The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Chaos Agent (Gray Man) by Mark Greaney

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

The Chaos Agent (Gray Man) by Mark Greaney https://amzn.to/49cWR7B Artificial intelligence leads to shockingly real danger for the Gray Man in this latest entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series. A car accident in Japan. A drowning in Seoul. A home invasion in Boston. Someone is killing the world’s leading experts on robotics and artificial intelligence. Is it a tech company trying to eliminate the competition or is it something even more sinister? After all, artificial intelligence may be the deadliest battlefield gamechanger since the creation of gunpowder. The first nation to field weapons that can act at the speed of computer commands will rule the battlefield. It’s an irresistible lure for most, but not for the Gray Man. His quest for a quiet life has led him to Central America where he and his lover, Zoya Zakharova, have assumed new identities. With a list of enemies that includes billionaires, terrorists, and governments, they need to keep a low profile, but the world’s deadliest assassin can’t expect to hide out forever. Eventually, they’re tracked down and offered a job by an old acquaintance of Zoya’s. He needs their help extracting a Russian scientist who is on the kill list. They reject the offer, but just being seen with him is enough to put assassins on their trail. Now, they’re back on the run, but no matter which way they turn, it's clear that whoever's tracking them is always going to be one step ahead. Since flight’s no longer possible, fight is the only option left, and no one fights dirtier than the Gray Man. About the author Mark Greaney is the #1 NYT bestselling author of BURNER, the 12th GRAY MAN novel. The Netflix production of THE GRAY MAN, starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, was the #1 most popular movie on the streaming service in 2022. Mark has written or co-written seven Tom Clancy novels and is also the co-author of the 2019 military thriller, RED METAL, and the 2022 release, Armored. The Gray Man series also includes, SIERRA SIX, RELENTLESS, ONE MINUTE OUT, MISSION CRITICAL, AGENT IN PLACE, GUNMETAL GRAY, BACK BLAST, DEAD EYE, BALLISTIC, ON TARGET, and THE GRAY MAN.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. When the Bugs Bunny Iron Lady sings it That makes it official

Welcome to the show as always We certainly appreciate you guys being here We just did our numbers Four years into the show Where we changed the format four years ago We are up in audience numbers Over 1,405% Not 100% folks

Not 200% 1,405 And we're proud of it damn it And we're not going to quit talking about it because we're just proud of ourselves. We did something. Now I'm tired and need a nap, so I'll get to that after the show. We have an amazing multi-book author on the show as always. In the meantime, though, you must require five people in your downline. The show's like an MLM, but not really. You must, for the sure, your family, friends, and relatives, go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube christmas christmas one on the tiktokity all those crazy

places we're at on the internet he's a returning guest the ones we love the most the ones who return and return our calls after a while so there you go mark grainy's on the show with us today as returning talk to us about his amazing series the gray man series if you're not a fan of it we'll get a life and order up his book so you can. And guess what? He's got a new book out so you can jump right on the bandwagon. His new book is called The Chaos Agent, and it's out February 20th, 2024, here next week coming up.

And we're going to be talking to him about his amazing book and what he's been doing in the last year since we've talked to him. Mark Graney has a degree in international relations and political science. He has research for the Gray Man novels, including Agent in Place, Gun Metal Gray, Back Blast, Dead Eye, Ballistic, On Target, and The Gray Man. He traveled to more than 15 countries and trained along military and law enforcement in the use of firearms battlefield medicine and close range combative tactics he's also the author of the new york times bestsellers tom clancy support and defend tom clancy full force in effect tom clancy commander-in-chief and tom clancy true faith and allegiance with tom clancy he co-authored locked in threat vector and command authority welcome

to show mark how are you i'm doing good chris thanks for having me back thanks for coming back we really appreciate congratulations on the new hot book coming out give us your dot coms or any place on the internet you want people to find you sure my name mark grainy g-r-e-a-n-e-y books dot com is a good place for me and i'm on all the social media sites, pretty active on them. There you go. So Mark, give us a 30,000 overview of the new book. This is the 13th Gray Man book. As you said, I hasten to add that everybody is, you know, every single book is a standalone.

You don't have to read them in any order. And this one has my hero. His name is, they call him the Gray man, but his name is Cord Gentry. He's a former CIA paramilitary officer. And the book opens with him trying to live a quiet life in Central America. He's being hunted down. So he's trying to lay low, but pretty quickly he's targeted by this unseen enemy. And he threw a little cat and mouse work realizes that this it's the same enemy who is

targeting and assassinating the leaders in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence all around the world so it's a big globe trotting spy novel where he has to go and find out what's going on and stop a revolutionary new autonomous weapon from coming online that will completely change warfare this sounds like one of those things from godfather 3 they're trying to if i get out and they pull me back in maybe yeah that that's always the thing he doesn't want to be doing this but he kind of gets roped into things there you go there you go you're just trying to live your life and have a few margaritas on the beach and damn it they just will not leave you alone but because you got to save the world so tell us a little bit about your main character your

protagonist what is he like and who is this gray man gentleman court gentry he started working for the cia when he was 18 years old he was in prison for some murders but murders that were done for honorable reasons. The CIA had identified him as somebody with a particular set of skills. So they brought him into a training, a two-year-long training program, and then put him out in the field as a singleton asset, a guy who works alone with little, you know, with no net under him and little supervision above him. And after a few years, he was pulled into a special activities division paramilitary team. And then one day everything went wrong and the CIA targeted him and he had no idea why. And he became a private contractor, basically a killer for hire, but he

only took jobs that he felt were like morally, you know, right for him to do. And so the, you know, 13 books in, we've gone back and forth with his relationship with the CIA. There is kind of a decent relationship with certain members of the CIA now, and that comes into play in this book. There you go. It sounds like what I do on Fridays. No, I don't do murder for hire on Fridays, people. Don't tell the FBI yet. I'm sure they're probably watching anyway. So give us a little bit of background on you. Let's talk about you and how did you get into writing? What were some of your upbringing and influences that you had? The background on me is not as interesting as what I just told you about my character. It's going to be. But no, I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, where I still live. My dad was the head of the local NBC affiliate. So I just grew

up around the news. I had a love for international relations and the news. So when I was in my early 20 or late teens, I picked up my first thriller of my entire life, which was a Tom Clancy novel, Patriot Games. And I just fell in love with the genre. And when I was 22, I decided I wanted to try and write a book. And I finished that book when I was 37 and then immediately wrote something else and wrote something else and wrote something else. Rejected by editors or by agents. And it was my fourth novel was The Gray Man, which was the first novel that was published in 2009. And since then, Chaos Agent is my 24th novel. There you go.

Congratulations. Did you keep all those rejection letters so you can write them every now and then and say, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. You know, it's like I know some of the people now who rejected me. And it's one of those things. It's like I have other friends who are authors that are really hold a grudge about stuff like that. There is a lot of reasons not to publish those earlier books. I think all those people made the right decision, frankly.

They just needed more time. But, you know, they could have, like, invested you so you could have developed more. those earlier books okay well i think all those people made the right decision frankly they just needed more time but you know they could have like invested you so you could have developed more but i don't know yeah yeah there you go it's it's it's always fun to keep those rejection letters i have different rejection letters for my businesses from you know applying to things and so it's kind of fun to keep them and you're just like yeah wrong. Yeah. But this is good motivation to push you to that next level. So what's it like? You said your first big novel that you picked up that you fell in love with is a Tom Clancy novel. What's it like going from that to working with and writing with Tom Clancy?

It was incredibly surreal for me. I didn't see it coming. I got published in 2009. And so the very beginning of 2011, like January of 2011, I get a call from my agent and he's like, are you sitting down? I'm like, yeah. And he's like, they're, they're wondering if you'd be interested in working with Tom Clancy. And I remember thinking like, that was so far above my head. I was like, can I work with like the next guy up on the ladder, you know, one rung above me and not all the way at the top of the ladder because he was a legend.

And my dad and I would give each other the Clancy books every year for Christmas. And it was a big part of my life for 20 years at that point. So I had more than 20 years. So, yeah. So they sent me to Baltimore. I got to meet him and we had a really nice relationship. And then the next thing I knew, I was working with him. For the first book, I wasn't allowed to tell anybody. I had a really nice relationship and then next thing i knew we i was i was working with him for the first book i wasn't allowed to tell anybody i had to do all this research i had

to go to the pentagon and do all these things but i couldn't tell anybody i was working on a tom clancy book because they didn't they didn't know how if it was going to work out so it was very frustrating because i was like boy i know all these doors would open so much quicker if i could say i'm here writing the next jack ryan novel oh, yeah. You're just like, I'm some new writer. You could have been hit me with the head of the CIA if you just said. Yeah, for sure. Me hanging out with the president and stuff and doing whatever, golfing or whatever. So you go through that.

I mean, it must have been kind of scary and intimidating a little bit. I mean, you're working with your hero at this point. Oh, it was completely intimidating. It was so intimidating when they first offered it to me. I remember thinking to myself, how do I get out of this without making people mad at me, which is just a horrible way to think. I look back on that, and I want to kick myself. How little ambition did you have that this was offered up to you, and you're like, oh my God, I need to run for the hills.

But I got over that pretty quickly. And then honestly, Tom died right after we finished the third book and the family asked me to continue the series. And at that point, if they'd asked anybody else, I would have been very upset because I felt like I was the right guy for the job. But at first it was like, whoa, this is way too big for me. Yeah. And so you took on the job. But at first it was like, whoa, this is way too big for me. Yeah. And so you took on the mantle and what an honor to be asked by the family to carry on his legacy. And there you go. And so for a while there, you were kind of switching between the gray man series,

developing that and publishing those things. And some of the Tom Clancy books, is that correct? Yeah. I went back and forth and back and forth. I've done almost two books a year. I have a couple other series that I've started. The second book and one of them's coming out later this year. And so I've written quite a few books. I was a ghostwriter too. So I wrote two books as a ghostwriter where my name's not even on the book. So yeah, I've kept a pretty intense, steady pace. It took me 20 years to get published. So I guess I'm just trying to make up for lost time at this point. Make up for lost time? Prove all those people wrong.

Yeah. So tell us, what's the basis? How did you come up with the inspiration to write this new variation or continue it in the series? When you're a thriller author and you write geopolitical stuff, there's only so many villains you can come up with. There's China and Russia and North Korea and Iran. And then do you recycle them or do you do something different? So I'm always looking for something different. And, you know, I was very interested in people like Elon Musk and, you know, these people at the forefront of artificial intelligence who have, you know, their companies have more money than a lot of, you know, successful nations in the world. And, you know, I thought it would be interesting to think about, to learn, to do research on

artificial intelligence in the civilian world, because it's all sort of fueled by ego and ambition and greed. And, you know, Michael Crichton had a line in Jurassic Park talking about genetics, where he's like, everybody was asking themselves whether they could do something. They never asked themselves whether they should do something. And so now, you know, artificial intelligence tied with weapons and robotics, lethal autonomous weapons. You know, it's a weapon that can, you know, decide to engage, engage and, you know, kill with no human interaction.

You know, that makes for an easy thriller. So I got that idea. And then I just did a ton of research last year as I wrote the book and learned what I needed to tell a story. There you go. We've had a lot of people on. We've talked about AI and whether AI should be tied to weapon systems. Because, you know, I mean, we had a lengthy discussion what the, you know, president's got to do with the suitcase, the football to launch nuclear weapons. Someone has to manually press a button.

As it is now. Yeah. Yeah. As is now. But if you tie something to it, it can press a button of its own free will and is its own species like AI basically is yeah that's a it's a whole new level of whether or not they should even be able to find a way to figure out how to map through a system of chips that are air-based and press a button yeah they're they're definitely working on it and you know the united states has said that there will always be human and machine teams and there will be always be a human on the loop but that

that really doesn't matter what they say right now because the moment china is fighting war at machine speed um and and not having to worry about humans on the loop then we're gonna you know we're gonna be at a disadvantage a serious disadvantage and very very quickly there's a thing called the neuromuscular delay which is human it takes humans an instant to decide on something whereas you know these weapons systems can make thousands of calculations a second. Yeah. And an AI system isn't going to be like, I'm going to lose my wife and kids if we launch this missile. Yeah. In fact, I might survive as opposed to these silly little humans, whatever.

And yeah, it's an interesting thing. And even if we try to morally take the high road as Americans and be like, hey, we need to make some smart decisions. You know, evil countries, the excess of evil. I feel like George Bush W. You know, they don't have any scruples. I don't think some of these guys care about their power and their lives, but I don't think the value of the life of the people they oversee that they regard is of any value. Yeah, clearly not. We see what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and they're just feeding a body machine over there.

But yeah, I mean, if it's a race to do AI and do it right, and if they are attaching AI to their weapon systems, who knows? Yeah, ethics will go out the window at that point where we have to fight for our survival. Yeah, and it's just going to be crazy. So do you want to tease out any sort of AI? Was there anything when you studied this and did your research, was there there anything kind of surprised you about AI that you can talk about that you're kind of like oh this this is my good data for the book I know we can't ever talk about the middle and the end of the book but yeah these out yeah it was all very very fascinating and and scary frankly this book scared me and you know let's let's look at the example of fighter pilots um this best american

air force fighter f-16 pilot went up in a simulator against the most advanced artificial intelligence that could fly planes and do air-to-air combat and the human never got a shot off lost 15 to 0 the zero yeah the simulated ai aircraft was taking things called front quarter shots, which is a head-on shot, which a human doesn't even try. And they were so aggressive. The pilot, and this has happened more than once, the pilots say that it's complete 100% aggression all the time, and there's no time for the human to think or react. So that's kind of scary. Artificial intelligence models have also created novel toxins for chemical weapons, things that humans haven't discovered yet and have come up with this synthesized stuff.

And they're large language models. They're not actually operational. They're not actually making these things. But in the book, I talk about how these really sophisticated large language models, they're not actually operational. They're not actually making these things. But in the book, I talk about how these really sophisticated large language models, if you hook it up with an offshore bank account and you set it on a mission, it can socially engineer people. It can get people to do its bidding. It can pay people. It can threaten people. It can have people kill people. And so where this is going, I don't really know but you know there's a lot to think about when you read the book holy crap that is scary you know we've had

some top air force pilots who fought in iraq and have written books on the show and you know reading their books you know there's there's a certain element of being in a dog fight and stuff and being in mill and you know the military and a military conflict, I suppose, of any nature, that there comes a point where self-preservation is going to be a timing effect, right? Sure, sure. Where, you know, you're talking about, you know, it's aggression all the time, but the AI is not sitting around going, I might not see my wife and kids. Yeah, you know, it's whole sub-st substack if you will i guess i don't know if

that's the right word is is is is a paradigm on winning and it not self-preservation in any way shape or form it doesn't care at all and so that's really interesting yeah they're complete they're completely remorseless and you know they're they're people think you know is is the artificial intelligence going to be like a human? The human brain is still the most powerful processor on Earth. But artificial intelligence, you know, built the right way there. It's able to train itself. So it's able to train itself on things that we don't even think to teach it.

So, you know, this is something that even even the people in charge of the different AI companies are have have said that they're a little bit afraid of what what they have behind. The gatekeepers are afraid of what's behind the gate is what a total terminator aggression. You know, like even in some of the books, they have to talk about making decisions of whether to bail out or not. You're watching gas. I'm flying a $2 billion machine. If I'm sloppy and wrecked this in the ground, I'm probably going to bill for it. I don't know. You think about so many different things. And the timing effect, even though, like a lot of these guys

that are Air Force dudes, they have to think in like, they have to process a lot of data in milliseconds and make decisions in milliseconds that are life and death for them. And maybe troops they're defending on the ground. And it just boggles the mind to think about it. Yeah, they call it task saturation where you just have so much to do. And artificial intelligence doesn't have to worry about it. Another thing it doesn't have to worry about are G-forces.

The way that a human being does i've been in a fighter plane and i've done six and a half g's and which isn't even a ton of g's but it was plenty for me yeah there's a lot more than i'd ever had before oh yeah and you know these they can go right up to the limits of the of the aircraft itself and they don't there's not this you know bag of blood and bones inside the plane that it has to keep alive that is crazy i didn't think about that too because there's not this bag of blood and bones inside the plane that it has to keep alive. That is crazy. I didn't think about that, too, because there's a whole process they have to go with their breathing and different techniques they use not to pass out and to move their blood flow around. And, yeah, I mean, that AI can calculate down to, I don't know, the ultra limits of the mathematical microsecond of micro G-force and turn that plane around and be right up your butt with bullets.

There you go. Was there any challenges you ran into writing this book? You know, I didn't want to make it too techie. It's like real important that people understand this is not science fiction. Everything that I put in the book was either existing or emerging technology. I might have utilized it in ways that it isn't being used in the world. But, you know, it's you can go on Google, any any of the robots that you see in the book. And there's a lot of it's a book about human beings.

But but there are this the novel thing is there are these killer robots. Every single thing that is in the book, you can find some version of online videos of robot dogs with 6.5 Creedmoor rifles on their backs or big hexacopter drones that drop robot dogs with rifles on their backs as a payload. And very, very, very agile bipedal robots that, you know, look remarkably and act remarkably like humans. And it's all, it's all existing or newly emerging technology. That is crazy, man. And so you're going to get the latest technology folks, pick up the book and find out, hopefully we survive. And I imagine the, our protagonists are, our gray man character is going to be the guy who saves the world with humanity. Damn it. Not AI or maybe he's going to try. He's going to be the guy who saves the world with humanity damn it not ai or maybe he's gonna try he's gonna try there you go you gotta read the book to find out if he makes

it or not find out if he survives as a species there you go so how do you see the gray man evolving over time with each book how to keep the stories fresh and engaging you know that's the toughest part at this stage of the game is to not go back over ground that you've already covered. And, you know, the psychology of the character is really interesting for me because I've created this guy who's an assassin, but he has a moral compass. He's very, very paranoid for lots and lots of good reasons, but he's in the series. And I try to sort of explore all of them. So the psychology of the character is probably the most interesting thing for me. I want to make, make his actions true to the person that I've built up all over all these years. So that makes it a lot of fun, but the, you know, as far as how do you, you know, come up with something fresh, it's,

I have to go out and get new information because I've used up all of my cool ideas long ago. Now it's all about finding the next new thing. So that's why I fly in planes or scuba dive or travel to West Africa like I did a couple months ago. You just go out there and do what you need to do to get new information in your brain so you're not writing the same book every year. Yeah. it sounds like you're staying up on the technology basis that the military is also pursuing. You know, it's interesting to me to watch. I was watching a video just earlier on TikTok of, you know, how basically Ukraine is, I don't know if we can say they're winning the war at this point,

but, you know, they're basically, one of the things they've used is these little drones you see these drones just dropping a hand grenade basically into a tank yeah and the way the russian tanks are made with the with the with the military armor or the ammunition being at the bottom of the tank and giving that what do they call it the pop thing effect is just extraordinary to watch and they just fly you And they just fly up to these Russians that are in a foxhole or whatever, digging or hiding into the ground. And they just drop a grenade in there. Yeah, Russians have surrendered to drones before, and the drones lead them back to Ukrainian lines. So the drones, they're about $400.

Most of them come out of China, I think. And in the military, they call it a trittable in other words you can you can bear to lose a bunch of them and you know a lot of them get shot down a lot of them you know are not successful a lot of them you know go out and never come back but they're cheap enough and they're funniful enough that that it's okay you know you can you can send 2 000 out and do a lot of damage and if 500 come back you'll send 2 000 out tomorrow and you can't do that with fighter planes or human beings hopefully the russians do but the rest of us don't yeah i mean you you look at how these are multi-million dollar tanks by russia they're not easily replaceable

and you see how that chance how that's got to change the face of war yeah in in the future and stuff i know there's a drone on the cover of the new book that's why i brought it up is there any application that or anything oh yeah there's a lot there's there's reconnaissance drones and then there's you know operational you know military drones in there and they're all based on real things out there. The interesting thing about drones is it is possible to hack them or to jam their signal. So there's a lot of advances in putting all the artificial intelligence on the drone. So you can't, there's no signal to it. If it's going out and it's looking for a target on its own with no human input,

and it's discriminating against targets, and then it's going out and it's looking for a target on its own with no human input and it's discriminating against targets and then it's identifying a target and then it's killing the target that can all be done on board in in the brain of these little drones and that's that's where things are going it's crazy in fact i guess ukraine was one of the first to develop them ironically these drone jammer guns i'm sure you've seen them yeah these giant looking things and yeah evidently they can you know someone's coming at you with a drone but yeah changing the face of warfare and how it goes is there any favorite scene or chapter in chaos agent without giving too much away you can tease out maybe yeah it's it's hard to to go too deep in this without giving

too much away but it's uh the scene where the hero and his girlfriend Zoya realize what they're up against. They don't know that they're up against robots and they're up against artificial intelligence. Sort of that scene, and it takes place in Mexico on the coast in Quintana Roo in Tulum. And they're at a house

and there's this moment where they're battling humans and then suddenly something else moves into their viewpoint. And so that was an interesting thing to write. And then they immediately have to sort of retool their fighting style to figure out how to remain invisible and battle this thing, which they realize is tougher than any human they're coming up against. There you go. You'll have to order the book, folks, to find out what happens next. Anything new on the horizon?

Are you working on the 14th book in the series, or what's up for you? I will work on the 14th book this year, and it will be out this time next year. But right now, I'm doing some final edits on a book that's coming out June 25th. It's the second novel in my Josh Duffy series. The first one was called Armored and it came out a couple of years ago. So this one's called Sentinel. It comes out in June and it's being developed for TV. Hopefully something will come out of that. And yeah, that's my next book. And then as soon as I'm done promoting this book and finishing my edits on that

one, I'll go into Gray Man 14. There you go. People can preorder sentinel june 24 or 25th 2024 yeah yeah i've got my 24s and fifths mixed up there dyslexic probably i don't know but yeah that you can pre-order both books since the other ones attendees out so there you go mark please come back for that one we'd love to have you back oh please come back for all of them where you're always welcome and give us your dot coms and final plugs wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Yeah, it's markgraneybooks.com or author Mark Graney on Facebook. Or I think it's markgraneybooks on Instagram. And it's markgraneybook without the S on Twitter.

I think that's all of them. There you go. Thanks for coming on, Mark. We really appreciate it. Great to see you again, Chris. There you go. Great to see you again, Chris. There you go. Great to see you again as well. Order up the book, folks.

Wherever fine books are sold out February 20th, a week from now, 2024, The Chaos Agent, book 13 of 13, the Gray Man series. Just go on there and order them all. Put them all on your credit card and give them away to friends, neighbors, relatives, and you can share in the reading and all that good stuff. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4ChessChristmas, LinkedIn.com, 4ChessChristmas,

Christmas1 on the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.