The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Threats to U.S. Security: Aging Infrastructure, Fragile Systems, and Information Warfare with Dan O'Connor

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

The threats facing the United States' stability seem to be escalating daily - from aging electric grids and deteriorating infrastructure to rising information warfare from domestic and international sources. How are some of the leaders within our institutions approaching these risks to respond with resilience and strengthen our national security?  Today, Nate is joined by national and homeland security authority Dan O'Connor to discuss what he sees as the most pressing risks for the stability and resilience of the United States. Dan emphasizes the critical role of energy in shaping our societal structures and the need for adaptive resilience and personal responsibility in the face of systemic risks.  How is the interference from adversarial information warfare eroding public trust and national resilience? In what ways are cultural fragmentation and worsening health crises accelerating our economic and environmental challenges? And, perhaps most importantly, could the most effective solution to these large-scale systemic challenges lie in embracing personal responsibility and authentic leadership? (Conversation recorded on February 5th, 2025)   About Dan O'Connor: Dan O'Connor is a recognized national and homeland security authority with extensive experience in national and homeland security, law enforcement, exigent leadership, crisis management, emergency management, continuity of operations, and security/anti-terrorism. He has consulted and produced operations for security and emergency management at various Olympic Games, and has been a consultant and key leader/facilitator for four of the largest marathons in the United States and a Super Bowl.  His contributions extend to Operation Allies Welcome, refugee resettlement efforts, and leading responses to over 1,200 federally declared disasters, showcasing his proficiency in operational excellence and crisis management. Recently, he was the only American selected to facilitate a NATO/Eastern European energy and crisis security exercise in Latvia and Lithuania, where his political acumen, vision, conception, and crisis leadership earned special recognition.   Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners  

America has been praying at the altar of convenience and friction-free world for a long time, and the bills come due. All of these things have made us hyper-briddle, soft, energy-blind, and we no longer do hard things. The essence of recovery and the essence of being able to adapt is to embrace this comfort. And we have done everything in our power, culturally, physically, politically, and economically, avoid discomfort. You're listening to the Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification. Today I'm

joined by security and emergency management professional Dan O'Sman. O'Connor for a wide-ranging discussion on how the risks discussed on this podcast, such as resource scarcity, energy depletion, information warfare, and human health and well-being are now be considered through the lens of national security and the long-term resilience within the United States. Dan O'Connor is a consultant, lecturer, and published authority in strategic problem-solving, information security, management of complexity, change, and leadership development. Recently, he was the only American selected to facilitate a NATO-European energy and crisis security exercise where his political acumen, vision, and crisis leadership

earned special recognition. Dan served 22 years as an active duty Marine, among other positions, as the anti-terrorism officer and emergency manager in Washington, D.C. during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. He has consulted and produced security and emergency management operations for numerous Olympic games, U.S. marathons, as well as Super Bowls. He is a recognized national and homeland security authority with extensive experience in law enforcement, exigent leadership, crisis management, emergency management, continuity of operations and security. This wide boundary conversation gives an overview of some of the bottlenecks for stability ahead of us in the United States and offer some key leverage points for fostering resilience

and good livelihoods long into the future. As you will see, Dan doesn't shy around the real risk prominent in the United States today, but he also offers an invitation for individuals and communities to engage in the hard work to mitigate and adapt these pressures. Before we begin, if you enjoy this podcast, please consider making a donation so that we can keep this content. free and accessible to as many people in the world as possible. All donations are tax deductible and go directly to supporting the creation of this podcast and our organization's educational efforts. You can find the link to donate in the show description of the episode.

Please welcome Dan O'Connor. Dan O'Connor, great to be with you today. Thanks, Nate. This is, what an opportunity, right, to just share amongst friends, nuance and dispositions of the globe and the universe. I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me. We have talked often off camera in the last four years or so.

In addition to being a friend of mine and being aware of the pressures and limitations currently ongoing. And today, to timestamp this Wednesday, February 5th, also accelerating in our global system, you have also spent 40 years in the national and homeland security emergency emergency management and consequence management space. So let's start here. How has the awareness of our global challenges, including things like resource and energy depletion, complexity, and economic constraints influenced your work within DHS and FEMA? So from my disposition, this has always been an interesting.

me, whether it's an element of my DNA and my past or my history, my time in the Marine Corps, and how your behavior and thoughts are shaped, you become very parsimonious and trade-off understandings with amateurs talk tactics, professionals, talk logistics, strategist, talk energy. So when you start getting into that energy transfer, understanding that everything we do, everything, every communication, every action, every interface, every economic motive is based on energy. It permeates the culture that I work in, whether it's in my prior military life, my homeland security writ large with all those nuances and the consequence in emergency management space, everything is driven by energy and as it relates to rebuilding logistics,

force projection, forced service. You know, so from my perspective, we are in the great simplification. It has begun. And you can tell it's begun because of what you're seeing unfold nationally, internationally, some of the dispositions, some of your previous guest comments with regard to finite minerals, rare earth metals, energy, finite space. and understanding that we're going through different varieties of metaphorical entropy, whether they're social, whether they're cultural, or whether they are the second, you know,

second part of thermodynamics, it is fixed. And we haven't run out, but it's getting kind of thin. I thought you were going to say second coming. I'm glad you filled in the blank with law of thermodynamics. So I want to point out for our viewers that though you work for, Homeland Security and FEMA, the statements you make here are your own and not affiliated with any branch of the government. This is you as a citizen sharing your knowledge on this topic. You mentioned that energy is ubiquitous in your work. Your perspective, certainly, because you've

followed this podcast and have become very energy literate through your career. But but do colleagues in government agencies understand the importance of energy yet? More than you might think. So with the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, where you came out to speak out at Monterey and an increase in energy literacy, there is a growing understanding and acumen with regards to return on energy investment. How can I move the maximum amount of people? personnel product logistically to and from places at the lowest energy coefficient and carbon footprint.

It permeates the DHS and DOD culture far more than people recognize. So it's not EROI in the production sense from biophysical economics like what I did my PhD on. It's the EROI and the consumption and the use of energy sense. Well, it's the use. It's the transportation. It is the movement. It is the transmission because all of those things are elements of of strategic planning. So if you go back in time, so my first college life, I was an exercise science, physical education major. My second life, I was a history major. So I have a background in I want to know how things work and I want to know why they work. So if you go back historically, you know, World War I was a battle of attrition until you engaged tanks, and tanks were driven by petroleum.

Petroleum was the dominating factor of World War II and logistics. The entire Cold War, if you wanted to make a case about it, was driven by two factors, global energy dominance and suppression of nuclear weapons. So all of these things that we do in our entire petrochemical, hydrochemical, Bretton Woods, all the things that drive our economic engines, Up until maybe the late 90s, early 2000s, were hydrocarbon-based. You know, our entire Fortune 500, the top 10 companies in America by and large, were hydrocarbons. So much, much bigger than people recognize.

And because we had production surplus and it was relatively inexpensive, and we took for granted a whole bunch of other things. We were more concerned with engine knocking than lead. And we knocked a billion points of IQ. and had a massive explosion of recidivism, negative criminal behavior, somebody or enough people started to recognize that our behaviors and our consumption requirements were going to affect us long term. And you can make a definitive historical argument that that's what the domino theory was. That's what drove Japan to attack us.

All of our interactions in the last 70 to 80. years have been based on energy consumption, energy quotient, return on energy investment, and capturing the market to maintain our place at the apex of global hegemony in the technical sense. And that's continuing now. Energy security is becoming much more of a dominant theme than decarbonization of energy for one instance. Energy security is ambiguous. And what I mean by that is how do you transport it? How do you transmit it?

How do you protect it? When you have roughly $158 trillion in deferred maintenance and your infrastructure is anywhere from 30 to 100 years old? Wait a minute. $150 billion. $8 trillion? Trillion? In deferred maintenance costs. That's like six times what GDP is.

Right. And how they came to that. So they do an annual report card, and we usually fall in the C minus and D range as a nation. So our perpetual deferred maintenance has a catch-up cost, a rebuild cost, and a projection into the future cost. And you're starting to see our infrastructure fail. So when you project out the cost and requirements over 10 years, it's starting to start. to creep past the $100 trillion dollar mark and we can't

pay that. It's a fantasy. So this is why this is why biophysical understanding of how the economy, growth, money, energy, technology, Nexus fit together is critical because if you use

growth is akin to a natural law and humans will figure it out without looking at natural resources that are you know, the principle we're drawing down instead of the interest, you get massively different conclusions. We can't rebuild all that in the same way. We cannot. No, and that's why I started our conversation with, you know, it has begun. The great simplification, whether it's an emergent property, a driven property, or contrived, there are going to be decisions made, whether they're

tradeoff or realizations that we're going to have to repurpose, recommit, or recommit. and understand how we did things may not get us to where we need to do things. And that's across the board. Monocultures and monor systems are no longer sustainable. Global conflagration, when you see articles and conversations about Ukraine and the finite amount of fertilizer and Haber Bosch creating all of these artificialities, the Green Revolution was a short-term solution to Mr. Erlich. disposition, but it was also a massive, massive implicator to our current climate condition,

because you introduced massive amounts of hydrocarbons into the fertilizer space, the industrial agriculture space, and the monoculture space. So in the short term, yes, we had dwarf wheat growing everywhere. We also put lots of countries out of business. We use food as an economic tool to curb the Russians in the 80s with wheat, all of these things are, they're in play, and they don't just stand along. So these are all the self-organized criticalities of the subsystem of the polycrisis. And they're not linear. They're exponential. The only guest I've ever had on that used the word self-organized criticalities in my recollection is my friend DJ White of Earth Trust. Could you define what a self-organized criticality is and why it's important?

My disposition on self-organized criticality comes out of some of the studies we did at CHDS. And we talked a lot about per box sand pile and how unbeknownst to us, as each grain of sand is on the pile, there is an organized criticality unbeknownst to us that we cannot assume that exponentially there will be a catastrophic fail. And in that catastrophic fail, you will have a cascading failure after that. So the self-organized criticality of all these systems and subsystems, whether you pay attention to them or aware of them, is unbeknownst to all of us, to a certain degree, kind of like trying to predict earthquakes. There is criticality in these systems that is being undetected or unknown. And in our own peril, they will break or dissolve or destroy themselves organically because the criticality is being ignored because we continue to do the same. same thing over and over again. And we will have a cascading multi-system failure because of our

tightly coupled systems. And from a systems analysis perspective, nothing we do is linear anymore. It's exponential and it's interdependent. So you could have a failure in an electric system and the United States conceivably could go back to 1850. If you had another Carrington event on top of a polar vortex with a fire in California that destroyed more than the Dresden fire bombs, you have all of these separate indicators or pre-incident indicators of activity. And we get very myopic and we worry about one thing. And the Homeland Security space and a lot of people who I work with pull back and they're trying to be telescopic instead of microscopic to try to to see and be forecasters of interdependencies, not predictors.

And that's my big picture understanding and expression of SOC. So what I think of the technological singularity, I think about what you just said, is that we've built this sand pile of complexity and just in time components. And eventually with all the risks, you mentioned a Carrington event or of fires or all kinds of things. It's the nursery rhyme for want of the nail, the shoe and the horse and all the way. I mean, that is something I think about all the time. And I had a guy that wrote the book, Ed Conway, the material world talked about how he learned about just in time supply chains and all kinds of seemingly unimportant components like by North Carolina when the hurricane was there.

There's that factory that had the unique sort of sand that made the crucibles that little devices were made in. It's the only one in the world. Like, I don't know how you all focus on that because that seems like it would take tens of thousands of people to manage that complexity and understand it. other than no directionally, it's a big-ass risk. Well, in that risk space, you mentioned North Carolina. These are the after effects of globalization.

So the largest saline manufacturer in the world is in Puerto Rico. When Puerto Rico was hit with Hurricane Maria, it interrupted the world's saline distribution and supply chain. Why is that important? What's saline? Saline is the most important liquid that goes in your body when you're sick. It is the fluid. It's the blood water plasmoid fluid that goes into your body.

That is the distribution network for medicines. So we don't make that in every county. No, we do not. And because of return on investment, complexity, just in chain logistics, and globalization, centralization works for massive ROI, but it's inherently fragile. Well, it's another rung in the ladder of trading resilience for efficiency. And we can get uber, uber efficient over time and make the system incredibly brittle, which we've done. Well, and that's the, you're starting to see a transition, at least in some military science, some complexity science. The lexicon is switching from Vuka to Bani, right?

So Zavukha was volatile. uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. And Banny is kind of the emerging more profound phraseology. It's brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible. So when you superimpose the great simplification on top of this Banny space and a couple of other frameworks, you can see that we are beyond inherently brittle. It's a matter of time. And that bothers people, but it's better to be aware than blind.

So let's get into that, Dan. So, you know, we talk every few months, so I know a little bit about your views and your work. But it seems to me that the biggest overlap of what you're explaining at Department of Homeland Security and FEMA with my work on the great simplification and the carbon pulse and the four horse. and the core message is the focus on resilience, resilience going forward. And so maybe start there. I assume that in DHS you work on resilience. What does resilience mean to you? And how does it inform the lens of your broader work?

So from the, again, my opinion, based on my observations, my point of view, resilience is a growing and emergent science and art because for the most part the disposition of the understanding of resilience was bounced back it was returned it was the metaphor of the rubber band but there is now in leadership science and in logistics self-healing organizations self-healing networks they're understanding that adaptation is the driving factor the ability to to adapt, the ability to understand that we require friction, that we require you stress, positive stress, you require tension, you require friction. All of these things are what make resilience real because they are adaptations from a metaphorical place because they're

biological, they're mechanical, they are organizational, and you don't bounce back, you go to a different place. So you're starting to see in a lot of these spaces, there's no desire to go backwards. That is the old idea of resilience or robustness. Resilience in this new context are adaptations to the present for preparation of the future. Does that you stress, good stress, and what you just mentioned rhyme or relate to Nisim-Taleb? concept of anti-fragile? Oh, absolutely. They, they, so, so Talib says anti-fragile is tested, evaluated. He does a whole part in his book about the why you have to exercise and, and how those things create stressors, which create mitochondrial change, which create adaptation to the space to

prepare for the next bout of exercise. So we need cultural mitochondrical, mitochondrial stress and change. So yes, and Dan's point of view, America has been praying at the altar of convenience and friction-free world for a long time, and the bills come due. So we're not a robust people. We're not a capable people. We'd like to think we are. But look how the pandemic inhibited us and how the inverse proportion of who is considered an essential worker, the one. that made the least amount of money, the ones that picked our food, whatever your political ideology is, ones that we innately knew we're going to work for pennies on the dollar that we were going to exploit, or the ones that we exploit so we can get some kind of voting base. It's both part of the same conversation. But, you know, go back through time. Go back into the cobalt mines and artisanal mining. Well, artisanal mining is a euphemism for digging with

sticks. So you have tens of thousands of Congenese people in a mine digging with sticks cobalt so we can drive electric cars so we can greenwash our footprint and make us feel better. All of these things have made us hyper brittle, soft, energy blind and unaware of the requirements. And we no longer do hard things. You know, do hard things, embrace this comfort. The essence of recovery and the essence of being able to adapt is to embrace discomfort. And we have done everything in our power culturally, physically, politically, and economically to avoid discomfort. If you look at many of the great thinkers of the past all the way back to the Stoics,

it seems like a common theme is personal responsibility. And maybe the carbon pulse. has allowed us to avoid and scrub personal responsibility under the carpet because we had so much convenience aided by cheap fossil armies that were everywhere, but that a renaissance of personal responsibility and resilience is going to be necessary. So the responsibility part is also a great word to tie to the resilience part because, again, in my opinion, we have become professional victims. The United States of America, the greatest army, the richest country in the history of the earth are victims. That does not

coexist in a rational mind. So is your behavior and your fear factor being either manufactured, manipulated, coerced, or pressed upon you? So you feel somehow that the lives we have and the privilege we have in this country, come on backs and decisions made against other people in the world. That's the reality of capitalism. It's not a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a thing. So when you understand all that, at least from a previous life perspective, you go to different parts of the world, you see other people's dispositions, you go on behalf of your country to project von Klausowice in politics. You get a much different perspective of, of what the world has and doesn't have.

And we have ample and we're still a victim. It's an incongruity that drives our brittleness and unends or upends our metal as a nation. What is the von Klausowiczian politics? Von Klausowitz said war is a politics by other means. Okay. So when you start getting into theory of war, Jamini and Klausowitz still are drivers of a lot of the theory

that 21st century war in America, how they project force and how they do things, is based on those things. But, you know, war is politics by other means. So then you have to get into, you know, what is war? Is war information management? Is it energy management? Is it food management? Is it nation state optimal foraging theory? All of those things. And then this is where you get into the intellectual conversation about known threats, unknown threats, terrorism. What is most likely our greatest threat? Is it ourselves? Is it our post-literate country?

Is it our superficiality? Or are we just an unfocused nation? Because we don't have a common people. We have a common language and we have an idea. The Constitution is what makes us American. But an unfocused nation is one that's productive and other ways, not necessarily national means. So in your opinion, Dan, with respect to resilience and the United States, what are the current key choke points or primary threats that undermine

the resilience of the United States to continue on functioning as a nation? So I'm not an optimist. I'm not a pessimist. I'm a pragmatist with a slight ideological bent. So I'm always going to bet on us. In order to be resilient, you have to reassort. Right. So when you have an energy surplus, you multiply. And when you have a deficit of resources, you have to reassort. In my opinion, we are coming to a reassortment space where we're going to have to own the fact that our multi-trillion dollar food system is making us sick and fat, and it's a homeland security issue. Our multi-trillion dollar medical system is a homeland and national security issue and it's not healing us. We're in an information war against us and projected out

from us and we're so superficial and topical. That's the Jonathan Hates book. We're making people just generally cognitively weaker. Our education system is under attack for a variety of reasons are all the things that make us unique that we used to have pride and have been neglected. And you have, They're the underpinnings of a multi-trillion dollar economy, but they're killing us, they're making us sick, they're making us illiterate. And it doesn't prepare us for a 21st, 22nd century energy-reduced, energy-reportioned competitive space, in my opinion. So we currently have Homeland Security that using a narrow boundary lens focuses on many things, but a lot of it is immigration, and cyber attacks and things like that. But from a wide boundary perspective of which you just gave a glimpse to,

it could be argued that DHS would need to be the largest entity of the U.S. government. That's where you get into really deep philosophical conversations about what is Homeland Security. Remember, DHS was born out of a failure to imagine the terrorist attacks of 2001. Well, they're coming up on 24 years old. and large. But terrorist attacks are a tactic. It's not an ideology. And it's a low-impact geographical attack with a high-emotional impact space. So when you unpack it in one context, you know, I'm from New York City. I had both my brothers at the World Trade Center. I lost people in the World Trade Center on the planes and in the Pentagon, just one of those rare

convergences. And it was a horrible day and a horrible week. And then I lost friends from the Marine Corps for 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. But that's a very, very thin group of impacted Americans. Terrorism is not the primary concern. Our primary concern is our ability as a nation to focus effort, adapt, build wealth, not transition. wealth, manufacture wealth, not monetize certain elements of our behavior, where you're extracting wealth from one group of people and trading it for another in financial instruments. You know this way better than I do. Once you went off the gold standard and you have a fiat currency, it's fungible. So when somebody decides to contract the money supply, your saved

dollar is worth less and less. And there's really nothing. thing you can do about it. If they expand the money supply, you're... If they expand it, and then when they contracted, you have inflation. And all of those things are part of that, that macro that we don't, we don't kind of get, right? So being poor is not a crime. Certain behaviors can lead you to stay in an extended spot, but this is still a land of unbelievable opportunity, but it takes discipline, it takes focus, takes some luck, and it takes some risk and we have become so risk averse that we are fragile. In contrast to everything you just said, and I think you said you're an optimist, you'll bet on us. Are there any things that we're doing

particularly well as a nation at the moment? And what might we do to strengthen those areas? So what we're doing well is having these kind of conversations. You and I have talked several times over the years, never, ever, ever give up. It's when you're the guy that keeps people awake at night, there's lots of people out there keeping people awake at night because they're having difficult conversations. That's part of the do hard things part. As a citizen, you have very few requirements of this nation. But if you're going to vote, you need to be informed. If you're going to be informed, you have to have a realistic understanding of the privileges that are afforded us, how they were earned and how do we maintain them.

It's a global competition and people want to take it away from us. That's our reality. Don't be afraid to have conversations, but be afraid to not have an opinion. An informed opinion is valuable and uninformed opinion is dangerous. And when you have an entire social media and information structure that wants to keep you, it's very Huxleyian and Orwellian. right? So we're in a space where, you know, part of this treaties, the Tower of Babel and

double speak and superficial information and influence. We're in a post-literate world. People don't read. People don't want to engage and attack or at least challenge their points of view. So you have this cleaving and ideology, and instead of coming to the middle, you see the pendulum swing back and forth for retribution instead of reconciliation. All of these things, I think, will emerge from these friction points that we're experiencing now and we have for really the last 10 years. And they're really important, but there are friction points. There's casualties, intellectually, morally, and what you believe and can you defend it? And so what?

What do you believe? And so what? And can you articulate that? That's actually of the things that keeps me up at night. it seems like not the most acute and scary, but what people believe and how they are not literate, as you say, and read their own news sources, and soon everyone's going to have their own chat GPT trained on their own beliefs.

That really worries me. So I know, you know, you've told me a bit about the work you're doing with misinformation and disinformation, and disinformation, particularly in natural disaster situations, such as the hurricane in North Carolina and the fires in L.A. Can you talk any bit about that and point out the leverage points that you see for managing information? So all of this information is open source, right? You can you can Google it. You can look it up. So there's nothing here that's classified or high end or anything. But you have to be a aware of what's going on. And the awareness part is everything we do from pre-birth to post-death at this point is archived, captured, pressed against algorithms, and an entire system of systems is monitoring your actions, whether it's capitalism, whether it's your behavior.

My private emails? Private emails, everything. There's a reason why they go through a giant server form in Utah. Everything we do is captured. Now, it may not be archived and scrubbed. Because it would take too much manpower and do it, but now with large language models, it might be. And that, well, that's one of the concerns. So even predictive analytics and algorithms and behaviors, so everybody has a cultivated and curated digital footprint and personality, whether they want to believe that or not. You do, I do, what you search, what you look for. If you pay attention, you know, after our conversation,

we'll probably have a couple of emails about one or two or three things we spoke about. Your iPhone's never off. Your Android phone is never off. And we take for granted that we think we're free. So on the one hand, you're completely free to disengage. From a philosophical point of view, there are those outside this space that if you chose to drop off and disappear from these infrastructures,

you could be construed as an enemy of the state because you are hiding. So you go with Ellison's point of view and he says ubiquitous surveillance will stop all crime. Well, that's the minority report. They're fictional movies about that. If you go with the China model that wants to archive your behavior and make you comply, all of that data points is there. And you come back to the American capitalist model. You get a FICA score.

You have a Lexus score. You have multiple scores that are economically driven. So you're monitored pretty much your whole life. So how does that add to your big series question? In order to undermine a nation, you have to undermine its faith. And how you undermine its faith is to make them fearful. That's where in a fearful nation, that is where real totalitarianism resides in the fear. You undermine the faith in the government and the faith of leaders and decision makers.

So we have adversaries that are exploiting us every single day with this curated, archived, digital footprint, and personality. and they project information war and information operations against us every day, all of us, all the time. You get it in your post office. Hey, you have a package here. Somebody's tried to hack your Venmo account. And there's a reason why we get those. And there's princes in Nigeria that want to give you their money because enough people use them or are tricked by them because of any number of

reasons because they accrue value. In the digital space, the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans, the Iranians, and perhaps even to a lower degree, some of our allies, monitor us, and we monitor them, and we try to shape and aggravate or accelerate certain inflamed behaviors to undermine our respect and admiration for our own government, which was really strong during the hurricane, the initiation of the hurricane in North Carolina. What did that have to do with the hurricane? What it has to do with the hurricane is it in a hyper-political space with a presidential election with two hard counterfactuals and counter-narratives, it inflamed the undermining of the current administration, they weren't effective, and it enhanced another disposition that you couldn't trust the government

to do the right things. None of that may have been true, but in that space, in that microcosm, you had offshore entities generating activity on our social frameworks to inflame, undermine, and distract the American people, and it only takes a few and have that meme machine, that virality of social media start to generate its own self-fulfilling feedback loop. And we had a anti-Semitic problem that FEMA was being led by the Jews and was not providing care for Americans in North Carolina. None of that was true. However, there were people who take it.

to the extreme, whether it's Hillary Clinton and Pizza Gate and QAnon and other people that take it upon themselves to exercise activity on their own behalf, and this can escalate quickly into a really dramatic, it leaves the anonymous cyber world and becomes an actual world problem, and those are always the concerns. So when you have millions of pings about our inability to provide for our nation at a time where we having an election where we're polarized and all of this activity, it's being driven not by the political parties. It's driven by our adversaries. And we are unknowingly as a nation being dragged into it and actually participating, unbeknownst to the motive. Because that is getting back to your early thing. From the adversary's perspective,

it's a low energy investment for a big payoff, which is- Absolutely. Yeah. And all it is is, you know, you're nudging stuff. You're adding gas to little fires. You initiate the activity and you let it run its course. And it's kind of fire and forget. It's like a like form in China with 7,000 phones. They are generating this perpetuality of information. And these are low-level psychological and information operations against us that then take our view away and adds to that fear element.

and detracts from our belief and trust in our government. So we have scary things and unfortunate things and natural disasters in our country all over the world. It is part of our lives, our reality. But what you're saying is the interventions, in this case, like Chinese or whoever against our adversaries, there's more than one, yeah. Make it 10 times worse, a thousand times worse than it actually is. Well, I can't quantify it necessarily because I just, just can't, but I know from a qualitative perspective, we are diverting resources, intellectual capital, emotions to solve a problem that doesn't exist, and we are answering things in the past

that aren't real. And in that continuum, we are missing opportunities to stay in the present. So that's like five months ago now, but I recall there were FEMA representatives that were supposedly being hunted by locals and things like that. I mean, how much of that was true? How much of what I read was true? Well, it depends what you read. But these are, you know, you take, none of that took place, right? So that's an artificiality and that is an information operation.

We see it all the time in psychological operations that take place in other countries. Nobody was getting hunted. There was always friction. because people have lost everything. And when you've lost everything and you have an expectation that has been crafted that in our altar of, you know, convenience, we want it now. We have been cultivated and curated to expect everything now. Ubiquitous service, ubiquitous redundancy, ubiquitous access.

And it's very difficult. So you have these contrasting points of view. that are competing, and in that competition, you add the information disposition, and it really clogs it up. Every time I feel like I'm squarely in the post-tragic, I have a guest on that brings me back to the tragic because I hadn't thought about something. So how in the hell can we solve or mitigate or navigate the best path on fish swimming northward due to less oxygen, climate change, biodiversity, energy, depletion? economic contraction, all the things, if we don't agree on what's true because these adversaries, and of course we're adversary to others, that we don't know what's true. Like what hope is there if we can't control the risks and the memes that you just said?

So that's, I think you're really starting to, from my perspective, unpack our real crisis. the other things are bad. It's our lack of trust and belief in one another. Yes. And in that space, we no longer have communities. We no longer have diasporas. We are, in our quest for multiculturalism, we have destroyed our culture. And culture is a manifestation.

All culture, all culture, 100% is from someplace else. So there are things you do that you, you know, Mr. Hagan's, Nate Hagan's, has done for 10 generations of your DNA. Your grandfather did it, his grandfather did it, whether it's a word or a phrase or a disposition or a dish, and it's just like mine. And this is what made America unique is we had this amalgamation, this mosaic of culture that was unique to us. and from a patriotic perspective, it was either unknowingly or haphazardly undermined by a series of activities may have been trying to be inclusive, may have been trying to understand the changing culture and immigration requirements of the world. but we are 13 different countries at a very minimum when you look at some of the facts. Right. So New England is different than New Amsterdam.

New Amsterdam is different than Tidewater. Tidewater is different than the Piedmont. So you start breaking out the places of America where people move to and you have all of these subcultures that no longer blend. they blend at the fringes, but in that multicultural competition space that is being exploited by our adversaries, what used to be an amalgam is now trying to be isolated. And we're no longer concerned with unity. We are being disunioned at our own peril. Personal opinion, Dan, looking several decades ahead, does this amalgam of, of 50 states that are unified,

rely on economic growth and stability. And subset of the question is, are you aware of, and you probably are, since you follow this podcast, the concept of bio-regionalism, which you just described from a DHS risk sort of standpoint. So there's, have you never, Thomas Barnett's book, It's, I can't pull up the title off top of my head, but basically he says there's going to be a reorganization from east to west to north and south, right? So you're going to, you're going to see

the globe realigned based on some of these non-attributable factors. We're going to need fresh water. We're going to need airable land. We're going to need to understand our food requirements. And at the same time, you're going to start to see, I think, It's 2050, 2050, the population peak and then the rapid decline of population amounts. But you're going to see the world realign because of everything, the great simplification and your your Theses brings together is in a finite energy space where resources are finite and there's competition. You're going to have to realign.

And I think that is an inevitability if you want to continue. to thrive, or are we just the next empire to fall off the wayside? Now, those are all really big, clunky conversations, but I would bet if somebody within the current administration understands elements of what you're talking about because that's why they're interested in Greenland. Greenland is, you know, 70% minerals. We require those minerals. We gave away our rights to a lot of our rare earth minerals to China. Now, you get into some of one of your first, you know, Simon Mishau, he talked endlessly about the finality of minerals,

and we can't do what everybody wants us to do in the space that we have these fixed amounts of things. So we're going to have to repurpose, reallocate. We don't, 98% of all the plastics that we create from petroleum, is not recycled, it's thrown out. All of these things. We overproduce both food and goods from a commercial perspective to maintain commerce as an economic engine,

but is there another way to repurpose all of these goods and services in a different disposition to make it a value plus as opposed to a value negative? And we don't have millions of dollars of sneakers and clothes float up onto the shore of Ghana every year and they go, where did this come from? All of these things,

production, consumption, commerce, economics, recalibration of relationships are all starting to converge. And that's why I think you're starting to see some of these conversations. And that's why I let off with, you know, it has begun. So let me ask you this. And, you know, this is a podcast episode and there's a limited time. But this is one of those that I kind of wish that we could do four hours because I, there's every aspect of this. I have so many questions. I didn't even ask you, what does AI pretend for the disinformation and misinformation risks that you said before? But let's stay on this topic for a second. When I talk about the great simplification, usually I, in my mind, think of three timelines, which is right now, while the economic

like superorganism and the turbo boost by debt and all the things, you know, right now. Then there's the bend versus break moment where the financial musical chairs due to complexity or geopolitics or Carrington event or whatever. And then there's the how do we live 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now. Those are different timeframes and different challenges. Do the way you work at DHS, do you also think of things in that way? because we can't really say this is how we're going to live in the United States in 2040 or 2050 because there's a lot of wood to chop metaphorically between now and then that we don't know how that's going to unfold.

So one of the, so there's 23 different components in DHS and there's some really, really amazingly brilliant people in those 23 components. And you have intelligence and analysis, you have science and technology. you have, you know, Customs and Border Patrol, ICE, FEMA, all of these entities. And there's synergies that are taking place in people that are thinking and doing hard things, right? So from that perspective, lots of people are in the present because the present is where most of our requirement is. But there are people and groups and think tank tanks that are apolitical reaching into the future. with expectations of certain behaviors and things, and they're forecasting, they're not predicting.

So one of the things we spoke about previously was the trillions of dollars and deferred maintenance on our critical infrastructure. So if you can't pay it and you can't fix it and you can't reimagine it, you're going to have to make some really hard choices. And those hard choices require leadership and that kind of leadership requires doing hard things.

and we're going to have to embrace the fact that to your point, the $58 trillion in debt that we have incurred to maintain a lifestyle that we can no longer afford, that bill is coming due. We add a trillion dollars every hundred days to our debt. That interest on that debt will become crippling and stifling. You get into semantic arguments about entitlements versus benefits. Well, how do you plan on? having that conversation with your populace that are moving into their last chapter of their life and you've made some promises and they've paid into something for 40 years with an

expectation of remuneration. These are all critical factors in our big picture conversation. How do you talk to people about everything we've pretty much told you about food has been a lie? and what we've told you about fat consumption is a lie, and we've told you about medicine is a lie. Now, a lie is a really strong word, and it may be driven simply by there's no malice, there's a point of view, there's marketing, there's information. Okay, so all of these things, from my perspective,

are part of that, the Utilup and John Boyd. So your orientation is shaped by a myriad of things, but it's how you observe that matters. So if your orientation can move through the transients and you can recognize quickly that in this space, we have a choice. We can be crippled or we can take advantage of the opportunity. And that advantage is to change, that rapid transient and understand that we have to deal with some entropic requirements, some energy requirements, you know, how are we going to deal

with heat? How are we going to deal with all of these things? And I, like you, I love listening to Daniel. Daniel Schmacher, I mean, it's a hundred pound brain that really pushes out into the future some difficult conversations. And he has them and it makes them uncomfortable. But we've already hit some of these gateways that we can't come back from. So what do you do with that? Well, you can choose to succumb to the pressure.

and throw your hands up and say there's nothing I can do, or you can fight and inform and educate and stand to your principles. And at some point, we're going to reach a critical mass of synergy where enough people recognize that we are the change agents, not the government, our consumption behaviors, our ideology, how we think, what we do. And you see some of these things playing out on a much lower level, whether it's Will Harris down in White Oaks Farms in Georgia or Joel Salton up in

Virginia and Polyface farms, they have captured and demonstrated that regenerative agriculture is as if not more effective means than the current industrial agricultural tools that we have. And they add biodiversity. So from a metaphorical standpoint, we are all always moving towards stasis, you know, homeostasis and also homogeneity. But we need heterogeneity. We need biological diversity to challenge the status quo.

So those perturbations create positive change. We're having this convergence now where all of these things based on people like yourself, and others who are thought leaders, critical thinkers, visionaries, investing in the future, moving from the traditional financial instrument part to changing the conversation to maybe a more harmonic disposition. It's all there, but it's going to require courage and, you know, who's with me? that that's the challenge and we may lose collectively but what do you believe and what are you willing to do

well first of all obviously i'm with you going back to what you said earlier you mentioned john boyd and the udal loops uda o oda stands for uh orient uh observe orient decide act is that right so i think we need to get the observes in the Orient, which we don't as a nation. We're really not observing and orienting our human predicament in the United States and the world. So let me ask you this, is what we've discussed so far in this conversation coming up in the political arena, are politicians and government officials aware if they squint and look at the shape of what we're discussing is, are these concepts now becoming more known and discussed? They are, but they're asymmetrical and a lot of the people don't like the messenger.

So this is why I caveat like that. It's easier to chastise Bobby Kennedy, RFK Jr. for his past behaviors, his predilections, his name, and all of his macro platform of beliefs, but buried in his beliefs, but buried in his belief system are some fundamental truths about medicine, about food, about wellness. Now, you can, shoot the messenger, but if you're not willing to listen to what he's saying and take ownership of that, that's a value proposition and an opportunity that's lost. So you have to sometimes look past the mask or the persona of the messenger and see how the message resonates. So when you have a farm bill that is multi-trillion dollars that funds SNAP,

and then SNAP is only excess carbohydrates that are hyper-processed into nutritionism and reductionism, and we're feeding everybody crap. You shouldn't be surprised they're sick. But then you blame the end user. You created the system that's 70 years old, and you keep telling people it's your lack of discipline. and it's you're a loser and you don't work hard enough. Calorie consumption is down and exercises up.

Why are we still fat? Why? Because there is a mechanism in place that nobody likes the message or the messenger that you're being exploited by definition as a cooperative for financial remuneration. So that food that's in snap and that wheat, that soybean, that. corn. It's all free because it's already been paid for. So they're just making more money on it and they tell you it's your problem. So all of these things, sometimes we get too

attached to the semantics of the messenger and the message. And we're communicated to all the time and we're just, pain is communication, sorrow is communication. Your five senses interface with your environment all day. You and I are different than we started an hour ago. So if you can embrace that philosophically, then you have to understand that all of these things are taking place and people are benefiting from it at our expense. So let's move past that and what are we going to do to change it? You sound like, You work for Homeland Security or FEMA or something. Let me ask you this, because you, in our previous conversations, some of your historical projects and your expertise are around health and particularly obesity, if I recall.

So you've mentioned that the United States citizens seem to be struggling on all fronts, from mental well-being and chronic disease to obesity, a fertility. how do you see the health of the individuals that comprise the 336 million citizens of this country fitting into the larger story of resilience, as you also talked about earlier, and the world? And what do you think the government or DHS could be doing to support change in that direction? So what you're talking about, it's the backside of eustress, distressed, the negative stress and the allostatic load, that chronic stress that we are putting on our nation. Now, you still only measure it in special operators and military members and people in combat, and it is the undermining of PTSD and that moral injury.

So when you start measuring allostatic load and the stress you're placing on people at the mitochondrial level, and you're changing their cellular response, and you're introducing endocrine disruptors and all, All of these chemicals that weren't in our bodies, even two generations ago, there's 300 more chemicals than a fetus now than there were 40 years ago. All of these things undermine our vibrance and health as a nation, which subsequently undermines our resilience. So when your resilience mitochondrally, they'd be able to heal and your endocrine system

and your entire immune space, you require some degree of hormeses, right? Some little stressor so your immune system can respond. Well, when you compromise that to such a degree that you require chemicals as opposed to your body to start doing these things, and you have, when we were kids, you know, I was born in 64, I think I got like nine or 10 vaccines my whole life until I joined the Marine Corps. and then we just got shot all time because all the places we went. Well, now it's like 69. What has fundamentally changed in the health space that you require all of this additional vaccination?

What has changed in our whole food disposition? What has changed in our food is culture, culture is life, food is life. That's all gone. Now Americans eat as a means to an end to get from A to B, and you're marketed to about, this is what you're going to, this is what you're going to eat, consume, die, we got you, just take this pill, take this, it'll be on your way. All of those things, 100% unequivocally, alter your mental health and disposition. They alter your DNA.

They alter your mitochondrial health. and all of these things add to why we are not vibrant and not, we're not healthy. So we're pretty much entertained to death with superficiality. We are distracted from birth to death with things that don't matter. And we have undercut for any number of reasons. There's no, it's not this dark thing necessarily, but it is a statement of fact that we have undermined so many things that make a culture vibrant that we are now paying a price for that.

So we need personal responsibility. We need new leaders who roll up their sleeves and embrace new udaloups and the discomfort of this situation. But how, I mean, how do you parse individual agency in better decisions in response to what you're talking about versus the system itself with the economic superorganism and profits for feeding. a high-calorie, low medical benefit to our health. Like, where's the balance between what you do as an individual in the United States, in this case, versus the system?

So two parts. The first part is an answer to your previous question that adds into this. What is your definition of homeland security? What is your definition of the homeland and your definition of security? Is security a state, an equilibrium of heart? harmony with your environment. So that's a different part of that conversation. All of the 23 elements that make up DHS have some activity in these spaces, whether it's determining regenerative agriculture spaces, food introduction across the borders, health, technology,

intelligence, and it's an emerging space. So there are people working this today and continue to. to your latter part of your question. I remember a commercial when I was a kid. His name was Cy Sims. An informed customer is our best customer. Basically, you have to read. You have to educate. You have to take complete control as best you can of your agency,

because the only thing you can control is your response to stimulus. And that's Frankl. except, linking back to what you said earlier, we don't know what's true or not when we read our own information and do our research. So that's where you, that's the essence of the challenge. You know, what is real? What is authentic?

Now, we innately know authenticity, and we innately know fakes. So what would happen if there was a, it's an interesting thought experiment. if you had a perturbation interruption enough in the space, what would happen to our health? What happened in World War II when the first time there was no sugar to give babies for a thousand days? What happened with? I don't know.

What happened? There were much healthier, right? So there are metadata points about some of these outcomes that take place that we just have to reestablish our understanding of and our authenticity. So it becomes, again, a trust issue. What do you trust? If you don't trust your parents and you don't trust your friends and you don't trust your clergy and you don't trust your teachers, then you're left to your own devices. And that can go one or two ways.

You can become a self-fulfilling organism that does what you saw on and claim your agency and do the best you can. Or you succumb to the pressure. The pressure is everywhere because they want to, they, which isn't necessarily they, but, you know, compliance is crafted. It's very, it's a obedience works because there's no derivation. There's no deviance from the mean. So once you start to feel better and you can see it start to take place, people are starting to become more aware.

It's part of that, that arousal curve. We're on the other side of that high arousal. dopamine addiction. You know, you're a champion of dopamine serotonin relationships. And we're starting to understand that the brain rot, which is a bad definition, but the dopamine addiction and the damage it does so the brain can be turned around with serotonin. So we're starting to see the brain chemistry and some of these other things in very small places start to grab hold. So it's not too late, but yeah, there's work to be done. I'm a champion and I'm also a client.

Boy, I bet you're fun at parties, Dan. We have to be invited. So please in the show notes, which Lizzie will put together, suggest some references on obesity and nutrition that you have found to be helpful. You know, this is going to sound a tangential and off topic or overly self-referential. But I think authenticity is what is our culture is kind of hungry for. Absolutely. It feels like an even larger responsibility and fiduciary for me and this work and this channel to research and find people on that I trust.

that what they're going to say is valid. But I worry about the runway of that and how is AI going to affect a podcast like this, for instance, how are people going to know 18 months from now what's true or what's curated just for their personal beliefs and demands? And what can we do as a culture or as individuals to chart a better path in that direction? So three things, authenticity, consistency, and discipline. You know, the best form of discipline is self-discipline, how you carry yourself, how you act, how you live, how you project yourself. People can spot a fake a mile away, but they will gravitate. For evolutionary reasons, this is hard-wired enough.

It is in our innate nature to gravitate towards authenticity because that's the only way we can compete. So there is, the greatest void in the world in the United States is authentic leadership, real leadership. And it's a, it's a billion dollar industry that is euphemistically barren because you have to put people first as a leader. And that is the challenge is putting people first. And, you know, that's, you know, eaters eat less. That's a Marine Corps axiom. Your job as a Marine officer is two things. Complete the mission, look out for the welfare of your Marines.

Now, the welfare of your Marines is a big, broad space, mentally, morally, physically, spiritually, all of those things. Now, it sounds kind of paternal in the 21st century, but even if you change it from paternal to parental, these are 18, 19, 20-year-olds. 64% of the DOD are between the ages of 18 and 24. And in our current space, if your frontal lobe isn't even matured till 25, you have an adolescent brain, you have adolescent behaviors, who are they supposed to follow and set an example for in the absence of the people who reared them? It's a really big responsibility. So be authentic, be consistent. Your behavior, they don't care what you say. They watch what you do. And that is across the board on all things. in the medicine space, in the food space, in the Homeland Security space, you have to be consistent.

And you also have to have an expectation when you do something to be able to explain it. So I think this, given that it's early February, 2025, I think this conversation would be sidestepping. If I didn't ask you how the work and priorities of DHS and FEMA are being changed. with the new administration as of February 5th, there's tons of executive orders and impacts on international coordination and cooperation.

What can you say about that as a citizen who's observing what's going on? So there's two points of view that one must consider, evolution or revolution. Now, we have tried for generations, or at least since 1947 with the National Security Act, and then probably post-Nixon evolutionary change to government. But no one can plan for complexity. It's an emergent property. And no one can plan for these things. So our government has gotten unbelievably complex, unbeknownst to us.

If you go back in the historical literature, the very same things that we're going through now. We went through, by and large, in 1920, 1921, 1992. We went from a debtor nation to a lender nation after World War I. It was the start of the American century. We had a burst of anti-Semitism and also the Red Scare, the first one, became very isolationist. And you had the roaring 20s. And what happened? We had a massive economic crash, the Great Depression, whatever you want to unpack as the reasons it affected us in the world.

And then we entered World War II. So now move forward, opinions aside and observations. Often you can let evolution try to change things. Sometimes that's not effective. And revolution scares people because of the pejorative. but when you want to enact rapid disorienting change, whether politically, economically, or nationally, often you have to do things at a high cyclical rate. And I'll come back to the current administration has a methodology. They are out-cycling their adversary in terms of politics, which are the Democrats.

And it is creating disequilibrium. And in that disequilibrium, they are trying to affect rapid change. Now, will it work? I'm not sure. But it has everybody's attention. So what is the desired end state remains to be seen? But the disequilibrium and the cycling through are very revolutionary. And it is a counterfactual and a counter narrative that we are unaccustomed to because most of us have

never even been an existential threat in our lives. If you were born after the Cuban missile crisis, what have you been through? Right? So all of these things, it depends on your disposition and your point of view. I take your great simplification as a plasmoid between revolutionary and evolutionary. It's somewhere in the middle because you have evolutionary methodologies that are facing revolutionary requirements. And that intersection, that convergence, starts some of these conversations. So yeah, I think the government's going to change. I think their methodology and their behavior and their performance will change. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Change in and of itself is never productive unless it's

purposeful. And it's very Machiavellian because those who lose on the change side always feel ripped off. So those who gain by the change are very happy and those who lose are very unhappy. That's part of the history of our species. History of our species over millennia. And there are, I don't like the word winners and losers. There are those who gain and those who stay the same or they stay in that stasis spate. And it comes back to that heterogeneity and homogeneity. this is a time of revolutionary change, and that's why, again, coming back to our conversation, you know, we're in it.

We're in the great simplification in some spaces. So what should individuals viewing this or listening to this who are not involved with Department of Homeland Security or FEMA or even live in the United States take away from this episode for their own lives? Never lose hope, right? So I'm not a big, I'm, I used to tell people hopes and empty barrel, but faith is everything. So faith is believing in something that you can't necessarily identify. Hope is something that you hadn't prepared for and it's wishful thinking.

But somewhere in the middle, bet on me, bet on you, bet on us. We can overcome this if we choose to, or we can succumb if we choose to. This is a series of choices. And, you know, we the people have tremendous power if we focus and we are not focused. And we have allowed things to evolve or devolve. Some of us think we're powerless. But I would say we are powerful beyond all measure. We just don't know how to harness it yet.

And you can harness it by your behavior, what you want to accomplish, what you put in your mouth, what you consume, what you read, what you feed yourself. you become. So maybe a theology or philosophy of sorts, but if you want to gain complete agency over your life and live the Victor Frankel disposition that all you can respond to is the stimulus around you, take ownership, choose what you eat, choose the people you hang with, choose the music you listen to, choose the things you read as best you can, challenge and provoke your intellect and your friends and grow. You either grow or die. every day. I mean, that's just me. You either grow in some space and the opportunity that you don't is lost and then you die. And since we, the only thing linear in our lives is our lives.

There's a beginning and an end. And what you do in the middle is up to you. And so many people are worried about their legacy as opposed to their immortality. And I'll leave you with this. you have changed my life forever. Now, that's a big stretch in one disposition. But there are people that you know, whether it's Daniel or Simon or all your guests have changed your life forever, what you do with that opportunity and that change in your disposition, you pay it forward and you owe for the people that came before you that made this opportunity possible. So that's what I believe the people who, for me, survived the potato famine, whether it was a genocide caused by the English or just a potato blight because of lack of biodiversity, all those things,

they came to New York City and they scooped up horses in the streets and feces. And I'm here because they chose to do that. I owe that. You owe your forefathers and four mothers. So, it comes back to there is a part of you that is immortal in your behavior, your traits, your DNA, your disposition that you owe the world in the future. So what an opportunity to give forward, to pay the past and the future. And that's, don't give up. Keep trying. There's, it's easy to be sad and it's easy to be defeated. It takes immense moral courage to say, screw you, watch this. And that's what I believe.

We need more kindness. We need more forgiveness. And we need more convergence. But in the end, I'm going to bet on you if I call you, you'll help me. And if you call me, I'll help you. What better definition of love and harmony is there? It's reciprocity. You owe me, I owe you.

Let's owe the future. That's what I believe. I almost feel like asking you the magic wand question as a second entire episode because I'm sure you have a lot of ideas if you were benevolent dictator or had a magic wand on actually how to directionally frame the challenges we have. But I'll just ask you briefly now if you had a magic wand and there was one thing that you could do to improve human and planetary futures with no recourse to you personally. What would it be? Oh, I would decentralize everything. I would add polyculture across the board. 90% of the world can eat

30 miles from their house. That would add biodiversity. That would add a whole different element of culture. And we would grow economically in ways we can't even fathom. But we would upset the status quo so much that it would disrupt the economy as we know it. But that takes a lot of chops. That's what I'd do. Okay. I like that answer. What do you do for fun, Dan, outside of thinking about these things and working. You know, it's my fun meter has changed over time, right? So, uh, like to exercise, like to read, like to listen to music, like to spend time with people, like to be challenged, you know, I dare say I like to argue. It depends on the subject. And I like to give back. I like sharing things with people that if you want to share with me,

I share with you. Uh, I like to be challenged. And, you know, funds a relative term. I I have a very, I'm a highly curious person that I can find stimulus anywhere, right? So just in our conversations alone, trying to take notes and talk. So I think being curious is fun for me because there's lots of stuff out there. And I can't do the things I used to do. I do the things I can do. So, you know, whether it was, I was a college athlete, I did that then. I was a Marine.

I did that then. You know, if I sit down and, you know, the old Marine joke is give me a box of crayons and I'm happy for, you know, a long time. So all of fun is a relative term, but there's lots of things I like to do. And I do the things I have to do when I have to do them because that's what being an adult and disciplined is. This has been really novel and interesting. I've never had a guest like you. and it is heartening to me to know that these ideas are being rolled around and discussed amongst leaders who are tasked with risk management and possible future scenarios.

Thank you for your work and for your time today. Do you have any closing thoughts or words for our viewers? My only thing that I'd like to share is the people in My space care and incredibly about the people in your space. And the people in MySpace, the national security, homeland security, emergency management, consequence management, they have huge hearts. And you have to be kind of wired to get bludgeoned all the time because we've created a nation of huge expectations and no friction.

And they still show up. You know, the hardest part of life is showing up. and a lot of people talk about it, but very few actually do it. And that's what I want to leave you with. There is a lot of people in this country that are invisible, that are unknown, that don't seek any accolades or prizes or pats on the back. They grind on behalf of their peers and their citizens. And that's what a patriot really is. It's not somebody that just whips the flag and wants to destroy the world.

They're there for you and they're there for me. They'll bleed for us. We bleed for them. And when you embrace that part of America, we have a chance. And I always bet on us. Dan O'Connor, thank you very much to be continued, my friend. Thank you. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of The Great Simplification, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also visit thegreat simplification.com for references and show notes from today's conversation. And to connect with fellow listeners of this podcast, check out our Discord channel. This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagan's, edited by No Troublemakers Media, and produced by

Misty Stinnett, Leslie Batlutz, Brady Hyan, and Lizzie Siriani.