The Team House - Army Special Mission Unit Intel Officer | Nic Adams | Ep. 347

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

Prior to his work on Capitol Hill, Adams served as a commissioned officer in the US Army. He deployed multiple times to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, as well as to Jordan and Iraq during the Global War on Terror. After ten years on active duty, he transitioned to the Army Reserve. Adams holds a BS in political science from Boise State University and a master of international public policy from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.find Nic here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/nic-adams208----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! Ridge Wallet ⬇️https://ridge.com/HOUSEfor up to 40% off!!For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample#armysmu #smuBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 347 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here tonight with our guest, Nick Adams.

Nick served as an intelligence officer in the Army, both conventional forces and also with a special mission unit. multiple deployments to Afghanistan and elsewhere. We're really excited to have you on the show today, Nick. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks, Jack. A pleasure to be on. So, man, let's jump into it. You know, the first question for most of our guests about your origin story.

Tell us a little bit about how you grew up and how that kind of took you towards the Army. Yeah, no, and I actually love that that's the first question because I love origin stories, right? because everyone's got a different story, and they're actually fascinating because everyone's just got different perspectives. Yeah, yeah. So mine kicked off. I actually, I was more or less born into it.

You know, they say the Army's a family business, I guess, in some ways. And so I'm no different in that regard. My dad was an Army, NCO, a mechanic, and he was stationed in Germany and a number of other places. So I was actually born over in Germany when he was stationed there. And so I grew up as an Army brat, as they say, right? Moving kind of from town to town and started in Europe, spent some time in California, Texas, Belgium, and then finally ended up in Idaho around eighth grade.

And that's when my dad decided to retire. But by that time, I mean, I've grown up playing Army, right? Because that's what kids do. And I remember at some point saying, like, I think I want to do. this when I grow up. I think I want to join the army. And like any other good army person, my dad said you should probably think about joining the Air Force instead. We had that conversation. And for a while, I was like, yeah, okay. But then, you know, like, being who I am and who I was, I was like, nah, I think the army might be it. And so it was always something that I think as a kid,

I gravitated toward. I thought it was, you know, obviously, you know, thought my dad was the coolest guy ever still think he's pretty awesome. And so, you know, that really had an impact on me. But I think, you know, the lifestyle was great too. And as a kid, I think at the time, you don't necessarily appreciate moving and leaving your friends. But I think later on as an adult, you're like, you know what, I saw a lot of the world at a pretty young age.

I think I want to keep this going. But what profoundly changed, I think, my conviction to join was 9-11. That's when it kind of went from. Hey, this might be something cool to go do. And man, it's really awesome seeing all the, you know, seeing the world and getting paid to live in Europe. I was a senior in high school when the planes hit the World Trade Center. And, you know, like most people, I remember waking up that morning. I was out in Mountain Time.

So, you know, it was pretty early. Getting ready for school. And, you know, one of my friends calls me. He's like, hey, man, turn on the TV. You know, one of the planes just hit the World Trade Center. And I was like, okay. Sure, it was an accident. and these things happen, I guess,

but I did no point in that first moment that I think this was a terrorist attack. And then like, you know, this is before I, I think I didn't have the cell phone at this point. I mean, this is like, this is like 2001. I'm driving the school, and by the time I got there, the second plane had hit.

And then, you know, by that time, things were kind of totally chaotic. And then, you know, a lot of rumors. I mean, I'm sure you remember 9-11. People didn't really know what was what, and like, what got hit? And like, you know, what was our response going to be? So, you know, I'm a 17-year-old kid.

I've always considered joining and now we're under attack. And so now I was like, okay, I'm 100% like signing somewhere, right? And so I was ready to go right away. My parents talked some sense into me and said, look, this, you know, this war's not going to end overnight. You should really think about, you know, going to school, going the ROTC route. I ended up meeting them halfway. I enlisted in the reserve at 17 under the delayed. entry program. So senior in high school, 17 years old, went to, you know, got my, I had to beg

my mom to sign the paperwork. But there I was, you know, signed up and raised my right hand December 2001 and enlisted in the reserve. And from there, it, I actually ended up getting picked up for an ROTC scholarship at Boise State University. And I commissioned in 2006. So, So that's kind of when I actually got into the fight, so to speak. You know, the way that worked was once I got my ROTC contract, the reserve essentially let me go do that. And so I went to school for the first kind of four years of the GWAT and then an 06 commissioned at that point.

Was there some inkling in the back of your mind of what you wanted to do in the Army if you wanted to be a pilot or was it always intelligence? Yeah, that's a good question. I wasn't really sure, but I remember having this conversation with my parents, and they, you know, my dad actually said to me, like, hey, you know, you like, you know, at the time I was like, I was really into command and conquer was like a really big, I might remember this computer game, right? You and I are the same age. Senior year of high school is 9-11. Okay, right? So you know what I mean. I mean, I loved, I love playing that. I love strategizing. I loved like, you know, sending a little spy playing out and seeing where the, where the bad guys. were so I could, you know, get a jump on them, that sort of thing. See, I was the guy that liked the Tanya units.

That's why I ended up. Yeah, no, I love it. Those are great. Tanya, yeah, that was great. So anyway, all to say, like, I thought about it and I was like, I think Intel would be kind of a cool, like, feel to get into to have all these things, you know, to kind of paint the picture, right? Like, what is the enemy doing?

And, you know, keeping your guys, obviously alive and bringing the pain to the enemy. Like that was kind of the thought process. And I kicked around a couple different ideas. You know, at some point I wanted to go infantry. At some point I wanted to go artillery. At some point, I thought logistics would be cool because what you might be able to do after you get out. But like for me, I was like, where can I have the most impact?

Where can I apply my talents the best? And I just kind of had that thought. And it was like, I think Intel is probably where I want to be. And so when I was in ROTC, I actually got the opportunity my last year. to sign, I could either sign for branch or for duty assignment, and they kind of dangle you with this additional three years, right? Where they're like, you're signing up for four, but if you do three more,

we can get you either your duty assignment of choice or your branch. And so I signed for branch, and I signed for MI, for military intelligence. And I threw in, like, I'll still put, like, Germany as my top duty assignment because maybe I'll get it. And I did. I kind of got lucky. I got two for the price of one. I signed for the additional three, served, you know, had a seven-year active duty obligation,

but got both branch and duty assignment of choice, so it kind of worked out. So ROTC, did you have to go to the basic course and then your officer or intelligence branch? I mean, I have no idea. I was in an officer. Tell us how that works. Yeah, they changed it a little bit. I think it's changed a few times even since 06. Yeah, so at that point, they had this thing called Basic Officer Leader's course to,

which you, basically, they took OBC, which was the officer basic force, and they broke it up into two different things. I think it's back to one thing now. I'm not a percent sure, but at that time, I, you know, I commissioned in May, and then I went out and did, I did a bullet two at the time at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And that was like your basic soldier FM7-8 stuff, right? Like, move into contact, convoy, ops, patrols, op orders, all the things. you did as a cadet anyway through our ROTC and then like now you're like okay like it's real now I mean still training but now you're actually commissioned now you're expected to know what you're doing and that was I think six weeks and then from there I went to Fort Wachuka for um the officer basic force for MI and that was I think about between four and six months somewhere that was great and a lot of people complain about Fort Wachuka I got to say like Arizona is a pretty

awesome place to be. You know, especially down there. I mean, there's some cool towns around there. There's Bisbee. There's Tombstone. Like, you know, I mean, tombstones is cool. Like, who doesn't want to go check that out? So in terms of, like, places to go see, like, it was a cool place. And the training itself, I think, was good, too. Interestingly, you know, six, like, there was still a lot of, you know, we were still doing, like, the high intensity conflict stuff. And at the time, everybody was like, we don't need this anymore. We have to do counterinsurgency. This is the only thing that we're going to be doing in the future like you know the battlefields are going to be in cities and it's interesting now 20 you know almost 20 years later how much we're kind of back to to what we you know basically

training for high intensity conflict again and how it's come full circle but at the time you know the shift was obviously toward counterterrorism and counterinsurgency hey guys our show is sponsored by ghost bag check them out please they make awesome mattresses awesome pillows awesome betting Ghostbred provides high quality and super comfortable award-winning mattresses crafted in the U.S. and Canada. Did you know that 60% of U.S. adults report being too hot when they're trying to sleep? That's me. I'm a sweaty little baby. That's why we design all of our products with cooling features so you stay comfortable and asleep all night long. Pair any of our mattresses with GhostBeds award-winning adjustable base and get the ultimate sleep experience.

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made in Canada. Shout out to our brothers in Canada. They rock. Check them out. I love Ghostbed. Thanks, guys. Do you want to explain a little bit about like, the job of an Army intelligence officer because it's different than maybe some of the other roles

out there. Like, at least I imagine, they're not training you in like tradecraft. That's not really an intelligence officer's job per se, at least not at this point, right? That's right. What did they actually do in the military? Yeah, it's funny you say that because I think at some point, you know, like when I was like, oh, military intelligence, this sounds cool. It's like James Bond.

And then you get there and it's not James Bond at all. back my first unit i wasn't even i was in a military intelligence unit and i was i was the exo of a company and so like all i did really was like supply and logistics and like personnel exactly right which is great and then we can get into that but the training i mean again it was you know essentially and i really enjoyed it i mean it was like really understanding what it is the enemy is doing and and being the person that knows how the enemy is going to employ his forces analysis. And so in high intensity conflict scenario, you know, you have to know the enemy's weapon systems.

You have to know the enemy's doctrine. And if you're going up against an adversary, it's your job to know, he'll probably use, you know, these, you know, breachers to get through this obstacle. He's got a reserve element. He's probably going to put over here. And so you just, you get trained in like that, you know, military decision making process and understanding how to, you know, employ your sensors to, like, find where he is. So that's ISR. That is human intelligence. It signals intelligence.

It's putting together all of the different intelligence disciplines to really paint a picture. And then it's understanding what it means, right? It's one thing to have all these collectors give you information. But if your analysts and your intelligence officers don't understand what it means, then you can't provide the most valuable piece to the commander, which is the so what, which is why do I care that he's got 50 tanks? Why do I care that, you know, to go to a counterinsurgency example, like, why do I care that he drives a white Toyota Corolla and lives, you know, on this street corner? Like those are things that, like, as the intelligence professional, you have to spend some time understanding what that means and what the significance of that is.

And then being able to understand, you know, like when patterns shift and why that matters. And so, yeah, to your point, it's not trade craft, right? Like intelligence officers in the Army are not being, you know, told to meet with some dude. some bar in Vienna. Like, that's not what we do. It's a whole lot of, hey, you know, we've got this mission and we have to, you know, what is the enemy going to do? What can we expect? What are he, what are his most likely and most dangerous forces of action and being able to brief the commander and at the team level or at the, you know, at the tune level, like the soldiers that are going out, like what, what they're, what they can expect to be up against.

So tell us about your first unit. You said Exo in a conventional MI unit? Yeah, it's funny, too. Like, my whole career I've heard, just wait until you get to the real army because things are different there. And I think what people meant with that was like the brigade combat team.

That was the big thing in 2006, you know, from I think like 03 onward maybe. And so that was it, right? It was like, when you get there, things will be different. But like here, you know, where I started out in Germany at a theater level military intelligence brigade,

you know, it was a, it was very much not that. We were not a combat arms unit. There were no combat arms soldiers around. It was a lot of intel personnel. And in 2006 at the time, like there wasn't much happening in Europe. It was pretty sleepy, right? And so like my first thought when I got there was like, okay, when are we deploying? Like, when are we supporting Afghanistan and Iraq?

And this is 2006, right? So there's two wars going on. And I didn't pick Germany to stay in Germany. I mean, of course, I wanted to get back there. I was born there. I've got a lot of family there. And so I was excited to go back. But I also knew in 2006 like that.

I didn't want to camp out. And so when I got there, I was actually initially little disappointed, I guess, that it was, you know, a headquarters unit of an intelligence brigade. It was actually an intelligence group at the time. But I, you know what? At the same time, I was like, okay, there's opportunity to learn here, right? Like, I'm going to learn how logistics works. I'm going to learn how personnel. works and as an executive officer of a headquarters and headquarters company like you're doing a lot of that

and so got to run my first range I mean those are all things you pick up and like things to learn so in terms of places to be it actually turned out pretty good and I had a really good commander in first sergeant and would I'll tell any lieutenant that listens to this is like listen to your first sergeant and listen to those NCOs and that's what my my dad told me going in as a you know as a former NCO he was like listen, those guys can make or break your career. So just go in, keep your mouth shut and your ears open for the first little while, and you're going to do just fine. Sound advice.

Yeah, absolutely. It served me well. Okay. So how long were you at that unit? So I was there for a year. And like I said, it was a good learning experience, got to run some ranges, got to learn how the army works. And then about a year in, actually about six months in, I try to figure out. out, okay, I'm not deploying here. Like, I'm going to be doing this for the next three years,

foreseeably. Where can I, how can I deploy? How can I get into the fight? And so at some point, I, you know, through the, I guess, lieutenant mafia, I heard, well, there's a unit that's getting chopped to us. They were coming. I think they were, before they were like a 323MI battalion, but they're coming to 66 of my group, which is where I was. And I was like, okay, well, this is a good opportunity, maybe to go there. They were an aerial exploitation company. So they had a combination of fixed-wing aircraft that were manned, and then they had a couple of Hunter UAVs at the time, which at that time were a program of record. Not cool, fancy SAT-com stuff, right? Like, I'm not talking reapers, but, you know, still, like, UAVs that were going over there.

And so this unit had just got back from Balad from a year-long rotation. And so I started making some phone calls. Of course, like, no top cover, right? I didn't go to my commander and was like, hey, sir, can I get to this unit? I was like, I'm just going to start calling the S-1, seeing what I can make happen here. So I figured out that, like, there's a, you know, this unit's coming over. They're going to look for a platoon leader. There's a lieutenant coming from the states to replace me.

But then I was like, but why should they send, you know, why should that person go over there? Like, I should go to this unit. Like, I would like to go do that. And I'm already here. I've paid my dues, right? You do need to get your platoon time in, don't you? You know, it's interesting. like you don't have to.

And at that point, as an Intel guy, like, especially from lieutenant to captain, it was pretty much guaranteed. Like, the promotion rates, I think it started out four years. It went down to three at some point when I was there from like, from like, commissioning to captain was like a 36 month timeline. And that was down from like the four years that had been before. So, but yeah, 100% I wanted to get platoon time, right? Like, as a lieutenant, like, you want to be with soldiers.

Like, you don't want to be stuck at headquarters the whole time. And so this unit was going out to Hohenfelds, Germany, which anyone who's been in Germany and, like, here's Hohenfels, they think, like, that's like the box. Like, that's where all the units get trained. Nobody wants to go there. But I was like, okay, but as a tenant unit, like, I get to go to this really cool base in southern Germany. Like, it's beautiful countryside out there. I drove a Dodge Ram, too, which up in, like, you know, like the Frankfurt area wasn't a great vehicle choice, as it turns out. because parking is pretty horrible.

But I ended up, like, working it out, and they just cut me orders. And then I, at some point, I did tell my boss. I was like, hey, sir, by the way, like, you're losing me anyway, but I'm going to try to line up a transfer. And he was like, hey, I support it. Why don't you come tell me next time before you start pulling levers? But I had a really good, I had a really good instructor in OBC. And she told us, she told every one of us. She was like, don't, like, you got to manage your own career.

because if you let other people manage your career, you're going to get stuck doing all kinds of stuff and other people are going to get the assignments you want. I took that to heart, by the way. And so I started making the calls. And I just figured it was like probably better to lean forward and, you know, see what I can get. And then the whole like ask for forgiveness rather than permission sort of thing.

And in that case, it worked out. So I got I got orders to go down to Hone Fills from the Frankfurt area. And it was a great move. I was with an aerial exploitation. battalion. I was a platoon leader of the recomb platoon. Like it sounded cool. I had soldiers. We had airplanes. And then like a couple months later, we got orders to Afghanistan. And so I was pumped, right? I was like 23, 24. And I was like, okay, like this is this is why I'm here. Like, this is why in September 2001 I got raised my right hand. It wasn't to like, you know,

sit at a garrison. And so that kind of started, I guess, that next phase of my career, which which is kind of when the deployment started. And yeah, that was a really cool unit. I mean, that was a fun place to be. And again, like, it was still Germany. So, like, it was a cool place to be stationed. But then it was, like, a really cool opportunity to actually get out and deploy with those guys. So tell us about the aerial exploitation unit and, you know, what you guys were up to when you got deployed to Afghanistan.

Sure. Yeah. So I think this was, like, mid or early 2008. And we started looking at, like, where we were going to deploy to. They weren't quite sure. They did a couple site surveys. So I didn't get to go on those trips, but our company commander went out there

and they looked at a few different airfields. You know, what they needed for that aircraft at a time. I don't even think we used them anymore, but, you know, they were line of sight aircraft, so they were tethered to a ground control station. And, but they could carry like an FMV payload, so full motion video payload. They could carry a signals intelligence payload.

And so at that time, that was a pretty advanced piece of equipment, right? Like now drones are everywhere, and we should get into that at some point, because it's crazy how the battlefields changed. But in 08, like, we were the only people with drones. We were the only ones with anything that flew, really, of any consequence. And so they were looking for a place to put us.

We ended up going to Jalalabad airfield out in eastern Afghanistan. And so the very first deployment of that unit was, like I said, like I said, like early 08, and then my first deployment ended up being in July. of 08. And so, you know, we'd already had it established a forward presence. And so the good thing is, like, you know, we did all the stuff back home. We packed everything up, shipped it out. I stayed back with the, the kind of main, really, like, most of the unit. And what we did was kind of an unorthodox way of doing business. Like, we didn't deploy, like, as a, as a company, we deployed a detachment forward, which essentially was being led at that time by our company commander. But then we, like, kept people in, and we just always would cycle people forward, right? And so, So we'd have an officer out there as the OIC, we'd have an NCIC, and then we'd have about 15 soldiers. And then we'd have about 15 contractors from North of Grumman who were like keeping the aircraft safe and like maintained. And so we had a combination of like maintenance soldiers and recon soldiers. And then we would go out there and just like do deployments.

And so mine started in July of 08. And, you know, I mean, like most people like when you first show up over there, you're like, what did I get myself into? like what is this place. But it was, you know, again, like it was, yeah, yeah, I mean, it got real, right? Like that was kind of when you realized like, okay, like, we're here. We got a job to do. And, yeah, it was a pretty cool deployment. We started out doing a lot of support for conventional forces.

And so most of it was doing like route clearance scans, right? So we'd put the bird up. We'd fly for, you know, eight hours, however long we had, loiter time. And we would just drive up and down routes, basically. But we kind of figured out, like, that wasn't necessarily the best use to that asset. Because what are the chances of you catching somebody and placing an IED? I mean, it's not, you have to, I mean, it's a soda straw, right? So it's like right place, right time sort of thing.

And I'm not sure that it ever actually happened. And so at some point, later that year, we had a CJA SOTIF unit on our compound. So I think it was fifth group guys. I'm not exactly sure like what group it was but I know that one of the guard groups ended up switching out with them all to say like they were like

hey you guys have a SIGG pod like we're trying to like find like bad dudes like can you guys help us out that so this now we're like yes like we should try to figure out this relationship and so again it was kind of a series of like you know phone calls and like MOUs and then we ended up

getting like managed your career yeah it was I mean it really was it was like it's it's almost it was like entrepreneurial right and this wasn't all my idea by the way like one of our like warrants was like hey man we should we should try to work with these guys like I think it'd be a way better use to the asset and I was like totally let's do it um and so you know we worked with our our like theater two and everybody else like let's let's get chopped to these sf dudes which let's be real they're cool

and as an intel guy you want to work with cool guys you don't want to you don't necessarily want to fly up and on a route especially if you feel like it's not um it's not yielding anything right Like if we were keeping guys safe and firefights, it's like 100%. I would have been a different story. You wanted to find a way to contribute to the fight. Absolutely, right? Like let's get this asset in there. Let's let's help these guys out.

And so we got chopped over. It was funny too. It was like a night and day difference, right? From like working with the conventional guys. And then suddenly, you know, we got, we actually got an MOU. So like we were chopped over to this, you know, shadowy organization, shall we say, at the time, right? Some guy in a seal out, you know, seal, Navy seal uniform, because yeah, I had no, nothing on them, right? And so at the time, I'm just like blown away by this. I'm like,

whoa, who's this cool guy? And he's got no name tag. And he calls himself Joe and who the hell knows that that's his real name. But like, you know, we're just like, yeah, and so we love it because that's awesome. And they're giving us real cool work to do. And we're doing some pretty good target development for those guys. And then, yeah, so that was that. And then, yeah, kind of throughout like between them and like the the siege of SOTUS guys kind of went back and forth kind of supporting them and then we were able to enable a couple of a couple of actual HVT kind of raids and you know putting guys on target and it led to in fact one of them actually made one of

them made CNN which was kind of wild because I was like okay we're like this little hunter unit out here in eastern Afghanistan but like at the time like we we ended up thwarting this like attack on the on the governor of the province and because they had some intel that like, you know, some dudes are planning an attack. And so, you know, we did what we did with our equipment. And we ended up figuring out where they were and, and they hit the house. And it was kind of a big deal, like, for that at the time, right?

And so, like, that to me was just like one of those eye-opening experiences where I was like, man, okay, this is pretty cool. Like, we're able to directly impact the fight. We're supporting people who know how to use us effectively. and we may have just changed the, like, outcome of the war in our sector, right? And so that's kind of where I got, like, the bug, right? Where I was like, okay, I kind of want to do this special operations thing. I kind of want to, like, stay in this fight.

Like, you know, they're able to get things quickly. Approvals don't take very long. And we're having strategic level of impacts with tactical systems. Like, how do I keep doing that? So that was kind of my first kind of, you know, look into that world. and, you know, kind of wanted to stay. Just from a reconnaissance point of view, I imagine that, what are we in 2008, the technology around these drones was still sort of nasient.

Was it difficult to use the video systems or other ints that are on these platforms? I mean, what were sort of the technical limitations that you guys found yourselves running into? Like, man, I wish we had three more hours of time and time of flight or whatever. Yeah, I mean, the most frustrating thing, honestly, was like the line of side stuff, right? Like, we could not go up into some of the areas where, like, the fighting was hair. Yes. So we were out of J-Bad Airfield in Nanga Har Province. We tried to push up to Kunar as much as we could.

We were able to get to, like, other, like, places kind of around J-bad. And there was a lot of dudes, as it turns out, like, there was a lot of bad dudes in that area that they just didn't fight there because that's where they had, like, their support zone. But we were still able to roll up people because, you know, they lived somewhere. Right, right. Turns out they don't always live where they fight. Some of them do. But we went up to Kunar a few times and you just, if you get too deep into those mountains, you start losing Link. And so there were a couple times where we'd be supporting, you know, like conventional dudes up there. And yeah, we would just lose Link. And then the aircraft would like automatically want to come back. And then we'd reacquire it and try to push it back up. And so we had like a map of like where we could fly. But, you know, I just felt bad for some of the dudes that we'd be supporting. like they'd be on the ground, like, humping these mountains, right, up and down. And then we'd be like, dude, I cannot, I can't, like, this is as far as this bird will go. And so, like, it was frustrating at times. We had conventional guys used us to, like, call an artillery, like, which I don't, you know, we told them like, hey, we're not a, that's not what we, we, like, legally, I'm not sure you're allowed to do this.

They're like, yeah, it's fine. Like, just show us this mountainside. And, and, you know, they, you know, then you'd see, like, all this, some rounds coming in, you know, and we were like, okay. you know, again, like made it clear that we were doing just the recomb piece. But that was the most frustrating thing. And that the tech now, I mean, it's so much different, right? Like if you get something that's either a SATCOM or even if you get somebody with a small quadcopter that you can just throw up in the air, you can walk up and down those mountains all day

and you can see what you're looking at, especially if you have small, attributable systems. So, yeah, things changed a lot. What I will say, though, is like I'm just grateful that back then I wasn't looking over my shoulder constantly while I was out, like, on the flight line, right? Like we had, I mean, J-Bad was not a bad place to be deployed. Like, we had a couple of times where we got like rocketed a few times where like, you know, I mean, we didn't have crazy enough. We didn't even have Hesco barriers on our side of the airfield.

Like it was a like, like it was a fence. And I was like, at, like, we're going to get like shot at on the flight line, right? And then we did. And I was like, okay. Like at this point, right? It's like late one night. And so I'm in the hangar and I'm here and like, it rounds at like two in the morning. I'm like, that's not like a, that's not like a, that's not the range at 2 a.

right so we go out there and we're seeing the tracers like fly out like fly into like the base and you know again like we're not a combat arms unit and so you know this is all conventional stuff I'm like what like what you know I was like get off the airspace like don't you know like the aircraft is not as important as you guys not getting shot so so we had a couple of those things happened but like by large like it wasn't like a crazy place to be but uh I did apply for um so that was my first deployment um I ended up applying for uh SF at that point because I was like, I was a lieutenant. I was like in the window.

I was like, I'm going to apply for special forces. I want to get into that community. So I had like a recruiter. I was emailing back and forth, but even then, right? Like, palms are not great. Email sometimes don't always go through. I put a packet together. I sent it to them and we're communicating.

And then I remember getting back to Germany after my first deployment. This is well past like the deadline. And he emails me. He goes, hey, man, I don't think we've got your paperwork and you send it again. And I was like, oh, so I did. And I got like an email. like, I think like two months later, saying, hey, thanks for applying for SFS, you know, but, you know, you're, whatever the like denial letter is that you get, you know?

That's, that's weird because I thought that you could go as a captain. Yeah. So there's, there was, basically it was this. It was like you had, you could do it for one year. I think you had to be able one lieutenant, first lieutenant promotable to go. And then you could, then you could get a waiver or something like that. There was like a waiver you could get for a second shot. And I don't exactly.

remember what the, what the, you know, stipulations were at the time. But it was like, I was disappointed, right? Because I hadn't, like, like, figured I would at least get a shot at SFAAS. And if I didn't, like, if I didn't get picked after that, I would have been able to say, well, okay, I left it all, like, out there, but I didn't get picked up. But not to get a shot at, like, assessment selection. I was like, oh, okay, that stung a little bit. But then I was like, okay, that's fine.

Like, I liked doing the Intel thing. It was pretty cool. Why don't I try to go to, to, like, SF? group as an Intel guy. And so after my second deployment with the same unit, where I was still doing a lot of support for the, for the, uh, uh, the SOTIF guys, this one was only three months, same location, same place, same setup, came back from that one and just started working it, right? Like, had a good friend who was down at 10th Special Forces Group, first battalion down in Stuttgart, Germany. And I was like, hey man, like, how do I get down there? And, uh, he was like,

well, I can, you know, we could bring it down for an interview. And so it's like, yeah, let's do it, man. Let's let me just come down and like talk to you, talk to your commander. So I went down, I drove to Stuttgart, had an interview at first Italian 10th group. And this was like right before I got orders for the captain's career course back at Fort Wachuka. And he said, hey, we think you're great. We'll, you know, we'll work it through HRC, you know, Human Resource Command. We'll try and get you on orders. That's a great. Got to Fort Wachuka and started the captain. course and you know about halfway through like the assignment slates are coming out and uh you know

I remember meeting with a branch manager and he was like well where do you want to go I was like well I want to go to 10th group he's like that's back in Germany you just came from Germany I'm like yeah I know I want to go back to Germany a because it's awesome but B like I want to go down to 110 I already interviewed with those guys and they've you know here's my by name request from the battalion commander and uh he was like that's not how we do things in the army like no five like what does this even mean. I don't care. Like I work for, you know, whatever. And, uh, he said, how about Alaska? And I was like, nah, I don't think so, man. Like, we're going to work with that, you know, I'll figure it out. So I left that interview, you know, convinced that this guy was going to cut me

order somewhere else. And I just, I called, I called 110. I said, hey, listen, uh, I had my branch interview. They told me to go pound sand. They said a B and R ain't going to cut it. Uh, and, uh, and they want to know, uh, you know, like what the hell I was even thinking. And they were like, okay, cool, we got it. And two weeks later, I had orders for Stuttgart. So it worked out. Whoever they called. Yeah.

Yeah, whoever they called, it worked. And, you know, it was just another one of those instances where, again, I was just like, I'm not going to just wait for the big green machine to give me orders. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to try to get down to group. And so that was it. I was, then I was a group. And it was, you know, it was cool because I got to then go work with, you know,

special forces, which is what I wanted to go do, I got to do it in Germany and I got to do as an Intel guy. So I kind of got it all, like I kind of got everything I wanted. And it kind of worked out. Hey guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about tonight's sponsor for the show, which is Ridge Wallets. I've been using this for about six months now. Really enjoy it.

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My stepfather has one of these. So I've given them away, too. And our producer, Dmitri, has one. So please go and check out Ridge Wallets. Tell us about being an Intel officer in a special forces group then, because that's a different role. You're not on an ODA, but you're still doing the intelligence support for these operations. I mean, I'd be interested for the, here's some insight from what that's like.

Yeah, it was cool. And I think every phase of my career, like, it kind of, you know, got, I guess, like, it was, like, it was, like, it was, like, it was, very different each time, right? Like the conventional thing, like, doing the, like, direct, like, aircraft, like, aerial exploitation support. That was, like, I wasn't doing any intel analysis, right? I was collecting. I was a collector, essentially.

I was like, here's the raw stuff. And then it was the guys over at CJA SOTF and at J-Soc and, you know, the people who were supporting, the first ID guys in some cases. It was their intel bububbas that were going through all that, right? So when I got to group and really to Battalion, to First Battalion, 10th group, now it was like, okay, you're the Intel guy. But what I started out as was not the S2, so I was not the senior intelligence officer of the Italian.

I started out as the military intelligence detachment commander. So mid-commander is what they essentially call it, right? So think of like, I guess in the conventional army, it's like a MICO, like a military intelligence company that supports a battalion. In a special forces battalion, you've got a debt. And I think we had close to 50 soldiers. and it was like we're we're force providers right i had sigot aid guys what's that the sate a guys yeah that's right i had a bunch of sodas some saut bs we had some um you know we had a couple of huminers

some counterintel guys and we had analysts and so we had the whole kind of package to support the battalion and uh and it was cool like i managed a budget i got to send guys to training i got to make sure we had like the right equipment we got some stuff installed to help guys do you know the analysis better. We got our SCIF certified on our floor. Like, these are all cool things because, like, and finally, like,

we could, like, enabled us to support the, the teams that were, that were deploying. And so when I got there, like, we were, again, like, kind of the same,

strangely of the same setup as my first unit, where we had, like, a continuous presence in Afghanistan, and we would send companies out there, you know, set up an ODB and, you know, take their ODAs out there and do, and do ops in eastern Afghanistan.

And so, So now it's totally different. So, you know, I was in Germany, I think about a year until I, or maybe about six months or so. And then I deployed. I was kind of over there now in Kabul with a 10th group pretty soon after getting there. But now, because I'm forward, now I'm the senior intel officer for like that forward task force. And so now it's what you described. Right now it's totally different from the collection piece.

It's different from the force provider. Now I'm the guy that's fusing all the different ins together. And I think what's interesting about that is that it's, you know, it's a very fast-paced environment, right? Like guys are going out on raids. They're doing their training. And at the time, we were training an Afghan police unit called the provincial response companies. And so when I got there in August of 2010, 2010, 2011. 21, August 2011.

We showed up, we're in Kabul, we had a continuous presence, but we had ODAs in like Wardak, Logar. We had some split team ops out in like, I think Sorobi. And so kind of like around the Kabul cluster where we had our ODAs aligned. And like their primary mission was to train these Afghan police. Is that the, that's different than the Kandak commandos? That's right. Yeah, they were different.

And so the Kandak guys, I think we're, see just soda and like you know then you had like some of the other cool things that you know again like some of the three-letter agencies were doing and and some of the other folks but we were doing you know it was a very like law enforcement kind of focus um so they were like a branch of the afghan national police but they were they were these provincial response companies and so like i remind people too sometimes like you know s f like it's and sf guys obviously that are watching this know this like it like it's not designed necessarily to be a door kicker unit right like that's like those are like that's the rangers right like we're like we're supposed to do

for an internal defense irregular warfare um and you know going out there with these the locals to do the buy with and through stuff right and so that actually was a lot of what we were doing at 110 um and you know it was again it was it was it was an interesting opportunity to be the intel guy that was fusing all these different ins together and so what what i did was like i mean i liaise with all the conventional guys like what are you guys pulling in because we didn't control our own assets. We had to compete for all of our ISR assets with everybody else. And so, you know, we would try to get aircraft. We would try to like, you know, task some of our like, partners. And we even had like NATO humaners that would feed us reports to. And so we would pull

Intel from wherever we could to paint a picture of like, okay, what's going on in the province that this ODA is in? Who are the power brokers? Who are the main players? Who are the HVTs? let's get a good understanding of what these roads look like. When is like the worst time to go up this route? You know, when are we seeing the most incidents? And so the job really became a cross between like finding people, like finding the enemy. And it was also like telling our guys like what to expect, you know, when they were out doing their missions. And then making sure they had the right assets in place.

So if I understand the job correctly, you were basically trying to take all these different inputs that were coming in and then getting to the AOBs and the ODAs, the information they needed to complete their mission. Yeah, that's right. And we had a really good relationship with the 18 Foxes, right? So the Intel sergeants on the teams, we would have like, I mean, I regularly had either myself or our NCOIC or our analysts, just pick up the phone and call those guys. What was interesting, though, about our mission, I probably should have mentioned this up front. Like, we were, so we were, our ODAs were training the Afghans, but

with each ODA was another like, I think they called it SOTGs. It was like we had Romanian partners. We had the Slovak partners and Hungarian partners. And so because we were a Europe-focused

battalion, I see. We had all these like European soft guys that were like deployed with us in Kabul and around, right? And so you'd have like, I mean, it was cool. I came home with like a bunch of different uniforms because you trade a bunch of stuff. So I've got like got a Hungarian uniform or made a uniform somewhere. But like those guys would go out on these hits, right? And so you'd have so it was like an added layer of complexity.

And as an intel officer, it was an additional layer of complexity because now I had like foreign intelligence officers that were like in our jog that I was like working with. And of course in like, you know, and far be it for me to criticize the way we do business. But like, you know, I've got like five different computers. None of that, none of which talk to each other. I've got one for, you know, like the nipper, sipper and like, you know, my J-Wix, but then I've also got my Bicces, which only talks to certain NATO partners. And then I've got one that only talks to the UK. And so, like, by the time you check all your email accounts, right?

Like, that's a struggle in itself. But, like, the dynamic was really interesting because in some ways we helped develop our NATO soft partners. So it was like a capacity-building exercise for both the applications. Afghans and the Europeans. But then, of course, we were actually, like, doing, like, no kidding missions, right? So we would go, like, these guys would go out and, like, roll dudes up. Or they would put the PRCs, which they were called, which now that acronym means something totally different.

But they put these spiritual response companies on target. And so it was like there was a lot of inputs from a lot of different places. And, again, like, our job was to synthesize it. Like, why does it matter? And, like, there's a lot of noise and, like, what actually matters and what's noise? No, that's really cool. And I was going to point out, and I mean, you mentioned by with and through the term that was coined by Mark Boyat, that describes how special forces works going with accompanying, you know, the host nation partner force on target or by where you're training them on the base and then you're sending them out on their own to do the mission. And then what you're describing with the European partner forces is through that we are working with these European partners and they are in turn training these.

provincial forces. So you're completing the circuit there. Yeah. Yeah, that's the best way to point it out. I mean, it's absolutely right. And they were good, right? Like some of these, these guys were hitters. And they wanted to get out there and get work. Those are used to do in European units. Some of them are pretty damn good. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we built some really good, build a great relationship with those guys. We, you know, when we first got in, I mean, we actually had a KIA, a U.S. KIA, like, within the first few weeks of like getting there. And so that really, and it was a,

it was a pretty tough day. I mean, like, it was like, obviously, like, you know, like,

that could happen, but you never wanted to. And it was kind of a, it was a bad day, kind of all around. It was like a day that, like the Capitol got attacked while we had an ODA out on target, all of our ISAR gets pulled to go support like what's happening back in the capital.

And so. Was this when the big, the hotel got taken? over and all that. Yeah, that was, I think that was, what was that, September 13th, 20, yeah, we interviewed one of the Kiwis that was there. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that was a, that was pretty crazy. So we were on Eastern, like, the Eastern part of Kabul at the time. So, like, we heard, like, we were to going down, right? And we're like, okay, like, something's happening, obviously. And we had a convoy of the dudes out, like, in the city that day, too, like, our guys, like, a couple

of our guys. And like I was potentially going to go out there with them, but then I didn't because we had an ODA out. And so I was like, let me make sure we have ISR assets for them and like, like, make sure I can like communicate. So it was a good thing I did. Like I was, you know, able to, to the extent that I could like, like fight for assets. And eventually we did get a bird back out to to what was going on. By that time, we had troops in contact. And then, you know, like I said, like one of our, one of our guys, one of our team sergeants was actually killed in action, which, you know, and that was, yeah, it sucked. Like that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, really set the tone for at least that part of the deployment and later. And like we always,

you know, yeah, I mean, you don't, you don't forget that. And so, but it does kind of reinforce, like, okay, like, let's, let's get after it. Like, these are the dudes. Like, we're going to, we're going to shut these networks down. We're going to, you know, you're not supposed to take this thing's personal, but I don't know anyone who doesn't, you know, when one of your guys doesn't get back. So, so that was, that was seven months. That was 2011 to 2012. And again, I think was pre-productive. I mean, we had a couple of pretty good uses of the, you know, again, of our special assets that some of the European partners didn't have. But we had, you know, Intel about like an attack on Kabul that we were able to, you kind of find out like, again,

like vector the right people and get some folks on it. Actually, like the Kiwis helped us out with that one and rolled some dudes up. And it was just enough to just like disrupt it. Like I I don't think we got like the HVTs, but we got some of the dudes that were supposed to be like, you know. It was enough to afford it to disrupt their plans. That's it, right? And so like, so like kind of got chatter that like, hey, they were kind of lying low for a little while. They just bought us enough white space to then develop the networks further.

And I think like what's interesting about like being in the Intel guy in it, especially in an SF unit. And this is probably the case in conventional in some ways. But like it's a lot of targeting, right? It's a lot of like high value target like finding people. And you're having to think a few steps ahead too. 100% right. And it's like what where is he?

What is he doing? Like really getting to know your adversary in a way where now you're, it's almost like, you know, if I compare it to what a lot of my, I think colleagues were doing in conventional units, it was, you know, we were doing briefings too about the area of operations, right? Like laying out the AOR and that sort of thing. but it was a lot more in the weeds of like finding HVTs and like trying to like you know take them down and so like that was demanding for for that reason too because you had to find people it's hard to

find people in Afghanistan right like at one point I was like why don't these people just have addresses to be really helpful if I could just like plug something into a GPS right and like but like it didn't exist it was like a third mud hut from the right sort of thing yeah yeah yeah so like it was it was kind of a pain but again we had all the assets to do it and like we had some really good teams And again, the people we work with were great. And so I think the longer you do it, the more you realize, like, okay, like, you know, one, yes, you're trained to do it, but no real amount of training can really prepare you for, like, when you're there. And then, like, the environment's constantly changing.

And so, like, the second time I was there with that unit, we had gone away from, like, hitting HVTs with U.S. forces. And then we had transitioned over to, like, making the, like, putting the Afghans in the lead. And so this was like 2012 timeframe. And then we had this thing called evidence-based operations, which essentially, like, we were supposed to, like, when we roll these guys up. FBI response companies. Yeah, right? Like have some evidence that we can then present to an Afghan judge to put this guy away. And so that briefs really well, right?

Like, it sounds good. But again, I'm not here to like, like armchair quarterback this thing from the same. 2025. But like I remember in 2012 thinking of myself like okay first of all like I don't think the Afghans like even have like there's not a there's not a word for like evidence that means the same thing that that we think it means right. Right. Like there's not that that concept wasn't well developed. And so then we're taking like our idea like oh yeah, what we got to do is catch someone right handed. And then you know, they'll go to jail. So there was that and there was like this is the rampant corruption in some of these like ministries where you know you could you could find a person you

I think you had to 72 hours then you had to release them and it made for like a pretty like it was it was not easy right like it was just a you know I say that like yeah you know it was it was unnecessarily hard right like we we could do hard things we could find people we could put them away but then like when like you know two days later they're like yeah we had let them go you're like come on man we we got them to you know we got them there now like what what was not good enough about, you know, how we found him or what the... Was that a evidentiary thing or was that what, that there was corruption with some of the judges? I mean, why in your experience were some of these guys, you know, going into this catch and release

program? It was hard to say. I think it was a little bit of both. I think it was partially like incompetence, right, in the system. Like, we were basically making these guys do things that they just had never done before. Yeah. There was corruption 100%, right? If you hit a guy that's high up enough, like, you know, he's going to call his buddy and they're going to, you know, they're just going to say, hey, let this guy go.

Well, we promised you won't do it again sort of thing. And so, you know, and some of the stuff is things I heard, right? Like secondhand knowledge, right? So it's like not all like direct experience. But, you know, when I compared and contrasted, like my four deployments to Afghanistan, like from 08 to 12, I kind of, you know, there were just like these small warning signs, right? That things weren't going so well. Right. And anyone that's been over their nose, like, you know, I think in 2012, it was the first time where I started thinking of myself, like, we might not win.

We may not get out. Like, in 0-8, I was like, oh, man, we got this. This is going to be, you know, easy day. We're doing so well. By 2012, things were looking a bit different. Is that because of, you know, you get the feeling that you're trying to, like, squeeze a round peg into a square hole? It's just not working. Gosh, I wonder what, you know, it's a good question.

I remember, I think it was like 09, right, when the surge was. got announced, I was pretty motivated about it because I was like, yeah, like, this is what we need. You know, we're going to, we're going to clean this up. It worked in Iraq, you know, to some degree. And so we're going to, it's going to work here. And I was a lieutenant at the time. And so, like, you know, I wasn't necessarily thinking about like the strategic picture. Like, I was certainly thinking more about like my kind of slice of the pie there.

But I think, you know, there were, there were a lot of things that we're trying to do that I don't know that we thought. I'm not sure if we thought that they were going to work or, you know, if we really ever got to the point where, like, we were ever accepted by, you know, some of the folks and, you know, some of the locals, right? I mean, I always said when hearts and minds. And I think, I think in some cases we did. There were certainly people that loved working with us and were happy that we were there. But there was just enough of a difference. Also, just culturally, too, right? I remember when I got, like, I was driving around Kabul. I just remember thinking of myself, like, this place is so different from, like, you know, back home. And I just think, I think that, and that's easy to say. I think people were like, of course it's different. Like, it's Afghanistan. Like, what did you expect? But I didn't realize how different and like how little in common I think I had with like even the Afghans that I interacted with a lot of times. And that's not to say we didn't have good interactions. I had very positive interactions with a lot of people over there, whether it was the guys that came on our base or like

the bazaars or like, you know, even interacting with people that you would talk to every now and man. Just the cultural differences are still. 100%. It was just such. So in that sense, there was some square peg round hole. And I just think, again, like, you know, as things kind of worsened, it was just, yeah, it was little things, right?

Like you'd hear stories like, oh, man, when I first got here, we would drive softskins to Bogram. And, like, by the time I was driving to Bogram, like, from Kabul, we would do, like, convoys around then. And I would love to jump on those because it was like an opportunity to get off the fob, right because like again as the intel guy i'm not kicking indoors i'm not even out on the on the objective so any opportunity to kind of leave the wire i was i was you know happy to kind of just go out and experience it and contribute but you know we would drive up to boggerman these like and this was

supposedly the safest route in all of afghanistan right this was the route where they were like nothing ever happens here you know but yet we were up there and like gun trucks you know uh you know with with crow systems pointed out and everything else and um you know i think I just thought to myself, man, things have gotten worse. And then in 2012, I remember there was this pretty massive attack on one of those rhino buses. I don't know if you remember those or not, but they had these. Do you mean like the extended MRAP? Well, so it was, no, it wasn't even that.

Like that would have been fine. They had basically like a bus that they would like weld a whole bunch of armor onto. It's probably a little specific than that. That's what it looked like. Yeah. And like it would pick dudes up from like, you know, Camp Phoenix and you could, you go to like, like Kabul International and it would go down to, you know, the southernmost base there, forget the name at the bottom of the city, but it would basically be like you would just drive dudes around.

And so if you were getting a flight into Kabul International from, you know, Bogram, but you had to get out to Camp Phoenix, unless you had someone picking you up, you were taking the rhino. It was just this uparmored bus. Now, luckily, we had MRAPs and we had people that cared about other people in our unit. So, like, we got rides, right? but it wasn't the case for everybody. And like we had a logistics unit next to ours and that rhino got hit by like a vehicle-born IAD

and it killed like 20 people. I think the majority of men ended up being like contractors, but it was like 20 Americans that were killed in that blast. Jesus. Yeah, we never had in Kabul. We never had anything, right? Like we, I mean, I think, again, like it was pretty chill. We had like gunshots every now and then.

Like I remember going out on like one of, our convoys and like the land cruisers because in in town we would drive in land cruisers all the time like that was no problem they were up armored but they were you know they weren't the m raps and I got back one time and like the down in the in the bumper there was like a I was like was that hole there before right like so like every now and then like we would like we would take like pot shots but it was never anything like we never got into a firefight right like Alba was very chill in 2011, 2012 but things started changing at that point we never worried about hitting IEDs on the side of the road like when I first got there

was always like, oh, trash pile, right? But like, by the end of those deployments, it was like, yeah, we don't get hit here. Like, Hubble's pretty safe. But things started to change, like I said. And then, you know, it was around that time. It was on that bus got hit. And then people started thinking twice about, like, holy crap. We might actually be in a war zone here.

And, you know, it wasn't just out in the provinces. Like, things were coming to the capital. And that was my last deployment to Afghanistan before I went to the special mission unit. But that's where I remember leaving going home thinking to myself, like, not as confident today as I was four years ago. So tell us about getting back home and when this idea comes to you that, you know, maybe there's something else you could be doing. Yeah.

Yeah, that was great. So, yeah, again, Ford deployments, you know, did some cool stuff. I think, you know, again, like even with 10th group, I think we, I think we did impact the battlefield, you know, successfully, like in our, in our sector, right? And again, you look at the great scheme of things. Like, you try to do what you can where you're at. And I think for the most part, we move the needle in the right direction, you know, to not to speak for the rest of the war necessarily.

But we got back. And then this was 20, yeah, 2012. So in 2012, I get assigned to or I guess it was end of 13. Yeah, so mid-13, there we go. And it was kind of like late 12, early 13, I started kind of getting a couple of ideas like, okay, I want to do something kind of different. Like, I don't want to go back to the conventional army. And as an Intel officer, you do, right?

Like, you can't just camp out and soft forever, right? Like, you get your three years and they're like, come on back. You got to go be a S2 at a, you know, whatever. And I was like, all right, I get it. And like for the career, that might have been the right call. But I was like, what else can I do? And so I started looking into like these various different special mission units. And then I looked at another one, which was not a special mission.

mission unit, but it was essentially a human program where as an officer, you could get selected to go be a human collector. The inscom stuff. Yep, that's right. And so I started looking at all of those. And I started getting emails from people that were named like Dan and Roger and Bill. And like, that was it, right? Random email addresses.

And they were like, hey, you know, we went you to try out for this. And so I actually had like three dates set with three different opportunities. to go back Conis and just try out for that. And I think, again, like, I was lucky that I was in a special forces battalion because it, like, I think it raised my profile among some of the recruiters in the special mission unit space, which as I found out later, when I was doing the recruiting for my replacement there, like, that's definitely like a, like it helps.

Yeah. Because they're looking for a specific mindset and, like, a specific, you know, soft experience. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I just said, all right, like, I'm just going to go check this out. So I took a flight back to the States. I had an assessment.

You know, it was, this one was, as I could tell, was less ops focused. There was one that I had that was an ops focused assessment and selection that was scheduled. This one was more of like an intel focused one. They were like, if we pick you, it's going to be to be our senior intelligence officer. And we want you to do that. And I said, okay, cool. You actually assessed for three different units? No, no, no.

So, yeah, I had three different things on the schedule. Yeah, I had three things on the books. So basically, like, I think it was like, I think it was like, like March, it was like this one. Then I had one schedule for April and one scheduled for May or something like that, right? And so I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to cast a wide net. I'm going to try to get into one of these cool, like, things. And then, you know, but for this very first one, it was, it was for an Intel officer position in a special initiative. unit. And so I said, cool, let's do it. And so the assessment was very intel focused, right?

It was like, here's a bunch of information. I'll be back in 45 minutes, like, you know, give me a brief. And it was, I was like, holy crap, first of all, it's just way too much information to go through in 45 minutes. Like, there's no way I can, like, do all of this. But that's the point, right? The point is for you to, like, figure out in a very difficult situation, you know, under some degree of pressure, like, you know, He wants a brief in 45 minutes and you've got like 800 pages of stuff and a bunch of maps. What matters? And so like that goes back to like, you know, what matters, right?

Like what's the noise? Go through the noise, figure out what it is, dump that, figure out what the most important points are and come up with options. And so when he came back 45 minutes later, I briefed him on the situation. Here's what I think, you know, like your options are. And here's like all the ways this can go sideways. And like, he didn't say much. And he was like, cool. and then he left. And I was like, all right, that either went really well or it was like the worst briefies ever got.

And I guess we'll find out. And then there were a few of those types of kind of scenarios over the course of about a week. And at the end of it was a board because that's what you get anywhere. And, you know, it was. And then it was. And I don't know, like, I'm sure you've been through these boards. Like they make you feel like, I mean, I felt like the worst person ever. They're like coming up with like, I mean, throwing all kinds of stuff. And like, have you ever done this? Have you ever done this? Have you. ever done that. And I'm like, I'm just being honest. I'm like, yep, I've done that. I've done this. And I was thinking to myself, man, there's no way these guys are going to pick me. They're like, this is the worst dude ever. And like at the end of this like scathing interview, they're like, all right, go back, you know, we'll call you back. And I was like, all right. So, you know, it's hard to describe how you feel. You feel a little bit despondent, right? You're like, yeah, hopefully. Did they hit you with a lot of like, like, scenarios that have like

moral quandries and things like that? Like, I don't know what's the writing in. answer. Totally. And there's no, that's right. There doesn't seem to be a right answer to any of it. Right? You're just like, oh, this, but I do that. It's a lot of like race space, right? But, you know, but look, I mean, at the end of the day, like, I was like, okay, just you've got to do the right thing, even when it's hard, even no one's looking sort of thing. Or some of that, too, like, well, what if you could get away with it? And it's like, no, you shouldn't do that. And then, you know, so. A big part of it is like, they want to see that you can keep your cool, right? That's right. That's the real point. That's right. And, you know, those of the things that you

kind of figure out, like throughout the course of the interview, right? Like later, like, during the time, you're just answering questions and then you're getting lightning rounded. And there's five, like, you know, very intimidating looking dudes, like questioning you. And you're just like, well, I hope I don't screw this up. But, yeah, at the end of it, like, I was, you know, I was, they called me back in and, and, you know, you sit there somewhat meekly, right? We're going through the ringer. And I just remember the president of the board. He, just looks to me square in the eye. The very last question he asked me was like, all right, well, do you think you're the right man for the job? And I said, yes, sir, I do. And then he said,

so do we. And then he, like, stood up, shook my hand. And I was like, you know, okay. And then I still didn't know who these guys were. I got no idea. I just knew they were some special mission unit. And I had no idea, like, really what designation it was. But then they told me, like, okay, here's where you're going to be, here's what you're going to be doing. Here's what you're going to be working for. But they basically made me commit before they would tell me that. And so that was another one of those things where it was like, are you willing to jump into the deepest end of the pool, you know, not really knowing what's down there, but you know it's probably pretty cool and you're going to be doing cool stuff. And again, for me, it was not necessarily like, you know, I want to go

be a cool guy. It was like, how do I have the most impact? I mean, this is the height of the war on terror. We're not necessarily like winning everywhere. And like, we're, you know, this is, by the way, way like 2013. I mean, now, you know, ISIS isn't a thing yet, but like AQI is and they're doing a lot of bad stuff, right? And so like this was like for me, it was, it was, you know, it sounds cheesy, but it was a calling, right? I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to go do this. This is how I can be most impactful. It's with this unit at this time. And I, and I said, yeah, absolutely, sign me up. And so, and so that was, that was how that concluded. I flew back to my unit. And then I just told the other two units that I'd had like interviews set up with and I said hey listen

I took something else I appreciate the opportunity and uh they were like cool thanks for applying so it was good that's awesome so uh tell us about like arriving at a special mission unit like how this differed from 10th group from conventional forces I mean what what was sort of the atmosphere and the vibe like when you hit the ground yeah it totally different right and again it's funny going back to what I said kind of the beginning of this right like I was always told like, I'll just wait till you get to the real army. Things will be different. Right.

And like I never made it to the real army. So I think for that, like if anything, like that was my, I guess my metric for success was like, how can I stay out of the real army for as long as I can? And this was like the farthest from like the real army, right? And so I show up and the biggest difference, and this is not taking away from my time at 110. not taking away from my time at 66 am i i worked with professionals everywhere there were good people everywhere but this unit was markedly different in that every person there was handpicked

uh nobody there just got orders um and like they told us like listen every day's selection man like you know like if you don't want to be here or if we think you're not cutting it like we'll move you on um and that's like that's not a threat that's just what we do and we need you to be you know we need you to be at the top of your game every day and i was like excellent. Like this is where I want to be, you know, yeah, I, I welcomed that. It was, it was really awesome to work with just incredibly skilled and not just skilled, but like dedicated, right? People that really wanted to be there. There was no one there that was like, ah, well, I'm just going to do my time here and then I can go do whatever. Every, every day, people that you worked with showed

time and again that they were, they were there for a reason. You hear over and over again guys talking about how like they say in my unit I was like the rock star I was this awesome guy I was the first of the PT test I was you know this and that and then they get to this other unit that they finally wind up in and it's like oh I'm just average here yeah totally right and uh but but you in some ways it's like I think for some people that's hard to to get over because they're like wait a minute like I'm you know I'm supposed to be the dude um but for me I just realize like everybody here does a job right and there was no there was no like oh you're just an intel guy you know why don't you stay in your skiff it was like you were part of the team and it didn't matter what

your job was if you were there you were there because you had a job that nobody else could do right like I couldn't do what the operators did I also couldn't do what the logisticians did I couldn't do what the finance guy did right but I could do intel and that's what I got hired to do and that goes everybody else. Nobody wanted to do my job because they loved doing theirs, but they knew that I would do mine well and that they could trust what I provided. And so when I showed up, like, it was awesome. I had a section of dudes. We wore civilian clothes, like, almost all the time. You know, I was a, I was a captain when I got there. I was the only officer in my section. People called me Nick, and that was it. And it was awesome. Right. Like, it was like the, and so again, like more and more and more

of the, like, professional. Rank didn't matter as much. It only mattered in so far as, like, people knew, rank had a different job. And yes, at the end of the day, like what that section produced was my responsibility. But the soldiers knew that and the NCOs knew that. And so it wasn't like a, you know, nobody was like, you know, nobody was like, you know, make me or anybody else or themselves look bad. It was like, we all have a job to do. And like, this is just the way it is. And so like, yeah, like when I said, hey, we're going to do it this way and like, yeah, we did it that way. But like, there wasn't any, you know, there wasn't like griping and complaining necessarily. I'm sure there was. but it wasn't like in other places, right?

Like it was just like, it was a very professional around organization. And I loved it. I mean, from like day one, it was like incredible. And so I got the opportunity there. I was in that unit for three years from 13 to 16. And this was like height of war on terror, CT, you know, ISIS is forming over in Iraq. And so I got a chance to deploy with a couple of the number of task forces. I got to do three of them overseas,

and then I got to do one back at headquarters, you know, doing, again, like some of the coolest stuff, I think that anybody could say they've done. But again, working with some of the most professional people ever. What can you tell us about, you know, those trips? Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, we would go overseas and then we would typically be, you know, called the task force, right?

That's what everybody would refer to us as. And, you know, the first time around was like Middle East focused. And so like our AOR was essentially, you know, it was Iraq, Syria. We're into the ISIS war at this point. Yeah. So this was like early 14. Like the split hadn't happened yet. But like, you know, we were seeing the signs, right?

And so there was a lot of things happen in Syria. And so we had like we had a lot of just kind of like essay on what was. going on, but we weren't like necessarily operational yet. And at that point, we were kind of operational in like some of the surrounding areas, um, where we were doing a lot of the, uh, intel support to like teams in that area. And so essentially like, you know, that was a lot of like, like, by with them through some of the local forces. Yeah, I was going to say, I'd be very interested to hear, you know, kind of your perspective on that time frame because, uh, I was in Syria 2014 as a journalist. And my impression was that we didn't have any, and no American military

presence on the ground at that time. As far as I knew, could be wrong. But I'd be interested what sort of like your insights were, what you guys were kind of gathering from that situation at that time. Yeah. So I was not in Syria. We were not in Syria. I'll just clarify that. So I think you're probably right. I don't know that we had a presence. Certainly not the presence that we ended up having later. But this was around the time where, you know, certainly we were still pretty active in Iraq, we had, you know, we had people in Jordan. I think we had some people in Lebanon. And we were just kind of all around the periphery. And so, and this is like U.S. forces and like, you know, obviously conventional. You had the siege of Sotaf guys all over the place. And then

you had a few of our guys just kind of like in various different places in the AOR. Like usually a very small kind of footprint, right, doing direct, direct support to various to various units and various organizations. And so that's what much of it was. And we saw the split in Syria started to happen. We were like, you know, I had a really good analyst that was working for me at the time. And she was like, this is going to go down. It's going to happen in Iraq.

We really need to pay more attention to this because there's going to be a huge thing here. What do you mean when you say the split? So the split to an AQI in ISIS. Gotcha. Yep. Or Al-Nusra, I guess, right? Like, Al-Nusra in ISIS. Like, they were kind of like on the same like outside ISIS.

In Syria, yeah, yeah. Yeah. up and then like that's when like the actual split happened then ISIS like became a thing right established the caliphate rolled over like parts of Iraq into Mosul and all of that and so I remember in like 14 you wrote this like intel white paper basically saying like hey you know we don't know what it's going to look like we don't know when it's going to happen we don't know how it's going to go but like this ISIS thing is not just like this is not like you know this is not going to go away it's going to get a lot worse and I don't think even we like nobody can like I don't

I don't know that anybody knew how bad it was going to be. I'm sure there were some people who were probably tracking this. There was probably something that was like, you know, alarm bells ringing. But again, like, some of it's disjointed and sometimes not everyone's talking to everybody. Yeah, I wouldn't assume that. If that female analyst was the only person in the U.S. government who came up with that, I'd believe it.

No, no. I'm sure there were quite a few. But she had a lot of experience in that AOR. And so she was like what she was seeing. And again, this goes back to like your analysts, like knowing their stuff, right? And she was like, this is going to be bad. And so, you know, we at least raised our little warning flag and saying, hey, we think, you know, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

And it did. And, and again, I'm sure there were a number of people and, like, I'm sure CIA and NSA and all those guys, they probably saw the same things and were pushing things up through their channels. And, you know, it's not to say nobody listened. I think people probably did. But I think everybody was surprised at the speed at which ISIS, like, came in and, like, took over some of those swaths of territory. And then from there, like, it was a pretty long slog, as you know, to, you know, to get them out.

Yeah, I mean, ISIS busts across the international border into Iraq. These cities start falling like dominoes. Syngar experiences essentially a genocide. I mean, things got pretty bad. I think the United States military finally got involved when ISIS was kind of moving on to hook. And that was sort of when we really stepped in. Yeah, no, that was a, it was, yeah, it was a, it was crazy to kind of see it. And by the time that that happened, like I had come back stateside.

And so I was like kind of back in the unit doing like the, you know, the in between deployment stuff, kind of training and kind of, you know, getting caught up on being back home. But it was a fascinating time period. I was back out 120 days later. And this time it was 120-day rotation supporting the, the Africa AOR. And so I basically started in like Middle East, but interestingly, I guess I started in Afghanistan, right, like Southeast Asia or Southwest Asia and then ended up doing Middle East stuff. And then I ended up over doing like North Africa stuff for a while. And so like now we were supporting a lot of things happening in kind of that the Sahel region and really looking at kind of like what's what's taking place there. And so this is like 14 and then going into 15. And what's interesting about that was, like, people weren't really paying attention to, like, North Africa, right? Like, the ISIS fight was in Iraq. We had people looking at that. But, like, you know, like there were, there were like elements of al-Qaeda and not so much ISIS yet at the time, but al-Qaeda was metastasizing pretty badly in certain parts of Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso, you know, all the places that were kind of being ignored in some ways.

And then Libya, obviously, after the Gaddafi regime collapsed, I mean, it's fascinating about that whole place. It's like there was, you know, again, Gaddafi, bad dude, 100%. But that place was, I mean, like, the Sahel region was pretty stable in terms of, like, weapons flows and things like that, right? As soon as that regime collapses, you see weapons flows going from, like, Libya through Niger, down into Mali, the Ossawad, the Lillian breaks out again, you know, a bunch of the AQIM guys get, you know, they get crazy down there. And so now, like, we're doing a lot of support to, um,

you know, some of the folks down there to try to keep, basically just to keep tabs on what's going on. Yeah, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but like my impression of, you know, sort of the U.S. military presence in that part of the world was that, you know, you had an at-risk population. There's a lot of poverty. There's already an Islamic fundamentalist movement in some form there. Was the fear that this part of the world was going to turn into the next Afghanistan in the sense that terrorist organizations were, going to be able to camp out there and mount international, you know, external operations? Yeah, I think, yeah, 100%. And obviously, like, our European partners were concerned about that, right?

Like, I mean, the French had a heavy presence down there. And we worked pretty closely with them, right? I mean, the French were great partners. I mean, people want to give France a hard dime for stuff. Like, when they went out there and, like, they would burn it down. And it was pretty effective. And so, you know, we would partner pretty closely with, with the French. And, you know, we're able to provide a lot of the support on the Intel side.

And again, right, like, counterterrorism is just, like, so much different from even counterinsurgency because now you're not necessarily, you're not necessarily, there's no evidence-based operations, right? Like, there's no of that. Like, that's out the window. We're not, we're not building schools in these places. Like, this is just targeting. And I think the biggest difference from, like, being, you know, in my first unit, being in 10th group and then ended up working with, like, special mission unit is that the pace of like, you know, operations is just substantially higher. And you're very concerned now about strategic fallout from, you know, hitting something somewhere in a country that, you know.

So there's a lot of work that you have to do. I mean, you have to work with the state department. You work with, you know, country teams. you know, you have to be, you have to make sure that what you're doing is like 100% like good to go because like the last thing you want to do is, is, is, is cause an international incident, cause a problem, right? So did most of that have to be done through partner forces like very little unilateral? Yeah.

No, absolutely right. I mean, we did, we did, we did everything, like almost everything was through partner forces in that part of the world, right? Because we didn't have an action arm. There weren't, uh, U.S. forces that were, that were out, you know, doing a lot of stuff. But I will tell you the assets and the support that we had at our disposal in that unit compared to where I was like anywhere else I'd have been before. I'd have to fight for ISR. I'd have to do all these things.

But, you know, once you come over to like that, the task force side, things are, things kind of open up a little bit more. You're being tasked to find national level targets. And that's, you know, it's a different lead. in some ways. So again, it kind of goes back to what I said about like showing up there. Like everybody was there for, you know, for a reason and knew what they were, what they were asked to do. So when you're forward, it's even more important that, you know, you're, yeah, you're, you're crossing your eyes, you know, or crossing your teeth dot in your eyes. See, there you go, I got to say right. But those, it became very important, right? Because like mistakes out there,

like, were, you know, they're bad everywhere, but certainly at international insight, at that stage it's no good. So, so yeah, mostly partner forces. We did end up, there were a couple of kind of like publicized things that took place later. Like there was a strike in North Africa that took place in 2015, which we enabled. And that was, you know, that was a pretty big, it was a pretty big deal at the time. Is this the one where we detained a pretty high-level bad guy? That was before.

So I can't take credit for that one. Okay. Yeah. Same, same general area. And but this time it was like we didn't have, like we weren't putting like people on the ground. Like now it was like it was like that ended up being an airstrike just because of where this was. Gotcha. But again, like this was like certainty, right? Like high value target, but like near certainty level of fidelity on the target, right?

Which means, you know, as an intel guy, like now you're tasked with your, you're, weaving together every int you can imagine, right? You've got everything, like you've got signals intelligence, you've got human intelligence, you've got, you know, geospatial stuff. You're pulling together old imagery from like, you know, years ago to see what it looked like then compared to what it looks like now. I mean, the amount of work that goes into like kind of developing a target and then

figuring out like, okay, like if we end up putting like bombs on this house, like, who are we going to kill, right? Like this is like we got to know that. Like it's not just like, okay, we think. So, you know, we spent a lot of time developing that using various different, different intel disciplines. And we built a good enough picture. This went all the way up to the NSC and, you know, got approval to go ahead. And so, like, we were in that, and that's what we had to convince.

And that's the other crazy thing I'm being in a unit like that, right? Like, I'm not, yes, I'm concerned about, like, getting the 05 to approve it, but, like, I'm also at this point, like, you know, like, it's going all the way up to the NSC. and they're asking questions about like, well, okay, what's going on with this? Like, you know, are you sure you, you counted the slant correctly, right? And it's like, oh, well, yeah, we did it. And like, you know, here's got to show your work. Do you want to explain to the general public out there what a slant is? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah, so basically, like, it's three numbers, right? And so, you know, like a good slant count might be three zero, zero, which means there's three males, zero females and zero, children, right? Like if you have that slant count on a on a building or on an objective, like, you know, you're probably looking pretty good. If your slant is anything like, you know, three, three one sort of thing, like you're not dropping, right? Three, sixteen, twelve. Yeah. Yeah, exactly, right? And like we had, I mean, we had a situation in Afghanistan one time. This is actually crazy. It's back when I was

with 10th group. We had an ODA on the ground doing a call out. And so they were just, they, they, they, down where this guy was. They went out and they, you know, did the soft knock. They had the, the mall go. And then we dropped ordinance on this house. And, uh, which is, you know, of course, like at that point, we were, we were cleared, you know, cleared hot to go, right? Not, not us, but like the Air Force that was flying overhead. They were, they were good to go. We had the ISR up taking a look at it. And when they went in to kind of, you know, do the battle damage assessment and everything else, I mean, there was a guy still still alive in there and, like, kept fighting. I mean, I just remember like being like, holy crap, man. Like, these guys are,

again, right? That's part of like that that Pashtun warrior culture that they're like, yeah, we're sending the women out and we're here to mix it up and get it on with you guys. And yeah, of course, the U.S. military is like reticent to send a bunch of assaulters in to get shot up for no reason. That's right. That's right. And, but it was such a, it again, underscored, like, to me, I was like, these dudes are, you know, they're willing to fight. did like a long Iraq deployment, right? Like I've been, I did, I did like short trips over there. I did short trips to Iraq, but I never did like a like a multiple month deployment

to Iraq. And so I didn't really have as much kind of, you know, experience kind of like with, with like the insurgency there in terms like how they could fight. But everything I had heard was like the like the Taliban, like they, they were, they fought much differently, right? They would fight it after the last man and they would, they would fight you, whereas sometimes in Iraq, that wasn't always the case. There was a lot of, like, you know, hitting a convoy and then melting into the, into the, you know, society or something like that, right? The Taliban, like, they would stick around. And so I think, you know, again, in terms of,

you have to, like, you have to be able to respect the warmaking capabilities of your adversary if you want to understand them. and I think that's one of those things where, you know, people say, well, you know, you got to be careful, I use the word respect, but like you have to understand your adversary and you have to know what he's capable of. And if you underestimate them, it's, you know, it's going to end up being a bad day for you. So before moving on, I'd like to hear kind of like your impressions about, about that central West Africa sort of experience and how you saw that going. I mean, as we've seen things play out, I mean, the Wagner group played in that part of the

world quite a bit. We got pushed out of Niger. I guess sort of like in the public sphere as far as what we read in the press, like it's sort of a rollback. But what do you think of it? Yeah. No, look, I think it's a it's really unfortunate to see the amount of ground that the Western world is lost in Africa, especially in North and West Africa, right? And by the Western world, I mean like the French too, right? Like, I mean, obviously the French were great allies. They've got their own colonial past there. And so like that obviously plays into a lot of this stuff.

And the adversary is great at using these narratives, right? Like what the Russians and the Chinese are really good at is taking like something out of history and then using that against against us now, right? So like, again, like the French experience in North Africa obviously has a legacy. Well, if you're a propagandist, that's great for you because you can just say, well look, these guys are just here to exploit you. We're not colonialists at all. We're fighting against imperialism, right?

And so you have these, you have these narratives being pushed by our adversaries that makes it easier for some people to latch onto that. And they've been able to use that pretty effectively to do some real damage to our standing there. And so, yeah, look, I think it's an area of the world that we can't really afford to to let up on, right? I mean, like, Africa is a, it's a growing continent. I mean, like, I think, I forget where I heard this, and I'm probably going to butcher the statistic,

but like, it's, like, 50% of the world by 2050 will be African or something like that, or more. Like, it's a ton, it's a lot of people on its growing economies, and, like, we can't just look at that continent and say, yeah, well, you know, if we lose ground there, it's no big deal. And now on the terrorism aspect, like, take economics aside for a second, just the sheer, just capabilities that these terrorist groups will build up in ungoverned spaces. Like, that's, it's hugely problematic, right, to our safety and security.

And so no one really talks about terrorism anymore because now it's all about great power competition. But, I mean, terrorism is still very much a thing. And, you know, if we cede the ground to, you know, Russians or in some cases, Chinese, I mean, they're not going to do the type of CT that we did. And it wasn't always effective, but I can say that we had to great effect in some places. I mean, Tunisia is one example of a country where CT was very effective. Great partnership with the Tunisians, you know, took out some pretty bad dudes at the right time.

And you have a stable society, you know, a decade later. And so, like, I kind of want to dispel some of this myth that, like, America. Rican CT efforts have always failed. I don't think that's true at all. Number one, we haven't had another 9-11, but two, we actually have had incredible success in some of these places where there is stability now because of what we did, not despite of it.

Columbia, Philippines, number of those. Yeah, those are great examples, too. Okay, so what was the next trip after Africa? That was it. I did two of those. And so I wasn't, again, like, I actually, I was clear for, like, we, I was like, we were, like, based out of, like, the Afrikaum, like, area. And so, like, I didn't, like, go to Africa, except for, like, when I would go down every now and then,

for, you know, for, like, trips. But, like, but that was kind of how we ran that. And then I just did, I, like, kind of my last trip was not really a trip. It was, like, leading the task force intelligence, component, like back at headquarters. And so that was a whole different ballgame there, right? Because now, like, I'm not forward, but it's still, like, you still work deployment hours. You're still, you know, showing up.

And this is end of 16. And this is kind of towards the end of like my, my, like, active duty career. Because at that point, I've kind of, again, made the decision that, you know, I kind of want to be something different and going a bit of a different direction. but it was a really cool way to kind of finish out the career because it gave me an opportunity to work, you know, kind of our entire AO and like see it from the headquarters level and, you know, enable some pretty high profile things. You know, it was also where, you know, again, like that was the time, I think it was like 2016, so you have the attacks in Paris or the attacks in Brussels. Europe was on edge, right, during that time frame. And so we were in the thick of the fight, and it was also around the same time where, you know, we were very effectively, you know, we, the USG pushing back ISIS all across, you know, Iraq, and then, of course, into back into Syria.

And that, of course, concluded later on, and I think 17 or 18. But we really did, like, get momentum behind that. Like, it was, you know, we, like, that was a lot of what was happening. was like how do we generate nephlementum to start turning to tide? Because I remember that being a pretty like, say dark time, but like it was kind of scary, right? Like there was a lot of things popping off in places that were always considered kind of safe. And they were bringing the war to us in some places. And so even though you didn't have a lot of it happening in the U.S. at the time, there was a lot of it happening in, you know, places where Americans went.

And there was a lot of attacks too. and, you know, I think the Bomico Hotel got attacked that year, and we had an American killed. And so, again, I think it goes back to, like, there was a lot of work. There was no shortage of it. But, yeah, so it was the height of it. We were busy. But so all to say, like, it was a really good three years in that unit.

We got a lot done. And, but, you know, it was, yeah, at that point, I made another career decision to kind of move on. Before we get to that, any particular moments, that stand out for you that you'd like to highlight from that time frame? Because, I mean, you're right. A lot happened during that time frame. San Bernardino. Yeah.

I mean, I think, like, having the opportunity to, you know, to go out and enable some of the ops that ended up, you know, again, like having strategic level impacts, right? whether it was like an airstrike or whether it was, you know, supporting the early days of the fight against ISIS to push them back. I mean, we had some real visionary leaders that were leading like elements of really a number of different special mission units at that time, right? Because there's definitely, there's a number of them. But we, you know, we just had the right people in the right place at the right time.

And we just, you know, enabling their people to do the things that they needed to do. It was a really, it was great to be, it was great to be part of that team. So I don't know that there was like one specific thing. I mean, it was just the ability to, you know, to be in trust, right? It came down to that level of trust. Were you around for the Baghdadi raid? No, I'd left there. So I was working in the, I think by that time I was in the, I might have been in the Senate by then.

Okay. But yeah, but those are the types. I mean, those are exactly the types of things, right, that are, that, that, you know, you're entrusted with that type of stuff. And, you know, it's crazy when you think about it as a younger, you know, a younger officer, you're like, man, I'm about to go do, I'm doing this. Like, I'm looking for this person or I'm supporting this unit to do that, right? Like, those are, those are, like, looking back at it now, it's, it's crazy.

And, like, anytime you get put in a situation, you kind of rise to that challenge and you say, I'm going to go do it. It's going to be awesome. But, you know, but yeah, looking back, I mean, it was definitely like, yeah, I mean, I don't know, like, definitely just like very grateful for the opportunity to be able to, to be able to work there and do those things. I could have probably continued, you know, after, I think, you know, ILE, there was an opportunity to potentially come back.

But at that point, I was like, all right, I think I want to do, I think I want to shift. So I made the career shift at that point. There was a number of reasons. You know, at some point I wanted to like actually like get married and have a family. It's hard to do that when you're gone all the time. And so, you know, there was personal reasons, but there was professional reasons too. And again, I think part of it goes back to like, yeah, look, as an Intel guy, like I might have gotten one more bite of that apple. But at some point I was going to go pay my dues.

Right, right. But more than that, I was like, how can I keep starting? serving at a strategic level and have the impact that I can have through service, that isn't necessarily going to, you know, like a conventional unit. And again, I don't want to like make the conventional guys sound like I didn't want to go there. I just think, for me, it was just like, where can I have that next level impact? And so that's kind of what led me down to my next, the next path. Yes, tell us about that.

You got involved with oversight of the intelligence community in the Senate. How did that come about? Yeah, it was kind of crazy how it all happened. In terms of like, just like, you know, like life will throw you kind of roads and you like choose to go down them or not. But like this was one of those things where I'd never, never my life thought I was going to go be a hill staffer or like go work on Capitol Hill or work for a member of Congress. You know, I mean, like again, in the origin story, like I'm from a blue collar family, right? Like it's not like we were not connected. we're not from like a you know politically like family or anything like that so so just the thought like

okay yeah I could work in work in policy like you know after I left the army I I am transitioned to the reserve at that time and then I ended up going to grad school I used the GI Bill and um and I went so to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies here in DC and I was trying to figure out like what do I do with like 10 years almost 11 years of military experience um and like this education, like how can I, how can I best impact, like U.S. foreign policy and national security policy. And so that's what I really wanted to get into. I had a few mentors when I was in, like I said, in the special mission unit that kind of like helped like guide some of my decisions and I bounced some ideas off of. But ultimately, I just met some folks that worked on

Capitol Hill and they were like, hey, you were thought about doing that. And so I said, yeah, I mean, this sounds cool. What do you guys do? Right. Let's talk about that. And yeah, I just, I met a lot of people. When I did a lot of coffees, and ultimately I got a chance to work for a member of the House Representatives, Brad Winstrup, a Republican congressman from Ohio, who offered me a job, as his military legislative assistant. So was this like working in conjunction with Sissy? So this is the four Sissy.

This is like how I got to the hill. So like I leave Brad School. I get hired in the House of Representatives as a military legislative assistant. I did that for a year. and then my boss was leading armed services. And so for me, it was like, okay, well, now I wanted to do, I wanted to keep working on defense things, got a job working for Senator Joni Ernst as her national security advisor.

She's a huge friend to Soff, a great member of Congress. Yeah, she loves Rangers. Yeah, she does. She does. And she's the chairwoman of emerging threats and capabilities. And so she's always looking at, like, how can she support spectral operations? And she's been a real champion for a lot of initiatives. And I will say, like, not just the, not just like the train and equip stuff, but also, like, the health and wellness stuff, too, right?

Like, help making sure, you know, that once these guys come home and women, too, like, once they get home, like, that they're taken care of. And so she's always been real passionate about it. And so, like, it was great to work for her. I got to do some really cool things. I got to travel some cool places. At one point, we went and did, like, like, we went and did a trip down when Colin Green was down on a, one of the SEAL teams down on the West Coast. I think he was out of Buds.

Like we went and saw like a Buds graduation. And so it was cool to like see like those guys like finish and like, you know, like that, that phase and kind of be there. And, you know, totally different capacity, right? Like I'm not there in uniform. There with like a tucked in shirt like holding a senator's like note bag and sometimes her purse, right? Like it was like a totally different experience. But it was so cool to be able to do that. And then after I worked for her, I got an opportunity to work for Senator John Cornyn.

And he was, he's obviously a senator from Texas. And he was on the Intelligence Committee. And he still is. And so I started working out as his national security advisor. And then a year into that, his designee on the committee said, hey, I'm leaving. Do you want my job? I'll tell the boss, I'll put it in a good work for you. And so he asked me directly.

that Senator asked me is like, hey, Nick, you've done a good job. My office, do you want to move over to the committee? And so, you know, what that essentially means is like now, rather than working directly for a member of Congress, I'm now working for an oversight committee. And so technically I worked on at the time, Senator Marco Rubio staff as a professional staff member, but I was chopped to John Cornyn. Like, that was my principle. And so for all intents and purposes, like anything he needed done on that committee,

briefings, he wanted to read intel. And he read a ton of intel. I mean, he was, he's one of the best informed members of Congress because he takes the time to go down to the skiff, read an intel book. I'll print it out. I'll read all the stuff. I'll highlight stuff. I'll even, like, it wasn't my job to do analysis there. But, you know, I done it for 10.5-ish years, right?

And so, this is what's important for you. That's right. And it's like briefing a principle. I, you know, briefed, you know, generals and, and, in some cases, you know, cases, you know, when I was doing the North Africa stuff, we would sometimes brief ambassadors on things that were happening. And so now I was briefing a senator. And so it was a natural transition and it was, again, I don't want to use the word easy. And there's nothing easy about it, but like it's just, it's, it felt natural and it felt like the right place to be. So that was a

real fun job. And like, it wasn't just getting to interact with one of, I still think one of the last remaining great statesmen out there. I think John Cornyn is definitely like that person. But it was the opportunity to do oversight of the intelligence community, which is a place where I had spent so much of my time as an intelligence officer in the Army. So now it's so funny because I remember being, you know, a task force guy out of an embassy and like hosting a CODEL and hosting a staff del, right? So a congressional delegation and a staff delegation where we would brief members of Congress on like what was happening in our AOR. Well, now, like, I was the person doing the staff deals, right?

But, like, what was cool about that is, like, I, of course, I got assigned to Middle East and counterterrorism because, you know, when I show up and they're like, what's your background? It was pretty pretty clear, like, what portfolio was going to be assigned for the committee. But I loved it. I mean, I love that region. And so every chance I got, you know, I would go, I would go out there and talk to our foreign service folks. I would talk to, you know, people that were that were out there in these embassies, State Department and other places and, like, ask them, like, what was happening and how we could be helpful. Do you want to tell people about what Hipsy and Sissy are and sort of, like,

how they integrate into the intelligence community or interact with the intelligence community? Yeah, no, that's a great, great point. So, like, basically these committees, they're, so, yeah, they're congressional committees, right? So on the Senate intelligence community, we had, I think we had 17 members. And so it would essentially be, you know, whoever's in the majority, right? So if the Republicans are in charge, you've got, you know, eight Republicans and nine Republicans, eight Democrats. And that number is kind of fluctuated over the years. I think it's like 15.

It's been 15, 16, and 17. But bottom line is like, these are like the 17 senators that are tasked to authorize everything the intelligence community does. and really all their programs and budgets. And then you've got a number of house members. I don't know exactly the number that Hipsy has. But each chamber has their own oversight committee. Our job is to be the eyes and ears of the American people to make sure that the intelligence community is executing like appropriations and authorizations

in accordance with the law and policy, right? That's what we do. And what's interesting about what's interesting about that is like, You know, there's an Armed Services Committee that does it for DOD. There's a foreign relations committee that does it for the State Department. You know, there's these different committees with different jurisdiction of the federal government. But what's unique about the IC is that there's nobody really looking at it, right, like, other than the people that are doing it, right? There's no cameras in a CIA skiff somewhere, right?

Like that you, as opposed to like the embedded reporter that's out with like a platoon of Marines and like Anbar, right? Like that's kind of like a, that's like public oversight in some ways, right? Well, that doesn't exist for the IC. And so like we had, you know, 17 members and then we had like about 40 staff, about evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. A number of those were, you know, for an office staff. And then you had kind of the professional staff members, which is what I did, where you're assigned a portfolio.

And that could be a region. It could be a function. It could be both. So I had Middle East, I had counterterrorism. I had a budget account for one of the eight. agencies that I oversaw and then I had my boss, right? So working for, for Cornyn and so everything he wanted, plus everything the vice chairman, Marker Rubio wanted on like my portfolio areas was kind of my responsibility. And so oversight is everything from, you know, drafting a yearly

authorization bill. It's traveling to various places to do oversight in the field. It's going out to the headquarters to interact with analysts and collectors. And it's really at the end of the day, like the way I approached it was like, you know, I get people always joke like the worst phrase in the world to hear from anyone the government is like, I'm here from the government, I'm here to help. But like I really did take that to a like to heart because I wanted to be helpful. Like I was like, this is we're one team. And what I found was that if you picked up the phone and called somebody or you made the effort

to go visit them like where they are in like a really dusty part of the world maybe, they are like they appreciate that and like you end up getting a lot more done because you're not getting stonewall people you know yeah ground truth 100% ground truth and like okay this staffer cares like he got on this you know he got on this plane he flew out here it's it's it's dusty it's you know it's it's whatever but he's here and he wants to learn about what we do and by the way when I got back and I and I produced a report for my colleagues I then also had the opportunity to write legislation to directly impact the work that was happening. And so we actually drafted a couple of bills.

It was cool. I got to work on chips for America. And so that was one of the big kind of semiconductor bills that we wrote when John Cornyn was the lead sponsor for that. That was before I got to the committee. But then after that, I got to help on a few things. I got to draft a bill called the Sensible Classification Act of 2023. And that bill basically was, the big aim of that was reestablished trust between the American people and our elected government because, and not just the elected government, but also are, you know, the appointees under that elected government. And so there's a lot of just, you know, there's a lot of misconception out there about what the intelligence community does.

There's a lot of conspiracy theories out there about, oh, they're doing this, they're doing that. I can tell you, we would have probably seen it if that was the case. You know, there's a lot of just incredibly dedicated and professional men and women out there doing some really dangerous and really hard stuff. And so, like, one of the things we did was just, like, try to, you know, help them with how they classify things and how we declassify things so that, you know, the American public could know as much as they could without endangering sources and methods. And so that bill passed in the law, you know, again, some of those things will reign to be seeing how effective they are. We kind of saw that, I feel like, in the run up to the second invasion of Ukraine, where we sort of like, I don't know, weaponized is maybe not the right term, but we operationalized intelligence. You know, and a lot of times we collect intelligence and we don't really do anything with it. But in this case, the United States government used the intelligence.

we collected to like kind of say, hey, Putin's going to invade this country. This is what he's planning to do, et cetera, et cetera, and kind of used it in a political way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think honestly, like that was some of the, I think they call it intelligence diplomacy. It was some of the most brilliant intelligence diplomacy I've seen, right, in terms of, like, getting people on board and using what we had available to convince partners and, one, to convince partners and allies that this was going to happen. because there were people even like I think to the very last day right where they were like nah there's no way this this happens right um but even I think the Russians themselves probably um I mean again I can't speak for them I have no idea but I would think that there was some disruption

there too because they were like holy crap like the Americans know what's going on like they're inside the network that was stuff now what's interesting though by the way and I should point us out is like open source intelligence is so much more ubiquitous now than it's ever been right And so now if you're trying to, like, you know, hide the fact that you're going to invade a country, you basically have to lie to your people about the fact that you're about to invade a country. So, like, I don't think it was shocking that a bunch of these, like, Russian kids that got sent into the meat grinder, like, thought they were on a training exercise until it went down, right?

Because they didn't want them saying, like, posting on their social media, like, hey, we're going to go invade Ukraine tomorrow. And so I think that there was probably some of that. but, you know, there's so many open source things now, like, like imagery, right? So, like, I can buy a bunch of imagery from, like, what is it, like Planet Labs and MaxR and Hawkeye 360 or whatever. And if I'm looking at open source imagery and I'm seeing refrigeration trucks near the front line, like, there's only one thing you got to keep cold. And that's about, you know, it's going to expire in 30 days. So, like, when we started seeing that stuff show up,

like, it's blood. You're going in. Like, that's, you know, that's, that's, uh, That's the type of stuff that that was a pretty clear indicator. I think that, you know, again, all unclassified imagery was able to pick up. And people could say that, you know, again, this goes back to like understanding like what you're looking at. Yeah, yeah. But if you're looking at something and you're like, well, what could possibly be so important that they're like bringing this out here? Like, you're not bringing that out here unless you're, unless you're ready to go, right? And so I think that now it's such an interesting battle space because you've got all these commercially available technologies.

that are just available to anybody. And they're starting to restrict them, too, from, you know, the private citizen that's using the satellite imagery. You're seeing some of them like curtail it because they, there's political sensitivities around what they're doing. Yeah, totally.

And that's, and that's another thing that, you know, I think people are wrestling with in Congress now, you know, about like, how do you, what's the right, like, what's the right touch? Like, how much should the government get involved? Yeah. I wrote a bill that, you know, again, looking at commercial activities of like former intelligence officers, like it was not illegal for intelligence officers, not that people were doing this

necessarily, but like there was no ban on former I-C folks from like working for like China necessarily, right? But then we had a bunch of former F-16 pilots that came up in the news where they're training the Chinese Air Force. And so that was another thing where we were like, this looks like a potential problem. And so, you know, wrote a bill, got enough co-sponsors, and it's now, there is now a permanent ban in place for former IC personnel that work for adversaries. And to me, like, that's not a, like, I'm probably not really restricting anybody's, like career ambitions, right?

Like, I don't think most people join the IC to go do that. Well, if you are, the hell with them. That's fair enough. The other thing, though, I think, is that it closes off a recruit. avenue for the Chinese, right? And I think, I think that's what we're looking at now is like, the Chinese are very good at looking at where to recruit and like, who can they get to come teach them things, whether it's, you know, finance, whether it's logistics, whether it's AI, tech. I mean, there's all this, like, there's a lot of money being thrown at this. And so intelligence is,

is another hot commodity. So we were able to close off that recruitment avenue to them. And I think that's, that's the type of work that we were able to accomplish in the Senate. And what I loved about working in the Senate is like there's really, there's no bureaucracy, right? Like people who work at DOD, they talk about like, you got to go through eight levels of approval to, you know, do anything. And then it takes months to get a memo produced. I mean, literally, I sat in front of my boss, like every week. And I briefed him on the world's happenings and handed him a briefing book. And then I wrote legislation and showed him. like, you know, hey, does this meet your intent?

Or, hey, I think we ought to do this. Do you want to introduce this bill? And of course, there was some level of approvals within his, like, you know, his office. He had a chief of staff and everything that in some cases, especially the stuff that wasn't classified that they wanted to take a look at. But it was quick. I mean, we could turn that stuff in like an hour, right? Not in like that month or a day or something.

And so it was an incredible opportunity to work for that institution. and in some cases, like I said, like doing some of those oversight trips abroad, meeting with foreign government representatives, in some cases being the first American in that country in a number of years, especially in places like Central Asia, where, you know, there's a lot happening there, geopolitically now, between, you know, the Russians, the Chinese and us. Those were some of, again, like, you know,

going back to the time of the special mission unit, I always say, like, that was probably the coolest job I ever had. but working in the Senate was probably the most fascinating. I was going to say, I mean, respect you for going over there and doing those trips and as a former Army guy, you were willing to do that. I've heard some pretty funny stories over the years from CIA officers running covert programs around the world. And, you know, Congress is up their ass.

Are you doing the right thing? Are you doing this? Or you're doing that? And they'll say, hey, if you don't believe us, send one of your staffers out here to come check it out. And a lot of times they're like, whoa, no. that's okay. Hey, we're good. Don't worry. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I, you know, I had a kind of tight group of colleagues that I would travel with pretty often,

and we had similar portfolios and interests and experiences. And I think, you know, in some ways, we pride ourselves with going to the hard places. You know, there was a number of, I, I did once swing through a developed country or two, but I was typically in places that you know again like it was it was kind of what we did back in in the old days right like hesko's and in some cases uh you know um there there were things happening and so going out there as a staffer was a fascinating just different experience because now you know you're going out there and you're sitting down um i mean we went out to jabuti right to go to jtf h oa right and you've got a um you know I'm interacting with uh with with with with the two star commander um um

in a way that I just wouldn't have interacted with him as a, as a, you know, as a military officer. Now, you know, it's just a very, very different relationship and it's more of an oversight relationship. But again, not adversarial. No one's, no one's pulling rank. Like, it's just like, let's have a conversation and how can we be helpful and like, let's get you what you need to accomplish your mission. And just educate me on what's going on so that I can go back and tell my boss and all the other members of this committee about the important work you're doing so that we can keep funding this. Or in some cases, like, maybe we don't need to fund it. Maybe we need to figure out, like, what a better solution is, right? Like, we can't get to that solution if we don't know.

So, yeah, so that was it. That was my seven years on the hill. And then I departed here in February. And I'm in the private sector now. And it's fun because now I'm working with a bunch of frontier tech startups. And so all the things I learned in, you know, in the Army and on the hill and, like, how does DC work? now I'm working with Washington office and like what we do is we we work with frontier tech companies that are coming to Washington and they're like how do I how do I work here how do I how do I

solve a problem for the military or like what congressman or congresswoman should I talk to about helping me out with this and that and that has been a that's been kind of a cool way to keep doing mission focused things without you know being like in the government or you know actually duty military or anything like that, but it's still a pretty cool mission. So all things are. As starting to wrap up a little bit, since this is a topic right now, I'd love to hear some of your, you know, your impression of defense venture capital and this sort of emerging field where a lot of these like VC organizations are getting into defense tech,

what are some of the trends that you see from where you are right now? Yeah. So I will say like the time to get into like innovative tech is now, right? There's a lot of momentum behind getting not just new tech, but like also like the right tech. And like figure out what that looks like into the hands of warfighters and doing more quickly. Like there's still a pretty big bureaucracy over the Pentagon. There's still, you know, entrenched interests in Congress. Like those are things that you're just going to be up against, I think. there's also like the defense primes right and like i think a lot of people are anti-prime right now and i

would caution against that in some ways and say it's not that we should be against crimes because i think if we get into a major war like the primes they are they know what they know how to deliver a lot of equipment fast right diversify it and so we still need the primes like i think i think people like demonize them uh because you know like there's there's this whole thing now about like oh, they've been getting all these lucrative contracts and they haven't innovated and everything else. There's probably some truth to that. But I think it's also because we've set up the wrong incentive structure within the government and how we reward success. And we aren't making it easy for contracting officers to take risks.

And so, you know, when we have a system that rewards stagnation, you're going to get stagnation because that's what you've set up. And so I think the primes absolutely can innovate. They have innovated. They've developed some pretty cool things. but we just need a lot more people building a lot more cool things now, right? So we need to move away from just four or five defense primes. We really ideally should have like 20 or 25 defense primes. And if you look at the way things used to be done before the consolidations of the 90s

when we thought we were going to have world peace forever after, we used to have a lot of companies producing a lot of things, right? And even during World War II, everybody was producing weapons. And so I don't know that we have to go back to that necessarily. But we do need a far more nimble, agile, and better resource defense industrial base. And so there's a big push right now. You know, you hear different terms. You hear reindustrialize.

You hear, you know, defense tech innovation. But there's real, there's real push and real money behind that. I think what, you know, to give you a thought about, like, trends, I think what we need to see in the coming months and years now is, like, real production at scale. and real return on venture investment in order to prove that that system works. But I think that some of the things we're seeing now are setting the right conditions for that. And so I do think we have to be cautious, right? Like I don't think we need to like cancel all these like programs unless we have a viable alternative. But there's no reason we can't like run fast, break things and build things quickly too.

Like we have to do all of those things. So where I see it like, you know, there's a lot of chaos right now. but I think we're a lot of people see chaos, like we see opportunity, and we see an opportunity for a lot of defense tech startups to get into the game right now and solve real problems that the military has been, like, begging for solutions for.

But I think now we're seeing some of the... And this, by the way, this didn't just start now. This has been... This trend has been underway for a while now, but you're starting to see that come to fruition, I think, where, you know, those things are... are happening. I think that, you know,

looking at what we've learned from the battlefields in Ukraine, there's a lot of cool companies being stood up here in the U.S. that are taking that and taking those lessons learned, providing it to our warfighters now. And I think we're going to see,

we're going to see those innovations bear fruit. So yeah, I think it's a good environment, and I think the trends are positive. And so if you're out there and you're thinking about getting into defense tech and venture-backed companies, like there's really no, better time than now to jump into that. Do we have any questions for Nick? Okay, no questions.

Nick, thank you for spending your evening with us. Do you have anything you want to plug or like where can people find you online? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. I think that's really like my only online presence. And I don't know if I have to put a link in the show notes or whatever if that makes the most amount of sense. But yeah, that's, that's, that's really the, and it's just, you know, and I see Adams, Nick Adams, that's, that's, you should, you'll probably find me. But yeah, I would just, you know, again, I really appreciate the opportunity. I'm happy to have this conversation with, you know, or talk about all the cool things happening in the defense tech space as well. But yeah, if anyone's interested in having that discussion, I'm happy to do it. That's great. Thank you, Nick.

Really appreciate your insights tonight. And, uh, everyone, We'll see you guys next week. Thanks for tuning in for this episode. And we'll see all of you next time. Thank you. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it. But you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the team house ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast Eyes On with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it.

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