The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Tom Clancy Shadow State (A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel) by M.P. Woodward

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Tom Clancy Shadow State (A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel) by M.P. Woodward https://amzn.to/3SQmW66 Surviving a helicopter crash in the Vietnamese Highlands is only the start of the challenges facing Jack Ryan, Jr., in the latest propulsive thriller of this #1 New York Times bestselling series. The vibrant economy of the new Vietnam is a shiny lure for Western capital. Companies are racing to uncover ideal opportunities. Not wanting to be left behind, Hendley Associates has sent their best analyst, Jack Ryan, Jr., to mine for investment gold. And he may have found some in a rare earth mining company—GeoTech. But a trip with a Hendley colleague to the Highlands to observe the company’s operations takes a treacherous turn when their helicopter is shot down. Some things haven’t changed, and Vietnam is still the plaything of powerful neighbors. The Chinese are determined to keep Jack from finding the truth about what exactly is being processed at the isolated factory. Now Jack is in a race for his life. He’s got to stay one step ahead of a pack of killers while supporting his wounded friend. He’ll get no help from the government, because in the jungle, it’s the shadow state that rules.About the author M.P. Woodward is a veteran of both US intelligence ops and the entertainment industry. As a naval intelligence officer with the US Indo-Pacific Command, he scripted scenario moves and countermoves for US war game exercises in the Middle East. In multiple deployments to the Persian Gulf and Far East, he worked alongside US Special Forces, CIA, and NSA. He later transitioned to the private sector as an executive in the media streaming industry. Most recently, Woodward ran international partner distribution for Amazon Prime / Prime Video.

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Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, LinkedIn.com, 4chesschrisvoss. Chris Voss won the TikTok and all those crazy places on the internet. As always, we have the Tom Clancy authors on the show. We've had everybody on the show, I think, from the Tom Clancy series is written for it, except for Tom Clancy

himself. I don't know why. We keep trying to book him on the show, but he never returns their emails, but there must be a reason why. But instead we have returning guest MP Woodward, who's been on before for the latest installment in the Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan jr. Series. And the book is called Tom Clancy shadow state,

a Jack Ryan jr novel out august 20th 2024 there you go so new book is out in fact i think we just had him on the show three or four months ago or so to talk about his other offerings and of course the the tom clancy book i think i forget there's just so many of them. I just can't keep up. M.P. Woodward is a veteran of both the U.S. intelligence ops and the entertainment industry. He was a naval intelligence officer with the U.S. Pacific Command. He scripted scenario moves and counter moves for the U.S. war game exercises in the Middle East. In multiple deployments to the Persian Gulf and Far East, he worked alongside U.S. Special Forces, CIA, and NSA. After leaving the Navy, he ran international

distributing marketing for Amazon Prime Video. There you go. And you can blame him for those commercials they're adding now. No, probably, he probably left before that. Anyway, he's a full-time writer based in Washington State. How are you, Mr. Woodward? Great, and yeah, those ads weren't my idea. Don't blame him. That was after he left. So there you go. Yeah, I love the idea.

What ads on, you know, I remember when they first came out with wire cutting. It's, hey, you don't have to have cable anymore in those stupid ads. And you're like, sign me up. And now they're like, hey, have some ads, eh? Yeah. Yes. You got to pay extra not to have as many ads. So anyway.

So Mr. Woodward, give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? I am at mpwoodward.com and mp underscore Woodward on Facebook. There you go. And I think we had you on for dead drop your your other book series i drop which is right right here or that one just actually comes out august 20th as well in paperback yeah oh there you go there you go you're doing the double standard double you're doing you know what since we're on video i will will hold up. There you go. There you go.

August 20th. Paperback, hardback. There you go. So pick up his other works as well. Now, give us a 30,000 overview. What's in the new Tom Clancy Shadow State book? In the Tom Clancy universe, as you mentioned, there are really two strains. There's the Tom Clancy Senior Books, which is about Jack Ryan, who is the president of the United States. And then there are the Jack Ryan Junior Books.

And Junior is part of an organization called The Campus that's run by John Clark. And The Campus does the stuff that we want to be deniable and off the books and can't be funded. And it's really self-funded by a private equity company called Henley Associates. And so there's white side operations, that would be the private equity business, and black side operations. And when this book opens, Henley Associates is busy buying a rare earth mining company in Vietnam. And Jack is really leading the investment. However, once he's there, he more or less stumbles upon a Chinese industrial espionage effort where they're trying to embed themselves in this mining concern. And that will have deep national security implications for the country and especially for his father. Ah, there you go.

Much ado and more about everything. What was it like writing for this series this time? It was, I think there have been about 20 books put out under the Clancy name, and over the last 10 years is really where this split happened between the senior and the junior books. So first off, I know the other authors fairly well. Don Bentley, who I think you had on the show before I was doing the junior series before me. He went off to do the Vince Flynn, Mitch Rapp Legacy series. And that created this opportunity. But I met with Don

several times and we have the same editor at the Penguin Random House and these books are under the Putnam imprint. And so we talked about where Jack Jr. and his character should go. And I also meet with Andrews and Wilson, the two guys that write the senior books. And so these books come out in sort of a TikTok fashion where it's senior, then junior, then senior, then junior. And we collaborate to the extent that we make sure that the universe always makes sense, right? Yeah. So that's kind of the nuts and bolts of it. There you go.

We just had on Brian and Jeffrey in May. And then we had Don on in June. And then in June, we had Andrews and Wilson for theirs. And then, yeah, we just have – it's crazy. It's crazy. Brian and Jeff, that's Andrews and Wilson. Same guys. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So they – yeah, there's – it's great that's andrews and wilson same guys yeah yeah yeah yeah so they yeah there's it's great that you guys sit down and powwow and make sure we you know all boats sail in the same direction there i think it's super important for for fans of the series and for readers that that there's continuity in that in that universe that you know a character doesn't say oh i don't know how to do that when it's like yeah, yeah, you do, three books ago. That's exactly what you did, right? So I think we all take that job very seriously, as we should. There you go.

So tell us a little bit about how you grew up and how you started writing for yourself. When did you know you were a writer, all that sort of stuff? I was inspired at a young age. I loved fiction as a young age, and I don't know why my brain chemistry beats me, but I really liked historical fiction. And I liked U.S. history and military history. And, you know, read a lot of that kind of stuff.

That got me very interested in writing and in the Navy in particular. And so as a young naval officer, I enjoyed, I don't know that I enjoyed, I attempted to write a couple of books a couple of different ways. Didn't always work out because I didn't know what I was doing yet. And then got swept into industry and got really, really busy. And then COVID came around and I had more time on my hands and I returned to it, being a little smarter after spending some time with Prime Video about how stories are told and then just had matured enough, I think, to be able to do it. Oh, there you go. There you go. When did you start writing your

series? I think, is The Handler what you're known for, that series? Yeah, I wrote the Handler in 2020, late 2020, and it launched in 22. And then Dead Drop came out last year, 23. And I'm working on more of those at the same time that I'm doing the Clancy books. There you go. I know we had you on in May 9th, 2022 for the Handler. And then I think we missed a book in between. We had you on. No, no, I was The Handler. Mm-hmm. And then I think we missed a book in between. We had you on. No, no, I was there.

Yeah, I was here for Dead Drop. Yeah, you were here for Dead Drop. I think The Handler has got a couple different covers, huh? Yes, it does. Very astute. They changed the cover from the hardback to the paperback. There you go. That's why it looks different to me than than

what i had because i was like maybe i missed one because some some of you guys you every three months you guys are pumping so there you go what did you find most interesting about writing for this version was there any sort of changes or maybe updates or add-ins that you you did that let's twist it a little bit and see if we can change the formula a bit. Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to, so Jack Ryan Jr. is this guy, son of the President of the United States, successful in his own right in this private equity business, but also works with the campus on dark operative kind of missions. And he's been trained by John Clark and Ding Chavez, et cetera. But because the earlier books he was younger, he was maybe a little cockier and a little more impetuous

and occasionally displayed judgment that was a little bit on the ready, fire, aim side of things. And one of the things I wanted to do was to challenge him with having to balance multiple responsibilities and make bigger decisions where there are larger things at play. And his boss, John Clark, had been pushing him to do just that. So we get some of that in this story. I also wanted to create a

legacy for John Clark, who, you know, let's face it, he was in the Vietnam War, so he's getting to be pretty old. And I had him bring in a new recruit, who is a SEAL Master Chief, who got a raw deal as he was leaving the service. And I wanted to show Clark interconnecting to a veteran SEAL like himself and bringing someone in to help run the team going forward. There you go. There you go. What do you think, if the series is so enduring with people, why do you think they really love it so much? I think anytime you create a genre, which is what Tom Clancy really did back in the late 80s, early 90s, there hadn't been techno thrillers before that. I guess the closest thing I can think of is you might have some stuff that's really, really kind of far-fetched or fantastic, like a Clive Kessler kind of book. Or you might have something that's really science-based,

say Michael Crichton. But Clancy did, he kept the technology authentic, and he also pulled back the currents, or the curtains rather, on the national security establishment to say, look, this is how, this is not only the technology that these folks use, but these are the ways that they make decisions or the way that they interact or consider things. And those technical aspects were all very correct. And I think that gave him worldwide fame. It created an audience that was hungry for more of that. There became many, many imitators, but because Jack Ryan himself as a character was also finally drawn as a good, honorable person that I think people just want to return again and again to these stories. And anything new technology-wise or military-wise that maybe you brought into the book from your experience of being in the military and some of the operations you were involved in?

Yeah, without doing any spoilers, but one of the big technologies in the book up front, as I mentioned, it involves rare earth minerals, and rare earth minerals are then further refined into magnets. Magnets are critical to generate an electric field, so in electric cars and other things. And in the book, there is a technical breakthrough that, along with some other physical conversions, helps to cancel out radar radio waves. Sort of the same way sound deadening works to counteract a sound wave to equal it out. This is fictitious, but I have technology developed that effectively can turn other existing aircraft into stealth aircraft at a much leaner investment than, say, buying a new B-21 Raider bomber. And so that's what, that's, and you know, again, I don't want to give away any spoilers, but that's some of the technology that's involved up front and where the Chinese have targeted their industrial intelligence apparatus.

Ah, there you go. I think you alluded a little bit to my next question. You guys often touch on geopolitical issues. How do you decide which current events to incorporate into the story? Or do you? Yeah, I very much do, because I think that's part of the Tom Clancy brand. They say there are those books that are ripped from the headlines,

and then there are those books that predict the headlines. And I think readers want Clancy Books to be closer to the latter. It's no great secret of the great power competition going on with China. And where I came from in tech, both at a Taiwanese company as well as in just broader tech, I saw a great deal of reliance on China in terms of the supply chain, as well as specific materials. And given the fact that right now, most big, heavy tech supply chains are looking for ways to decouple, that means decouple from China, that means they're looking for other places to go, where labor is relatively inexpensive, where there's plentiful minerals, materials, etc.

And Vietnam is one of those obvious choices. So I thought it would be interesting to both play on the industrial espionage aspect of China, but also bring Vietnam in as a country with which the U.S. has a very complex history. Yeah, it's kind of interesting how things really change there. We do a lot of manufacturing and stuff there and supply exchange stuff there. You think back, you know, I grew up, probably you, you know, we remember Vietnam and that whole kerfuffle and didn't make anybody really happy, let's put it that way. I mean, you know, think of our two of our largest trading partners are Japan and Germany, right? So it's not unprecedented that countries with, you know, that we've gone to war with, that we turn around and can build a productive relationship in the future.

Yeah. I mean, we did that with Japan, technically, after World War II. We actually went in and rebuilt them, which is kind of interesting how we did this. I think we kind of did or tried to do that with Iraq, and then eventually they're like, get out of our country. We're like, thanks, eh? So there you go. Lots of interesting things happening in the world. I mean, the Ukraine stuff is really interesting.

What are your thoughts on the Ukraine thing? I think it's brilliant what they've done by opening up. Basically, you know, Putin left the front door open to his country, figuring, I guess if we have them on their heels, they won't attack us, and we'll focus on all of our conscripts and resources to the front line. And then the Ukrainians are like, sure, we'll just evade you too. I think it's quite brilliant.

What do you think? Yeah, I think that it's a strategic calculation on Ukraine's part because here they're pushing into the Kursk region, which makes Putin look really, really bad. It's a political liability to him, which I think that is the strategic calculation. Because from a military perspective, the challenge they're going to have is that the further they push in, the easier it is to cut them off. And what looked like a very swift victory becomes an unsustainable one but you know they know that too so hopefully they've got good plans to to maintain their gains and and cause that cause some pain for the russians

yeah evidently the soldiers in the military that the russians sending to them the ukraines are seeing it coming it's extraordinary to see the drone war like i'm just enthralled with watching the drones in ukraine you know, kill Russians, just these little fricking drones dropping grenades and equipment. And I think the interesting thing about that is that on the one hand it's low tech, on the other hand, it's high tech. And what I mean is on the low tech side, these, these are electrical components that, you know, they're, they're they're buying wherever, right, and putting together and saying, let's go get them. On the high-tech side, though, we've never had ready access to bandwidth that's available throughout the world via Starlink. And all of a sudden you have the lower orbit satellites circling the globe like

a ball of yarn and providing high bandwidth to these drones that really need it, right? Need to stay connected the entire time. And I think that is something that I, a theme that I wanted to play with a little bit in this Clancy book, Shadow State, about the way that private industry and future conflicts and the interests of nations are all a little bit intertwined because so much innovation is happening on the private side that is instantly applicable to defense. Yeah, it's just crazy to freaking watch and everything else. So how do you make sure that you keep the the pressure of meeting fans expectations expectations and of course you know making sure you stay within the lines they expect how hard is that to do given the popularity of tom clancy's

books well we'll see how well i did i i certainly tried very very hard as a somebody else said to me oh they're just waiting for you to put the wrong scope on the rifle. So let me say that I took it and do take it very, very seriously and work really hard to get that stuff right. The positive side is that unlike when the original Tom Clancy books were written, information is readily at our fingertips where we can verify that, yep, that is the right scope to go on the right rifle, et cetera. So there's the real-world technical aspect, and then there's the continuity aspect to make sure that you're staying current with Tom Clancy characters.

On the real-world side, there's both the Internet can pull up all these things, but I also have a good network of of guys ex-soldiers a guy on this book that that helped me quite a bit was a sergeant major in in delta force and you know guys like that know know it and a quick text message can fix you up on the continuity side as i mentioned i talked to don and the other the other authors I reread the old books. And there are also a number of fan wikis out there that you can go and check. Oh, really? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. There's a whole Ryanverse that exists out there. Wow. That is crazy. You know, I've seen them do that with Star Wars. I saw a picture of the Linear Falconcon someone to design the interior or something and evidently there's no bathrooms on that they could find on the modern falcon i'm like that's kind of weird a port somewhere that was just a port of space you just you know pull off on the side of the road like you're you know your family used to do when you're

driving those long distances actually star wars Star Wars is a pretty good example. I mean, the Clancyverse isn't quite as extensive as Star Wars, but my son, he did all the Star Wars Legos. He knew the entire lexicon, et cetera, and he read probably 20 Star Wars books that were written by authors who picked up this world and said, okay, here's the, here's the story that, you know, fits within the, within the rules. That is wild. That is wild. So what's the future for the books? Are you signed up for a certain

amount of run? And then what's, what's the future for? Yeah, I mean, we do, we do contract multiple book contracts at a time. So, yeah, I'm signed up to be doing these for a while and looking forward to that. And I think what you'll see is the continued expansion of the junior line as the next generation of characters. And you'll continue to see the broader military fiction in the senior line. There you go. There you go. People love the series and they love your writing,

so they're going to keep coming back. What's on the handler front? Anything over there on your work there? Yes. I'm finishing up a third one and hope to be back here, probably back here next year. Please come back. We'd love to talk about that. Yeah.

Yeah. We'd love to have you talk about it and keep the series going. So thank you very much, Mr. Woodward, for coming to the show. We appreciate it. Give us your dot com so people can find you

on the interwebs. Yeah, it's mpwoodward.com. There you go. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Thanks to my audience for being here. As always,

go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrissfuss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissfuss, chrissfuss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet

Be good to each other Stay safe We'll see you guys next time And that's