Eric, you know, what can he say about him? Is he the American Progosian Wagner group? Apparently you did some business with him. Or maybe he hired you guys. We'll talk about that, whatever the story is behind it. That's, yeah. That's a hard no. Okay, great. I mean, we'll talk about that, whatever the story's behind it. That's, yeah, that's a hard no.

Starting point is 00:05:26 Okay, great. I mean, we can talk about it, but I did not do anything with that. You can call, any of these things that I bring up, you can call all of them out, then we'll have a good time with it. PMC, some say you founded PMC, even though it's been done before,

Starting point is 00:05:38 not in the US, it's been done or passed before. Again, you'll give your answer to it. We'll talk Hamas, we'll talk Israel, we'll talk the difference between, whether we should trust a private military contractor or the national one, there's a lot to be talked about. Again, you've lived a very interesting life, but it's great to have you on the podcast.

Starting point is 00:05:56 Thanks for having me. So what was it that caused you to say, I'm gonna start Blackwater? How did that happen? to say, I'm going to start Blackwater. How did that happen? I, well, back to the family policy. My dad was a very successful, self-made guy, built a business which made first die cast machines,

Starting point is 00:06:17 big machine that squeezes a mold and makes the transmission casing of your car, the engine block, and now they're even die casting entire Tesla chassis. And then he made automotive parts in the early 70s and the business really grew, was privately owned. But family policy was you don't come and work in the family business, you have to go do your own thing first.

Starting point is 00:06:39 You can later, but not at the beginning. You have to go do something completely on your own, not associated with the family. Did he have a time limit like at what age you can come back? Was that clear or was it kind of blurry? Kind of blurry. I don't think he really bargained that I was gonna go join the SEAL teams but my plan was to go 10 to 12 years in the SEAL teams which is a good time to be a SEAL officer much beyond that you kind of get stuck at a desk. But he died of a heart attack in 95. And I kind of threw the family into a bit of a lurch

Starting point is 00:07:13 because there wasn't a clear successor to take over the business. And so my mom made the right decision and she sold the whole thing. And I got out to help that out. And at about the same time, right after the birth of our second child, my wife was diagnosed with cancer at 29.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And so I got out of the Navy and started Blackwater really as a way to stay connected to the SEAL teams. Got it. And by the way, for folks that are listening, your dad didn't just build a small business. It's a good-sized business. I think you sold it for like $1.35 billion, or some number like that I read.

Starting point is 00:07:47 Is that correct? Yeah, it was a 5,000 employee. It was almost a billion in sales, very efficient, very effective at what they did. Now, what would your other two sisters do, the two middle ones? What business did they go into? My middle sister has a, her family

Starting point is 00:08:07 has a significant ice cream business. Would I know about it? Hudsonville ice cream. I make a whole bunch of private label brands for a lot of stuff that you'd see in the grocery store shelves. And my youngest sister, they have a bunch of car dealerships and injection molding, and she is an ordained minister. So how is that possible for everybody to be successful? What did mom and dad teach? Were there certain set of clear values and principles we expected you to do this and

Starting point is 00:08:36 then you do this and then you do that? I guess they kind of imbued that Dutch Protestant work ethic from a very early age and Hard work and excellence was expected But was there with like you know when I talk to my kids, you know I've had interviewed Kennedy and I've interviewed president Bush and I'll say and I say Kennedy I mean RF Kennedy Robert Kennedy. I'm too young to have a great guy very nice guy And I would ask I say so tell me what are the traditions within the family? Like, what do you do? What did your father or grandfather expect from you? What was dinner like? What did you guys talk about? You know, we

Starting point is 00:09:10 always talk about politics. We would always debate. It was always told, go make your money, take care of your wife, take care of your kids, take care of your family, and then give back to public service in your own way. Politics, church, nonprofit, whatever maybe. Was there any set of principles they passed down to you guys or was it kind of general? There's got to be some traditions. There's no way you guys became this and by accident. We certainly went to a K through 12 Christian school was run by the church where we're members and we traveled a lot. My dad was invited by the Soviets in the early 70s to come there, because they wanted to buy his machines. And so he went off to Moscow, didn't like it at all,

Starting point is 00:09:56 didn't like the surveillance state and the whole thing. And so they made, you know, by the late 70s, the business was starting to do okay. Because before that it was really struggling. My dad almost died, he had a heart attack at 42 years old in 1973 and that really gave him perspective. But we started to travel and he actually shipped a Chevy Van to Europe and we did a six-week

Starting point is 00:10:28 road trip Across Eastern Europe as well. Czechoslovakia, East Germany, all the rest. I spent my my seventh birthday in 1976 in Berlin and I will never forget that. It was a great I think formative moment seeing the guns the dogs dogs, the tank traps, the minefields, Akhtungminen signs, all facing in keeping people prisoner in East Germany. So even for a 70 year old, you can figure out maybe the socialist workers paradise is not such a paradise.

Starting point is 00:11:00 Is he telling you this while you're going through it and son, look, this is why. Oh, yeah, no, that's I'm teaching. I'm seeing that. But is he teaching? Sure. Okay yeah I remember drawing I remember rolling into Prague then Prague the capital of Czechoslovakia and the only bright color in the whole capital was red commie stars in the buildings because the buildings were disgusting. Wow. Dark gray from all the coal smoke. My first girlfriend at the refugee camp was Czechoslovakia, Katarina Staf. Her older brother was my best friend, Jan Staf. He died very early.

Starting point is 00:11:31 Good friend of mine. Okay, so you're traveling, are you traveling because your dad is at all connected to the government or no, he's making money and? Zero, no, no. Nothing to do with travel. That travel was purely educational to my sisters and my. And was he ever, but he never, he was never an agent.

Starting point is 00:11:47 He was never linked to the government. He never worked with them, nothing at all. Nothing. That never touched the family at all. Did he have any interest in politics? Did he talk politics with you guys? Not really until 1980. Because I remember him saying that in the late 70s,

Starting point is 00:12:03 he was paying an effective income tax rate of like 90%. So this is the wonderful Jimmy Carter era. Yeah. Right. Yep. And I'd watch the news with him when we talk about it, and I remember kind of my first, the farthest back moment I remember is Nixon resigning because it was kind of a traumatic

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Starting point is 00:14:25 Koodle! Conditions apply. So I paid attention to those things. Tally-get it, yeah, it's interesting. My family, mother side, communists, that side, imperialists, so they had two divorces within 20 years, two each other. Married divorce, married divorce, done.

Starting point is 00:14:42 They cannot be in the same room together. If they are, I have to call private security. That's a fundamental difference in a big way. By the way, to me, I think political difference is more negatively impacting the marriage than religious difference. You can be a Christian and a Catholic or a Christian or an Atheist, but you both believe in the same political ideas. That's more likely to work out than a Christian and a Christian, but one is a commie, one is a imperialist, less likely for likely to work out than a you know Christian and a Christian, but one is a commie one is a Imperialist less likely for it to work out. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I don't recommend it by the way

Starting point is 00:15:11 If you were I don't know how a communist could be a Christian as well Well, you know, it is what it is. They did escape Russia go to Iran eventually and they found each other anyways, okay So I was curious family what happened with Raising four successful kids while he's building a business that eventually ends up selling for $1.35 billion? Let's go to Blackwater. So you read all over the place, the whole concept of private military contractors,

Starting point is 00:15:35 you hear different names being thrown out by a bunch of different people, right? And you're the founder of it in America and you've told the story of really back in the days, this is nothing new, we've always had this before. When you get out, why do you choose to go become a private military contractor? The SEAL teams had used private facilities since the 70s. A shooting instructor that was a really good competitive shooter would build a small facility almost like a dojo and teams would go there.

Starting point is 00:16:05 But no one had done it on an industrial scale. And the tempo that SEAL teams would train at and to for a deployment like the, I remember the year before I deployed, I was gone 11 of 12 months before even deploying for another six months. Are you married at the time or no? Yeah. Before even deploying for another six months. Are you married at the time or no? Yeah, okay. Yeah, so that's hard and so building a Significant training facility where the teams could do a lot of that stuff Local and still get home in time for dinner was important to me And I wanted to stay connected because I got out of the Navy way earlier than I wanted to And I was in the unusual. I mean, I'll think a lot of guys had the idea, I'm not original

Starting point is 00:16:46 on it, I was in the unusual position that I could fund it because funding a private training facility in the 1990s when a major base or range facility was being closed under BRAC like once a week, that was very counterintuitive. It was unfinancable. And every smart financial advisor said, that's a dumb idea. It'll never work. So started small. Well, had to buy a lot of land. But I said, that's the 6,000 acres you bought.

Starting point is 00:17:16 Bought 3,100 acres to start. And it was cut over forestry land. I knew nothing about business, nothing about government contracting, nothing about land development, but just kind of figured it out and you go back to the team that you know and trust. I hired Ken Vieira, who was my training officer at SEAL Team 8. Al Clark was our first firearms instructor and I hired Jim Dehart who was the guy that managed actually managed the facility of SEAL Team 6 and built it out. So, you know, there's our just very talented hard driving guys that figured it out. Now, if I would have worked with you and if I was at any of the units you were at, would

Starting point is 00:17:59 I have known that you're eventually going to start something? Would I say this guy's probably going to start something. What I say, this guy's probably gonna start something. Nah, not necessarily. I kept my father's success very hidden. So the kids, did the crew know that you were from a wealthy family? No, I kept it really quiet the whole time, except after my father died,

Starting point is 00:18:21 and then that was in March of 95 like three weeks later I had to be out in Fallon, Nevada at the Naval Strike Warfare Center because we were doing combat search and rescue training and strike training and We got done on a Friday and the Navy aircraft wasn't coming to move us all back until the following Tuesday Mm-hmm, and I asked my boss. They said listen I got all kinds of family issues, because my dad just died three weeks earlier. Do you mind if I split? And I'll see you guys back at the team on Tuesday. He goes, go. And my mom sent the plane.

Starting point is 00:18:56 And a couple of the guys from my platoon drove me to the airport outside the base with a truck. And I said, said guys I got my bags to stay here like no that's okay mr. P got a private jig on a no I and um well you're like mom what are you doing mom why are you doing this no no it was the only way I was gonna get back because it was out in the middle of nowhere but so that that between those two guys have spilled the beans but they asked me of course like wait a minute. So you could like retire right now?

Starting point is 00:19:28 I was like well, I guess I could, but who would want to do that? So anyway, that was the only time that the secret cracked. Very interesting that you're from a very well off family. You have money, you've traveled the world, you've seen a lot of different things. You probably stayed at the best hotels, you probably traveled private like you're talking

Starting point is 00:19:47 about, you guys probably own jets, you lived in beautiful homes, beautiful vacation homes, and you chose to go into military to make your life tougher and harder. Why would anybody in the right mind do that? Or was it the fact that they just raised you so well that it wasn't too much money? No, I look, I always had a desire to go in the military. I was a military history geek. Because remember, my family went to Normandy in 1980. And I was I was the tour guide at 11. So I mean, Pegasus Ridge, and this is sword gold, Juno Yuto Omaha. And movie did a movie inspire you to typically it's linked to a movie. Was it a movie or a t-shirt?

Starting point is 00:20:26 The only movie about Normandy that was out then was The Longest Day, which was made in the 60s. I probably did see that at that point, but no, I'd read. I just read a lot of that kind of stuff. So now you're buying the land, 3,100 acres. You bring your three peers to come start with you. You have the advantage that you have money, which means you can get started with money. And now people are kind of realizing

Starting point is 00:20:50 your family's got money. Okay, maybe we're gonna do something with this guy. You start, 31, hey, or 3,100 acres. You got your stuff going. Who's your first customer and how do you find your first customer? At that point, it was a West Coast SEAL team actually that sent their guys all the way across because they didn't have any access to

Starting point is 00:21:09 good areas then and that's how we started. Our first big regular customer was actually the Canadian Special Forces. The Canadian equivalent of Delta Force would come and do their selection January, February, March because it was just too damn cold to be training in Toronto. Got it. And how did they find you? Because it's not like you're doing internet, you're running funnels, you're doing ads, you're running it on a paper. The soft units would talk. The soft units would talk even to people in Canada? Sure. Yeah. Tell me more. Unpack that for me. Just like that because the US elite units would train

Starting point is 00:21:43 with Canadians, would train with the Brits, would train with the other European counterparts. And what are they saying? Are they saying, are you guys here about what he's doing? Are you guys here about what Eric started? Is that kind of what the conversation is like? And what is he doing? He's doing such and such. Let me give him a call.

Starting point is 00:21:55 Yep. And then so if you've never done this before. Look, so why we built Blackwater the way it was is because training on government bases was exceedingly bureaucratic. You'd go to try to check out and use a range and some sergeant wouldn't be around and they wouldn't give you the range brief and your ammo wouldn't show up on time. And for a SEAL team that's doing 11 out of 12 months where you're on the road and you have all this stuff you have to train for, all these hoops you have to jump through, then having to go through the nonsense of getting jerked around on an army base, it just didn't work. So we gave people a

Starting point is 00:22:30 country club-like experience. If you book a tee time, I'm not a golfer, but if you book a tee time, you expect to be ready at 8 a.m. You expect the greens are going to be raked, and it's all going to be in order. And that's what we did. Radio, brief, ammo, go. Lunch at 12 and it was a customer service organization and that's how we ran it. And at the same time, till Black Order's getting started, I moved back to Michigan because the original business my dad started,

Starting point is 00:23:00 the die cast machine business, because we'd sold the mother ship, but the die cast machine business was had because we sold the mothership, but the die-cast machine business had been kind of bumping along since started. It was not really making money or losing money. And I wanted, I didn't have an MBA, but I really wanted to turn around my dad's business and make something run well.

Starting point is 00:23:19 And I remember my dad described the president there as the smartest engineer he ever knew. And great guy, smart guy would not change anything because we're trying to kind of do a lean transformation kind of based on the Toyota production system to engineer out costs and buy things smarter. So I had at 27, I had to fire them. And that was quite an experience and kind of restaffed the whole place with people that were much more focused on Six Sigma and lean manufacturing, et cetera. And that really taught me about linear flow.

Starting point is 00:23:59 If you think about old school factories versus how a Toyota system, a Toyota production system runs. And that really, I mean, even the Japanese, about old school factories versus how a Toyota system, a Toyota production system runs. And that really, I mean, even the Japanese, when they came to compete in America in the 80s, it really, it forced American manufacturing to wake up and cut the waste.

Starting point is 00:24:16 Exactly. And so seeing that and doing that to a machine tool business, which was a 30 year old business, and very based on very old school practices, I start to a machine tool business, which was a 30 year old business and very based on very old school practices. I start to think that, okay, we built a training facility, but what does the military do? It recruits, it vets, vet meaning vetting, recruits, vets, equips, trains, deploys, and supports people to do a difficult job in a difficult place. And so really, as Blackwater built out,

Starting point is 00:24:45 and there was actually a kind of a aspirational picture made at the day we opened of what we wanted to look like in 10 years. And that's what it was. It was became a machine, which did that. And so later when 9-11 happened, and we got pulled into the security business, doing overseas deployments of people for the USG,

Starting point is 00:25:07 that put us in good shape. And that allowed us to be the low cost competitor, because we could process and recruit and do all that stuff with and for the guys before they went, much more effectively than our competitors. So you start off with training, all one. So that's December 26th, 1996. We open in 1997.

Starting point is 00:25:28 So that means you don't get the real big contracts till 0102. Correct. The first years were very lean. What's your revenue first year? What kind of numbers you guys? 400,000. OK, got it. Second year was 800.

Starting point is 00:25:44 Then a million two, then a million six. Still haven't blown up000. Okay. Got it second year was 800 then a million two Then a million six Still haven't blown up yet. Nope. Then it went to 12 God, that's it. That's all got it 12 35. Yep. 160 400 550 and up Did you guys ever hit a bill and we were Oh, we were about 850. 850? 850 we topped out at. And this is seven? Would it be 07 or 08?

Starting point is 00:26:09 Ah, about 08. 08, okay. So legitimate business, you're going 400, 800, 1.2, 1.6, 16 million, right? Or 12 to 6, 12 million, 35 million. So if you're 400 first year revenue, you brought the three guys, the average salary for Navy SEAL today at the median is I think 97. The top 1% TALIFI, I'm not mistaken is 135, 138 today. Yeah, look, the first year or two, I still had to, I had to help with payroll. Got it. Sure. But then, but then again, you just find people

Starting point is 00:26:45 that will find a way to win. And we had very destructive customers, meaning they shot a lot of stuff. Right. And they ended up destroying all the target systems we bought on the outside. And so Jim Dehart, the guy that came over from Dev Boop, designed fantastic steel targets that everybody loved.

Starting point is 00:27:03 And so the customers started buying them and and oddly enough the FBI ordered in The 11th hour of the last day of the fiscal year Ordered $400,000 with the target target systems from us. That was the that was 400,000 of that million two Third on the last day, you know literally like at 1155 p.m. On September 30 the last day of the fiscal year a fax machine Starts putting out. Oh god. Yeah, 30% of our I know that's great Of course, I know what that feels like the irony. It was the FBI. So our target systems

Starting point is 00:27:39 stat, you know Are probably at 10 or 12 field field offices around the country now You're I'm assuming you're losing money first year second your third year because you're not we're breaking where we broke even at About a million two. Okay, so you're paying these guys You're not making you're not taking any money off the table because you don't have any money to take off the table negative so when did you know and by the way if I'm working if I got two options, okay? I'm in the Navy seal. I'm making the 97 idea, let's say I'm making six figures, right?

Starting point is 00:28:09 What advantage do I have? And by the way, that has to do with time and service rank, all this, I'm just, well, come on, man, you're 27 years ago. It wasn't $97,000 of payroll back then. 60,000 you want to say? Yeah, 60. Okay, let's say 60,000.

Starting point is 00:28:23 So 60 and the best guys are making 80. Is that fair? We put 60 to 80. Okay, something so what what why would I work for you instead of staying in the military? I'm assuming as a private contractor you probably have way more to offer than the military does that because they They like the chance to do it right. What does that mean? because in a non bureaucratic non-sonsense way. I remember being a homo mechanic and we would order parts and I would look at the number and I say yeah this part is $800. I'm like what is why is this $800 and you go look it up you talk to Mercedes or who you know yeah

Starting point is 00:28:59 it's a $70 part. Yep. We're spending $800 on yes we are. What are you talking about? It's kind of what happens here. So is that kind of what you were talking about where money was being wasted? Yes. Like our first State Department job, which didn't come until probably 03 or 04, we we'd been training high-end special operations units. We knew what we're doing. We knew our costs. Yep. The first price we've submitted to State, they said we can't accept this. They said, why? It's so low, it's not deemed credible. That's the idea. I understand. Have you been to drive tanks, the facility in San Antonio? Drive tanks? Well, no, I used to have tanks on my farm. Have you heard of drive tanks? No. Okay, so this place is called drive tanks. One day, crazy story, I'll tell you. I had kids, I

Starting point is 00:29:44 had two British armored personnel carriers but I'm gonna take some people go for hay rides we had tank rides but you see you look American you are American I'm from Iran so one day I take my kids these guys from drive tanks reach out they say Pat we love the content we want you to come out and bring your kids we're gonna have a lot of good time we're gonna drive over cars with tanks we're gonna blow things up you're gonna do 50 Cal you're gonna say I'm like, let's go, we get a big sprinter,

Starting point is 00:30:07 we get the guys, we go. I take both of my boys at the time. This is five years ago. So my oldest would be seven, youngest would be five. We go there, there's Navy SEALs, there's Delta, there's Special Forces, fifth group, everybody, they're there. And you're making bombs, you're driving on tanks,

Starting point is 00:30:22 you're doing all this stuff. It was an incredible experience. If a person's never gone to drive tanks, you gotta go to, you're driving on tanks, you're doing all this stuff. It was an incredible experience. If a person's never gone to drive tanks, you gotta go to, it's a great experience. My kids come back. That next week, my son goes to school, the younger one, five-year-old. Teacher says, how was your weekend?

Starting point is 00:30:36 She says, it was great. So what did you do Dylan? My daddy and I made bombs and we blew buildings up. I get a call from school. The teacher says, you're son can't say stuff like this because I'm from Iran so they're freaking out. I said, well, what do my son say? He said, well, your son said you and him made bombs

Starting point is 00:30:53 and you guys blew up buildings. I said, my son's not lying to you. Well, sir, what do you mean you guys made bombs? I said, ma'am, we went to this place in a military facility. These are trainers, drive tanks. Here's the video. Oh my God, he scared the kids off. I said, this is an innocent kid. These are trainers, drive tanks. Here's the video. Oh my God, he scared the kids off.

Starting point is 00:31:07 I said, this is an innocent kid. He's just giving you experience. Anyways, we had a great time with it. I asked you this because was this kind of like a hobby or was it a business? Did you see it being a billion dollar business? Was it kind of like, let's see what it's gonna turn into. Was it a clear vision?

Starting point is 00:31:19 You saying, I think we can turn this into a billion dollar empire. I, another formative moment was seeing the incompetence and corruption of the UN in Bosnia, right? The Yugoslav Civil War and, you know, UN let forces letting people just get slaughtered at Sebranica. So yeah, I had, and even seeing the nonsense what happened in Rwanda, UN run their mouth and the Houtis kill, sorry, no, the Tutsis and the Houtis.

Starting point is 00:31:54 Yeah, the Houtis kill a million Tutsis with basically farm tools in four months in Rwanda. Come on. So I definitely saw a need for private peacekeeping as a way to displace the UN, which was in my mind, and proven corrupt, immoral, useless, beyond useless, they're maligned. In your mind, are you sequencing the process of how this is going to work? Yeah, we're going to start off as a training facility. We're going to get the word out that we're going to get the right training again. And then all of a sudden, we're gonna be a contractor

Starting point is 00:32:27 and we're gonna do it better than the military's doing it. Did you kind of foresee that happening? Yes, and seeing what executive outcomes did, which is a South African PMC that was formed in the early 90s, the great work they did in ending the war in Angola and literally saving Sierra Leone from an almost an ISIS-like force called the Revolutionary United Front. They cleaned it up in 120 days and then were forced to leave by idiots at the State Department

Starting point is 00:32:59 only to have the country retaken again by the same bad guys. I knew there was a place to do peacekeeping and stability operations infinitely better than what the status quo was. And in doing so, saving millions of people from unnecessary suffering. When you're talking to the first three guys you hired, are you selling them that vision? No.

Starting point is 00:33:19 OK, so they don't know. They're a simple one and a come over to you as the fact that. Five and 10 meter target was, we're gonna run a fantastic training facility and you get to innovate tactics, techniques and procedures. And we wanted to be a place where, because at that point, the SEAL teams, the JSOC units were not doing a whole lot

Starting point is 00:33:41 of close quarter battle and door kicking and that's actually the people to really learn from then was LA SWAT. They taught the best hostage rescue. The SWAT. Yeah, so we brought Ken Thatcher, senior guy from LA SWAT out to teach courses at Blackwater and so we wanted to make Blackwater the repository, the crossroads of tactical the crossroads of tactical expertise. Got it. Okay. So 400, 800, 1.2 million, 1.6 million, 12 million, 35 million. When did you get the contract where you said, guys, this thing's about to change? What I know you said 911, but one was when they actually made it. It was actually after the USS Cole was blown up in October of 2000, right? Navy ship blown up by a suicide boat killed 17 sailors. They were holding unloaded weapons that they hardly ever fired

Starting point is 00:34:30 before. Because the Navy viewed firearms training as too dangerous. So they're shooting laser simulators. So the Navy came to us having because we are training lots of soft units and they said, could you train sailors to protect their ship, retake their ship, all the elements of small arms, which the Navy had basically abrogated knowledge and responsibility of. So this is still training though, right? You're still not deploying. No, correct. Okay, so what that was that that was a seven that was a seven million dollar a year contract. I got you know, that's that's real for us. Now it's official. Now you're sitting there saying, guy, something happened.

Starting point is 00:35:07 But it's still training, right? Yep. At this point, how many former military vets, seals, I'm talking high level soldiers do you have? When you got the $7 million contract, how many do you have? For that kind of training volume, it's probably 30 instructors. 30 instructors. OK instructors, okay.

Starting point is 00:35:25 Because we had to stand up facilities in Jacksonville and Groton, Connecticut and San Diego and Bremerton, Washington. Okay, so now that's happening. You got the $7 million. What's the next call to say, hey, we actually need a private military contract to send soldiers out? When was that? After 9-11, a high- level job for the CIA in Afghanistan. How big was that? That was 18 guys. 18 guys, got it. 18 guys, because the military didn't want to do it

Starting point is 00:35:56 with less than 250. The military didn't want to do it with less than 250. They asked the military to do that. And they wanted 250 people. They said we will not do it with less than 250 people. You were able to do that. And they wanted 250 people. They said we will not do it with less than 250 people. You were able to do it with 18 people. Yep. Okay.

Starting point is 00:36:11 So when that call comes in. And then the next one after that was a very remote, very important base that enabled a lot of GWAT activity. And there was 166 soldiers there and we replaced it with 25 of our guys. 166 with 25. In that case, they had 28 soldiers in Infantry Patoon and 138 people supporting the 28.

Starting point is 00:36:37 And we could send 25 guys, five of which were dual-hatted, to keep the power of the water, the sanitation, the comms and the food running. It's a different model. I can send 30, 40, and 50 year olds that have a lot of experience and can fix a generator, run a radio, and fix a desal pump versus the military sends lots of 18 and 20 year olds that can do barely one thing. So at this point, what percentage of your business is intelligence? What percentage is muscle? What percentage is protection? The cost of overseas, of deploying guys to weird places, that cost gets high fast. So that starts to skew the revenue, but as we're growing, it was still probably

Starting point is 00:37:27 40%, 50% training, 50% security. And then we bought an aviation business in 2003, presidential airways, a niche little business. It was some former TF-160 guys, Richard Pair, Tim Childry. And they had the licenses in one leased aircraft. And we bought that. And six years later, we had 73 aircraft that we owned and operated everything from a 767 to a Supertocano light attack aircraft that was fitted out with a FLIR, a G-Box, a cell phone intercept

Starting point is 00:38:04 system, geolocation, link 16 so we could talk to all the fast movers and it could drop laser-guided bombs. It was magnificent. And we actually put that on contract to JSOC as a way for them to do very cost-effective, close air support, cheaply. And boy, the big Air Force, big Navy smashed that

Starting point is 00:38:27 because anything that threatened the primacy of the trillion dollar F-35, they wanted nothing to do with. Now, the difference between PMC and working for national military, army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, whatever it may be, where is my pride to work for you versus the pride to stay, keep serving the traditional Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force, whatever may be? When the debate was happening over the,

Starting point is 00:39:01 whether the US would go to an all volunteer force, it was in Congress in the early 70s. And Westmoreland, who whether the US would go to an all volunteer force. It was in Congress in the early 70s and Westmoreland who is the idiot general that really screwed up in Vietnam, who then they made the chief of staff of the armed forces, screw up. Under who? Under Johnson and then. Makes sense. And then Nixon. Yeah. He said, I do not want to lead an army of mercenaries. That's what Wes Moreland, career army officer called an all volunteer force because the men and women were finally gonna get paid

Starting point is 00:39:34 a fair wage. And Milton Friedman was debating him in Congress and he said, I will serve then, then I am served by a mercenary butcher, accountant and barber. Because if you're not getting paid a wage that you're due, a fair wage, then you're not a free man, you're a slave. So look, the big military can complain about,

Starting point is 00:39:55 well, obviously they were about fair pay, but a contractor is, in our case, was an American veteran that already served their country once, volunteered to, and now they're just volunteering to go back again and do it for pay. Of course, they're not doing it for free. And this idea that our contractors were paid vastly more is also really inaccurate because our guys were only paid

Starting point is 00:40:22 for every day they were in the hot zone. Much like, just like a roughneck gets paid to go to a rig they get paid a lot the day they come ashore their pay goes to zero so our guys were paid to be in the hot zone to do the dangerous thing and as soon as they left they went to zero I saw somewhere $600 a day from them is taken that's a number I saw on the hot some times more sometimes right okay but again the military is tax-free in a combat zone all you got all kinds of other housing allowances and all their stuff which is non-cash compensation but they don't really see and feel but in our case it was simple cash in a barrel head so when you if I'm working for black water I'm a

Starting point is 00:41:02 contractor there you pay me $600 and $600 is not five days a week. It's seven days a week. So I'm making 42. And it could be 18 hours a day or it could be 22 hours a day. Right? I mean, it depends. If the op tempos go, you turn two. But your day is $600.

Starting point is 00:41:16 Two hours or 24 hours at $600? Yes, but you're still in a war zone and you're still at risk of being shot. Sure. We had some of our guys were wounded while asleep in their beds at night. We have an extremely inspiring story. There's a West Point grad Army officer, Army Ranger named Derek Wright and he was about 2006 asleep in his pod next to the embassy.

Starting point is 00:41:46 And a 107 rocket launched by Iranian surrogates came through, blew up in his pod. And the guys found him at the pool of brain fluid laying on the floor. And they stabilized him, kept him alive, but they figured he was brain dead. They flew him to Landstuhl, Germany, where the military hospital was. And I remember meeting his parents and his wife, because they came through our office

Starting point is 00:42:13 because we had to quick get them a passport, basically to go say goodbye, to unplug their loved one. So I remember sitting there praying with them and crying with him, and off they go. And so they got there like five days after the incident and Cindy walks in and there's been no brain activity and she takes her husband's hand and she said, babe, I'm here. And he squeezes her hand.

Starting point is 00:42:39 And it started a long road back and she made videos and she documented it beautifully I tear up every time because he learned to walk again and then he learned to run and literally that rocket took the back third of his head off and One of his eyes doesn't work well, but God bless him. He is as resilient as you could imagine He's alive and he is a tour guide in the state capital of Texas. Get out of here. Get out of here. What a story. Wow. Wow. So yes, people can pay up, people can, you know, throw stones at contractors getting paid. That was a guy that served his country as a ranger and he goes back serving again and he's, you know, takes one to the head while

Starting point is 00:43:22 he's in bed. Yeah, to me, I don't have a problem with the contractors getting paid. I'm trying to make it as efficient as possible to see what do we get better usage of our money with, paying it to our soldiers that are putting their lives on the line or overpaying for a product by a thousand percent they can get somebody else to negotiate so they can save some money for the company. Look, we have an antitrust problem all across America. We've way over-consolidated every industry. You used to have a hundred major defense contractors, really at five now.

Starting point is 00:43:51 That's right. And they really behave like a cartel. And they pay almost a brigade's worth of lobbyists, a couple thousand that infect Washington DC, contractor gets charges way too much for product who then pays lobbyists to pay politicians to affect more restrictions on competitors and really more nonsense. And so it's a very unhealthy cycle. The next president must break up the cartel that is defense contractors, IT, big tech,

Starting point is 00:44:31 insurance, banking. There's a really powerful book I read actually referred to by my daughter. It's great when your kids start referring your stuff and educating you. It's called The Myth of Capitalism. I highly encourage your audience to read it. And it's by Jake Tepper. And it basically makes the case that the problem in America with income inequality. Jonathan Tepper. This is not new. This came, this is a six years old. Yeah, I read this book. And it just, we have way over consolidated everything.

Starting point is 00:45:06 And man, we saw that loud and clear in the defense base as well. Yeah, there's five of them now, right? General, we've gone through the process. Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon, General Dynamics. Yeah, and they're almost one company. When you're a five, you're not really five companies. You really want a company.

Starting point is 00:45:22 They jointly bet on stuff and it's co-operative at Moons. Right, you take this one, I'll take this one, you take that one, it's cool, I'll take the next one and they're all bully in the same buyer. It's a cartel. Right. Makes sense. Now let me ask you this. For somebody that's looking on private versus public, right, if I'm choosing to give you the money, do I want somebody like you to become as powerful as possible where all of a sudden you're saying you have 73 aircraft, 767, you have all these guys, was there ever a moment where you're sitting there saying to yourself, I can do

Starting point is 00:45:56 this better than you guys, follow everything through me? Did you ever go through that yourself? No, I mean, in some areas we were definitely better because we could operate with such a smaller footprint. Where were you not better than the U.S. government? Look, we never attempted to, endeavor to do big line formations, divisions, brigades of tanks and it was not our thing at all. But I would argue that for insurgencies for For those problems we had a much better model and we could do it better than the US than the US military What I wanted what I really pushed for in 2017 was to get Trump to change tactics in Afghanistan to prevent the debacle that happened

Starting point is 00:46:45 Trump to change tactics in Afghanistan to prevent the debacle that happened. Uh-huh. Um, Bannon, Steve Bannon, friend of mine, um, said, we're going to debate Afghan policy right in our bed. So I did. I wrote it to the Wall Street Journal, submitted for an audience of one. Trump read it while they were sitting at the Oval Office desk, circled it. He called in the National Security Advisor who had just asked to send 70,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Starting point is 00:47:08 Trump said I don't like your your plan do this one HR McMaster Sure, he's a nice guy, but he was a three-star armor officer who wanted to be a four-star And he wasn't gonna do anything contrary to the Pentagon what I advocated was basically a version of what the Special Operations Community had done effectively, which is to train Afghan forces in a way that was cost effective and you actually live with, train with, and fight with. Put that mentor model with them so that you have, well, it's the same thing the East India Company did for 250 years, building local forces. company did for 250 years, building local forces. About 5% were expats, the rest of them were locals.

Starting point is 00:47:50 But by having the continuity with professionals that provide leadership, intelligence, communications, medical, logistics, expertise attached to them, it's like giving a big brother training wheel support to those units. And there was like 90 some battalions that we're going to attach to. So it would have been about 3600 and then there was about 90 aircraft we would have bought, brought, we already had a lot there, or just taken over the Afghan aircraft, but

Starting point is 00:48:21 fly them effectively. The US makes the mistake that they built the Afghan army in the mirror image of the US military, heavily dependent on contractor support, heavily dependent on high-end laser-guided bombs and all the other stuff, really forgetting how the Afghans wage war and doing the basics of logistics.

Starting point is 00:48:39 So we're gonna support the Afghan troops effectively. People love veterans, people love to say, people love veterans, but they hate contractors, but really in this case, it was the same thing. Just a soft guy going back to serve again with reliable air power that would show up. And then you take away the real source of corruption the Afghan forces was the fuel, the payroll, the munitions, food. was the fuel, the payroll, the munitions, food. And you basically take some, put an accounting firm in charge of that, take that away from the Afghans. And we could have done, we could have saved about 95%

Starting point is 00:49:14 of what the US was spending. I mean, meaning our program costs less than 5%. And there was a big policy meeting at Camp David, the summer of 2017, I was supposed to go as a backseat to the agency, and I was blocked by Mattis and... By Mattis? Yeah, Mattis was a five star,

Starting point is 00:49:36 basically it was a five star general as the sect dev, as conventional as it is long. And the sad thing is, for all that money and all those flags, nobody has been held account for wasting blood and treasure in Afghanistan. And it's disgusting. Those guys, those guys, those guys all have board seats. They all have their full pensions and they lost. They lost us. They lost the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. And we just pissed away a lot of great Americans

Starting point is 00:50:08 in an effort that was unnecessarily wasteful. Eric, how much of your $2 billion contract you got was for Afghanistan? Probably a third. A third of it was for Afghanistan. You guys was $600 plus dollars of it? Okay? So so let me ask this, you know for me In the last whatever the biggest parts of those would have been building the Afghan border police

Starting point is 00:50:35 Building the Afghan narcotics and addiction unit We did a lot of aviation support flying supplies to All the remote bases of the US guys. And then some of it was for diplomatic security. Do you think, you know, the last few years, lowest trust the US population has in the politicians as well as mainstream media. They just don't trust them, right? Why would they?

Starting point is 00:50:57 You can't blame them. Then you got CIA, FBI, lowest it's ever been in a long time. Do you think we need those organizations and if you had it your way if you had the influence would you have the military be set up the way it is right now would you have 50 PMC's competing against each other to provide the best service for the for the US government? I think one of the best roles that a PMC could do here here's the thing. We have a post office, that's a federal government activity. Sure.

Starting point is 00:51:27 You have FedEx. You can drop off a FedEx package. In some cases, you can pick up at a post office. But the difference is FedEx operates as a private sector benchmark. Because Fred Smith wrote the paper proposing FedEx, I think it was at Harvard They said that's a terrible idea in the game of C. Yeah, well hold my beer. He does it

Starting point is 00:51:49 Yep, and and now FedEx serves as a benchmark and it's definitely made the post office wake up and be more efficient Maybe not perfect yet, but it's definitely better than it was and that's the best rule that the private sector can be is to provide competitive pricing that it was. And that's the best rule that the private sector can be is to provide competitive pricing reality checks on what some of these things should be. You didn't answer the question. So do you think I'm asking? No, should it all be PMCs? No, absolutely not. But there's a lot of functions that the government does that can be bid out and let the government bid to do that or let the private sector. I remember to be bid out and let the government bid to do that or let the private sector. I remember in like 2005, the Bush administration was, they were talking about hiring 2,000 or 5,000 more Border Patrol agents. And we got called to testify as to how much it would cost to

Starting point is 00:52:39 train those. And CBP, Customs and Border Police were saying it was going to be like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars to train each Border Patrol agent and we got called we looked at the curriculum to say well we can do that for about 40 and so we were not very popular with CBP because we could and no shit we knew our costs we could do it for a quarter of what they were who Who should the American people trust more to do the work? better PMC's or the US government like if I'm again because the the government has lost a lot of credibility last few years right

Starting point is 00:53:21 Who should they trust more you guys? First of all first of all we as country, we should just spend less. Our government will suck less if it's smaller. We spend too much in social programs. We spend way too much in military spending. We don't have the money. I mean, we're 34 trillion in debt. We have grave danger of our currency collapsing. Putting the military, putting all the agencies on a severe diet is a very healthy thing because it will force people to start to think

Starting point is 00:53:53 outside the box and say, this is the mission, I still gotta get done. I don't have this billion dollar fire hose to throw money at problems. Anytime a business goes into crisis, right, when it goes into a bankruptcy and you have a bankruptcy trustee and they come in and they force people to realign their thinking, that's it oftentimes is very healthy for a business. We need to do that to all aspects of our government. So I'm not trying to avoid your question, but competitive reality check benchmarking is absolutely necessary to really make our

Starting point is 00:54:31 military spend less. I mean remember, in defense spending we spend more than the next 17 countries combined. That's insane. That's grotesque and we're not that good at it. I mean now you have the Houthis, which are basically behaving like long range pirates, armed by the Iranians, have closed the Babel Mendab, the waterway, and is really choking off Egypt. Egypt is in danger, grave danger. 40% of their GDP depends on Suez Canal traffic,

Starting point is 00:55:03 which is now dropped by 90%. Last week, the Egyptian currency devalued over 25%. Insane. So you have 110 million people, a very poor population, prone towards Muslim Brotherhood Iqwan attitudes. The only reason the Iqwan is not in power there is because CC took over. You talk about danger, all the equipment of the Egyptian army in the hands

Starting point is 00:55:27 of a Muslim Brotherhood leader, that's a big problem. Yes, again, I'm asking this question maybe for my own self-interest and I think there's other people like me that are interested, meaning. There's a group of people that will sit there and say, well, they're all doing it for money. The NBA plays the game for money.

Starting point is 00:55:49 People make movies to make money. If you can do it with your passion and you make the money even better. Capitalists builds a business and does it better. If you're not getting paid a wage, you're not a free man, you're a slave. That's right. And so that goes back to the message you said earlier.

Starting point is 00:56:04 And people join the military and you have to pay them well to do so We're not we're not even given a raise. I mean right according to what What we're blowing blowing a lot of money that we should just be paying guys directly on on lots of nonsense That's mobile again. Well, what could it actually work if the US government just like you're talking about the five Contractors we have that were buying stuff through Boeing, you know, General Dynamics, all these guys, would it work if we had 50 PMCs that the government hired to work through? Would that could that work? Think of it this way, in the continuum of statecraft, you have diplomacy on one end.

Starting point is 00:56:40 So you have embassies and international conferences. Right. And on the other end, you have a military that is big and conventional aircraft carriers and tank divisions and nuclear weapons You really don't want to leave that you don't want to have to deploy that ever because it's very expensive. They should be there fearsome with maximum deterrence like a big Snapping dog Waiting to be let off leech, but the middle is the intelligence world with maximum deterrence, like a big snapping dog

Starting point is 00:57:05 waiting to be let off-leash, but the middle is the intelligence world. And that's where we've fallen down because the agency, the CIA, is not doing anywhere near the covert actions using the authorities that it was designed to do to solve some of these problems internationally. And now, and even more so, you have the Pentagon

Starting point is 00:57:28 trying to wade into all these little small conflicts, and they basically crowd out the private sector from helping and correcting these situations. You know, like Guyana? Guyana isn't- Venezuela, the oil. Correct. So Venezuela wants to take 70% of Guyana's land, the Essequibo area.

Starting point is 00:57:50 And that is a perfect example of Guyana needing a PMC. They need surveillance, they need some specialty manpower to train and advise them. They need some lift aircraft, they need some maritime interdiction capability, all of which a PMC can do. But the Pentagon goes waiting in there backed by the big five to say, ah, we're here to sell some helicopters and we're going to sell an aircraft. And it's all nonsense. And Guyana is going to get rolled. And I predict they'll get, they will get pressurized hard here by April or May. Okay, so let's-

Starting point is 00:58:27 So now you have another country that's going to get damaged due to a lack of American credibility and success. I don't disagree. So if an expat goes to a PMC, you know when you join the Army, you join the Navy, hey, I solemnly swear and you're kind of giving your oath that you know you're gonna, is there an oath when they join a PMC or no, it's just a job? So meaning well why would I when guys went to work for Blackwater? Yeah. They swore the same oath that they did when they joined the military. Why does it matter if I'm doing it for a private contractor though? Because we serve, because we're Americans working for America Did you guys ever take contracts for a company countries that are not in America?

Starting point is 00:59:08 Sometimes training contracts sure training contract. Yeah, but nothing more than that. It was all training. Okay training So so you know when you're when you're watching what's going on today? Okay? You watch Ukraine you watch. Let's specifically stick to Ukraine for now and then we'll get into some of the other ones. You watch Ukraine and Hey, we're gonna do border, you know Bill, $118 billion. You guys are saying no to the border bill two weeks later. No, it's a $95 billion bill $60 billion is going to Ukraine, right? Yeah, and where that money is gonna end up

Starting point is 00:59:43 You have no idea where that money is gonna end up, right? And Kamala here is going to say, we're going to keep spending money until that, that, that. How similar is Ukraine to what we did with Afghanistan and what's different about it? Ukraine is a, we need to bring that war to a close because all Ukraine is doing now is destroying itself demographically. They are chewing up the next generation of manpower that they can't really replace right now. They don't have enough manpower.

Starting point is 01:00:15 The western defense base is pathetic and you're not going to out-conventional war the Russian bear. And I would say a ugly piece is better than a Whatever their idea of an idea war is well, what is an ugly piece though meaning freeze the lines straighten the lines except Let them have Crimea. Let them keep Crimea Dnesk lahansk whatever They need to, it is not

Starting point is 01:00:46 certainly the tax, it's not the American taxpayers obligation to spend another $100 billion in Ukraine when there has been significant corruption and really nothing to show for it. But why do so many people support it, Eric? I mean, you're saying that, so somebody may say, it's easy for you to say, so should we just let a dictator do its part and kill all these innocent people that he's killing? Are you saying we leave it alone

Starting point is 01:01:13 and we allow Putin to get what he wants? I mean, half the country voted for that, right? There, you know, the disgusting thing is all these people that say, ah, support Ukraine, spin a globe in front of them. 99% of them couldn't even find Ukraine on the map. So don't tell me what their opinion is. Their opinion doesn't really matter because they're idiots.

Starting point is 01:01:35 You think they're idiots. And I think I think a shocking amount of the people that have these strong social media opinions on Ukraine have no freaking idea where Ukraine is or what the realities are and so I think social media is a is not a great influence on our body politic or on our society at all. I don't know if I disagree with you but the question is somebody is converting these people that you claim idiots, right? So the question that becomes I read this quote by this lady who said it the other day

Starting point is 01:02:11 1% of the population controls the world. It's a smaller percentage, but you get the idea 4% of population are their puppets 90% percent of the population are zombies 5% are trying to wake up the zombies, the 1% make sure that the 4% stops the 5% from waking up to 90%. I don't know if you cut that whole thing that we're going through. I think Sal was trying to do the math. So there's a lot of math going on here.

Starting point is 01:02:37 For a guy that made a lot of money, I'm sure you're following through on the math here. But the point is this, forget the 90% of zombies, okay? The 1% that are advocating to the 5% of the 4% of their, not the profits, but disciples, and they're going and selling everybody. These guys could be in mainstream media. These guys could be in business. These guys could be in Hollywood.

Starting point is 01:03:02 Why are those guys, the people that are smart people, they're not dummies. Why do they think this is a good idea to keep giving Ukraine money? Is there an incentive behind closed doors to them that we don't know about? Is that the only thing that drives them? Or do some of these guys actually think we're doing the right thing? I think people are highly susceptible to propaganda. Highly susceptible to propaganda. Yeah, look, the Russians were wrong to invade Ukraine. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:03:35 But I don't know that the West could have also handled the whole situation much differently because there is all kinds of assurances made that NATO would not extend eastward after 1992. And from a Russian perspective, now they lost 22 million people in World War II defeating the Nazis. And so for them looking out and seeing more unfriendly countries on their border than any time since what May of 1940 That's a that's a problem. That's a red line for them. And they kept saying stop stop stop this idea of making a Ukraine a NATO member bad idea. It should it shouldn't have been on the table beforehand and

Starting point is 01:04:21 You know, I even offered I offered the administration before the invasion, because I noticed that there was the Russians are even canceling orders, defense orders at the end of 2020 before the, no, at the end of 2021. And I wrote a paper and I sent it up through a friend in JSOC without my name on it so they can't use the IHEDARC prints card. And it basically laid out that at that point there was some almost 500 aircraft set to be retired from the US inventory. So literally scheduled to be flown from an active squadron to the desert Davis-Monten Air Force Base, the Boneyard, and parked for eternity, written off to zero value to the taxpayers. I said, make that a Lend-Lease package. Almost like when Roosevelt gave 50 destroyers and some

Starting point is 01:05:19 aircraft and a bunch of guns to the Brits in like 1940, Len Lise. And I said, make it a combination of Len Lise and the flying Tigers, a good use of a private contracted capability because Ukraine needed air power. They need a lot more air power. So I said, perfect. There is 50 some f-16s 55 f-15s and another 40 810s perfect Fly those to Ukraine Biden can make an announcement Ukraine is not going to be a NATO a member of NATO But they're gonna have an Air Force and here it is and I could have put contracted pilots in those aircraft And you know what if you lose 20 or 30 percent of the aircraft

Starting point is 01:06:05 that's okay that's what ejection seats are for that would have been a significant deterrent force the whole program would have cost like 400 million bucks which was when you're talking about no okay no that we looked at we looked at buying motors Itch, which is a company that makes turbo engines, and some idiot made wild allegations about that. That was three years ago. That was a simple plan to buy a turbomaker. But no, went all the way up to Sullivan and the National Security Council, and of course they never acted on it.

Starting point is 01:06:43 But again, because you have people in those jobs without experience that have never deployed aircraft themselves. They've never done that, so they get told by some Air Force officer, well, that's impossible, they could never staff those aircraft. In that sense, there are hundreds of former military aircraft flown by contractors today in America, and they're flown as opposition squadrons training against the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy for their readiness. So it was a very applicable model and it could have, I believe 150 ex-U.S. military

Starting point is 01:07:16 combat aircraft showing up in Ukraine. That's a significant deterrent and I bet you it would have stopped the war before it even started. So why'd you stop doing this? Why'd you stop? Why don't you still do the business? I mean, you sound like you're- Because the left and the idiots in Washington so hate any ideas that are innovative or different that interrupt the money train, the very corrupt money train from the Uniparty, Lindsey Graham, just as bad as any Democrat on spending more money to defense contractors and washing it through. And what do we have to show for it?

Starting point is 01:07:53 What great military successes do we have for the last 25 years? Remember after 9-11, what did the Pentagon want to do? So Bush goes to meet with his National Security Cabinet five days after 9-11. While the Pentagon is still smoldering, the most expensive military in the world at that point with like a $700 billion budget, they wanted to do bombs, missiles, and a Ranger raid in October of 2001, and they wanted to wait until the following April and do a mechanized invasion via Pakistan. That's the best the Pentagon came with. It was the CIA, go for

Starting point is 01:08:34 black, and counterterrorism center, and they said, money, authorities, three weeks, the flies will be walking on the eyeballs of enemies. That was innovative. They had done asymmetric unconventional warfare and with less than a hundred special operators and case officers backed by air power, smashed the Taliban. They were truly on the run. That model worked for six months until the big conventional Pentagon showed up and then they screwed it up for the next 19 and a half years. And basically replicated the same Soviet battle plan.

Starting point is 01:09:08 If you read a book called the bear that bear the bear went over the mountain. That's what the Soviets did. In fact, our base locations were the same places. The Soviets were followed the same plan. So you telling that story? What's your point of telling that story? Are you telling it to say how bad it is right now? If that's what you're doing, why did you get out of the business if you think you're fully qualified

Starting point is 01:09:29 to be able to expose that and make it better? Why did you get out of the business? Because the black water was so attacked and the regulatory state was thrown at us. I paid about two and a half million dollars a month in legal fees for two years. 60 million. Yeah. I paid the highest per capita fine in State Department history from Hillary Clinton for

Starting point is 01:09:55 no actual damage to national security. So they've, of all the stuff that was thrown at us because black order was bad after Nisir Square and the left really came for us. We fought off all the audits, Defense Crown Track Management Agency and all we came through that all clean but the one place we could not fight we couldn't litigate was on export licenses because if we if we litigated they would stop all export licenses and it would stop the business because you have to be able to export Body armor or a helmet or a gun to do a security or training job

Starting point is 01:10:35 And so they stuck us with the highest per capita fine and even in their study They acknowledged that there was no actual export of no damage to national security. So what they ended up finding us for? was exporting helmets Body armor plates etc. So if we were working for the State Department, diplomatic security, another part of the State Department does the licensing called defense trade controls, and they're kind of moving at their own pace. And so we have a license into them to export stuff for our guys, which the diplomatic security service is demanding. I need 50 guys in this town in Iraq, next week, go, go, go.

Starting point is 01:11:08 My license is in, it hasn't come back, I'm not gonna send these guys naked. Yeah, we sent the body armor, we sent the helmets, and they fined us like $500,000 per helmet. That kind of nonsense, and it was just politics. So I started the business as a way to stay connected to the community I loved and to serve my country and to just get repeatedly kicked in the head.

Starting point is 01:11:29 Yeah, I'm about done with that. How many people, like, how many PMCs do we have right now the size of Blackwater peak when you guys were doing 850 a year in America? There's really not any integrated ones left. And they've all, like Blackwater now is owned by BlackRock, or no, by Apollo, another freaking New York hedge fund. And it's run like a typical Beltway bureaucratic firm.

Starting point is 01:11:58 But you're getting out, you're contributing to that, no? If you get out and, because think about it, okay, how many people like you are there, and I know what you're thinking. You're like, do you know you get out and because think about it, okay If you how many people like you are there and I know what you're thinking you're like Do you know how hard this was do you understand how tough this job is I get that I Honestly, no it fair. It's a fair criticism Because if I look back I was 2007 I was 36 years old, 37 years old.

Starting point is 01:12:26 I did not have an older me as a mentor. Nobody that I knew in Washington or anywhere had gone through the regulatory proctology that we had, the bureaucratic assault, the media assault. I mean, at that point, I was doing, we were doing very legitimate co-ordaction programs from the agency that I was even involved in personally on top of all the training and security aviation and stuff. And so we kind of built and prepared to help our country deal with threats abroad, not planning for the bureaucratic and media and political assault that we came under back

Starting point is 01:13:05 in Washington. But if I could send a, if I could send myself a note back to a, when I started the business, I would have just said, don't work for the State Department. They're not worth it. For all the great work we did. I don't care what happens to them. Not worth my people. Find somebody else. That's, that's the one thing, what else? But even having gone through all the shit, the gauntlet, even if I had to pare it back down to a 30 or 50 man business down from a thousand man or 3,000 men,

Starting point is 01:13:41 I would have, hindsight, I probably would have done it. Because it was it it was Such an extraordinary team. They were the best that team that management team Punched so far above its weight. It would run circles around the fortune 500 How many of them are still there with none? Okay, so your kids you have 12 kids, right? So so we have a double Brady bunch family. I had seven she had five so seven is still a lot He used it. Oh, yeah, so you got a good side got four I'm like you know, I'm a small timer compared to you having seven and twelve kids. Okay, so seven twelve kids Do you do you think the future looks bright for those guys if somebody doesn't choose to?

Starting point is 01:14:20 Expose what these guys are doing on the military side because the fewer guys like you out there you create fewer competition if you do the bullies are just gonna go more and you know they're gonna they're gonna be able to take advantage the system more and have more and more control and my my concern is the following so you ran a PMC okay successful one 850 a year you know what the next PMC is gonna look like? Probably robots, AI, God knows what the next level of PMC is gonna look like. We've seen it, I mean it's not like

Starting point is 01:14:51 it's not a believable thing, right? You see in the military what Guy creates, he's got all these. There's an interesting window to what that looks like. That's what I'm saying, I think it is a little window. There's a book called The Profession, written by Steven Pressfield and That's the guy that wrote gates of fire about thermopylae also wrote

Starting point is 01:15:10 The Lionsgate, which is a very interesting book on the 67 war But he wrote the profession which is written in like 2030 set in 2030 and At that point the Iranians invade Saudi Arabia, they take the oil fields in the US because of basically Middle East fatigue doesn't send any troops and so what do they do? The Saudis end up hiring the successor company to Blackwater who cleans up and does it and it's a very interesting perspective how that force is organized and a lot more mobile, fast, and drones. And I would say the real lesson out of the Ukraine conflict now is that small

Starting point is 01:15:54 FBV drones or small quadcopters that can drop munitions, even in a high electronic warfare environment, is exceedingly potent and a true asymmetric capability that the US military is, I mean, the Russians are paying attention. They are building and learning. I was just at the Saudi defense show a couple weeks ago, and there's all kinds of Saudi firms marketing their loitering munitions and with videos of them smashing Western tanks, Paladin how it's hers and an M triple seven, you know guns on you know Without without damn it without without stopping. So it's

Starting point is 01:16:35 the US military needs to pay attention to those things because the the change of Equipment and tactics and warfare is very real Who's the modern day Eric Princes? They're Eric Princes right now trying to do what you did or no. Are they any formidable ones that are ambitious, driven, crazy enough to do it? I'm not saying I wouldn't build a PMC again.

Starting point is 01:16:56 Okay, good. All right, maybe we're bringing them out of retirement today. An announcement's been made. Okay, so let me continue my questions. This is good. I'm enjoying where we're going with this. I mean, look, what I really tried

Starting point is 01:17:08 to get the Trump administration to accept, and even the Biden administration, was a rationalization, a stay-behind plan for Afghanistan to keep the lights on, to keep the Afghan government in power, put the Taliban on their knees, and make them take a deal. Yeah, that would have been a full-spectrum PMC But instead I would not I would mean the analogy what and and now billions of dollars right every year in whatever aid I would not do a PMC to just play defense and be a bodyguard for the State Department. No, I would do

Starting point is 01:17:39 Do it if you you could actually do offensive combat units that could go and do small scale counterinsurgency kind of stuff. The Russians contacted me in 2011. I went to Moscow November. They said please come and build a black water here. Here's the land, all the rest. I actually went shooting with their Alpha group. This this was before they went into Ukraine, even in 14. So there was a preset and peace, love, and happiness

Starting point is 01:18:10 with the Russians. Obviously I said, no, I can't do that. But it was interesting. They fully embraced what the private sector can do. And... Are they doing it? The Russians have never really integrated air land battle and maneuver and

Starting point is 01:18:31 The integrating fusing that surveillance I would argue. I think I could have built a better PMC than Progosin did but Wagner group. Yeah Because that was a very very conventional force. Did you guys ever do anything? Did you ever meet him or no? Never did never had a communication? Nothing zero point zero zero zero zero zero got it because somewhere talks about black water offered service to Yeah, that's a a That's a newspaper if you can call it that funded by an Iranian communist From the today part you got to give him credit. It's actually pretty good spin if it's a fuck those guys Who is this company by the way? Do you know it's a it's a ball this up? I'm actually curious

Starting point is 01:19:12 It's it's funded by Pierre Omadar. Okay whose parents were Iranian communists Which they stayed in Iran? Yeah, that's from the Mossad air camp Al Jazeera wrote it or who wrote it? Intercept. Intercept wrote it. Okay. So you're there, you're in Russia. They're wanting you to create a PMC there. This is a year after you, so 2011. So this is a year after you sold. So 13 years ago, you're 41, I want to say, 40 years old. Okay, so you still, you know, you have a lot of the stuff is fresh in your mind. If you really wanted to do it, you could do it. Did you ever meet Putin on your trip there?

Starting point is 01:19:48 Or you never met him? Okay. So let's stay on this point here with the PMCs, but also a little bit with Russia. So the house and Republicans push back on this border deal that was disguised as a border deal for $118 billion, but only $20 billion was going to the border, $60 billion was going to Ukraine.

Starting point is 01:20:11 Two weeks later, they just come out and they call it the $95 billion bill. And all those numbers you're throwing around, it's disgusting, they say, oh, we're gonna spend $20 billion on the border? It's all nonsense, it's all a game, and that's the problem. We can say the Republicans are in charge of Congress, then if they really are, starve the beast,

Starting point is 01:20:30 beat the litimide, cut everything down to size. We cannot afford all the nonsense that we're spending money on. And the best thing America could do as a society, as a government, as a people, is put the whole thing on a very severe diet. I think a lot of people look at what Millie in Argentina has done in like two months in office. That's right. It's the equivalent of him cutting a four or five hundred billion dollars out of American budget. That's what he's done

Starting point is 01:20:57 in Argentina. That's right. God bless that man. Yeah, you saw the meeting with him. Any man? I don't know if you saw that one. Oh yeah, I was there. Yeah. Look, anybody that campaigns with a chainsaw, I could identify with. Yeah. So, so let me stay on this one eighteen. Then I go to 95, 60 going to Ukraine, 60 billion going to Ukraine. They say no. But hear me out. Let me get my question. They say no. After they say no, the media blames the Republicans. All of a sudden, Navalny dies. Okay. Whether it's a blood cloth, you know, a Ukrainian spice as it was blood cloth, but everybody else says no, Russian spice killed him.

Starting point is 01:21:30 Whatever the story is, many people believe that Putin may have taken out as opponent. That's what a lot of people are saying. And if that's the case, then the following week, US puts 500 sanctions on Russia, 500 sanctions on Russia, 500 sanctions on Russia, three out of four banks in China, largest four, the largest banks in China,

Starting point is 01:21:50 three out of four, all say moving forward, we're not doing business with China. These are all bigger than JPMorgan Chase in China. So. Bigger with China or bigger with the, or doing business with the US. They will not do business with Russia. They will not do business with Russia.

Starting point is 01:22:03 So I can give you the bank's names, Rob. If you want to pull up the bank's names, I believe you. I'm not questioning that. One of the industrial and commercial bank of China, the China Construction Bank of China. ICBC. The only one that didn't do it, that still allows, is the agricultural bank of China, all bigger than JPMorgan Chase. How much of this do you think is... You worked with the CIA before, you know how those guys work, you know, if they want to overthrow a government, a country, a president, a leader

Starting point is 01:22:32 that they don't like, they can do it in many different ways. Do you think there's anything going on here? I don't think, I think you think a little too highly of that organization anymore. I think too highly of that organization anymore. I think too highly of that organization. I think you're over projecting what their capability is, or what their willingness is. Let's change the capability. How about motive?

Starting point is 01:22:53 Is their motive still high if they want to get rid of somebody? Do they still have high motive when they don't like somebody and say, let's target this guy, let's get rid of him? Is the motive still high? I don't know. I come back to the, you've heard of Havana syndrome? No.

Starting point is 01:23:09 Pull up Havana syndrome. It started in Havana. There was US diplomats working out of the embassy that suddenly got hit with effectively a microwave weapon. The sound, yes. Yeah, a microwave weapon and it's giving them serious TBI and screwing up their vision and hearing and then it was in Columbia and Vienna and Delhi and even in Washington D.C. and these are real problems definitely caused by it's not made up in people's minds. And for the agency to say, well, it's all in your head, that's a problem. That's an organization I have a problem with. If you're asking your people to go do difficult,

Starting point is 01:23:50 dangerous things, right? Because if you're sending a case officer out, they're literally committing an operational act, a crime that can get them killed in a country to convince someone to betray their country or their friends and operational act and active intelligence. And yet they're not even acknowledging these attacks

Starting point is 01:24:13 on their own people, I have a problem with that. So do you think Navalny was killed by Putin? Do you think Putin is a bad guy? Do you think some of this stuff that's happened is simultaneously right after them saying no to the 95 billion, do you think games are being played or no, it's just whatever we see is exactly what it is? No, of course there's games being played. And look, Putin has a, opponents of Putin have a way of falling out of windows a lot.

Starting point is 01:24:40 So yeah, obviously there's a lot of directed hits all through there for anybody that's appointing him. There's some kind of a parliamentary election in March. So, Navalny having a fatal accident or whatever he had, doesn't surprise me, sadly. Doesn't surprise you. No. From being on the inside, not on the inside,

Starting point is 01:25:08 maybe seal, I know you're not gonna say on the inside, but were there things, Eric, were there things you knew that, you know, because you're getting certain contracts, you're communicating with certain people, were there things you knew that the media would report on and you're like no way that's what's happening. I'm part of that and I know that's not what's going on right now. Were there things like that? That happens all the time on a almost daily basis. How big of a scale was it? Or were just like small things, that they're

Starting point is 01:25:43 bullshitting, it's not a big deal but they're bullshitting on this, that's not a big deal but they're lying on this were just like small things. Ah, they're bullshitting. It's not a big deal, but they're bullshitting on this. Ah, that's not a big deal. But they're lying on this. Or some of the things were so big, we were like, this is ridiculous how they're selling on American, they're buying it. Some of, look, some of the nonsense that you see in the media is driven by

Starting point is 01:25:59 the competition of the internet. And so they are all in the race to be the first out with a story, which is not so well- so well checked and they try to make it sensational to make it click-worthy effectively click bait and so yeah truth has definitely been the victim of some really sloppy journalism and then you add to that nation-state sponsored propaganda whether it's from the Russian side or the Ukrainian side or the Chinese or Cutter or from different interest organizations the United States There's there's a lot of propaganda in the world and so I I guess I try to cut through that

Starting point is 01:26:36 I travel a lot and I meet with a lot of people that are first-hand Participants and a lot of those things that are happening. I can at least ask them what they saw happen. Got it, got it. And I give you maybe a different kind of a, yeah, because I wonder some of the stuff we're seeing right now just feels like it's coming straight out of a movie. Like it almost doesn't even make sense when you see some of these things.

Starting point is 01:26:57 Like even a maybe a recent event that just happened, AT&T a couple of days ago. I don't know if it happened to your- Yeah, I think that was a Chinese cyber attack. You think so? Yeah. Why do you say that? I would predict that was a warning,

Starting point is 01:27:15 a trial run before they go do more aggressive things on Taiwan in April or May. So is that a way of saying? I would expect provocation by the Maritime Militia or some of the islands, so there's Taiwan Island, Formosa, and there's smaller ones like Qimoy and Matsu, which are right up against the Chinese,

Starting point is 01:27:36 actually the Chinese mainland. I can see some incidents there where they seize those or stage an incident or an accident, and they end up putting hundreds of Chinese maritime militia, which are just PLA troops called maritime militia, and they'll see what the West does. Is Biden going to roll an aircraft carrier if that happens? And so they will test and see if there's consequences. Test and see if there's consequences. They now do hundreds of Chinese Air Force aircraft

Starting point is 01:28:06 that overfly Taiwanese airspace all the time without consequence. They shoot missiles over Taiwan or Japanese territory even without consequence. If you allow them, China is an ancient society and they will slummy slice. They will keep pushing, right? You know, you can cut it really thin and they might take three little slices, but they've moved. They've moved the ball in their direction where they want to be. And Trump was the first president that came along that said, hey, they're like a neighbor that moves the yard fence into your yard six inches a year. And Trump was the first one that said, hey, get the hell back on your side of the line.

Starting point is 01:28:53 I can tell you, I spent enough time in China during the Trump administration. They were spooked by him. They were, they were the trade policies and the controls on certain technologies not going to China really spooked them. What's your level of speculation on this being China? If you were to say over and under, I'd say 70% is China, 50% is China. What would you say on the AT&T incident? 70%. Okay. So let's just say that 70% China.

Starting point is 01:29:22 Are they doing it and telling US that we did it? Like are they doing? Okay. So they're doing it and they're saying break contact on Taiwan and or more to follow. Got it to say we are capable of doing way more than this if you screw with this. Okay. So let me ask let me go a little bit deeper with this because we have lots of asymmetric capability inside the United States already. What does it look like? Give us a picture of how ugly this could be, what would China's capable look? Look, China from a CI, counterintelligence perspective, they've had the Confucius Institutes at American universities for decades, which are Chinese government-funded interest and communication centers on campuses.

Starting point is 01:29:59 They have the Thousand Talents program program where they would task smart Chinese to go... Thousand Talent program. Thousand Talent program where they would task smart Chinese to go study in a specific university to gather intel on a specific thing. So they're tasked to go burrow in, learn, do, follow, take that tech back to China. They have the United Front Works Department all through the United States. So you have a lot of Chinese diaspora that are here that the Ministry of State Security still has their hooks in. And because there's family members back in China

Starting point is 01:30:43 that they can hold in danger to make that person in America do what they want if the if the FBI was serious about CI the The Communist Party members have to check in and go for training at least every six months so there's a It's called the general. a, it's called the general, I think it's called the general management department. It's like the HR department of the Chinese Communist Party

Starting point is 01:31:11 and they oversee the training you have to do every year. It's almost like reserve duty where they have to come in and get their party indoctrination. If they were smart, surveil every consulate, every known Chinese facility and see who's going in and out of there, those are the CCP members that are here in the United States working, living, studying, and some of them even working for the US government. So yeah, they have a massive installed base of influence and covert action already, and

Starting point is 01:31:43 that's mostly on the collection side. And because of the massive illegal flow of migration, there's a lot of Chinese males, military-age males, they're not all Chinese soldiers, they're not all Chinese spies. There's a lot of men, there's like 40 million males of marriage age in China with no prospects of marrying a female

Starting point is 01:32:03 because of sex selection abortion. when they had one child policy the parents would abort a female baby and Have a male so they have so these these dudes are in China with a economy not doing great with no prospects of a female They say hell I'm I'm going to America now if only 2% of those millions are bad I'm going to America. Now, if only 2% of those millions are bad, still really bad. So again, that is a serious CI problem that needs to be mopped up. On the cyber side, AT&T, phone goes out, right?

Starting point is 01:32:34 So can they? Knocked out 911 service. That's right. So can they, what does their cyber attack capabilities look like? Like if you were to paint a picture, what could it look like? Quite significant. And if they have, if there's Huawei switches and any of that Chinese telecom infrastructure in the United States, which is what Trump was right to ban and to push other allies to ban.

Starting point is 01:32:57 When the daughter was trying to come in from Canada and she was doing business with Iran and Huawei no longer could do business here. I remember that. Yep. Um, but before that, there was a lot of Huawei switches installed. And so who knows what, uh, what back doors that, uh, you know, Huawei was started by a X PLA Colonel, uh, from the intelligence business. So yeah, there's no, no, no shocker there. So, but, but, but paint paint a picture meaning, for example, do they have the capability of the week of the election to have 300,000 phones, you know, in make life challenging

Starting point is 01:33:38 in certain zip codes, certain areas that maybe are going to be politically voting on one side or the other to keep the left or Biden in, are they capable of being able to do something like that? They understand asymmetric warfare very, very well. So yeah, think of the permutations of nonsense that they can pull. They'll probably do it. Okay.

Starting point is 01:34:01 So let's just say they do do it. What they are doing now is sponsoring the fentanyl epidemic. China. Absolutely, unequivocally fact. The precursor drugs produced actually around Wuhan, oddly enough, the same place that COVID leaked from. And the stuff is shipped to Venezuela, Venezuela to Mexico, formulated into fentanyl.

Starting point is 01:34:25 And I mean, think about it, all these fentanyl deaths, like 109,000 Americans killed by fentanyl, and it's a normal drug dealer, doesn't wanna make a drug that kills its customers. Dead customers don't pay, they don't buy, right? That is absolutely pushed to a fatal level as a true disruptive destruction to American society. And they and they need to feel consequences for that.

Starting point is 01:34:52 The son of YouTube's former CEO Susan just died from fentanyl. YouTube's CEO, former she resigned a couple of weeks, a couple of years ago. Her son just passed away, tragic death from fentanyl. Yes, so I'm all right about it Okay, but I'm trying to go a little bit. Did you watch the movie leave America alone or leave America behind? The movie with Barack Obama that he was the have you seen that movie or no? No, no, I haven't seen that Why are you smiling? I Wouldn't say bro. I'm the world behind I wouldn't I smiling. I wouldn't say Barack Obama. Leave the world behind. I wouldn't, Barack Obama would not be on my top 10 filmmaker list. Well if there's anything that I would want you to watch as this one, not because it's a great

Starting point is 01:35:31 movie. When you watch it, you'll see, well I'm surprised you haven't seen it by the way. It is a very weird movie. Very. There's a scene in this movie where a massive ship, okay, is coming towards, we can't play this obviously for obvious reasons, but a massive ship is coming towards the beach and the daughter, this baby is sitting there saying that ship's getting closer and closer and closer and closer until eventually it just comes through. Planes start crashing, Teslas are all driving into each other. I mean, it's a pretty epic movie if you've not seen this. And he is the executive producer with Julia Roberts

Starting point is 01:36:11 and a couple other people. Then a movie is being launched right after that called Civil War. We were talking earlier off-camera. And my question is the following. If let's just say election day, I think it's November 5th, it's a Tuesday. If on that day, there is some gamification going on

Starting point is 01:36:36 where certain people don't have access to voting and others do, and the election goes in a certain way, how ugly do you think it would be in America gamification yes what do you mean game of fine meaning they can game of fine manipulate look a lot of countries have moved back to paper ballots and vote on that day let's do that simple you know we're gonna do that no chance of hacking we should you think we're gonna do that. I think state by state We should

Starting point is 01:37:08 Not sure that there should is a different. There's a lot of you know things we should be doing but as a country You know Again if in any possible way there's manipulation gone and there is There's manipulation gone and there is phones off, phones not working, certain things not happening. You know, places you go into want to vote, maybe it's not working. There's challenges with technology, with software in that area that is causing you

Starting point is 01:37:35 to wait in line for eight hours and families are sitting there saying, dude, I can't wait for eight hours. My kids are waiting out the house. I gotta put them down. If there's that level of frustration where a mom or dad is gonna say, I just can't wait anymore, I gotta go home. And that affects the election and there's that level of frustration where a mom or dad is gonna say I just can't wait anymore

Starting point is 01:37:45 I gotta go home and that affects the election and there's proof of that how ugly could he get in the states and if no If no clear candidate wins 270 electoral votes the founding fathers are so G are so brilliant they thought of They thought of everything so it goes to the House of Representatives and the house decides It happened before Brilliant. They thought of, they thought of everything. So it goes to the house of representatives and the house decides. It happened before. It was John Quincy Adams versus Andrew Jackson. Nobody won the Electoral College clearly. They went to the house.

Starting point is 01:38:24 John Quincy Adams won and then Andrew Jackson came back four years later and crushed him. So you're not worried about it. You're not worried about 2024. There's a lot of people that are. Of course I'm worried about it. There's a process and let's follow the Constitution. I mean, of course, I mean, people want to follow the Constitution. You say it in a way where you're assuming everybody will.

Starting point is 01:38:41 Do you think the concept of civil war is capable of happening in the States anytime soon or not on America? Not the way the founders created it? I've read a lot of American civil war history and the feel and the vibe in the country and, yeah, some of that feels like it would today. But here's the thing, a civil war would not necessarily be, it's really going to be rural versus urban. That's the difference. It's not a regional, it's not a north versus south. It's rural versus urban is where this divide is Which is a very different different equation. Tell me more Trump won in like in 2016 Trump won Like 3,100 counties Hillary Clinton won like 80 Yet the ones that she did win are big urban metro top 20 metropolitan cities

Starting point is 01:39:49 yes so if that becomes a civil war becomes a very unpopular place to be not because those are those places don't don't have enough food don't have enough water that becomes very very bad for for them. Are you a preparer? Not really. No? No. Live a simple life. You're not, you know, concerned about what could happen.

Starting point is 01:40:13 Yeah. I have a few guns. I have a few guns. I have a few friends. Just a few, is that what it is? There's a couple. You got like a, you know. And a great alumni association. A alumni association.

Starting point is 01:40:31 Who out of all our enemies do you fear the most? Like if you were to say our most formidable enemies, who would you say are the enemies that you fear the most? Look, the sad thing is, if the left had not done the lie of the Trump-Russia collusion bullshit, which is proven to be bullshit after $50 million of investigation, if they'd not done that, Trump could have made a deal with Putin on Ukraine and it would have pulled with Russia on Ukraine, et cetera, pulled Russia in from the cold and pulled them out of the orbit of China.

Starting point is 01:41:07 The US policy for 100 years, and even before we really got involved in Europe, the goal was to keep German industry away from Russian resources. But now we've pushed Russian resources into the hands of Chinese industry and really Russia is in a subjugated role. So I think the the medium and long-term security interests of the United States is to bury the hatchet with the Russians and pull them away from an Orbit of China because culturally we have a lot more in common with Russia than we do with China or Japan or Korea or India, fact.

Starting point is 01:41:54 So our major threat, the major threat to liberty in America is still the Chinese Communist Party. When you read the statements that she makes to the Standing Committee, there's a great article written in Foreign Affairs by Matt Pottinger, and he actually takes chunks of she's statements that don't normally get translated into English. And he says, prepare for great conflict, and it is basically the job, the mission of this Chinese Communist Party to remake the world in the image of this Chinese Communist Party to remake the world in the image of the Chinese Communist Party and to overthrow the Westphalian Order. Now, you've never heard of the Westphalian Order. I know you have, but it's basically the role of the modern nation state and

Starting point is 01:42:37 our role as citizens within that, and they want to remake it into the role of just like China. Hell no to that. And I think the next administration, and China has a, for like the last 19 centuries, it's been one of the biggest economies, if not the biggest in the world, but they have a habit of coming together under a strong dictator and then a century later, fragmenting apart. I think it's better for China to be a bit more diffuse and less controlled by Beijing and that is in all of our interests. Even especially the neighbors of China would especially agree with that because they don't want to be seenified. And by the way, their economy not as good as people think they're getting hammered right now

Starting point is 01:43:28 You know, it's correct. Look when they look what they did to Jack Ma right Jack Ma is like a combination of Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs like literally an amazing tech innovator and Just so Jack Ma started Alibaba, which is 10 times the volume that Amazon does. And all this, he made some comments critical of the government in the central bank and the CCP. And instantly he's disappeared from view, like literally one of the wealthiest guys in China. He disappears. And some months later, he's found lecturing to an elementary school and that in the media announced that he'd embraced supervision whoa

Starting point is 01:44:10 Okay, so that that's the message they've done to their tech sector. I can tell you that the Chinese money is fleeing China as much as humanly possible. They're going to Europe. They're going to Dubai Anywhere they can. There's a huge Chinese population in Australia that's gotten out there because they want to live free and not be under the boot of the CCP. Where's Jack Monowadis? He is in China under supervision about three, four years ago. no, not even, three years ago,

Starting point is 01:44:45 he made a trip to Spain to basically clear out bank accounts, to sign them over, and he was surrounded by 12 Ministry of State security agents, while his family is held hostage back in China. So they hold him by the balls. This all happened after a speech he gave. I don't know if you saw speech he gave him a little bit Critical it wasn't like overly critical. Yeah, that was it. He wasn't throwing down. No, he wasn't throwing down

Starting point is 01:45:10 Like this is it you can't talk like this You can't talk where are we united at in America like if you were to say the left right center everybody what what topics are we united on that you see or everybody, what topics are we united on that you see? Is there anything we're united on? A country is a country when its people have some commonly held beliefs. And if we can't even agree on what is male and female anymore, we have a problem, right? The Democrats' last candidate for the Supreme Court could not identify, could not define, supposedly some Harvard trained lawyer, couldn't define what a woman is. So that's a problem. The first, the last Civil War kicked off over states rights.

Starting point is 01:46:01 It was over trade and it was over, and people went to war over that. Maybe it's worth going to war over defining what a gender is, because I certainly know what a gender is, and there's some things I'll fight for. Yeah, that's the part, right? When you got kids, and your kids get into it you bring a man like a grandkids now. Well, yeah, congratulations. I'm far away from having

Starting point is 01:46:32 grandkids. My oldest is 12. I swear. If I become a grandfather soon, I'll be very upset at him. But I'm impressed slightly but more upset. But so I got kids and you know when these guys get into it and they fight and as a father you first let them do their thing And there's levels of fights right level one level two level three they got right six seven Maybe eight nine you kind of get involved look at we got to talk guys and you start off by saying hey What do you guys you know a green? This is your brother. You'll love him. You know, this is your this and you kind of go through it So so let's just say we're trying to figure out a way to put the people from the left and the right and the center in the same room.

Starting point is 01:47:10 Okay. And you're the mediator. They've hired you, Eric. That's your new job. Okay. To mediate these guys. Easy job, not a tough one. Hell has frozen over.

Starting point is 01:47:20 It's frozen over. And you show up, right, and you're trying to bring them together. What do you ask them? Like, what do you say? They say, hey guys, can we all agree that America is the greatest country in the world? No, it's not. Do you know what we've done?

Starting point is 01:47:33 Okay, let me try a different way. Do you guys love your family? I love my family, but I know he doesn't love his family. How do you start to get these guys to start out of common? I think the amplification of social media of idiots is, look, I think most, I think you're gonna see an awakening of what were traditional Democrats

Starting point is 01:47:56 that feel abandoned by that party and even black and Hispanic votes that are, you know, most black and Hispanic voters know what a male and a female is they know Muslims as well by the way you can put Muslims in that. Absolutely. They definitely know it exactly. Yeah and you You focus on basic economic Opportunity again a candidate that runs on

Starting point is 01:48:22 De-cartelizing industry wins. What did the US Army do? The mission of the US Army after World War II in Germany. Denazification, demilitarization, and decartelization. The difference, again, I'm drawing in that book from Tepper, seeing what John D. Rockefeller did, controlling most of the hydrocarbon industry

Starting point is 01:48:57 in all of America. And then when the Sherman anti-trust laws come along and they break up standard oil and it becomes all kinds of oil companies. And John Rockefeller made more money doing that because he had a bunch of businesses. But the Germans saw that and they did that to their industry. And so it made it very easy in the 20s as they became bigger and bigger cartels after World War II.

Starting point is 01:49:22 Very easy for the Nazi party to control German industry, much easier to control 30 companies than 30,000 entrepreneur led companies. We need America, we need hundreds of thousands of entrepreneur led businesses with a very sharp elbow competition instead of the Fortune 500. Here's the thing, even in the last like 20 years, there is half the amount of public listed companies than there used to be. Why? Over consolidation. And how is that allowed to happen? Because it's like a $220, for every dollar you spend in lobbying, they get $220 return.

Starting point is 01:50:05 It's like a 22,000% return, which is why we have too many damn lobbyists in Washington, D.C. and the five counties surrounding Washington, D.C. are the wealthiest per capita in the country. All of that is not a sign of a healthy society. So fix that. Yeah. Teddy Roosevelt, total badass, got shot while he was campaigning, finished his speech, then he went and got fixed. He led a very, very rough but effective antitrust effort. We need

Starting point is 01:50:39 that in America. A rising tide really does lift all boats and making it possible, whether you are super poor or your middle class or whatever, easier to start a, to start a business, to get access to capital, all the rest. And that's even the same argument on governance. One of my favorite authors is Fernando De Soto. And he wrote Invisible Capital and the Other Path. And he was a Peruvian economist. Sorry, he was a Peruvian, managed a big construction firm in Switzerland, made all kinds of money, went back to Peru,

Starting point is 01:51:19 and said, why is Peru so rough? Why is Switzerland so nice? And he built a consulting firm around installing the basic building blocks of capitalism, like title for your land, a bank account, a business license, a commercial remediation, a way to commercially adjudicate disputes, all the things we take for granted, right? If you want to form a business in America,

Starting point is 01:51:44 you can call 10 states and get it done for 200 bucks in half an hour. You can get a bank account. You can get, that stuff exists. But the more regulation, you know, this runaway regulatory state that now puts up like an average of 78,000 pages of rules which has the force of law which has never been voted on. When the regulatory state's allowed to do that, we truly have a constitutional crisis because we're supposed to have three branches of government,

Starting point is 01:52:18 executive legislative judiciary, but we have a fourth permanent state bureaucracy that is not elected, not accountable, yet can write rules with a force of law that must change I just ordered a book Mystery of capital yeah, that's what you were talking about So you know back in the 80s Peru had a terrible problem with the shining path the Cendero luminosa Which was a Marxist Maoist? Insurgency and when they enacted De Soto's reforms, land for the people that they owned, it was over. Because the farmer said, the Camposino said, this is my land, pal.

Starting point is 01:52:55 Get out. That's right. No more commies. So a couple more topics here before we wrap up. How much did you study? How much do you know about what happened with Iran? Do you know a lot about Iranian history or no? Okay, so what really happened with, you know, how the Hezbollah, Sahih Khomeini, how these guys came in with the Shah,

Starting point is 01:53:15 you know, the revolution that took place with the Shah, how much do you know what happened there? I know that I think it was Mossadek. Mossadek was before the Shah. Yes, but he was going to nationalize BP, their oil fields, and so there was somewhat of a sponsored coup which ousted him, put the Shah in place. The the Kamini definitely got help from the Soviets To stir up and to oust right because they hated that there was an American friend on their on the border of the Soviet Union and I think the US largely let the Shah hanging And didn't give him the help

Starting point is 01:54:03 Again, the CIA in the 70s was a very troubled, weakened, hamstrung organization between the church committee and Stansfield Turner just kind of threw out all the all the sharks and they were left with minnows. And what a what a strategic error to let it go. Destroyed an entire region. Now, a question for you. Let's just say hypothetically. And you know what, someone just told me that the Shaw converted to Christianity before he died. Did he really? I've heard that story. Yeah, this is his last book he wrote before he died, Answer to History. I just had a son on a couple months ago. We did a 3R podcast. Raisin Pallavi? Yeah, we had him on it.

Starting point is 01:54:44 Very, very, longest podcast he's done. We did a three-hour podcast. Raisa Pallavi? Yeah, we had him on a very, very longest podcast. He's done, we had one of the best conversations. Everybody around the world was talking about it in their Iranian community. But I got a question with this one. Say somebody was to call you, okay? And they said, hey, Eric, we would like to hire you as a consultant and we would like some ideas.

Starting point is 01:55:02 If we wanted to bring democracy back to Iran and whether it's a revolution or change the regime. How would you go about doing it, Eric? Of course I've thought about that. Do you think I'm gonna talk about it on camera? Give me three things. I mean, you know, it's just, first of all, we have a small podcast.

Starting point is 01:55:21 Probably 17 people will watch this. And the 17 people that watch it, they're all gonna be Iranian, just so you know that. But if, I know you can't, do you and your mind know? Like, do you, you're- I know exactly what I do. You know exactly what you would do. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:55:40 Who else knows? Ah, some of my friends. Okay, good. So what I'm saying is- So if I get clipped, the mission will Okay, good. So what I'm saying is in... So if I get clipped, the mission will continue. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm asking is like... No, look, think about it this way.

Starting point is 01:55:51 Reagan took office in 1981. And he sat in the Oval Office because we'd had a policy of containment for 35 years. And he said, enough. We're gonna fuck the commies. We're gonna go at them economically politically culturally socially in all ways We push back. I remember that speech fuck the commies. It was a no I go what you're saying I'm with you know, but I look behind closed watch my podcast Yeah off leash with Eric Prince and you can see Jack Wheeler put the link below by the way so the audience can find it

Starting point is 01:56:19 Jack Wheeler was the guy that went abroad and brought back all the ideas which became the Reagan doctrine from all the places to push back on the Soviets. And I mean, he's the closest thing to a real life Indiana Jones. Anyway, I digress. What they did, what the US working in concert with the Catholic Church and MI6 in Poland provided communications equipment to the shipyard workers, the right, the solidarity movement, students, farmers, the church, all sorts of communications, and that, you know, the means to communicate is essential.

Starting point is 01:57:01 There's a fantastic book called the Dictator's Handbook. Great book. You've read it. Fun, Fana, it's small. It's a fantastic book called the Dictator's Handbook. Great book. You've read it. It's small. It's a phenomenal book. Yeah, but it's a college study and how Dictators can empower. So identify who that selector it is. Who keeps the Supreme Leader in power? Okay. Obviously the sad thing is, I think the Arab Spring started in Iran in 2009 with the green movement, you know, lots of people in the streets, and the regime was so threatened that they had

Starting point is 01:57:35 to call in Lebanese Hezbollah to crack heads because they didn't trust the Iranian internal capability anymore. And crickets, nothing from the Obama administration. Not, we support Iranian freedom, we support your, nothing. Not, obviously no direct help or kinetic help, but not even the equivalent of a tweet or a statement. And then you have the women life freedom protest, where women are protesting protesting they want to show their hair or wear a skirt or drink a beer or listen to rock and roll or drive or whatever be normal and

Starting point is 01:58:13 be free and you'd think the women's rights groups from around the world would be supporting them but it's again crickets from them crickets from the left, empowering those movements with communications tools with we can make you can make the regime very, very vulnerable. Now, there's a lot of stuff before that that I'll tell you about after we're off camera. But yeah, yeah, it's it's I was talking to Pierce two weeks ago, and he asked me the question I said, you know Iran what you're here's Pierce Morgan, and I oh, yeah What he what Iran fears is not what you fear

Starting point is 01:58:52 Iran fears the youth they fear women They fear Students they fear sanctions they fear economy being bad. Those are some of the things that they fear. The question is, to go about doing that with Iran, you also need the right administration that's willing to go all the way through for that to happen. And that's a lot of work. And you do that, why would Russia or China, whatever your plan is?

Starting point is 01:59:33 Let's just say your plan is a strong plan effective one. Why would Russia or China allow you to win? Well the Iranian people all ultimately get a say there's what 85 million people Yeah, I mean look the Iran even has a demographic problem themselves the women have voted and close their wombs. I mean, they went from like five kids per woman to like point eight. Right. They have a severe contraction issue. Right. China has it because of force. They have the reverted pyramid, whatever they call it, inverted people where. Yeah, and the costs, where it's very, very expensive for them to try to start a family and job insecurity and all the rest.

Starting point is 02:00:11 I'm curious to know what your plan is. I'm very interested to see what your plan is. And you and I will talk off camera. Next question, McAfee, John McAfee. I don't know if you remember him. McAfee, anti-virus guy, right? So I sat down with him six years ago at his place, five years ago at his place. Very interesting guy, eccentric.

Starting point is 02:00:29 The entire interview, he had a gun on him. He was smoking cigarettes and he was having whiskey or something. While his guys in the back are holding M16, some guy knocks on the door. They run to the door with guns. The guy's freaking out. I'm just trying to drop off something. He said, he looks at me with my phone. He says, why do you have a regular phone? I would never have a regular phone. So what do you mean? So I would never have a regular phone. You know what kind of phone I got? Do you know who's

Starting point is 02:00:53 spying on your phone? I said, John, do you really believe about everybody? He said, you have too much trust. Okay. Now for you, you also, you know, talk about a certain phone. Yeah. Right. Tell us a little bit more about that phone. You also talk about a certain phone, right? Tell us a little bit more about that phone. Well, this is an unplugged phone. And this resulted from the nonsense after the 2020 elections. Big Tech was canceling certain apps

Starting point is 02:01:18 and shutting off certain voices. And I said to some of my much smarter friends, I said, we need our own phone that they cannot cancel, they cannot control. And so this is an unplugged phone, which as a result, it's our hardware. So it's unplugged on there. High-end camera. Same one that's on the iPhone 15. But the difference is this is our operating system with our own store VPN antivirus messenger.

Starting point is 02:01:47 But the difference is we don't have an advertising ID. Your phone is like a 25 digit, basically like a mark of the beast, which follows you everywhere. And it's they know where you go, what you buy, how you, where you go, who you call what you buy and what you browse. And they the handset, right, Apple, Google, take that data, export it to the tune of about $180 a year, and the apps that are on your phone also work with that ad ID to export, to the point of even turning on the microphone, turning on the camera, turning on GPS. I've had so many people I've talked to, they said, yeah, I was talking to my wife in our bedroom about the need for a mattress,

Starting point is 02:02:28 and the next day we're getting advertising for mattresses. So imagine that phone listening in their bedroom. So this phone prevents that because it doesn't have an operating system. We block that, and it's actually the first one With an actual firewall on it that you can hard off The Wi-Fi the camera the microphone who's a service through T-Mobile AT&T Verizon and we prefer Patriot mobile got it So so it's really the internet It's really on the it allows you to be in the world, but not of the world and not be collected and tracked got it

Starting point is 02:03:06 Very and it's called what unplugged unplugged unplugged on plug on plug.com. There you go. Yeah, we're looking at we delivered Yeah, we delivered 500 of them in November and I got 10,000 coming delivering soon So did you guys just started this? Well, geez we went from zero to a fully functioning phone with our own operating system in three years. That is so cool. Just, that's great. If you've ever heard of Pegasus?

Starting point is 02:03:33 Yes. The guy that developed Pegasus is our CTO. Got it. Okay, so he's a good CTO. But he developed it as a way to do remote phone service. And then he built a very secure phone used by governments and then he built a phone that controls most of the world's pacemakers. Now who's behind this phone by the way? Investor-wise?

Starting point is 02:03:51 Me. Just you. Well no, me and some others. And just a few others. Okay, you haven't done around, you haven't brought people in yet or anything? Ah, no, there's, I think we have ten. Okay, got it. Very interesting concept. But we are, it is intentionally not a Silicon Valley backed company. It will not be a public company ever and it is there to be an independent phone platform It's not even an American company

Starting point is 02:04:13 Where's the base out of cypress cypress? Okay, cool That's a very interesting project last but not least before we wrap up. I I saw an article. I wonder if this is true or not Did you guys train Project Veritas' spies on how to go and get intel from some of the people out there? Is that a somewhat of a true story? I didn't train anybody, but they did use our ranch at some point. They did.

Starting point is 02:04:40 Yeah. It's open area and they had, you know, they used a barn in a classroom. What a interesting model. Did you see him the other day dressed like a gay man going out there talking to and actually pulled it off? You got to give this guy credit on one. Obviously, he's no longer a project very tough. That's called OMG, you know, what's but yeah, I know there's no question about it. There's no question about it. Eric, your book. Oh, can you tell us a little bit about the book?

Starting point is 02:05:09 I brought this for you. Oh, okay, fantastic. This is the Civilian Warriors. It's the book I wrote about starting and running and getting crushed in black water, but it's a bit cathartic and it sets the record straight. Well, is the next one gonna be I'm back? Is that like the next one?

Starting point is 02:05:28 I'm back in the PMC side, okay. I'm gonna come back. It's gonna be interesting to see what you do with it. You know, I- Look, there's a lot of instability in the world and there's a lot of people suffering unnecessarily and it pains me that the US can't ever seem to finish. pains me that the US can't ever seem to finish.

Starting point is 02:05:50 And the private sector has the model about to do that. Cheaply, practically, ethically, and safely for the people, and not safely for the jihadis that deserve to die. You know, my interest is, here's one of my interests, this purely competition. That's my interest. Because if we have more. Yeah, if we have more PMCs if we in a in a perfect world for me at least as a Civilian if we had 20 30 40 PMCs

Starting point is 02:06:14 I feel safer and the reason why I feel safer is because the way AI is advancing I will feel very uncomfortable if it's a monopoly controlled by a government who can impose certain regulations against PMCs or if it's done by a guy who is a multi-billionaire and not just a billionaire guy that's worth half a billion dollars or trillion dollars who has his own PMC because remember a lot of people think PMCs are like such a you know my god PMC Ross Perot I think send the I don't know how many people get his 130 employees from EDS when they were working for the show in the 70s ex-villain 79 right and he brought him back in December

Starting point is 02:06:56 Yeah, and he left a few guys to finish the project and after Khomeini that he brought him back So Ross Perot did that. I mean, there's a lot of people that have done this to protect their guys nature hates a vacuum Yeah, private military contractors are it's kind of the world's second oldest profession As long as people have been picking up sticks and throwing them at each other yeah PMC's were the the engineers that built the Trebuchets or the this super accurate bowman if you're using a longbow or the this super accurate bowman if you're using a longbow or today it's it's the guys that are can fix the aircraft or provide a very high-end intelligence capabilities. I'd like to see more of them that's that's where I'm at I'd like

Starting point is 02:07:36 to see more of them so the government has to compete and get tighter better cheaper. And I can tell you unequivocally that big Washington and big government wants to crush it all they want to they want a big monopoly and our big monopoly military is not very effective at finishing and that's the problem and by the way don't get me wrong I don't I don't trust if there's only one PMC I don't know only one PMC a hundred of them I want as many PMCs and let the best one survive and then if we have 20 30 of them I think we're in a very good place the gazelle wakes up in the morning knowing that he has to outrun the lion to her be Eating the lion wakes up in the morning knows that he has to outrun the gazelle or he'll starve

Starting point is 02:08:16 That's right. So whether you're the lion or gazelle when you wake up in the morning, let's find out You better be running. Let's let's find out Eric. Appreciate you for coming out. Cheers. This was great Really enjoyed it been looking forward to this for a while. Take care everybody. Bye bye, bye bye.

PBD Podcast - Blackwater founder Erik Prince | PBD Podcast | Ep. 372

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