The Team House - From Getting Pizza in SERE School to CEO of Blackpanda | Gene Yu | Ep. 310

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseGene Yu is Co-Founder and CEO of Blackpanda, Asia's premier digital forensics and cyber security incident response firm. He is a computer science honor graduate from West Point, previously served in the U.S. Army Special Forces, and is the author of three books. Gene has served across Asia in both the military and private sectors as an equity swaps trader with Credit Suisse in Hong Kong and with Palantir Technologies’ Asia business development team in Singapore.Gene is currently best-known for leading one of the fastest recorded recoveries of a family friend, kidnapped in eastern Malaysia by Filipino Abu Sayyaf terrorists in late 2013. He is also a graduate of Johns Hopkins University SAIS and Stanford University GSB.Grab Gene’s book here: ⬇️https://a.co/d/jgtPFe4BlackPanda ⬇️https://www.blackpanda.com___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:⬇️Kinetic Research Group (KRG)https://kineticresearchgroup.com____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social 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/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]0:00 start #specialforces #cybersecurityBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go it and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Special operations. Covert ops. Espionage. The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Welcome to Team House episode 310. I'm Dave Park. Jack Murphy. And our guest tonight again is gene you thank you from special forces CEO to cyber security and jeans were in a couple of books in the past but we have his new book uh the second shot a green beret's last mission oh good okay um jack you want to do the live yeah sure so let me tell you about our sponsor for this show before we go any further uh our sponsor for this one is kinetic research

group amongst many other products they make. One of them is this polymer adjustable rifle chassis. This one is the X-ray chassis. All these multiple points of adjustment that it has. You can fit two different types of 308 rifles on here, Remington 700 and Dietika made by Seiko. So it can accept a couple of different rifle body parts. And we hope you guys will go and check them out. Again, it's totally adjustable. All these different points it has, even the forward part of it can adjust back and forth and you can mess around with the placement of the magazine. Well, so if you go check out kinetic research group.com, you can check out this product

and many others there, and we really appreciate you guys supporting a sponsor of the show. And veteran-owned company? Special Forces guys. Juan Juarez. Justin. Justin Wores was a guest on the show a couple weeks ago if you want to check out his episode and he works for KRJ. Gene, welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for being here. We're super stoked. Dude, I'm super stoked. It's really cool to be in here. And it's all this stuff as we were talking about earlier. I love New York, right?

So just my rubber arm. I think when we did our first interview with you, we were in our old studio. That's how long ago it was. It's probably like two half, two and a half years ago? Yeah, I'm trying to talk about. Something like that? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's been a while. Oh, sorry, three years ago. No, that's 21. Yeah, we were definitely in our old studio. Okay. So, awesome, man.

That episode real quick. So everybody knows. Everybody, make sure you check out the very first episode where we go over, you know, Jean, like our normal shows, Gene's early life and time in SF, episode 113. And that's where Gene tells the infamous pizza story, which I promised I wouldn't make him recount here. But I kind of feel like we have to, though. it plays into this story. It's all tied together. Well, let's go, let's start with the book, Gene. I mean, people can listen to your last interview for the whole typical team house fair, right, that we usually

go on. But tell us, you know, you would self-publish three books in the past, the yellow-green beret series. I read the first one. I loved it. I know you have mixed feelings in retrospect about it, but I really enjoyed it. And now this is your new book, the second shot. Um, And I would love to hear that, like, start with that journey from being a self-published author. You're into cybersecurity, many other things. And how did you land on this project? Yes. Okay.

So I guess the first thing is just to hit the headline of what the story is, right? Which is essentially that a family friend was kidnapped by Abu Sayaf out of an Eastern Malaysian resort. Her husband was killed in the induction. She was taken back across international. lines into the southern Philippines and landed in Holo Island where most of first group has been through during the I think 12 years effort working with Filipino counterparts down their targeting that group and it turned out that I was part of a larger mission in 2006 that failed to kill three of the lie lie lie lie lie the group that kidnapped her and so she ended up landing in a group of 80

about 80 Abbasai and to fast forward of course You can just check out the story, of course, for the details. But we were able to connect up with, through West Point connections and through the old Special Forces networks, to work with Scout Rangers and Nika operatives, which is their CIA, to affect basically a kidnapping ransom exchange where we put a technical surveillance tracking device that we convinced an Australian intelligence operative down there to lend us, okay? And after the exchange, we basically vectured the scout rangers in and destroyed the group. And part of the stories, Hoopla, was also that at that time, I was the nephew of the sitting president of Taiwan, right?

So he's my mother's older brothers. And when the story went back to Taiwan, it became this huge national news. I always joke around and say it was like my 15 minutes of boy band fame. But no like hot young girls were looking for me. It was always like old taxi drivers and old ladies that watched the news. in Taiwan, but people literally would run out of cafes to take photos with me and stuff like that. It was an interesting short time period. And essentially the book, when about four years ago, I was approached after all the Asian content

that's starting to come out. I don't know if you've seen this crazy rich Asians, the movie. Basically, there's a lot of Asian American content coming out. And so Hollywood started calling basically because they'd heard about the story through channels. And so, you know, when I was thinking about it, I was like, oh, wow, a film, you know, around this story is really, wow, interesting project. And actually, I'm able to officially disclose that Temple Hill Entertainment, the producers behind Mays Runner trilogy, First Man, also Twilight, the but big franchise. Marty Bowen and John Fisher are in discussions to be the producers. And then Simulieu, the lead actor of Shang Chi, the Marvel movie.

Oh yeah. Marvel movie? Yeah. So it's still early, okay, but discussions and United Town Agency, one of the largest Hollywood agencies brought me on to start putting it together, right? So to start the project, right, they're like, look, we need you to write some type of IP that needs the movie needs to be based off of. And I was like, well, you know, as I shared, you know, first I find my previous writing a

little bit cringy and everything, especially as a hopefully older, wiser man today. I feel like I was a kid when I wrote that. And so I wasn't that interested in having my personal story and name come out. As I've gotten older, even though I'm here publicly talking to you guys, right, there's an aspect that we do need to try to sell the book and everything. But, you know, I'm more protective of my privacy, right? So I actually told them I'll do it, but I want this to be a fiction. Okay.

So they're like, sure, you're the client. We'll do whatever you want. And fast forward a few more months. And then my book agent there was like, Ejean, you know, how confident are you actually? in your writing skills, because if we take this to a major publishing house for fiction, you need to understand that your writing has to be so good. And I never thought about this before for writing, but your writing needs to be so good that people know it's a fake story or think it's a fake story and are so compelled that they

keep reading it. Right. So how good is your writing? And I'm like, damn, I don't think I'm that good. So I was like, okay, so after, you know, a lot of back and forth, you know, I agreed to do it as a nonfiction. And then as we wrote the story, there's a whole, now once it got through a major publisher like Amazon publishing, which is where this book's gone through and why it's had a big push, right? It launched in October 1st. I just met with my Amazon, my, my, my Amazon editor today in

the city and shared 53,000 copies have been downloaded and sold. That's awesome. That's amazing. It's insane. Yeah. It's like the power of Amazon. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Like just the engine and just pushing it out. Yeah. And, you know, and, and, and, and, and, that, you know, there's something like 2,000 reviews or something like that, like, you know, already. So, pretty wild. But as I learned that going through this process of actually working with a major publishing house, it's a team sport, man.

There's a lot of editors involved. Boyers. Yeah, lawyers. There's a lot of legal review. You know, UTA, basically, and I worked with an amazing, they advised and also pretty much, almost forced, but I worked with a very high-level professional writer. He, who I also had lunch with in the city yesterday, refuses to be named. He wants to be completely anonymous.

He's absolutely adamant about it. He's actually quite a well-known journalist back in the day. But working with this professional writer, right, of going through my entire life and watching him masterfully crafted into a story, then also saying things like, look, we can't just tell this story. Like, why did you go to the Philip? Right, yeah. And pulling out those strings, and then each question that came out, the editors or him, himself would be like, no, that's not sufficient.

Tell me more about that. Tell me more about that. And it just keeps on getting pulled. And so actually, if you read the book, the way I look at it now is I describe it as a serendipitous series of events that connect everything to basically the saving of Evelyn Chang's life. And in many ways, like a lot of the fuckups and things like that I did that I had in the Army, West Point, Special Forces, that all led to basically getting her out of there.

Right. And when this event had finished, I actually believe. the moment that the entire purpose of my life was just to save her life, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's such an odd confluence of events. All adds up to that, yeah. You know, Steve Jobs talks famously in a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford about how in your life, when you plan your career, you can't connect the dots forward. Right. Right. You can't plan out how things are going to happen towards the future. What we can do is connect the dots backwards. Right.

And connect the things and experiences that happenstance or on purpose that you that you chose to go forward with and put that all together. And that's what this book actually realized now, as I look back, and as I was sharing with you guys earlier, this whole process made me realize I was feeling certain things or thinking certain things during that time period that I didn't even know that I thought and felt until this team of editors and also the professional writer

forced it out of me essentially, right, of shit that I was angry about or happy about or whatever, that ended up leading to different things. So that's really what the second shot is about, is that storyline, but it's also my own journey, right, of finding myself through growing up as, you know, as Asian kid, you know,

and going to West Point, ascending into special forces, serving, you know, in Iraq and the Philippines, and all those experiences, how they tied together to, after I left the army, five years later, that these same dudes

we were targeting. I mean, where does somebody have that story in SF or anywhere? Right. That the guys that you were targeting, whether it be ISIS, whether it be Al-Qaeda, whether it be whoever, right, in Afghanistan, and that they come around and kidnap somebody in your personal life, personal family circle. How bizarre is that?

I mean, it's a work of fiction, right? Like, it really is, you never, yeah, 100%. Everything is so interconnected in the Philippines, though, on one hand, it's like, sort of makes sense. It sort of makes sense. Well, I mean, for, I mean, my family's background is from Taiwan, right?

So, you know, Evelyn's story is that she has a lifelong factory, like kind of middle general manager, right? And this was her retirement vacation with her husband and went down to Palm Palm Island. The Palm Island is some people may have heard of Sipidon Island. It's a really world-famous diving site. I've actually been there before this event. It's gorgeous. It's unbelievable for diving. But it is like 20 minutes by speedboat to Sulu, to the area that first group and other

groups, I think the National Guard groups rotated through as well, were working with Filipino armed forces, particularly special operations, trying to target Abbasaf. And, you know, a lot of people don't know that a good body of the hijackers in the 9-11 attack actually came through and trained in the Philippines. You know, we can go into this, actually, if you guys like, a little bit, but there's a lot of, you know, kind of grumbling around the politics of first group being involved in that in the war on terror, and then also the unintended knock-on effects that we ended up getting shut out of Iraq and Afghanistan

the beginning. And, you know, we were actually kind of, like, looked down upon during my era, you know, as first group because we weren't one of the war groups. You weren't one of the cool, yeah, yeah. You know, there was a saying, actually, because our flash is yellow, right? It's like, oh, that's nice, matches the color of a stripe that goes down your back. And it's like, what the hell, man? It's not like we chose to.

Right, right, right. Obviously, we voted. We voted and decided not to go. We don't want to go. No, no, no. Obviously, we went through the same course, right? We come in the same exact background, right? And that was actually a very frustrating point for first group in the, I guess you call them the 2000s, right, in that era.

Yeah. But, of course, you know, for me, you know, my time period, I ended up going Iraq twice with my two different teams. One's a Bravo company and one Charlie Company, which was that special company that, as we know we can talk about it all time, but for some reason, DOD redacted it out. So I'm just going to call it Charlie Company.

One of the cool things, I mean, I always think this is cool is that you kept the redactions in your book. You know, some people, they'll reword it, or they'll try, you just kept, they're just like straight up redactions in there where you get to guess. You know, straight up, like, because I actually had to hire a lawyer, this is a major publication, right? So it went through major legal review, even on Amazon level, right?

They have their own in-house lawyers, checking everything, right? And then I actually had to hire a specialist lawyer in D.C. that deals with this, right, and then passes into DOD. So DOD took about nine months, I would say, which was actually pretty fast, apparently, for DOD. And it went to Socom, even went to, I believe, the intelligence agencies because of the NECA mentions, again, the CIA of the Philippines. And that's the main group that ended up working with closely to get Evelyn out, right? It was actually the Nika guys. And when I was talking to the lawyer, when he said the redactions came back, he's like, you should keep him in because it makes it look more legit. But it's funny because of the things that they redacted, it made no sense to me.

Right. They're like things that are like super open in the internet now. There's a Wikipedia page. Yeah, there's just like tons of people talk on these things. But since they officially redacted it, I'm just going to continue saying things like, oh, Charlie Company in Okinawa. Fort Bragg-based unit. Yeah, yeah.

Fort Bragg-based unit. So one of the funniest redactions, though, if readers do pick it up, is that I made up a code name for one of the Nika operatives because he's actually still operating. And I made up a code name that's not even his code name or anything like that, and they redacted that. I thought that was probably the funniest one. I was like, oh, good job, guys. Yeah.

Caught you. Yeah. But I think once sending it through DOD, to be honest, they were actually very supportive once the process went. But even then themselves, the guy that I was talking to there, was like, look, I know some of this doesn't make sense, but just for the safe side, for your own protection, legal aspects, et cetera,

it's been through. And everything you put here, nobody from the government can say anything. And actually I checked it out with senior Philippines intelligence officers as well and everything like that because I do care, right? I'm still on Team America even though I'm, you know, well, well now, you know, out of uniform. Yeah. And who knows what the hell is. Like, I don't know anything that's going on, right? Like in the effort of, I don't even know what they're doing.

Right. I don't really pay close touch anymore. But I certainly don't want to share anything that for some reason would compromise some type of operation. You know what I mean? So yeah, sure. Just go ahead and redact, and tell me, right? I don't know what's going on, right?

I'm a civilian, right? I run a cybersecurity company. Right. I'm a founder and CEO of a cybersecurity company. I don't have any to do with this anymore, right? So, yeah. So I'm seeing requests for a pizza party, but let's talk about you leaving the military, I think, right?

Because we did talk about your military service in the last show. If we have time at the end, maybe he'll regale us with the pizza party. I'm trying to think of some insights that I didn't show us. But you left and you were a little lost. Yeah. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, sure.

I mean, I think like everybody that leaves at a certain point will feel a bit lost. You know, one of the things I didn't realize that had bothered me a lot more after I had left was that there was, look, I was thinking about leaving. I'll be full disclosure, right? I was done with my captain's time. I'd gotten into a couple, you know,

pretty prestigious grad schools. It was easiest for me just staying in the Army. I could figure out how they could pay for it. I liked being in the Army at that point. I had done pretty well, right? I'm very proud of sharing this. I was the last of my class military at West Point. I got my ass kicked.

I was the stupidest plea that you could possibly imagine. I had hazed all the time. All the time. Even when I catch up with my West Point classmates now, they all still remember I was the most eight-up idiot plea. And I'm really thankful they were my friends because I was such a shit magnet. So to make it all the way into special forces, make it not only just a one team, but do well enough they'd let me have a second team in Charlie Company, right?

Forward Combat Tours. I was one of nine special forces captains be picked up below the zone for major, which was a huge honor for me, right? You know, it was kind of a grand go to hell. You know, everybody who doubted me, everybody who told me that was a piece of shit, like Bobba Hall stuff, sort of. It's like, you know. So my favorite two words, especially as an entrepreneur now, which I start with F and N&U. And so when I was on the way out, one of the things that I disclosed to my unit was that my uncle was this really famous politician that was going to become the president of Taiwan. And that information at the time was just greeted with kind of like so.

And I was like super embarrassed. I'm a cherry captain. I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm just, hey, so you know. Right. Like I don't want this to be a problem. Right. And these questions don't come up.

in your T.SSEI clearance question. It doesn't strictly ask you, is your family member, you know, like a politician, et cetera, et cetera. It specifically doesn't, right? And if you remember when you go through that process, you're coached, don't add any extra information. Just get through this bullshit, right? Because loyalty is not really questioned

when you go through all the training that we've been through and taking on the most dangerous missions that America offers, right? Going a little bit long on this because it's not, It's not as much, but essentially, I was done with all my tours, and then it came up with the new leadership, because I don't want to point out anyone, because I actually don't blame them. I think it is a weird situation, right? Like how often is that that an SF officer has a book, like his mother's older brother

is the head of state of a very important geopolitical country as well? Right. And I will call it a country. And so I don't actually blame anybody for needing to look into it, but the way it had happened, it just triggered my touch points around feeling that I was always kind of doubted a little bit. You know what I mean? There's always a little bit like maybe I'm not totally part of the club.

And then so while I was thinking about getting out anyway, I didn't realize years later and especially even writing this, the writers and the editors pulled that out of me. that actually I was festering about that. So when you asked me about like, I bring this up because I felt like I had to talk about that in the story because I feel a bit embarrassed when people say like, oh wow, you're such a great guy. Like you stopped everything you're doing.

There's still a little bit of like, I'll show you. Yeah, there was a, like, I didn't realize the time that I actually had like some undercurrents of wanting to prove, you know, like that I was still this guy. I was angry a little bit about this and everything like that. It's not as clean, you know what I mean? Like I didn't, I wanted to be,

honest, rigorously honest, right, about recanting the story that it wasn't like, oh, I'm just sitting around having a great life and like, hey, Evelinga kidnapped. Let me get up and just, you know, I'm just like, I'm just like, you know what I'm like? I was in a really shitty difficult transition time period. You know, at that point I've been canned actually as well from Palantir, which was like a company I loved working for and I still am really proud that it came from that company. And so I was like in one of the most depressed time periods of the transition, right? Yeah.

Of coming back from the real world. You know, I felt waves of guilt because I was in my prime, right? I was like 31, right? While people were still deploying, you know, SF guys are still going. And I'm like utterly unoccupied and useless. Yeah. Wasting my time. And I was finding myself, like I was, you know, abusing.

You know what I mean? I was like getting finding my way to the bottle every night. It was a dark time period. And so when this happened, it was almost like a bit of salvation out of all this anger that I had to go forward. And I recant that story of why I decided to go and just see what I could make happen, right? I mean, not to mention that they had really no options.

Part of that is the whole political situation in Taiwan, there's no diplomatic relations officially to Philippines because the way China chokes Taiwan's international status. And when I met the family in Taiwan, I realized that out of literally all the shitty options, that was the least shitty, you know, to do something and help. So, maybe I'll pause here. I feel like I'm kind of rambling off.

No, no, it's good. No, it's interesting. You know, it's, so in a way, you know, it wasn't just Magnetor. There was this anger driving you, but there was an emphasis. There was, like, they said, hey, she got kidnapped. And you're like, well, I'll, I mean, were you like, I'm going to rescue her? You think, I'll go see if I can help? I'll go see if I can help.

Let me go find somebody to help them, and let me get back to my own problems and being unemployed. Like that was my life. Yes, yes. Yes. Yeah, the SF guy in the background. And ultimately, when you read the story, I was a facilitator.

I was just a broker to the real heroes, the Filipino Nika operatives and the Scout Rangers. And actually, I'm proud of two things when I talk about that. One is that in this story now, I can give them the credit, you know, but more openly. It's passed like a certain statute of limitations that they actually even willingly share the full.

story and there's a lot of things that until I started digging into this that I didn't even know until like a year ago, right, about the results of everything had happened, how wildly successful this whole mission actually ended up being. And one of the ways that I wanted to thank them was that actually all the revenue proceeds from this book went to that. Wow, that's amazing. It's already been spent for various things that they wanted to do, right? And that's a way that for me to thank them. Because there's no way like I couldn't figure out how to thank them. They put their lives and their careers on the line, as you'll see in the story. Not a lot of pay.

For nothing. Yeah. Right? For nothing. Right? And they did it at a friendship of meeting me literally like 30 days prior. It shows the, this is what I always love talking about like combat and like, you know, all stuff of stuff is that in the backdrop of all this horrible thing, all these horrible

things are ongoing. You can see man's best sides. Right. It's like the light is the brightest, you know, against the darkness, right? And even though it's super messed up, you know, what's going on in Southern Philippines, all chaotic and that is such a complex place with everything that's ongoing there. You have these heroes that show up, right, and just put their lives. And again, careers, they were ordered to stand down and put their careers on the line,

right, to go get her and get her out, right? And so this is my way, you know, in a bleak way, right, of thanking them, right, of actually generating, you know, some revenue for the, you know what I mean, to be able to give, right? I'm not a money machine that it can just give out, give out things. But the other aspect of this as well is, is now, I'm, I've come to realize in my own career, right? You know, I'm the founder and CEO of Black Panda, right?

We've raised 30 million US dollars now, venture capital. We're leading cybersecurity emergency response, crisis response group out of Asia, right? And from my time in Charlie company, as a public service crisis responder, then I have a personal story with kidnapping ransom crisis response, and now I'm in the digital crisis response arena.

And I realize my career is basically this, now for 25 years, right? I'm a crisis responder. I like following Stoic philosophy. And one of the things I love that they talk about, right, is that we can't control the things around us, but we can control how we respond. And that's the aspect that I've always found

with crisis response and in the story as well, is that when I was in that dark moment, right, of my life and just failing in my transition to the real world, so to speak, taking on other people's crises help put your problems in a perspective. Yeah. helps you deal with your own problems right yeah nobody has no problems everybody's life is hard okay no matter what it looks like from the outside

they're struggling okay just like us we're all like a chaotic just like carnival of emotions all the time right just pinging off each other everybody is suffering in some way or another right and by putting other people's problems ahead of yours when they're so when you realize there's so much bigger like obviously everyone's problem at that time being kidnapped by Abu Sayaf right and taken in the jungles, right? Her problem is way bigger than my problem right now. And I get respite from allowing that angry, critical, horrible person and voice in your head

that follows you around everywhere you go, to shutting that person up for just a little bit while I focus on this. That was actually a bit of the salvation that I had taking it on as well. You know, it's interesting because your story is reminding you a bit about Scott Mann's story with Operation Pineapple. right um and and it's you know everybody thinks of special forces or or any special operations unit that their greatest skill is in pointing a gun at somebody and and and you're right kicking in a door and pointing a gun at somebody but really it's it's so much more than that and that's that's like

that that's the end point right that that's the last the last little bit of it the The relationships is the thing that emphasize. The relationships, the planning, the creativity, all of that stuff. That all has to happen before you go in that door and point a gun at somebody. You know, one of the things I remember during, you know, basic training, you know, at West Pointe, call it Beasts, but they beat into your heads not to call your rifle a gun. Right. It's a weapon.

Right. Right. Then when you get to SF, they're like, don't call it a weapon. It's your gun. It's just a tool. Right. Because you're the weapon. Right? These are just tools, right? So, you know, I like to say now, like, look, I'm a Brazilian

Giuseu Black Belt, you know, I was a choppin, champion boxer. Yeah, these are tools, right? My hands, you know, my knees, you know, et cetera, from a close combat, hand-to-hand combat standpoint. Let's move away, yeah, I'm pretty damn good still with the Glock. Yeah. The Glock after my time and Charlie Company and everything like that. And now we're exchanging, we're just extending the range of my lethality. But ultimately, I'm the weapon. Right. And especially, you know, for my role, having been a team leader and an officer, actually, if I was shooting a lot of rounds downrange while we're... I'm definitely not doing my job.

Right. You know what I mean? My main tool, right, with me being a weapon, is my mouth. Right. And like you said, the relationships, right? Winning friends and influencing people, right? And moving people together, that's, you know, what I think is really powerful of being effective

across many different paradigms. So, and then now in cybersecurity, I mean, forget, like, tanks. involved all this type of stuff, but now computers. Right. Like, I'm not running around kicking anybody's ass, no matter what my skills are these days. You know, I'm kind of like, I'm sure with you guys,

like all the injuries that pop up after all the time of service, you know, I've got all sorts of problems. I'm not kicking anybody's ass these days, so don't get me wrong. Like, nobody please think I'm saying that, you know. So I sit behind a computer these days, but yeah, I can reach out and touch you through that, right? So, you know, that's one of the things I just like thinking about when you talk about that, you know, about, you know,

the aspect of what is the weapon, right? You're the weapon, right? The mind, right? And that type of attitude, you know, it says persisted through my life after a time and group. So you hear that she gets kidnapped. You're like, let me go check this out. Let me go see if I can do anything.

How does that all go down? Yeah, so I was, you know, just feeling sorry for myself in Hong Kong, right? So I worked at Credit Suisse as an investment banker for a little bit in Hong Kong. So that's where I'd gone back, you know, when I was just kind of licking my chops and couch surfing. And so my mom calls me and it's just like, hey, look, I'm visiting Taiwan from the States, right? And since your ass is unemployed, why don't you come over here and meet your grandmother and just kind of hang out for a little bit? So I was like, okay. And then she was, oh, and by the way, remember my high school best friend, Angela, her younger sister, Evelyn, you know, this whole story got kidnapped.

And I remember thinking to myself, that's probably Abbas Sa'Av. It sounds like Abusaaf, but, okay, that sucks. Right. Go to Taiwan and then I'm surprised to see that this is national news, right? It's like on every channel because Taiwan and Asia broadly is really safe. You know what I mean? Like I live in Singapore now. It's literally a place where you can walk down some of the busiest, most trafficked, like, equivalent of Fifth Avenue.

It's called Orchard Road there. And you can see two little girls like four years old just holding hands walking by themselves, going and running errands by themselves without their parents. It is so safe, right? So Taiwan is not a far cry from that as well, other than, you know, there's like a thousand missiles from China pointing out of it. So for the Taiwanese people, the idea that one of their citizens could get kidnapped like this, it just blew their minds, right? And the Taiwan media is very paparazzi-like. And Evelyn, her older sister, Angela, who's classmates with my mother at high school, they were also classmates with my uncle's wife, who's the first lady.

So it's Taiwan small, right? So they use that as a, like, one or two degrees of separation, a very loose connection to claim that whoever had kidnapped Evelyn was targeting the president, which is total bullshit. Right, yeah, right. Now the ironic thing is when I naively wandered into this, there was a very direct connection to the presidency of Taiwan because of our blood connection, right?

But through Evelyn, no, right? And so when I was in Taiwan, then my mom's kind of telling me about this little bit. And so I was like, you know what? Why don't we, Angela had the oldest sister had flown back from Florida. So she lives out there. And I said, why don't we meet them for breakfast or the next morning? And I'm just kind of here and see if I can be useful. And as I'm hearing their story, right, because of the, again, the no diplomatic connections,

the only connection point they have is one Taiwanese interpol officer who's talking. talking to a buck sergeant from the Philippine National Police out of the anti-kidnapping group, which at that time, and I don't know if this is so fair, but just the contacts I had in the Philippines, didn't really well regard them as an upstanding unit. So that's all they were getting in terms of information, right? And so that's when I realized, I was like, shit,

like, at least I can try to call somebody, right? We're just talking about, you know, all these amazing Filipino officers, right, that we had worked with, whether it be the Scout Ranger, scout rangers of the light the light reaction battalion at the time when I was there and then you know eventually became the regiment and that was Charlie Company right out of Okinawa that stood that helped stand that unit up all those connections we had I was like maybe I can call those guys but they were when I did call them they weren't in the right positions anymore they left right people who put ten positions right but we can introduce you to some people but the way Asia is that's

not going to be done over the phone right you got to come here right you got to come here and spend time, right? And so, yeah, at the moment I realized in everything I was just saying just now, I mean, I was like, wow, I actually think they don't have many options. You know what I mean? I might be actually the best option to find somebody that can help them. And then, yeah, I was on a plane in Manila that night. Was, because of your family connections, was the Taiwanese government at all, like, were they backing you? Were they offering you any kind of support? No, no, not at all. In fact, So two points. One was that I was able to leverage my old Palantir team,

that we used to work the special operations command, right, for Palantir as our customer. So they actually had some live connections back into an American U.S. signals officer, right? And, you know, I kind of convinced him, you know, to put the phone number, because in between all, fast forward, in between this, they'd actually called with proof of life, right, called Taiwan. And then did not mask their phone numbers. We actually had their phone number.

Was it a ransom situation? Or what were they? Yes. Yes. Yes. And they killed the husband because he fought back? Maybe. No idea.

No one was there. Right. And so I suspect so. He was actually quite tall, right, as well. So I imagine in the middle of night at 1.20 a.m., you know, the opposite side of the Towsig people are quite small, right? Smaller than the average Filipino. And I think they were kind of shocked. And then, you know, that's my guess.

right um and uh now you know as i do want to share a quick segue is that after all this and i'm being like heralded as a hero and everybody's you know everybody's clapping their hands and just cheering back in taiwan um i went to uh this dinner uh with the changs and then uh the nephew who's basically the son of the the um from a previous uh of the husband i got killed uh asked to drive me home and uh when he drove me back and he parks the car and he's like hey jean i just want to ask you one questioning is like, why do you think that my uncle had to die in all this? I know it's just a very like point in question because it made me forget, like I forgot because everyone was just celebrating the victory of getting Evelyn out and everything like that,

that, you know, the husband was killed, right? And I remember thinking about it and I told him, I was like, actually I think his fate or his destiny in this life was that he either scared or fought those attackers and possibly saved the other guests at that hotel chain from being kidnapped as well, right? Because I think, well, Evelyn was just the first one that they hit. They were staying in those bamboo stilt villas, right, those in a holiday. If you've ever seen those that are on the water. So they just came across the water because again, Holo Island or Sulu, that area is only like 20 or 30 minutes by speedboat across to Malaysia. That whole area, like many places

in the world, was split up by colonialism, right? The Taoistic nation does span of across into Eastern Malaysia and then Southern Philippines, right? So those people are all connected, right? Like in terms of history and as a nation and as a culture, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, so, you know, that, you know, I reflect upon as well because, you know, it's just the story is just so serendipitous in terms of how all the connected pieces and even my life that connected this altogether, I think about a lot, right, with all this, right, in terms of just like how much is really in our control in our lives, right?

that these kind of things fall into place and then just happened, you know, that how unlucky, to be honest, as well, that obviously I have picked up Evelyn Chang and I happened, not to, sorry, to put accolades to myself, but I happen to be totally available and psychologically available to put all of my skills, knowledge, and abilities against them. Yeah. Right? Like, they're very unlucky when you think about it from that aspect as well, you know? Yeah.

And, I mean, obviously, I don't feel that bad for them, but it's just, it's just an aspect of that. If they would have picked anybody else at that resort, probably there'd be no, they'd still be there, they'd be dead. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. You know, we'll never know. Start to walk us a little bit through like the logistics of like you hit the ground over there. What are the first steps? Yeah, so, okay, so when I get there first, right, I start, there's a lot of, and I touched upon this a little bit, in the early days of Black Panda. We were actually, we actually had to kidnap and ransom consulting business. There is, and you guys may not be aware, because it's a little bit more in the British,

world, okay, but there's the inventors of insurance the world is this market called Lloyds of London. Yeah. And it's 88 insurance companies currently that's all basically a consortium, right? And they have a lot of specialized insurance products that they're a bit more known for today. One of them is kidnapping ransom insurance, right? Now AIG and these guys also have these insurance policies, but really what they are is like they cover people traveling to high-risk regions.

You know, so like oil executives who travel a lot to high-risk regions in South America, Africa, et cetera. You know, cover like political violence, kidnap in ransom situations, terrorist attacks, as well as like special evacuation. And part of the insurance policy will not only cover the ransom payment, but also unlimited cost for the crisis consultants. And the crisis consultants are actually. actually what differentiates the insurance policy.

So the most famous group in the world is called Control Risks Group. You guys ever see the movie Proof of Life with Meg Ryan and Russell Crow. So, fictionally, right, they didn't use the names. They're talking about Control Risk Group. Like Russell Crow's character, former 22 SAS, a lot of these guys are, right, out of either anywhere of the Commonwealth SAS, right? We call it A&Z in Asia. The Aussies and the Kiwis.

And ZAC. Yeah, yeah. and 22, you know, out of UK. A lot of these guys actually worked at Black Pen at one point. So I actually do have a network of that. I'm happy to talk about it. That's really fascinating to actually interface with those guys. But anyway, so on Lyme Street, which is where Lloyds of London is at,

all the global crisis consulting firms around that area. And a lot of them are calling because this is big business for them, you know, to come in. But as I was interviewing them and helping the Chang family screen, I literally discovered that none of them had ever even started. at foot in the Philippines. And after having been there for two deployments and knowing how complex the Philippines is, I was like, there's no way that you could possibly help in this situation. Now, that being said, because I got in the business a bit later, and actually went through some formal kidnap and ransom negotiation training through control risks type type of fault

because they had a whole training program and everything like this. As they were going through the briefing, they're like, this, don't never do this. This is a landmine, this, this, this. Everything the Evelyn Chang thing, I was like, yep, I did that. So there is aspect of value with the table with all their experience all over the world with kidnapped and ransom negotiations and extortion, right? It's a completely different ballgame of what our backgrounds are. Yeah. And so first I screened all these guys, right?

I was like, shit, none of these guys can actually really help, right? It doesn't make sense for the Changsling dole out, you know, $50,000, $100,000 for these guys, and they're not, you know, as far as I knew at the time, they weren't, like, flush with cash and just like spur around on this. So I called Matt Pecco, who is the co-founder of Black Panda. He was also a Charlie Company guy, but 17 years before me, out of Oki, hired me at Credit Swiss, big Master of Universe, banker type out in Asia. He's the man, okay?

And I called him, right? And he picked up immediately, it was like, hey, I know a four-bragg unit plank owner guy, who knows a guy in the Philippines. and it turned out and I call him the Viking I don't know whether his name should be revealed because he actually, I do share that he did some things a little bit, it's just called gray. Unconventional.

There is a special forces association chapter out there in Philippines, isn't there? There is. It's out at like, you know, I think Garfields is the name of the famous bar out in Angeles City that's everybody convenes that. The Viking is not American. He's actually from Iceland. He's actually a Viking. Like when you see him, you're like, that's what a Viking would look like, right?

He was like 6-2, 6-3, huge dude, all white hair, shocking blue eyes, right? And actually, the first night that we met, because he was, you know, he was a Blackwater guy. He claimed that actually when he was in Baghdad, that he was the motor pool up armor welder when I was there with Charlie Company. And he says that I remember you, right, during that time. So this, again, the serendipity event of the connection of all this and everything. He was bizarre, right? But he, so he had been in the Philippines for 18 years, right? And his background was that he was a private military contractor,

was doing all sorts of various things and had connections down there. And so we ended up hiring him initially to help us. Sounds like a blackwater guy sending Western Union checks back to the Philippines. Yeah. So there's a whole story itself how that went sideways, you know, and I kind of leave that to the readers, you know, to find out about how they went with the Viking and these other groups

and I just got turned around all over place because honestly like when I look back it's like I thought it was the better option I didn't know what the hell I was doing right and typical hubris of SF guy like I'll just figure it out did you find because we know that this is true in the mercenary world right

and I think that like the Ukrainian Foreign Legion has learned this lesson very hard but there are a lot of posers right out in out in the world people who are in distant places making outrageous claims and whatnot. Did you find,

not necessarily with the Viking or anybody else, but did you find that there are a lot of, like, people who said or represented something that... Absolutely, but that's more my time at Black Panda that I started encountering this because I was actually, you know, in the business, so to speak. Right. And there's a lot of weird people,

especially in the Philippines, that are hiding out there, right? Because that's kind of, you know, the Philippines is actually on the up and up now, and to be honest, because, you know, I've been able to, build one of the offices of Black Pan out there and reach the wealthiest families in the Philippines, right? Like the biggest bank in the country is our customer. The elite of the Philippines

are the toughest businessman you've ever seen. Okay. And, you know, I've had a chance in my time, you know, as an entrepreneur and businessman in Asia, to see and meet a lot of extremely wealthy people. And almost always, the next generation are a bunch of shitheads, okay? Like the sons, of like they're just horrible people right and in the philippines it's not the case like they run those families like iron fist like those chinese filipino and spanish filipino families like the dynes that they create there they're so tough i mean i'm talking about like sions of billion you know billion dollar empires and one of them was uh asking me for advice when he was visiting his son in boston of how to in the dead of winter as as cold as boston is what's the best way to get to the bus stop

to take the bus to go visit him. And I'm like, what? Like, you don't have enough money just to take a cab? Right. Like, this is the type of tough environment. Yeah, so I just wanted to make a general comment about the Philippines on that side

that, you know, I spent probably a total of 18 months, I think, in the Philippines when I was in SF. What I learned at Black Panda interfacing with business, politics, and business in that country at Black Panda made me realize that in my time in SF, I only understood maybe 5% of what I know. now about the Philippines. It is such a complex and hairy place that everything is intertwined.

It actually made me realize that more developed countries and even the states has features of this. It's just documented in different ways. Legalize in different ways, right, about how all power really works. It's all about the money at the end of the day. It's all about the money. Everything is driven by the money. And I'm rambling a little bit here, but basically the Philippines on the lower level, right, we were just dealing with Abbasayev. That's all we thought about, right? But the real problem in the Philippines,

and where the governments worry about, is the new people's army, the NPA. It's the longest-standing communist insurgency in the world, right? It's actually started out with even Maoism, you know, Maoist too, philosophy. And they're organized. And when we're a Black Panda, that was the main problem we had to deal with when we were advising copper gold mines. Those were like the guys that killed Nick Rowe, right?

Yeah, that's exactly the guys that killed Nick Rowe. The Sparrow team, yep, those are the guys. And they're nasty, man. They're really organized. It's totally different, like having to enter up. face with them and they come for, they called them protection, not protection, revolution, revolution payments. Okay. Right. So you have to pay them all. It's like the mafia, right? You pay them for protection money, you know? And there's really no way around it because what are you

need to do. They've got like a few thousand guys over there. We can tell your copper gold mine client, like you should build your own private army too. It's not cost efficient. Right. Just pay these guys, right? And you have to facilitate all that. That's actually the role that the NIC operatives already had in place, so I'm skipping around the store a little bit. They were posing as a local construction company and paying the Abu Sayaf protection money. Interesting. That's how they had the connections in the camp where everyone was at. Very smart. So that was something that I just had fallen into, you know, introductions. But anyhow, I just wanted to kind of share a little bit about the Philippines security environment because even in my time in SF, I didn't realize

how complex it was. One of the biggest things that people miss or don't understand about the Philippines and the provinces is that outside of Manila the governors the mayors and the barangay captains are oftentimes hereditary transfer of power and they have all sorts of feeders of money coming in their pockets because they don't get paid shipped by the government right and all sorts of money that's actually the reason why they want these positions is those positions of power to get these different business lines into them and they use that to fund their own private militias etc so people in Manila and businessmen will refer to the province leadership as

warlords. Like actually call them warlords. And yeah, and they're they have compounds and they're nasty people. Yeah, their compounds are fully armed. You know, when I was down in Sultan Kurohatt with Black Panda, one of the governors that we were dealing with and needed a support for the copper gold mine, he reportedly in the previous election was actually threatened by the by the opposition. And after the opposition candidate gave a speech, walked off about 200 meters and he sent somebody over there and shot him in the head right in front of like hundreds of people. That's the type of environment that's ongoing in the Philippines

from a politics standpoint. And he's still just continued on. It wasn't like, oh my God, put him in jail. Just like, oh shit, well he's the man, so, you know? So there's that. Then also another hairy group people don't talk about is the indigenous people tribes. Those guys are nasty too, man. The blonde tribes, like

these indigenous people tribes that have all sorts of like kind of shamanism, religion that live in the, you know, live in Minnau. and those guys are violent as hell too and they've got all sorts of clan warfare ongoing and et cetera, et cetera.

So I think I'm probably going a little bit too this right now, but I just want to share how complex the Philippines is. The other thing worth pointing out maybe is, you know, the Philippines is an archipelago of like 2000 islands. And so when you have all these different people isolated in different places,

it becomes this question of like, how did they have a national identity? Right, right? They're all islanders in a sense. Yeah, exactly. not to one of it's a say 7,100 islands okay thanks for yeah thanks for one out

you know it shows but it points to like how many are inhabited yeah probably it points to the issues that we had in Afghanistan right that there are all these different tribes

a lot of these people are isolated they don't have a national identity they don't care what's going on in Kabul all they care about is their little village and the other village that they've been at war with for the last 200 years yeah well especially like the Philippines you know, when you look at the Mindanao region, right, that area being Muslim, right,

and the rest of Philippines being devout Catholic, there's never that sense, like, we're part of this, right? They want their separatists, right? They want their own thing. It's been like that. They've always wanted that, right? Nothing's changed in the last several hundred years, right? Whether the Spanish were there, whether Japanese briefly, and then, of course, there's an

American colony. The name's just changed. It's the same people. Brits were there briefly. Yeah, were they too? Yeah, they had a couple years. Okay. So yeah, it's just an incredibly complex environment.

I do think one aspect of the book that I hope, especially the viewers of your esteemed podcast, right, being interested in special operations and everything. A lot of people don't know about the, you know, the hundred green berets and various other soft units that were in the Philippines for about 12 years, right? It was like 2002 to 2013, I think, so 11 years. But there's a book that was written by Linda Robinson who wrote Masters of Chaos as well, which actually thought was pretty well written about SF and Iraq and everything. She wrote a book as well, a bit of a history accounting of SF in the Philippines, largely first group.

And, you know, I think one of the things I noticed when I sent this to DOD was the guy that was my main interface who was like, I've been in DOD for sort of for 40 years. Like he was in the Army and like all the stuff of stuff and the DOD. He's like, I never knew. there was any U.S. military bulk of the Philippines, right? And in many ways, I thought that the way that we had to operate in the Philippines was way more difficult, right, in a low-intensity, semi-permissive environment.

The complexities of that were so frustrating. People actually got very frustrated working the Philippines in terms of SF, and it was really difficult because we were very restricted and everything like that. It wasn't nearly as kinetic as Iraq, and especially in the late 2000s. That was just some hairy, hairy stuff. Right. And, of course, Afghanistan, you know, throughout that time period and later. But I actually found that the Philippines stretched our capabilities further of trying to be effective, right?

Because it's so complex and also the political navigations, everything like that. So, yeah, so again, you know, for the Evelyn Chang bit going in, especially by myself, right, and not having the backup, you know, and everything, I think that was the aspect of the most biggest challenge just trying to figure out who you can trust, right, who we can work with. I don't get ready-made American trained operators that you immediately can trust, right? You speak the same language.

You can literally just write task, purpose, key tasks, design, and everybody understands, right? And, you know, that was the biggest challenge, I would say. Yeah, how did that go down, though? Because you, I mean, do you fly into Manila? Like, where'd you fly into? Yeah, Manila. So you're flying to Milnella.

So it's like getting out of JFK, and you're like, okay, I need to meet some. some people from the CIA and I need to be some people, you know, from the military and maybe a mercenary to a fixer. Like, how do you do that when you get on the ground on the milla? So I did connect with the Viking before we flew in. So he had laid everything out and he had some like so-called Nika partners and everything like that, who ended up threatening to kill me later. But, so he had kind of lined things up and he had like, you know, he'd like lined up like a room at the peninsula. It was all like fancy schmancy and everything like that.

So in terms of like, it wasn't like I showed up and it was like, where do I go? You know, like, we just went straight hotels, start getting briefed up on like, what's the situation, you know, how things changed the last five years since I've stepped foot into this country, you know, et cetera. And so that time period was an interesting time period as well. This is late 2013. Two major events had happened. And this is now, we're talking about the back end of SF being in the Philippines. They're literally winding down.

SOTIF. Yes. They're literally like shutting down, right? So things are wrapping up. But no real end in sight. It's not like Abusef was destroyed or like that. I think really changed as far as I could tell. And that's all part of my own reflection.

As a veteran of the so-called war and terror, like, what the hell was the point of anything? You know? Right. And especially the way that we left Afghanistan, 21. Right. I'd been out a long time, but I was like, anyway, it's a whole other topic.

But so in the Philippines, an event called a typhoon Yolanda had come through and ripped through the country. So Philippines is a country that the infrastructure is not developed. So when a big natural disaster like a typhoon comes through, a lot of people die. Like it's a serious survival situation. You know what I mean?

I lived in the Philippines for close to 18 months setting up Black Penna, and a couple of typhoons came through, and it's scary, man, because all the water comes up, how are you going to get medical supply? I mean, it's like a real survival situation. because infrastructure is not there to support, right? Yeah.

And so Typhoon Yulan had come through and ripped apart the Philippines. And in the wake of it, the MNLF and, of course, of the Saif people, right, attacked Zamboanga, the capital city of Minna. In 2015? Yeah, 2013. Yeah, and try to take it. But it was really more of a political scan. They knew they couldn't really actually hold it. But the scout rangers went in there and fought them in the closest urban combat they claimed the fiercest,

World War II. Now a lot of people always like to say since World War II, it sounds really good. But, so I thought at the time I was like, eh, it was just a little bit over-exaggerated. Like sometimes I've heard, you know, these stories out of, you know, whether it be Iraq or Philippines, it feel like kind of exaggerated. They all sound like metal of honor citations and everything. But when I was actually down in Zamboanga, the scout rangers took me to walk ground zero. I mean, it looked like Swiss cheese everywhere. I mean, it was real fighting. And you'd know when you look at it.

I mean, it looked like anything that we had seen in Saunders City or like that. It was pretty hairy. And they fought, I think it was like two weeks, you know, basically nonstop in close quarters like that. And so everybody was kind of licking their wounds after this, right? It was, you know, both had lost on both sides. Of course, menela maintained control of Zavuanga. But in the wake of this, Abwazev started, I think,

trying to replenish their resources and started hitting a lot of kidnappings and dared to go as far over into Malaysia, right, to hit a resort there and pull out Evelyn, right? So that's just to give a little bit of backdrop of all the complexities that exist in the Philippines. And then you have these events ongoing as well as driving all of this too. Now, you know, you can say if you look at how the Philippines is every couple of years, there's some crazy stuff like this happening. It's a pretty crazy place, right? Again, look, 100 million people, economies on fire right now.

Someone gets a little cooey in the military. It happens. It happens, guys. Yeah, yeah. I actually believe a lot in the Philippine economy. invested quite a bit there. You know, and I think it's coming up. But yes, in the provinces and all this, there's still a lot of airy stuff ongoing.

Yeah. It's a really difficult business place to navigate as well, right? So what was the next step? When you link up with this dude, the Viking, you're navigating this incredibly complex environment. Yeah. How did you start trying to like put out those feelers to get towards Evelyn? So, okay, so I'll just kind of like, because the story is so complex.

I'm going to skip ahead to the real heroes of the story. Okay. if okay. Sure. It's a logical jump here. So shit just goes wrong with the biking, okay? Like really, really bad. So I'm like, I quit, okay?

Because I fucked this up. Okay, I'm just, I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, you went down one road and it didn't pan out. It didn't pan out. I'm like, what the hell am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing. Right. Like, I need to get out of here.

So I already had the plane ticket to go back to Taiwan until the Chang's like, I'm sorry. I'm not able to help you. Okay. And, uh, an advisor that I met at Palantir, and actually an old first group guy, and West Pointer named Joe Felter. I'd reached out to the whole number.

Do you know Joe Felter? I don't know him personally, but that name, he was like on the policy side real big in supporting some of the Filipino soft units. Yes, he actually became a very big figure in the Department of Defense. I think it was like undersecretary of... Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.

Southeast Asia. I can't remember. He's a big dude, right? He's a professor at Stanford, super upstanding a guy. And so I met him at Palantir. and so when I just put out feelers, right, to help, and actually it was my old Palantir network

that helped probably the most, right? I think active SF guys in A&U were kind of like, whoa, dude, you're... Right, we're just talking about it, you're a money-grubbing civilian now. Right. Whoa, whoa, Gene, what? Okay, and also Rogue Gene U

was doing some weird shit again. So they didn't... And I don't blame them, right? But this Palantir guys actually helped me the most. and so Joe Felter actually reached out and said actually I know an incredible upstanding Filipino scout ranger officer named Dennis Echloran is in fact we're the godfathers

each other's children and he's actually at West Point graduate as well in 1993 and so he when I was connected with Dennis Dennis actually showed up and it's the only time that's where I'm wearing my ring today I'm going to talk about this in a second okay is the only time in my entire life that West Pointer well West Pointer helped me

Your ring knocker? Yeah, this bullshit about ring knockers helping each other in the army. It's such bullshit, guys. West pointers eat their own. Officers already eat their own, as it is. It's not exactly the most inclusive environment using today's woke terminology. But West pointers particularly, like classmates will help each other, but not outside. Right.

And, look, honestly, I generally try to help West pointers they call, and I promise you this, every SF guys ever called me for help in private sector, always taken their phone call. In the Philippines, they call that like Mista culture. Is that it? Mista culture? Mista or Mista?

It's like the guys who go through the academy and they're like the same class year number and they all hook each other up. It's like a mafia. Yeah, that's what everybody thinks in the army. That's not what happens. I'm telling you guys, I swear God right now, nobody's like saying, like he's a ring knocker.

like everybody like his path is made right that's a real fun for listed i know i know right and even amongst other officers who are not west pointers right but west partners don't help each other because almost because of that reputation right so they almost kind of go out of their way not to not to appear that way so how does the ring help you out in this case so the ring actually helped me out here where because dennes being a west pointer there's not a lot of west pointers in the philippines he's a a Filipino citizen and officer right you know and so he comes in and just feeling that west point love right And it's just like from a west pointer to west pointer, I'm going to help you. Right?

This is a West Point thing, right? It's the only time my entire life is somebody actually cited because of our West Point connection that I'm going to help you, right? And he's the man, you know? And so he was actually on the way out of the Scout Rangers at the time, so he had a little bit more availability. He was like the, I mean, he was a company commander and he actually has some amazing stories of heroism as well during his time. But I think he was the, but he was like the historian or something on the way.

out and so he had a little bit more bandwidth basically just kind of like mess with me like mess around with me yeah so he basically tapped into the main hero the whole story his name is Manuel Juter okay now at the time because he was operating as a on loan from the Scout Rangers the Nika unit didn't tell was me his real name and told me his name was Nick okay which I thought was funny it's like his so secretive his nickname has a nickname right right so he's he's a scout ranger officer who's from the actually from South Tampankan area in Minnau so he speaks the local dialects down there he's from there right so he's

on loan in Nica because he can operate a lot easier navigate you know down there and mix in with the local people because the people the Filipinos of north do not look like the people down south I mean to you and me they might look very similar but they can tell right and and especially language and everything like that culture blah blah so So Nick was at that time, okay, and unbeknownst me until like recently, because they're not disclosing a lot of the shit to me at the time, right? So I'm filling some gaps here.

So he was posing as a construction engineer working in a company in Holo and was paying extortion payments to the Abbasiaf. Okay? So he didn't, he had basically just the contact of the person that collected the money. And through that person, he built a rapport, right, and kind of turned him under. unknowingly into an asset. And this asset revealed that Evelyn Chang was in that camp.

So now we have a direct asset in the camp. Yeah. Okay. Is Nika military intelligence? No, no. It's straight up. Really? Because you remember the, so the Philippines being, having been an American colony.

Yeah, when did they get stood up? Ooh, I don't know their history. Well enough on that. I'm just curious because I remember someone telling me that they had military intelligence, but they'd always talk about RA, like regional affairs, and I found out way later that was us. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's the agency.

Nika, I know what you're talking about. There is a Philippine, they called it Mig, military intelligence group. So that's kind of like our military intelligence guys, right? And there's a little bit of overlap. So one of the things about the Philippines because it was an American colony and because there's such strong ties

from the American military from that history, one of the things I always like to comment is that in Filipino English, right, because they have their English, right? They use a lot of terms we use an army, right? And they don't realize it. Like, they call, like, backpack rucksacks. You know, they, when they talk about running,

they're like, hey, double time, buddy. You know, like that, right? It's really funny. They don't really realize it. They're using a lot of army slang. So just a quick side kind of funny thing about the Philippines. But anyway, so the Nika guys, I remember when I was in SF,

they had the reputation for being super shadowy and like they used to like assassinate a lot of people right that was their reputation in fact because I'm so close to these Nika guys now right you know when I was I needed some help from Black Panda and we were having a problem with one of our clients like a competitor I was talking about it with one of the former Nika guys and he's like it's that much of a problem let's just take him out I was like this is a business I'm not doing that really like it's not supposed to be like that anymore We'll accept your story on the show. We'll accept it. Literally, weirder things happened at Black Pandan, the Philippines, then Time and S-F. But, so, so Nick is like the main guy, right?

And so he starts negotiating directly on behalf and says, oh, I was contacted by the Taiwanese family because we have business in Taiwan. Okay, and that's how he kind of made a connection along those lines. Now the problem, and the story is so long, by the book, but one of the problems was because the Taiwan paparazzi was drumming up all this

stuff about the connection to the present Taiwan, the Abu Saf are like, asking for more. Right. Right. The ransom started at $5 million US dollars. Wow. And prior to that, there have been Europeans where the Europeans have paid. They've paid like up to 10 mil for people, right? Which is ridiculous, right?

But look, one thing that I'll say, though, is that when I was in, and especially in Charlie Company, I drank all the Kool-Aid, right? America doesn't negotiate with terrorists. Right. Hey, that's all great when it's not your person that's in there. Right. You know what I mean? Right.

And that there's no other choice at the point. Because the question is not whether you should pay the ransom or not. I talk about this all-time in cyber security with ransomware attacks. Right. Right. It's not should you pay the ransom or not at that point? It's what do you need to do to make sure you never get put in this position again in the future, right? But this situation now, if you're checkmated, and it's your family member, your loved one or whatever.

Right. Or you're a company in a ransomware situation. They kidnapped your company. You can tell everybody don't negotiate, like crowdsource a solution to this, but come on, that's their, that's their, they're the ones who have anything on the line at the point. So I don't really buy into that to share now. And at the end of the day, our company does negotiate with terrorists, and we do pay ransoms. Okay, that part I don't know anything about it. But, so, you know, so basically the negotiation started, you know, at that point, and we needed to bring down the ransom.

So the first thing was to, there was like this grandstanding Taiwanese politician I talk about and telling him to like basically shut up, right? There's no connection to the president. He stood down. We got engaged with this nefarious character that essentially an Abasai broker. Right. That calls herself Lady Ann. I was going to ask you because obviously in ransomware, like they found that a lot of these negotiators

are actually in contact with the ransomware groups, telling them how much like insurance will pay or, you know, telling them, they're supposed to be like the middleman. Yeah, they're coaching them. But did you see this too? Yeah. So this is a funny thing about just security as a service in general. We don't think about it when you serve the government, but it's a symbiotic relationship for the budgets, right?

Or in private sector for your revenue, right? You need the bad guys to be there in order for you to have business. And it's just a value transaction. It's a symbiotic, unbitten, quiet relationship between the two that you actually kind of need each other, right? And it's not really the best way. to put it, but that actually is true, right? Without the bad guys, there's no reason for a budget. Right. And so to your point about some ransomware negotiators talking about this is how

the insurance amount is and everything like that, it really depends on the strategy, I would say, you know, I don't think that's exactly the best way to go about. You know, there's a lot of different TTPs, type of things, procedures of how to handle the extortion negotiation. I always like to describe extortion negotiation like a heads up poker, right? Yeah. But except, right, because there's only, you don't trust each other. Obviously, you don't have a long-term relationship here. Right. You're basically trying to screw each other over and get as much as you can on this deal.

Right. Right. And so both sides are playing this heads-up kind of game with each other. So depending on the strategy, maybe they do know that there's an insurance policy. So you can't fake the funk and say, no, no, no, no, they don't have any money. Then now you know there's an insurance policy. But then there's also the aspect that if you give in too quickly, then maybe they say, say, oh, thanks for the down payment, here's a finger.

Right. Right. You know what I mean? Yep. So there's a certain amount of like attrition that needs to happen inside of the negotiation that both sides feel psychologically that they got the best deal that they could have gotten at the time or at least reasonable, that they're ready to walk away at that point. And also not too long, right?

In this case, where the group, if they decide that this is taking too long, then they kill it. Yeah. And now it's a propaganda video and everything like that, right? Which happens to a lot of other side of victims. In fact, right after Evelyn got out, I think it was two Canadians got kidnapped and the Canadian government tried to go in and, you know, negotiate with a big ransom. It didn't work out and they were online, right? And so it's pretty real, right, if the negotiation fails, you know.

And also the aspect, too, is, you know, obviously I was able to work out channels to access, but it's not like there's a ready-made broker, right, that can interface and that the opposite of trust. So actually leaning in this humanitarian that comes forward, right, who's basically an Oposaf, kidnapping ransom broker, she actually does serve a good use, is that she's trusted, right? Evelyn later shared, she saw this lady just come in and out, free, you know. Everybody else was like, this is a secretive terrorist jungle camp, right? You can't just come in whatever you want. She just came in like she was part of the, you know, part of the team. But, you know, her being a broker, right, she wants her commission, right?

She wants her fee. and she wants that ransom to be as big as possible. Right. Now, look, I think if the Chang family were billionaires, yeah, no problem. Let's cut the check and get this done with, right? But this is not a group that has that, but because of the affiliation,

thinking that this was tied to the president of Taiwan, who presumably is an extremely wealthy person, he's not, okay? Then they can pay a lot of money, right? So I've learned in my life, as I've shared, you know, I've rubbed elbows with here and there with people with real money. And one of the things that I've always noticed about people with real money, they never talk about it. They always hide it. There's nothing to be gained with people knowing that you have a lot of money. It just means they're going to come and try to get your money,

right? But what's even more dangerous than that is when people think you have money and you don't actually have money. Right. Right? Yeah. That's actually the worst situation. So that's the situation this was, right? And my dating life. Yeah. So yeah. So yeah, so anyway, so one So these kind of things started getting removed, and I'm going to cut through the story. We're able to knock the price down at $300,000, okay, which is still a lot of money, right? We're able to, and I can't share where the money ended up coming from, but, you know, we're able to get that through. And the plan was for the scout rangers to go in, meet at this e-mom's house. And actually, any first group guys who have been to Philippines will remember that there's this trusted e-mom who's still there.

This guy just lives forever, okay? and this is house out in the Nunn, okay? And it's like the safe space that everybody recognizes as like the Switzerland of Holo, okay? And I didn't actually, wasn't really interfacing with that much when I was in SF on this, but this is where the exchange is supposed to go down the same freaking Emolm's house.

And so the Scout Rangers take Nick, the Nika operative that I mentioned that they redacted the name even though I made up a name. So why don't I just make a big name now so we don't have to keep referring to him it. We call Mark. So Nick and Mark are the main guys who are supposed to do the exchange and they bring three

Scout Ranger snipers as well and the snipers are supposed to provide Overwatch and the idea is to do the exchange and then smoke the opposite I can get the money and the oh and they wanted some electronics as well right various radio stuff a computer or whatever blah blah right so I just assume that they're using that shit to I don't know make IEDEs I don't know it's some of operational equipment And so they go to the imam's house and two Abu Sayf guys show up.

One guy actually I discovered later through my own U.S. embassy and old SF contacts. It's actually a well-known guy named Abu Kaiser. And they've been trying to find this guy forever. He's like a 15-year-old kid, man. And they show up with grenades, right? And like, no guns, but just grenades. And they're like, cool, we're going to do the exchange. And everything goes down.

We're just going to blow ourselves up. Right. And so at that point, they said, change your plans. We're not bringing Evelyn to the imam's house. Okay. One of you need to come with us back into the camp. Uh-oh. Fuck. Yeah. And by the way, I skipped through the story with it. They already have orders to stand down. So there's no QRF. They stood down all assets. Okay. Nobody's supporting. The Philippine government did not want to support the exchange. I'm not going to make accusations now as to why I think that is. Okay. But they straight up got told to stand down. And the Scout Rangers and Nika guys, to the man, we're like, no, we're going to go in. And I just met them. You know what I mean?

Like, they were, they're the fucking men. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You ever come across, I think, a major Rippie in the Scout Rangers? No. He'd be probably a colonel by now. I never worked with the Scout Rangers when I was in XF, actually. So I only met them through this, right? And, you know, and they just as we're talking about that,

they carry that same hardcore street-to-core of the Ranger Regiment. Right? They're so proud of being arranged. Yeah. The Scout Ranger Creed is word for word, the American Ranger Creek, right? Recognize and I volunteer's Ranger, blah, all that, right? And it just shows the deep ties between the U.S. military and the Philippine military. So even like, like, look, my era, okay, of SF guys down there was pretty jaded about the whole experience.

So we all felt like it was just kind of just like bullshit, you know, like tour and everything. But my experience now, because I, talking to, you know, Nick, right, like Manuel Jutcher, you know, all these guys and everything, I can really see how interoperable the U.S. military is now with the Philippine military military. I've been told that Philippine Marine Corps ball is like identical to an American. I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure. I mean, everything. Like the Philippine Military Academy, I had a chance to visit because during my time at Black Panda, it's just like West Point.

The uniform was exactly the same. The hazing that I saw in the mess hall was probably from the 1950s. Okay, they didn't get rid of all that. Like, they were bracing. Like, Westporners are listening. Well, no, like, we didn't do that even my era where there was still hazing. but the debate where they like have to show some of wrinkles in their chin. It's a weird shit for the 1800s.

They were still doing that, you know, at the Philippine Military Academy. So the aspect of the interoperability of the Philippine and U.S. military is at a level now that is very critical, very strategically important when you look at how close the Philippines is to Taiwan, right? And the coming, I believe, you know, more likely than not, right? Conflict with China, you know, Japan and Philippines sandwich Taiwan from the north and to the south. And these are really important allies, you know,

and in the region around the major hotspot and conflict point, right? So I think that that was really interesting for me to observe as well during this time period of and learning about, you know, all that innerability. So, you know, the snipers had M24 sniper rivals, right? The same ones that I saw when I was a student at U.S. Army sniper school, right? which by the way as an aside like that's why this book is called the second shot right by the way I didn't graduate from sniper school I failed the I failed the stock exams I'm super ashamed but I passed everything else and but I was indelibly influenced by my experience at that school

right and one of the things that I remember one of the instructors talking about was that the hallmark of a good sniper team is not if you get if you get the kill on the first shot to get the target on the first shot the whole one shot one kill thing but actually actually how fast the team can get the second shot on target. Yeah. And I really like that as a metaphor about how to approach life and deal with challenges, right, about, don't worry about if you get it on the first shot, right? Keep calm, reload that second round, adjust the windage and elevation and get the second shot on,

or the third shot or the fourth shot, et cetera. And I feel like it's a good metaphor for just like how my life was in terms of the serendipity of failing and getting back up and failing. So that's why it's called that as I talk about sniper rifles. and the scout rangers at the imam's house. So Nick and Mark debate, you know, over the morning, right? Like, just get themselves, do we go in? Who gets the short straw?

Yeah, who gets the short straw to go in, right? And, you know, I didn't tell this in the book, but they talk about how, like, they were sitting there looking at these birds fly by. Like, you know, it's just like this point of moment of like, is this where I die, right? I'm just like, I'm just the idiot, you know, Nika operative, you know, or a scout ranger that just walk straight. to Abbasiof camp got tricked and they just decapitate me.

Right. You know, and so, and by the way, Mark has a story that he was essentially like, kind of like a Jack Ryan story where he was an analyst. He was a desk guy. And the Nika head, who was also one of the heroes of story, Aldre Lemoso, a very close friend of mine now, he was the commander of Nika for all of Mindanao. So he's the commander of this whole thing, okay? And he just tells Mark, you're going.

And he's like, what? He's like a guy that does the analysis, everything like that. He just becomes an operative on this, you know, in this mission. And he just steps up and does it, right? He's the man as well. So anyway, so at the imam's house, Nick decides, okay, I'm going to go in, right? I'm going to be the one to go in.

So Mark ends up staying back at the imam's house, okay, with the two Abbasaf guys, Abukhizer, and we're like literally playing catch with each other with the grenades and acting like idiots. And, um, and waits there, essentially. to be held as insurance, right, as Nick goes forward. When Nick goes into the jungle down to Mindbong, which interestingly, my first team, ODA121,

was stationed there when I was down to Polo and I visited him there. So this is all tied back to the actual experience, right, in SF. And so Nick goes forward into Mindbun, where basically this all went down. And then Mark stays back at the house and I think eight, no, maybe six more. Abbasaf guys, I forgot it's a book.

Six more guys come and ring the house. Now the snipers are basically having, when we're watching this point. But he's just held hostage, essentially by the Abbasaf for the next six hours. How far was that he had to go? Was that by car by foot? He had to go by car.

So he drives with an Abongo truck, right? He's got his own driver. I think he said it was like an hour drive or something like that. Because it's more, not the whole load is big, but the roads are shit. Right, right. And so it just takes a long time. It's very, you know, bumpy.

So Aldred, was hanging out at Third Marine Brigade Headquarters and actually had leveraged his Philippine Military Academy classmate who was the brigade commander. Because remember, this is a battle space. So when Aldred comes in with this team, he tricked actually the Third Brigade Marine Commander that he was coming in to inspect an eco-like warehouse for inventory.

And then when he shows up, he's like, actually, we're about to do this off. You need to stand all units down while we go do this. and that colonel is actually kind of pissed, right? Sure. He's entering his battle space, but he's like, okay, for you because you're my classmate, right? And that's actually something I do want to bring up as well is that the Philippines has a very strong sense of filial piety, right, from Confucianism, right? It's an Asian country. Now, another thing that one of my closest investors and friends in Philippines told me, though, was you need to think of the Philippines as a Latin-rooted country.

Right. Right, right? Because it's the Spanish, where there for hundreds of years, it's Catholic, you know, etc. And that helps explain a little bit more about the Philippines, thinking about it more like a Latin American country, but with a ton of Asian influence as well. But the thing is, is about them, is that they have a really strong sense of filial piety, meaning I listen to my elders. Stronger, to be honest, in my observation, than even in Chinese-based societies like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan. In the Philippines, if your older brother tells you what to, like, that you need to do this, they're always like, well, he's my older brother. and I just do it. And so that's why these people are doing this.

Jill Felter was the older brother to Dennis Echlorin, and Jill Felter asked Dennis to help him. I will do it, right? You're my older brother. Someone once told me that, you know, Americans, you guys need analyst notebook to show the connections between people, right, and how they're connected to one another.

But you're saying, we, you know, the Filipinos, he's like, we do that genetically. Genetically. I mean, even like the fraternities at Philippines, which are notorious for the hazing and beating, like, hardcore, you know, They're like I've seen old men in the Philippines just be like that's my older fraternity bro. Whatever he asked me to do, I will do it. You know what I mean?

It's just like rider die. Yeah, it's rider die. Yeah. There's rider die. They have such a strong sense of that hierarchy and that relationship, right? And so anyway, that's all it's all connected. So Nick doing all this stuff is because Dennis asked him to. That's it.

That's it. Right? Like it's not really me. You know what I mean? Like sure, maybe, you know, I gave a pitch here and there, you know, to help influence things. But really at the end of the day, it was this, it was. It was this trusted relationship, you know, the history that they had. So Nick goes into, to do the exchange, and two people come out that apparently at that time that the Filipinos themselves had never seen the faces of.

Right. So actually this aspect is you can realize now this operation that the Philippines, the Abu Saev don't realize who's on the other side. Right. Right. And they expose themselves. Right. So these are guys that are actually on our HPT. list, right, when we were operating, you know, against them in SF and everything, one guy whose name was, he was like kind of the day-to-day boss, okay, and his name was Sahada Latip. So he shows his face, right, and Nick sees him, and he's like, holy shit, that's Sahada Latip, right? And so he gets the facial ID and realizes at him. Then the main negotiator, his name

was Idaeng Susikhan. Okay, and again, first group guys, especially on the Intel side, will know these names, right? They've never got them. He shows his face, and there's 18 Abbasaf guys. And Nick is just like, fuck, this is it right here. I'm taking down Bidong-Susagan before I go, right? And he's got his like 19-11 cult. He's telling me the story, right? Obviously, I was not there, right?

So I'm just relaying what he shared with me. And they go back and grab Evelyn, and it's actually a reasonably eventless exchange at this point, right? And they exchange, you get the cash, get the electronics, and get back in a truck, and they speed away. Okay, and Aldrid had come in as well. to try to make sure that he had some kind of common linkage back and not leaving Nick out there on his own. They make it back into Third Marine Brigade.

And at this point now, the tracker device that we had engaged with an Australian intelligence operative is in electronics. So just keep that of mind. So I continue telling the story. And we get into Third Marine Brigade, and the colonel there immediately calls the press to claim they had rescued Eblen Chang. So there's a lot of like online content we see this stuff. And at this point though, as you can kind of tell, like, I'm not really sure if I can trust the Philippine government and we've been operating after effectively

they had told us to stand down on all this type of stuff, right? So I'm like kind of wondering like, what's the situation with me being here, right? It's a foreign civilian with no authorization to be here, right? Running around all this type of stuff. I don't really want to hang around and find out, right? I just want to get out of here with Evelyn, right? And, you know, we don't need to go through, like I don't want to go. Like, I don't want to go through any type of process with the Philippine government.

So Dennis is actually the one who, or no, no, I think it was maybe Aldred. Sorry, they figured it out. It was like, look, the plan is tomorrow morning we're going to take the evergreen helicopter. You know what I'm talking about? You're down there? There's like this evergreen helicopter that all shuttles people from Zambawanga to hold, although it's still there, okay? We're going to take this evergreen helicopter to Zambuanga.

And when we get there, like, everybody's going to be waiting. The police, the police, the media, da, da, blah, stuff. But then at night, what they did is, we snuck out the back gate and bribed the guard and got into a civilian ferry and rode it all night, right? Just puttering along from Holo back to Zamwanga, where I met them with Dennis at that port, right? And they basically took her to the airport,

and then whist her way to Manila, and then bam, like the Taiwanese diplomats were there and got her out, right? As soon as we were out, the scout rangers zeroed in on that technical device and hit the camp, like in a company-sized rolling assault. right like straight up

that's amazing straight up 105 is how it serves rolling with the 60 millimeter mortars right all that shit the traditional stuff right and actually those artillery pieces they used are still the ones on Budatu Hill

these archaic antiques okay that were used in the operation I was in yeah they actually used those still I think it was two or three of those guns and because they usually would the Abbasat are really good

at ex-filling and moving, right, because they know the jungle like the back of their hands, right? And the complaint all the time was that they would see blood trails, right? They would hit them, but then there was never a body because they'd rip off the banana leaves and take the bodies with them, or supposedly.

But this time, because the tracker device is falling, they just hit them over and over and ensuing months and claim that this was one of the most successful operations ever against Abbasat. So fully the results will be declassified, supposedly, in 2032. They gave me everything

They knew for the story this time. They wanted this story to come out at this point. They actually are such great guys. They actually wanted this story to come out and highlight the difficulties and the corruption on going into Philippines. They wanted to call this out actually. That was their motive for this.

For me, I wanted to give them face. You know what I mean? Like that aspect of, you know, as I just shared, you know, and telling their story, especially because I've, you know, in small circles, taken, like, been the face of this, you know?

Right. And for various reasons that we had agreed, agreed upon before because they had countermanded very senior orders. They wanted Did they get in trouble for that? They did not actually. See the thing is is that when things are successful everyone's just kind of like Right the person who countermanded probably got

an award. He's like yeah I thought of that. I mean there's probably some American officers that got an award for your involvement Oh gosh that'd be hilarious So do you I'm going to ask you You can either speculate or not Or whatever but I'm curious

if the stand-down if the pressure on the Philippine government was with Abu Sayy for a cute like with that or was it with the Chinese not wanting the Taiwanese had to have a victory or like if it's just like we don't we don't want the problems sorry like the why was there

why was there a stand-down because you said that there was some pressure on the Philippines or that the Philippine government wasn't let's for now for speculation sake could just say maybe they thought it was too risky. Okay. I think that, you know, you could infer a lot more insidious reasons as to why they didn't want that to go down because they knew that it was going down for only $300,000.

Okay. And, you know, all that, right. So, I'll leave it back. So the, but look, you know, the money, we never recovered, right? The electronics, we knew, and that was recovered, okay? So that wasn't used for whatever, you know, reasons I had made. up in my head, you know, about what they're going to do with it. The money was gone, as you might have, you know, but now, you know, as I wrote, I just think

about it as the price that we paid for their heads, right? Yeah. Right. And because without that exchange, you know, then it would have went down like that. So, you know, when the actual, the opposite side pulled off of the eam's house as well, the scout sniper has actually begged Nick to take the shot, right, and to take those guys out, you know. and he declined, right?

Like, very strategic when you think about it. I think he never admitted this, but I do think he realized, like, actually, now let's get them because we've got everyone out safely. Yeah. Right. We don't need to show our hand too early. Right. Right.

Let's talk a little bit about the fame of Gene U after this, and, you know, there's K-pop girls all over you, bottles of champagne. It must have been crazy, right? Yeah, no. So as I was saying at the beginning of the conversation, like, there was 15 minutes of band fame in Taiwan. So it would be tee pop. Yeah, tee pop.

Yeah, T pop. But again, it was like, look, people that watch the news in Taiwan are, like, taxi drivers and, like, old ladies. So, like, yes, people would stop me on the street and take photos with me, and that was kind of fun, you know, but it lasted very briefly and people move on with their lives and their problems, right?

So very, very short. But as I like to describe now, is I actually believe that this story is the story of the founding of Black Panda, right? Because, you know, at that point, because of this minor notoriety, a lot of powerful people were very interested to know me, right, or just to meet me. Now, meeting me was more just like, oh, wow, you're such an interesting person because of the

story. Now, what are you going to do with that once the doors open? Right. How do you leverage it? How do you leverage it, right? Like, the doors open, right? You're going to kick it open and do something with it. So after the first couple of meetings with really powerful people, I was like, what am I doing? I'm just like coming around taking photos with people and then moving off. Right. And it's actually Matt, again, Matt Pecco, who kind of brought it all into focus, was like, yo, let's start a company of Black Panda. Here's a million U.S. dollars to start. You want to do it?

I was like, yes. You know what I mean? Like he literally invested a million on day one. Yeah. That's how much trust came around from this sort of thing that you knew that I had the marketing push. Right. Like a generate business.

Now, did you know what that business was yet? No. And so at that time, it was like, hey, let's, we're special forces guys. let's just bring some really cool special forces guys together and it would be awesome right right you know now that being said let's get a team house and get paid for it pretty much you know but uh they're a tongue-in-cheek i mean we we did have a big uh copper gold mine client to start there was revenue coming in you know things started going sideways very quickly after that in terms of how business goes but fast forward um fast forward three four years right and then 2018 uh resorts

world Manila, was hit by a gunman and burned down half the casino and 37 people. I remember that. I remember that? Okay. So we got hired by Resort's World as the crisis consultants to respond to that, right? So we came in and started immediately helping them, you know, through the crisis and repairing their security. A few days after that, they started getting hit by cyber attack from all the world, right? Stealing money out of the chaos.

And so they asked, they're like, hey, you know, you guys are trusted guys, can you help with this? with this and quickly realized that there was a big gap in Asia for a specific type of cybersecurity service emergency response right digital forensics instant response and ended up putting together Palantir Palantier guys and old army guys a few contacts and we made more money on the cyber that we did on the physical side now where were you at that point in your understanding of cyber and the cyber environment oh man like just touching upon it from a business standpoint yeah i'm not a technical cyber guy yeah and i actually talk about this a lot in a very open about my position as the founder is that, you know, I'm more of a, if I could self-describe,

but more of a broad macro security strategist, right? You're still playing the role of the facilitator. Yeah. You got it. At the end of day, like I, sometimes when I meet people, strangers, like, say, at a bar or something like that, and they're like, what do you do? And I don't care to share too much more. I just say, I'm in sales.

Yeah. Right? Like, as a founder and entrepreneur, you have to sell, obviously your customers, right, to take a chance on you when you're a no brand, no nothing, not anything. Right. You're going to sell your partners to take a chance to put their name and reputation with you. You need to sell investors, right, to take a chance on you and give them their blood money. Right.

And trust that you're going to, they give you a nickel, you're going to give them back a dime. And then you have to sell your staff to take a chance on a, again, small company they've ever heard of, etc. Man, I've got to sell myself to get out of bed just to do this every morning. You know, it's just nonstop sales. I joke about about that. But that's what really, I think, being an entrepreneur is about. And I do think that SF helped me with that. a lot, you know, especially as in the team leader position, right, because you're the one who's

interfacing with the G chief all the time. Right. And what are you doing? You're selling them constantly, right? Like, hey, let's do this mission. Why don't we do this training, right? Hey, Kurds, why don't we stand up a strike force and go and like whack some dudes down south, right?

And get in the fight, right? And, you know, you're pitching constantly and selling, right? Winning friends and influencing people. Right. Right? And again, that comes back to what we're talking about before, about you're the weapon, right? And it doesn't matter whether you're the guy who's kicking doors in and pulling the trigger, et cetera, like what is your ability to affect orders of magnitude across the

battlefield, but then also the business environment, right? And so that's how I do think that a lot of what I learned in SF, and I do think that SF made me a lot into who I am today, of course, is indelible part of our backgrounds. But definitely quite directly from this aspect of how I even approach the business in a black panda being in Asia, right? We're offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Manila, opening in San Francisco, entering Australia early next year. Everything about how we approach security is by with and through.

Localize, localized, localized. Security is emotional, right? Security is selling trust. And the people that you trust the most are the people who are like you. They don't want to see me coming in and telling them, right? How much did the Afghans and the Iraqis like it when Americans come in and be like, do security like this? Right, right? People want to keep it in a family, right? I'm cool with that. I just want to, well, sell you my products and services, right?

I don't need to be the guy, right? So to do it in that way, to localize and put it in their language, to put it in the terms that they need. This is actually, I think, the most secret sauce inside of Black Bennett. How did you, when you kind of transition, in that cybersecurity though like it's not it's not the same as going into say pharmaceutical sales because

here's here's a new warfare environment but you speak the same language you understand the concepts it might be a different landscape but all the principles that you learned in SF apply you might not be the sniper

but you understand the planning that needs to go into all strategy so like how did that play into it as you're learning more and more about the cyberspace. So one thing I will caveat, though, is that I am reasonably technical. Okay. Because I was a computer science undergrad. Okay.

My parents are hardcore engineers. You know, I grew up in Silicon Valley, right? You know, am I ripping out 10x, you know, code right now? No, okay. But I'm not completely devoid of technical capabilities, right? And so, but to your point, that's what I came to realize and is the underlying philosophy of the whole business model of Black Panda is that cybersecurity is not.

is not an IT problem. It's a security problem. Right. It's not a computer after script that's hacking you. It's a human being, right? And a human being has friends, organization, different desired end states,

does course of action, and all the things apply again. Okoka, right? Yeah. warfare remain the same, right? And once I started understanding that, that's where I started coming up with a fairly unique and innovative business model and applying that aspect. Everything in the physical security world has been figured out by our ancestors, and they

were not dumb, okay, right? Just because it was low technical skill compared to how where tech is now doesn't mean they were less intelligent about the way the models worked, and that needs to be replicated in the digital world. That's what I'm doing at Black Panda. Right. I don't want to go too much. No, it's amazing. It's very fascinating for me, though. In terms of looking at as, even if you're dealing with a client, you know, a mom and pop business who, you know, run a bakery,

how do you look at it in terms of cyber war? Like, I feel like a lot of what our government or other governments do is treated as though we're building base defenses. But that's how we think. we're going to win this war is with base defense. Right, right. So I think like one thing too is, again, just in a very simple way of thinking about what is the analogy in parallelism in the physical world. And I always love explaining cybersecurity and physical knowledge is easier, even for technical

people, it's just easier to understand or talking to each other. So one is that in the news, the headlining things about cybersecurity will always be attention-grabbing when it's like, oh, the Chinese did this or the Russians did this, et cetera. But just like in the physical world, if the Russian military, has decided to attack your company, there's not much you're going to be able to do. That needs to be government-on-government action. Right.

You're not going to out-spend or out-budget a government, even a small, like, you know... North Koreans hack and Sony. Yeah, yeah. Like, even a small, impoverished country, like North Korea, has more money to spend than Sony does on this. Right.

You're not going to out-budget a government, right? And so that principle right there is important because as a private company, I'm not here to protect you against the militaries or nation-state level of attack. I don't have the resource to do so. In fact, I probably just can get out of the way, just like in a physical situation, if the spets-nots are coming to storm your company personally, I'm not going to go out there with my private security guards.

Don't fight them, right? Right, right. So that's one, right? It's like where I live inside of the cybersecurity world is I'm like an ADT. You know what I mean? I'm handling like your home security against burglars, hobos, like in San Francisco, where my family is at, just wandering into seven-level.

I'm trying to protect you from that guy. Right. That's my level, right? And I'm trying to do it as many folk as possible to build a large business, big business, you know, for return of my shoulders, right? So that's one aspect from a physical analogy aspect is that I'm dealing with civilian level, right,

like municipal, local level sort of stuff, right? We have handled really large clients and victims in the past, you know, like really large headlining hotel chains, banks, et cetera. But really our bread and butter of the insurance-backed and driven model that we have is for the mass market. Do we have questions for Gene? And, Gene, I mean, you've been talking about Black Panda. Let people know, like, if they want to acquire your services, where can they find you? Where can they find the company?

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, you know, we're in America right now, right? So we're an Asia-based group, right? So, look, I'm not, it wasn't that I purposely wanted to start a company, not in the U.S. It's just the first guy that invested me and trusted me. We were in Asia, right? And actually, I do think that, you know, we might have some legs to make a back if the stars really align. If people want to find it, as we're in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Manila. Our products, and are distributed in every country in Asia except Korea. I don't have anything against Koreans. I love Korea, actually. It took us so long to translate our tech product into Japanese. Korea is kind of a similar market of Japan. We're getting that fully up and going first before we spend the resources in Korea. But we will go to Korea eventually.

That's awesome. So first off, Tony, Harold, thank you very much for joining the, becoming a Tier 1 operator. against your one operator. Sully, thank you very much. How smashed do you guys get on the podcast? Have there been times when you've gone too far? Does D have to do security checks? Short answer is yes. Yeah. Yes. We have gotten two smashed on the call. Watch some of the ones with Andy Milburn. Yeah, way back in the day. We try not to do that, though. We, I mean, we have a, we've been in the New York Times for that. Sully, thank you very much. How much harder is training

unit life for officers in the Green Beret? compared to enlisted, and what would you change about special forces training? Oh, well, okay. Two big questions there. So the first one I always like to say is, especially now being so many years out, right? Actually, the happiest time I realized that when I was in the Army was actually during training because I didn't actually have to be fully an officer, right? And I got to be a little bit just like everybody else, right, in that aspect, right?

and I think, I like to think, that the guys that, when I went to Ranger's school with at the Q course, I think we, like, we got along very, very well during the time period. So that's actually why I view the training. Of course, there's a little bit, everybody kind of knows you're an officer, right?

But just think back when you're going through those schools, but you're kind of equal. Yeah, because you're not in a leadership position for them. You're both suffering through the same shit. You don't have the pressure or, you know, overseas, God forbid you lose someone. Did you feel at all, isolated or like when you're on a team or leading a team

like you're not you can be one of the guys but you're not one of the guys no you're totally isolated right and actually that's the aspect of when I look back it's like you kind of have to like play this character to be the officer yeah I mean and it's in a lot of ways it was actually contrary to my personality although I think the guys are on my team would be like what so full shit but but definitely there was a lot of times that I would have had a lot more fun just being one of the team guys

Yeah. It's a pain in the ass to be the officer. You get yelled at a lot, by the way, that you don't see. Yeah. I was watching somebody else's podcast was kind of getting ready for this. And I was an S-F guide who was talking about how, like, oh, the team leaders, they actually don't do anything.

The officers don't actually do anything. They're like, they're just tourists, blah, blah, yeah, you've heard all that. The thing is is that on the team, the stuff the officer is doing is outside of the team room. Right. You're taking the ass chewings that they don't. Sure, but you're out there fighting for resources

versus the missions, right? You're negotiating, like, you're working with the other teams, you're working with the major, you know, blah, or the colonel, you know, all this type of stuff. You're up and out, right? You're the CEO of the team. Right. And the team sergeant, who's the heart and soul, of course,

and the real leader of the team, particularly day-to-day operations, he's running down in it. Right. And so most of the team just sees that, right? But, you know, I think most, I did notice this because in my time in a team, I think at one time, I got to recount, but I think I actually have like five or six team sergeants in my time, right? Because I was on a team a long time.

I had two teams as well. It was like a little over close to three and a half years, right? So I saw a lot of team sergeants come through, right? And I think one of the things I noticed was that the new team sergeants were always a bit shocked at, or a little bit surprised. We're like, oh, this is what the officers do, right? Like a little bit like that, you know? And so anyway, but back to the question about the training, I will say that, so, you know, um, Some of the happiest times that I had was during, you know, the hard training where I got to be basically one of the regular guys, one of the Joes. And I'm very proud, actually, that I appeared very well during these schools. That's actually what saved me during the piece I think, too.

I forgot that's part of my story. They actually looked and were like, hey, actually you got appeared like number one or number two. You're not a piece of shit. Yeah. Maybe you can get up a second chance, right? So then during the two course, I also saw the podcast, like nobody knows what, officers do doing the alpha course and runoff. We're doing what our, we're learning what our job is, which is due to the strategy and the planning. Right. Right. The military decision making process

is extremely lengthy and detailed, and the Q courts and special forces teams go into isolation. I don't know if they still do this, but we used to go to isolation for, you know, three, I think it was 72 hours, right, where you eat, live, and plan together. Well, the officer is running a lot of that process, right? The details of laying out all the facts and assumptions, making sure the assumptions are valid and necessary, laying out the terrain and, you know, all this stuff, by the way, I've applied in business. Yeah. Right.

I created my own version of the military decision-making process when I do strategy for our company, right, and walk through the process of the pros, you know, and all this type of stuff. So anyway, I just, I thought it'd be worthwhile because I think a lot of people don't realize what they are doing. Yeah. It's strategy and planning, just like what a CEO does in a company, right? I mean, it's interesting because you see a lot of, especially SEALs, but you see a lot of people come out of special operations and create whole businesses just around teaching MDMP to

silly companies. Right. Right. The magic leadership stuff and it's planning or telling worse for it. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. I know it's really lame and boring, right, when you're on the team, right? But you need a plan, right?

Like you don't run out there like cowboys or nothing and get shot up. Like you have to think, well, let's not talk about it right now. Yeah. But yeah. So, yes. But now, I have seen people come out of the Army and show up in the private sector and then just try to, like, do things exactly like MDMP, and it comes off very poorly, right? Because it's very rigid. You know, the average person in private sector doesn't know what you're talking about, right?

You just start laying at all this doctrine. And that's actually one of the powerful things about the institution of the, particularly, I can't say about the other branches, but for the Army, because all the NCOs go through all that formal training through VNOC and ANOC and the officers go through basic wars and the captain's corps. we're all learning the exact same language and terminology of how to do planning. When we say something like tasks and purpose, key tasks, et cetera, everybody immediately knows what you're talking about. We're going to disrupt the target or we're going to destroy the target or we're going to interdict, whatever. Everybody immediately understands what the mission is. In private sector, nobody knows what the hell anybody is talking about. We have to all start from fresh.

Nobody's going through the same type of training, right? Everybody's come back from their different universities or whatever, different backgrounds. and like I especially as a founder and having to establish that common operating language is really painful and to train and that's why it's so damaging to companies and people churn in and out because you have to start all over right people I imagine commander's intent is really important too because like in these units you trust the guys that once they have the left and right limit is the commander's intent that you trust that they'll be able to get that job done but maybe like in a in the civilian world you don't always know that yeah right exactly because again

you know, you constantly have to check and that's where there's, to be honest, in my experience in private sector, is a lot more micromanaging than it was in the Army, which is different, especially SF, which is really different from how your general civilian, you know, will think that the military was like. But it is because there's that aspect of micromanaging is because you don't know if you're on the same page. Right. You know what I mean? Like you communicate if it's like, did it was really received. Right. That that was, you know, these are the, these are the general guide rails of what we need to happen as an intent. Yeah. And so, yeah, Yeah, I would say that I actually do write out intent formats, almost like a con-op,

to my team, right, to various people when it's like, I've explained verbally. It doesn't look like they're, you know, I haven't explained clearly or it hasn't been taken in, then I'll write it out actually like that, and then give them a document and say, this is what I'm saying right now that I need, right? Yeah. That's awesome. Solly, thank you very much. Gene, if you were in charge of Seer and a trainee got caught for what you did, the pizza scandal.

but denied it, what would you do? So I catch somebody and then they lie to me? They lie to you. Oh, you're done. Yeah, for me, you know, maybe this is my thing as West Boehner with the Honor Code and everything like that, but no lying. In fact, actually, I really like this thing from the writer, Anne Rand,

one of the characters talks about lying, and it's like basically she says, and she writes, it's the weaker man who lies, right? Because his reality, he's not strong enough that his reality can be accepted by others. He has to change his reality, right, for others to accept. But the strong person will just say, hey, this is the situation, even if it's not perfect, but own it.

Yeah. So for me, you know, that aspect I actually am a little bit more straight down the line on. And that's why, you know, when I got caught from my pizza thing, right, anybody was there, that's your commander. As soon as they threw their receipt on the table, like, what the hell is this? I was like, this is what happened. I didn't hold any detail back. This is exactly what I did and what the problem was.

Or not problem, sorry, exactly what I did. And hey man, you know, you live with the consequences of your decision, right? And that's what I think I managed to do. Watch episode 113 right after you get down with this and you'll see what the pizza thing is. You know, it's interesting because one of the things I noticed, and not saying that all veterans and all service members are more honest because that's not true at all. But one of the things I feel like the military did for me was gave me the ability to say, okay, I fucked up.

Like, I fucked up and to accept that and then just say that, right? And just drive on from there. You know, instead of trying to cover up my mistakes or my misdeeds or whatever else. I mean, I definitely learned, like, because, I mean, I messed up all the time throughout my whole time in the military.

I can't have got, I mean, I just think about how much I've been screamed at. You know what I mean? Like, and just like, deserving. so for making, you know, not following instructions correctly or whatever, all that that type of stuff. I always learn that when you're screwing up, be as honest about it as possible, right? Like, when you, when we've seen like people go sideways where, you know, they've done

something. Yeah, the cover up. Yeah. It's hard, you know, also just that aspect. You better, like, one of the aspects of being a great liar, right, is you've got to have a really good memory for keeping all that cover stories together, right? Yeah. They teach you that in tradecraft, right?

It's like, when you come up with your cover story, keep it as close to reality as possible, don't screw up, like that storyline, right? And I always thought that because I actually don't have a very good memory, right? So, you know, and so I'm like, this is like too hard for me. So I better just, you know, tell you all the truth. Yeah. So I thank you very much. What proportion of US soft who are public are genuine about their records? How can people spot the liars so they don't support the wrong people. Oh, this is an interesting one. I mean, you know,

somehow it popped up my YouTube feed of the stolen baller stuff. I mean, that stuff is just ridiculous, right? Like, people not wearing the uniform correctly and walking around, it's like, what the, what are you thinking? Like, people are not actually right in the head, right? Right.

But then when you talk about somebody who's running around and actually wearing medals, right, or awards or things like that they didn't earn, but they're wearing it all correctly, I mean, how would you tell? Right. Right.

I mean, I mean, I think personally, you know, like, look, at the end of the day, one of the things I've definitely learned coming out in the private sector for so long right now, the general civilian doesn't care about all the details and differences between us. Right. Or even understand it. Or understand. The things that people lie about, people who are actually served, the things that, like, Nells, when he would wear that CIB instead of just a cab. Yeah. Like, no civilian cares about that. No, I don't care.

Like, it's such a weird hill to die on. It's just us that care. Yeah. Right. And so, for example, I used to get a little bit wrapped around the axle that nobody had ever heard of, you know, U.S. Army S.F, Kareem Berets. Right. And the time of the bomb in my mouth, it'd be like, oh, so you're an Army seal. And I'd be like, shoot me now.

And I used to really be like, oh, no, we're different, this and that, you know, make my little jabs, you know. But nowadays, they will get you like, oh, so you were a forest ranger? Yeah, yeah, that's what I did. No. So, I mean, what I realize is like the average person, it doesn't matter at all. You know, like, to be honest, the average person doesn't even know the difference between a captain and the sergeant. Right. We're definitely the same, like, in terms of just being military.

Right. The number of times that people have been like, Gene, you've got to meet this guy. He was a Norwegian Coast Guard, you know, like, whatever officer. Yeah. You've got to meet him. You guys are basically the same, right? In backgrounds, and I'm like, yeah, there's no reason for me to meet him. You know what I mean?

Like, you know what I mean? Like, so. Yeah. So that's what I've learned as well. details. I mean, you know, it's got to be egregious. It's got to be really egregious. Yeah. Nobody cares. Joe, thank you very much.

How would you compare, contrast, your time on so this was redacted, well, actually, how, from three, what, the,

from shooting, from a, from a close quarter battle, more focused team than from a regular ODA. I thought it was interesting the first time we chatted and all these people were so interested in like, oh, what's Charlie Company like? Look, I'm one of the first people to be like,

I actually think that I'm one of the most more objective views because you get a lot of Charlie Company haters in SF as well. And then you get these other people in Charlie Company who think they're actually better than everybody. Right. I'm in between, right? So one is that I enjoyed way more, like overall being on a regular ODA,

a Ruck ODA, right? Or a really hated term, vanilla. Yeah. You just have so much more freedom, right, as a Special Forces team, right, to do all sorts of different missions. It's so much more creative, so much more fun. Like, being a Charlie Company team leader,

I mean, I was a squad leader, right? You know what I mean? Like, we're door kickers. Like literally all we do is kick in doors. Now, like at the beginning, it was fun, right? Like, being going to Sephardic is unbelievable, right? To be honest, I never, even today, I don't understand people's obsession with all the infiltration schools, right? Like, it's cool, don't get me wrong.

I think Halo dive school, all that's really cool. You know what's really cool? It's people to shoot really well and run around and just whack everybody, right? And that's what Sephardic gets you, but it's just the, it's like just getting your driver's license, right? And once you get into Charlie Company, it goes to a whole different level, right? Because everybody's constantly training. It's like you go through airborne school Like do you really know are you really a good paratrooper?

Right You know you gotta be in an airborne unit and go through a lot of jumps and everything like that So that aspect I Disagree with the rest of SF and like oh what's the difference with Charlie Company? Like we go to Safawak and we learn out of shoot blah blah like no no there's levels to this game Right But then the other side is you know the aspect of You know Charlie company guys back in the day acting like they're cooler because you get a little bit of tier one money or whatever blah blah blah

I never bought it either. I actually really wish that all SF guys, rather than trying to put the money, especially in the time to go to Halo school or whatever, no, everybody should go to Sephardic, man. You know what I mean? It's more important to learn to shoot, move, and communicate. Right.

Getting to the target in different ways in special unique ways, interesting, okay? Like how many, but in the grand scheme of the entire history of SF, how many Halo and how many dive missions were there. But I guarantee you this, in our academic, Canada said, there was a lot of action on targeting.

Right. With shooting, moving, and communicating. So that, to me, is the most important skills. Why wouldn't we spend more money in that? Because Sephardic is a badass school. You know what I mean? And it's hard, right? A lot of people fail as well, and the standards are just extremely high.

I'm definitely the most proud of having graduated from that school. Especially, again, as usual, my stories, I sucked at the pistol at the beginning, and blah, blah. My first team, I remember when I got announced that I was moving over to Charlie Company, they all, like, literally openly laughed because they're like, you're the worst. Right. Right, right. at us work and everything like. You're literally the worst.

And anyway, so my own stories of how I figured it out. Your friend, Mikey, thank you very much. Pizza party, anyone, yes. Andrew Dunbar, thank you very much. Pizza story. We need the pizza party. Episode 113, pizza party.

Gene Callie, thank you very much. I guess if I could add something about the pizza thing? Sure. Obviously, I've told the story on the podcast, before but one thing just tying back to the whole book right as we're talking about a bit earlier right if the pizza thing didn't happen this whole thing wouldn't have happened right because when I was initially I was even informed that I was going to go to charley company first right so I was like most

captains going to go straight to a team but because of the pizza thing I was on like in purgatory probation so I was told by the unit that I was going indefinitely to go serve as a staff officer down in the Philippines. Like, maybe for my whole time I grew. I, like, didn't know what was going to happen. And it was actually a known thing that if you screwed up, you got sent down there. There was another officer who got a DUI in Okinawa

and he'd been down there for like a year. I was like, I got a sign to go, like, be his buddy. You know, so it's like us fuckups. Right? Right. And that was where Operation Ultimatum started off. And that's, you know, where I got all the context and everything on Abbasai-F and da-da-da. of the timing of everything, right?

And set in a motion, everything. It's just, again, interesting and talk about connecting the dots. So I just wanted to add that bit, that the mechanics of the pizza story, I mean, you know, everything. Yeah, you know, well, everything. I mean, like, everything from all the things

that went negatively along the way or that didn't work out, it all worked out in the end and needed to happen in order to be, not only for Evelyn to save her life, right, live but also where I'm at today with Black Panda and everything like that right so there's nothing in my background that honestly that I would change because my life is awesome right right it is you know

I literally am so lucky you know what I mean I'm like where where I've gotten to and so um I'm not so so flipping to be like oh I have no regrets okay I don't I hate it when people say that come on sure no regrets like um but uh but I but I but I can't change I wouldn't change anything technically because because of where I'm sitting now. But of course, life is a sign curve, right? Check and down, up and down, yeah. You know, appreciate the times that you're up. I love this thing from jujitsu, right?

It's like when you're smashing others, remember to be kind. And where you're getting smashed, remember to breathe. Yeah. Right? So, you know, just be kind when you're on top, and then remember when you're on the bottom, just breathe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You just made it reminded me of the whole stoic, you know, that nothing is good or bad except for, you know, how you respond, yeah, how you perceive it, how you respond. Andrew Dunbar, thank you very much. What does a K&R policy run on average? You're quoting insurance policies. You know, I think that, look, this typical insurance underwriter response, it depends, you know, on all sorts of different parameters

and where you're going and everything like that. I would say that Yeah, I mean it's gonna be like 10, 20,000 dollars for a few million dollars to cover or something like that Yeah Right, yeah something around that whole size Please don't hold me to that, right? We used to be brokers as well for the insurance policies, but mostly the money that we made was being the crisis consultants on the policy And getting paid that big insurance money when something happened, right?

So to be honest like because I'm not a license insurance professional as well. I didn't work a lot on the broken side of our business, even though I was the owner of it. Genecaulay, thank you very much. To what extent is the increase in assassinations in Mendano driven by the change in power from arm to barm? Oh, gosh.

I don't think much has changed there in the last few hundred years, right? It's several hundred years. they used to be called the morose okay and now they're called whatever just the people of Mindenau the name nothing's changed but the names and the same we built the 1911 pistol for them didn't we

that's right that's right because yeah because they would come with the bolos and they were like wild men right and continuing fighting and they're fierce they're ferocious they're warriors right they're warriors you know so the aspect of the politics changing I don't think has that much of influence

at the end of they they want their own space, they want to be autonomous, you know. I mean, the Philippines was created again at that time out of colonialism. The British took Malaysia, the Spanish took the Philippines, and the Dutch took Indonesia, of all those islands down there. So it's a little bit arbitrary from that aspect, the same problems we saw in Iraq, you know, et cetera, with colonialism just splitting up this little bit willy-nilly according to what the European powers wanted, right?

So, but you know, one thing that I would comment just thought about with this question, right, is that I do think about that a lot of the level. lot in terms of, you know, the three of us here are warriors, right? I mean, just stated it. Like, we don't say that all the time, like, stay in the mirror, but yeah, you know, warrior, but let's call it that, right, like in terms of our place in the world. We didn't have a choice what team we were born on. Right. Right. Right. Right. The Abbasiaf, those guys are warriors. They were born on the other team. Right. We're going to fight. Right. That's it. Because just warriors fight, right? Fighters fight. And I think about that a lot in terms of when that question,

right, of like, oh, how many politics change, at least for the fighters, doesn't matter. Right. It's just what team you're born on. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I'm trying to remember his name, you know, my memory. The SAS guy, or SBS, that we had on, who I believe his father was Pakistani, right? And his dad tried to kidnap him.

It was... Oh, he was an SBS guy. SBS. Oh, my gosh. What was it? Pasha. Yeah, and it was Pakistani, right? South Asian.

South Asian. Okay. But his dad tried to kidnap him from England. And he said almost exactly that same thing. Oh, yeah. You know, I'm a fighter. Like, if my dad would have successfully got me there, who knows... I would have been on the other side.

Who knows whose side I would have been on. Yeah, right? I mean, because, you know, everybody's a hero, you know, on the team that they play. Sure. Right. Like, sure. You know what I mean? Like, I'm sure somebody on Osama bin Laden's inner circle loved him, right?

I thought he was a great guy, right? So it just depends, again, on what team you're playing, and which vantage point from that perspective, right? so yeah that's very interesting um let's see here um Andrew thank you very much this guy inhales air and exhales good stories and excellence piss is excellence yeah a lot of piss and excellence yeah a lot of piss thank you it's very nice um deed did we uh yeah i got a one question me uh that attack squirrel just uh with the emode or the GIF, whatever, sicker, Bravo.

We've got to call that out. We have a question. Yeah. From M. Corbyn, thanks, M. How might offensive generative AI influence the importance of in-person, immediate incident response and an on-side triage?

No pressure, bro. Wow. That's a very, okay, this person understands cybersecurity. Yeah, I mean, look, generally AI is about to have a huge impact in cybersecurity. I think most people all agree that we're still waiting for the true impact

of what AI is about to bring, right? It's like all the AI startups and all the money flowing into it right now. We still haven't seen that like inflection point, right? But we all can feel it's about to come, right? So the way I look at generative AI is a concept that I remember learning at West Point called Revolution in Military Affairs, RMAs.

So a really obvious one is the Manhattan Project, the invention of the atomic bomb, right? Like warfare change forever, right? It's a revolution in military affairs strategy. Another one that I really like that I'll make the comparative analysis to, or comparative analogy, to generative AI is the invention of the Gatling gun, right, and in the American Civil War, right? Before that, it was just single shots, right, et cetera, but now you bring an automatic machine gun onto the battlefield and casualties were seen like none before, right? It was just shocking

to the whole world on casualties in the U.S. Civil War. So I think that generative AI is the equivalent of automatic machine guns on the battlefield. Both offense and defense are going to be able to use this. But what I've seen, at least in my brief study of warfare, right, is usually the offense uses the technology first, right? It figures out how to apply, and then the defense has to adjust. So asking about triage and et cetera, et cetera, well, first, there's the aspect of all the change of cybersecurity attacks that are going to be used by generative AI. The generative AI, by the way, is all. already being used and shown from attackers to bypass existing systems on the fly, right?

And figuring out how to get past some of the more advanced versions of antivirus, which you call endpoint detection response platforms, like CrowdStrike famously from the outage, etc. And so from that aspect, I believe that we need to see how the attacks are going to be coming in from that aspect and then generative AI can be used either in the triage process, maybe helping faster the triage process, like figuring out through the attacks, the scoping call with the victim of exactly what happens. So you know what to do from an instant response standpoint. It's like somebody calls you and says, hey, I've been robbed.

Okay, I needed a few more details before I can respond and come into action. And so generally AI also, I think, will be able to use in an automated fashion through LMs and chatbots basically to be able to handle all the basic stuff at the beginning. It'll be a lot faster in a case workflow for the responders, right, to pick up and then move fast from case to case. Yeah. Okay. So that was a very technical question.

Yeah. With how many readers or listeners care. I was looking, I don't know, maybe it was eight months or a year ago. I was written one of the more recent, uh, 2600s where they covered the, uh, the DARPA competition where the machines, these machines, uh, with AI both attacked and defended. It was like a challenge, a competition. Right. That they ran out, I guess in Vegas.

I can't remember now. But it's, it's interesting now, like these attacks are, they're just kind of going against each other. Right. Well, so one thing that I, like, and this is hotly debated, you know, I've gotten some really ferocious debates with people about this, but for me, I always think that at the end

that you're going to need a human, you know, behind everything. Right. Because you can't fully delegate the responsibility of something like security as important as that to a machine, right? Like they can do all the hard work in advance, but there's still going to be a human being making a decision on their side

if there's human lives, you know, at risk and things like this are real money. There's a book I would recommend to you. I just read this novel written by a dude named Tom Gaines, Special OPSO officer. He wrote this book called Quantum Dagger, and it's a novel about an ODA and like a J-Soc dude, and they are contending with China using AI and quantum computing in Vietnam, specifically. It's an interesting read. Wow. Is it kind of a little bit of a...

Techno-thriller. Techno-thrill. Okay, but like how history could have changed, etc. Right. I mean, I do think that one of the things that is scary about AI and the whole China thing, right, is that because there's pretty much no privacy, right, in China, they're collecting so much data.

Right. And the power of AI is going to come down to who's got the better data or the wider data set, et cetera, et cetera. And look, I don't know enough about quantum computing to really intelligently comment, right? But that's probably what people talk about as the next. major technology advance. So with that aspect with AI, that's the technology race that's happening

under the hood, you know, with the U.S. and China, right? Particularly with the Nvidia, the chips that are now pretty much all restricted to China, you know. You know, how much longer can that technology advantage be held is a really important component, right? We're talking about the game at this level.

So the book, the second shot by Gene Yu, hope you guys will go and check it out. It's out now, right? Yes. Yep, it's online, Amazon, yeah, it's been out since October. Definitely buy it. You will love it. It's in the link, but pick it up. Yeah, we'll have it down in the description.

Check out our Patreon also, please, support the show. Yeah, any last thoughts, Gene? No, I mean, I think just mostly just thanks for having me on the show, guys. Thanks for it's really cool. When I say we, you know, the good friends that I maintain contact with in an SF, we love your show. Thank you. Thanks for representing. and thanks for having me.

I wouldn't want to go on any other podcast. Oh, that's awesome. Thanks for coming in, man. I mean, we could go on for hours more, and I know you have so many stories. I can pick your brain, but it's okay. We can save it for another time.

And maybe we can get some of the other guys affiliated with Black Panda on the show in the future. They would love to be on here. They love the show, too. So we'd love to bring that the founders. We're special forces. We're always down. Yeah.

Next Friday, We have a intelligence officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or this Friday. This Friday coming up. So yeah, that's Friday. And so we'll see you guys then. AizOn, new IZon episode. Don't forget to subscribe to the Aizon channel, please.

Check out, We Defy. It's up for pre-order now on Amazon, December 9th that comes out. My special forces history. Doing an interview with Jack over the book on December 9th with, I believe Chris Cappy will be in studio helping with that interview. Awesome. So we'll see you guys on Friday.