The Team House - MARSOC Commander | Andrew Milburn | Ep. 130

Episode Date: January 30, 2022

*For headphone users* the boys go a bit wild later in the show, so just be careful there may be some microphone peaking. ANDREW MILBURN was born in Hong Kong and grew up in the United Kingdom. After graduating from law school in London, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps as a private. He was commissioned from the ranks, and as a Marine infantry and special operations officer, has commanded in combat at every grade. As the commanding officer of the Marine Corps’ special operations regiment, he was selected to lead a multi-national task force given the mission of defeating ISIS in Iraq. He retired in 2019 as the Chief of Staff of Special Operations Command, Central (SOCCENT), the headquarters responsible for the conduct of all US special operations throughout the Middle East. Since then he has written articles on topics such as leadership, ethics and culture change, for a number of publications, to include the Atlantic Magazine and War On The Rocks. https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554 Today's Sponsors: 👇 A-TAC FITNESS (Veteran owned and operated) https://www.ATACFITNESS.com Use the promo code "TEAM10" for 10% off! Selection Starts Here. Thanks for supporting the companies that support the show! Want 2 bonus episodes per month and access to the bonus segments? Subscribe to our Patreon!👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media Links:  The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: 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/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #marsoc #usmc #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit Child and Family Resource Network.org today. Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy.

and David Park. I don't think. Hey guys, welcome to episode 130 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with my co-host, David Park. Joining us tonight on the show is back for round two, Andrew Milburn, retired Marine Colonel. He's also the author of, you can see the book right behind him When the Tempest Gathers.

He also writes lots of articles, commentary, analysis of national security, international events. And we were just talking before we started the show, and we realized the last time we had Andrew on, it was episode 30. So it's literally 100 episodes between then and now. Andrew was kind of like one of our early guests. He was our 11th. Experiment. 11th guest. That's nuts.

Yeah. That's nuts. And we really appreciate you joining us tonight in studio. For people who are not in the northeast of the United States, there is like a massive snowstorm today, like all day pretty much. And they were calling it in the news. What was the cyclone bomb? Bomb cyclone. I mean, they used these apocalyptic terms now.

It wasn't quite the end of the world, but it still snowed a shit ton on New York City. And I know it was difficult for you flying in and then getting over here to Brooklyn. Yeah, shit ton is a good description. Yeah. Yeah, so 1240 this morning. This morning I woke up in Thailand under very different circumstances. from, yeah, from Lopuri in Thailand, which is kind of a rural town, to this part of Brooklyn, which has not improved in the two years, if anything.

It's gotten a little worse. I'm very glad that you guys have risen in the world, but your workplace certainly has not. No, no, we are. I always saw us as being deep behind enemy lines, getting our renegade transmission out to the world from our basement studio. But Dave, do you want to give a quick word to our sponsor before we roll into the show? Yeah.

So our sponsors for tonight are our friends at ATAC Fitness, ATAC Fitness.com. They sell these great kits for anybody they're preparing for selection. Or if you're just, you know, at that point in your life where you need to stop, you know, hitting the road, your joints can't take anymore. You hit the pool. You know, they sell these kits with these great rocket fins, very, very, very, very, very, uh, rigid fins, vented, open heel. Or if you just want to cross New York. Yeah, exactly.

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Those are the ones without this centerpiece, so you can kind of let all the water in and practice clearing it. They come with a snorkel so you can practice your snorke. Yeah. And then they come with little pieces of line where you can practice your underwater not tying or, you know, use it on your favorite partner with consent. Make sure you have a safe word. But yeah, so ATAC fitness. I'm amazed no one's complained about him over the years. Everybody complains about me. Team 10 for 10% off. Team 10% off. ATAQ fitness. Selection begins here. Starts you in the public.

So you should have consulted me. Begins here, I think it's better. Selection starts here. This is why you're not supposed to pregame. See it. So, welcome to the stream. So welcome back, yeah. That is empty.

No, no, that's not from tonight. No, we're on our first class here. Yeah. 100%. So for those of you who have not had the joy of watching episode 30, I really recommend you watch it. It's phenomenal because we talk about Andy's book when the Tempest Gathers. And I was so impressed by your book because it's really about your journey as a leader. And it's one of the differences I felt with your book is very introspective.

And you go through a lot of your internal process, your doubts, your fears, you know, putting other people in harm's way, yourself being in harm's way. You know, am I going to measure up? And I think that's something that a lot of people in combat think about it various times, and particularly leaders in combat have a responsibility. I think a lot of times poor leadership gets highlighted. Yeah. You know, and it's easy to make a decision that turns out not to be the right decision, but you never knew that going into it.

Yeah, we have to self-reflect, don't you? And it's a balance because you can't think yourself into paralysis. But when I think about the guys, you know, what separates the guys who are really good leaders or just, you know, acceptable leaders from the guys who are just abysmal, you know, and we've all sadly come across those? And I think it's self-reflection. Yeah.

You know, it's her ability to stop and just say, okay, I really fucked that one up. But I'm not, you know, I mess it up, but that's not, that's not me. That's not going to define me, but nevertheless, I need to, you know, I need to up my game in that sense. Right. And the other thing is, too, the understanding that you don't have to go it alone, you know, that, and Michael Platoon Sergeant told me this, when I was a platoon commander, it's okay to say to the squad leaders, hey, fellas, anyone got a better idea, you know? Right.

And so even in conventional units, and then, of course, when you get in soft, you've got to do that, you know, because absolutely, the chances are someone does have a better idea. And, you know, everyone understands you bear the responsibility for that decision, but everyone now has getting in the game. They've had the chance to throw it. That seems so basic, right? So many, I mean, you know, I think about, and I suppose, although the Marine Corps full of chest pounders, I'm not sure we're any better than any other service in our record of promoting the wrong guys, you know.

And I think we promote a lot of guys who get the job done, but along the way, ruin morale. and and and and it's kind of uh it's like using plastic right it's very convenient at the time and it works but then you you know afterwards it has bad that's a dreadful analogy no but you know but the next the next guy who comes in has to fix all that exactly that's what i mean yeah he leaves he leaves the unit that that that is just basically hollow um but the i think you know there's a lot of a lot of things that contributed to that and one of them is just the way that we do you do performance evaluation. I think the Army's edging ahead here, I think.

We'll see. But if you have a system, a performance evaluation system that is hierarchical is always based on what your senior thinks. Dudes who are adept at getting ahead are adept at getting ahead and always good at presenting that good image. You know, it's what's it called? The end of the, I'm forgetting it's like the monkey syndrome that, again, I'm screwing up this analogy, but what everyone else sees is the monkey's butt, right?

Oh, the higher the monkey class, the more you see the fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, across it, you just have to look at the news in the last two years. I added up, it's really hard to get numbers of brigade and battalion commanders who've been relieved. But I, so I tried to do it by service by service. And in the Navy, it's kind of easy. It's like 50% of all ship drivers get relieved. I'm exaggerating, but the Navy eats their own.

Quite right, too, because they're dreadful leaders. But Marine Corps and the Army has fired an incredible number of regimental brigade and battalion commanders, and they say for loss of trust and confidence. You look into it. There's a number of things wrong with that. One is, yeah, a lot of those guys should never got to that position. The other thing is we don't train. subordinates to lead up right and we just don't have a culture that accepts that you know so if you

have if you if you've trained mentored guys to listen to their subordinates a little bit better i think a lot of these car wrecks wouldn't have happened yeah you mean that's the situations where the subordinates are kind of leading up when you say that do you mean like they're saying hey sir this isn't a good idea yeah maybe we do this instead yeah um yeah so i i i And again, I mean, I was in the soft community for 10 years before that conventional Marine Corps, and I will say the soft community is much better about that. But nevertheless, there's still, we've had ourselves on the head too much. We aren't good at leading up, and the culture just doesn't really allow that.

I mean, think about when you went through, when you guys went through all the training, you both, you know, you both reached NCO, senior NCO rank, but nowhere in that training that they teach you, hey, here's what you do with the bad boss, right? Right. You know, so you're always stuck in this cane mutiny dilemma of, do I go over the guy's head and turn him in? Is this really that bad, you know?

And instead of just getting people understand, hey, your loyalties to the institution, it's not to anyone individual. That having been said, you can't, you know, You can't just turn on a guy simply because you don't agree with him, right? Right, right. So you've got to lay a play out, but at the same time, the guys who have the most influence him, typically the Sari Major, like senior enlisted dude, and the XO need to start playing on him. You know, I mean, trying to shape him, right?

There's nothing wrong with that. And there has to be an escalation of force. There has to be a point before he gets relieved where his subordinates are saying, hey, bye. You were fucking completely off the rails. You know, I've only seen that happen twice in my career. Yeah. You know, one Marine Battalion, and it wasn't mine, because I never had the balls to do that. But a good friend of mine, Exo sat down with this battalion commander and said,

Hey, hey, sir, you know, you're always asking us what the fuck is wrong with this battalion. It's you. It's like, and the Sarmajor was behind him. And you know what? The guy, actually, he altered, he altered trajectory. And he really, yeah. So, you know, it's hard to say what effect. And that's in, I mean, the Marines are the most, it's a strange anomaly, right?

We are very, very tick-tok hierarchical. At the same time, we do tolerate eccentrics, which is the only reason why I reached the rank I did. In those. As Dave's saying, hey, you're talking too much. No. Let me put in an intelligent question to get a special question. to get us back on track. No, no, you never talk too much.

True love is blind. Yeah. In those times that you researched of people being relieved, were there many or any cases of you reading and go, well, that's bullshit. Oh, yeah, yeah, many. You know, and research

is, it gives it too dignified a term. I've just been, you know, a number of my friends have been relieved. I should have been relieved, actually. You know, I went, no, I mean, seriously, I always tell people, I could have legitimately being relieved at every rank I held as an officer for something. Right, right.

Nothing as bad as Dick Pick Six, but there you have an extreme example of a dude who, who is now a garrison commander near Washington, D.C., by the way, and F. FYI. And has been, has done things that are criminal, right? But I'm not, you know, I'm not taking criminal stuff. I just mean, you know, your basic fuck-ups, you know, just idiocy. And, you know, and Jack and I have talked to. about this on the show before and the pressure

that the military puts on its leaders in the sense of Jack, can I, hold, I notice you pulled all the whiskey over to your your outside. No, no. And I mean, I mean, I, I have the good whiskey over on this side of the table. Jack's not even offering up his whiskey.

Oh, did you want to, did you want to? No, this is good. This is good. Jack can't do this whisking. And as we know, he will definitely get through that. So, sorry. I, just to come, Keith from committing a cardinal sin, I'm just going to finish this off. Can't let it go to ways.

I know. We'd probably throw the bottle out with, you know, just a touch. But we've talked about, you know, the pressure on officers, it's one thing of an officer, you know, commits some sort of indiscretion or whatever. It's another thing. Yeah. And it's another thing. And would you say that taking pictures of your penis and sending it to people is it just indiscretion? That's pretty high up there.

as far as things you should not I'm assuming he's like 13 though, right? A lot of your support nets probably do not want to see pictures of your penis pop up on their self-hance. I mean, speaking for yourself, I'm sure that if I have... But it's amazing how you can

feel upward like that and then... I just don't have a lens wide enough on my camera. Being made the Garrison commander over that installation in D.C. puts you in an oversight position over sexual assault or harassing. case is brought against hundreds of high-ranking officers in the Pentagon.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you're right to bring us back on track with that. No, I mean, he, absolutely. That's, it's, it's, it is disturbing. It's a, but, but again, you know, that's, seriously, that, that is a, no one get, you know, everyone, I mean, think about during your careers, your peers, your peers and your

subordinates are the best judges of your performance and character. Right. Right. And so, you know, I've read, I've read the counter argument about having a 360 evaluation and within the Marine Corps, it has always been, we do not want officers who pander to the Marines, right, in order to, but in Marines, and I suspect soldiers, I know soldiers are exactly the same way. They recognize, they don't want to be pandered to you. They don't, you know, bottom line is if an officer is a little bit of an asshole, they would prefer that if he was an equitable asshole when he was competent. Right. Absolutely.

And they'll say he was a hard ass, but he knew what he was doing. Yeah, exactly. Rather than a dude, you know, who was like, when we go back to that. Or, you know, was just incompetent or couldn't make decisions or, you know, I mean, so I really think we need to move into the 20. 21st century in our culture and so on 360 evaluation. That's just step one. There's a number of other things. We can talk about them.

We need more intelligent officers. We have some super bright guys, and then we have a lot of real idiots. And I'm not just talking about the Marine Corps. I know you guys all joke about that, and the crayon eating and everything. But I've got to tell you, there's no service pericalism here.

they have idiots and all three. So too many. Right, right. You need to be an intellectual. But how do you recruit those people? Like how do you make sure that happens and keep them in? Dave, think about how, so I asked this question the other day. The Marine Corps University was ill-advised enough to invite me to come and talk to them.

And oh, by the way, like the day before, this is kind of interesting. So it was super exciting for me because the Marine Corps is very, very tight with money. I mean, and that's an understatement. You know, you can ask people who've ever tried to go TAD with the Marine Corps, TDI in your terms, TAD. You know, I mean, it's like being denied laundry, being denied rental cars. I mean, that is, that's just what the Marine Corps does. Right. They send you in a box of MRI.

I know. cut down, you know, so TAD comes to Sanford, you know, traveling, whether traveling around drunk or temporarily acting divorced, you know, that's, I mean, these are the cultural nuances with the Marine Corps. But anyway, I get off the topic. So the day before I was going to go to Quantico, I got a call saying, hey, we're not sure we can fund you coming here. and it wasn't a huge amount of money.

I mean, I'm very grateful. It's some rancor, after all, but it wasn't, trust me. It was maybe one hundredth of what General Petraeus gets charges to go in and talk, and we can talk about General Petraeus later, but there's, you know, another good example. Because you wrote this article, and I was thinking, shit, which article, man, I wrote a lot of pretty critical articles, both administrations, you know, and it's about policies, not people. Right.

But this one in particular was about General Austin. And it was not, you know, I wrote it for task and purpose. And here's a plug for task and purpose. They were very professional about the editing. So I had to go back and back again to prove everything that I had said. And it wasn't about Austin as a dude. It was about, you know, from the time he was sent comp commander, just abysmal decisions he made or decisions he had not made.

and then as secta, you know, I mean, you know, we all tracked the debacle of Afghanistan. And I was trying to point out, this is not about any administration. Right. But you can't let this particular administration get off the hook just because the previous administrations were awful too, right? Anyway, so I wrote an article critical about him,

but also Marine General, McKenzie. And so the Marine Corps University is like, listen, we will bring you in to talk to the students, but we can't pay you because of that. It's like, it makes no sense. Because you were critical, we can't pay you. Yeah. That's an interesting one. It's okay to support, you know, you're coming in, but we don't want to be seen.

Right, right, right. We can say, hey, you just showed up. Right. He was walking down the street. We said, hey, do you want to come in and talk to the students real quick? Yeah. Don't tell him your name. He was getting a mocha frappuccino at the Starbucks down the street.

And I went, so I said, no, absolutely not, guys. I'm really, I was so excited about being paid by the Marine Corps for anything. Right. Then I got a call a little bit later saying, what about if you do it virtually? I was like, there is no difference. You're either good with what I've written, you know, or not. And by the way, if you're not, then you have to establish Marine Corps University policy that says, is we can only invite speakers that do not agree,

do not disagree with the current administration, whatever their administration is. Right. And I said, then you find yourselves in this weird realm, weird realm that's kind of called, you know, to tell you know, terrorism, fascism. And then an hour later got a call said, okay, your trip is on, you know, I think.

But is that bizarre? It's really bizarre. Yeah, it's a little concerning. well and i mean what's funny is you know how highly the marines hold like smedley butler right yeah yeah yeah and and he went off on the whole war is iraq um you know but but smitley was smitley is not you know you're right they he he's he's mentioned but he's not eulogized right he's not a chesty puller right um do you think it's because of that i think so yeah so by the way for our listeners who are shamefully ignorant enough to you

not know about Smetli Balder. Smetley Balder is one of two Marines, right, to win two medals of honor, but then subsequently kind of went off, went off on, I mean, this became an anti-war activist, really. I mean, he wrote a book called War is Iraqi, and if you read that book, which I did, because I'm a sad individual, he was not wrong. You know, he was talking about the Banana Wars and the fact that, the Marines were being used to basically

protect the profits of a number of U.S. Like Dole and whatnot, yeah, yeah. And he was right and he was, I think, justifiably angry. And so the Marine Corps kind of, they kind of, you know, it's kind of embarrassing when someone like that does something like that. So he was never actually decanonized

by the Moran Corps, but on the other hand, you have to look hard for statutes. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting.

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You can receive over $500 the first month. Learn more about plasma and how it helps people at Gryphalsplasma.com. Fused to Smelly Butler, right? Right. Whereas, who's the other dude? I'm trying to think of. The guy, the guy who was incarcerated for drinking.

Yeah, way to narrow it down. No, no, no, but got two medals, I'm on it. It'll come to Dan Daly. Yeah, Dan Daley. Yeah, yeah, he was the other. So he was, he had no. moral qualms. By all accounts, good dude.

And actually, a little bit of a nerdishness, he was my great-uncle's company gunnery sergeant in France. And my great-uncle was killed. And Dan Daly wrote a great... So I have a affiliation

at Dan Daly. But Dan Daly was definitely, in today's ring call, would have been, you know, he would have been kicked out as a long call for because if you look at this list of transactions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a new book out about Smedley Butler that I'm afraid I haven't read, hopefully, and get to it. You don't read any of these books, okay?

I've heard you only read your own books, and I understand. I get to the last page, and it was so good I just started over it. But Smedley Butler, again, for people who don't know, he was supposedly recruited to lead a coup in the United States. No kidding. It was a business coup. Oh, that's right. Supposedly Prescott Bush was involved, if I recall correctly.

Yeah, I remember that. I can't remember that. I believe you remember that. They wanted him to, because he was a war hero, they wanted him to lead these guys who were World War I veterans in a domestic coup in the United States. And he played along for a long enough time to figure out who this cabal was. And then he turned him in and kind of blew the whistle on the whole thing. So which makes him more of the hero, right?

Yeah. Because I have been thinking about writing a novel along those same lines in contemporary. I mean, that's not too far fetched, right? It feels like it sometimes. But if you beat me to it, I will see. But it does feel that way, doesn't it, really. I mean, jumping ahead, jumping ahead, you know, away from Smudley Butler, it's so many things are concerning, one of which in the last two years

and I've been following your very surbic tweets by the way my spicy my spicy no I love it there's no one who's better with these one-liners it's like I'm going to digress very quickly

so I mean I can't I can't run out of them but um there was that one so one guy uh is like holy shit what happens if we have to deal

with two conflicts you know at the same time time. And Jake goes, my dude. It's like, it's just the first two words, alert. He's about to deliver a, you know, salient lesson. He's like, my dude. This is actually a well-recognized problem for DOD.

Be assured that there are plans for this. The military is literally designed to fight two wars. I know. It's not. But this guy was like, oh my God. And there were, you know, 100,000 light. three tweets. It's like, this guy's a genius, you know? That's, that's kind of where I do kind of, like, chip in. I don't like want to, like, troll just like regular people or anything,

but when you see people are like, quote unquote experts saying, like, completely idiotic stuff, like, we're seeing many people say about Ukraine and Russia right now. Oh, yeah. He's just like, how many beers have I had tonight? Jack, what are your thoughts, man? Ukraine and Russia? I have a, maybe I shouldn't even trivialize something so important like this. but I have a friendly wager with a friend of mine about whether or not the invasion would occur in January and he's about to owe me, you know,

a high dollar bottle of scotch. Oh, yeah, but we're like two days away, man. I know. You think 48 hours, you still think so? Yeah, but do you think, I'm sure there are Russians listening who do not want you to get a bottle of high. Holy scotch. Well, Putin is a member of our Patreon,

which reminds me because he brought this. I'm going to get us rated by the FBI. Join our Patreon and get access to tons of bonus segments. And keep us in the LaFroy and the lagoon and you know, like you guys, our Patreon kept our lights on.

Absolutely and still do. And still do. So join our Patreon, please. I want to hear your two cents, Andrew, but I would just... I was trying to get Jack to talk about. I would just say that my my own opinion on it,

I think that Ukraine and the situation in Ukraine represents another one of these quote unquote frozen conflicts for Putin and it's something that he can twist the knife on anytime he needs to drive up nationalistic sentiment in his own country or just to fuck with the United States for whatever reason or fuck with Europe for whatever reason

he can twist that knife in the soft underbelly of the European community. I think that's what he's doing. It has to be taken seriously, obviously, and I think we are. But I'm just saying, I don't think there's going to be an invasion. I think what he would be facing, what Russia would be facing if they did that now, is profoundly different than what happened in 2014. Yeah.

No, I agree with you 100%. He has bolstered his image by doing what he has done. Right. You know, it's, his popularity is declining in Russia, but in the end, the Russians. And actually, Iranians are very the same, very much the same. They, you know, obviously rational, sophisticated, educated, but at the same time, they're nationalists, you know, so anytime someone can send up and say, hey, this is, you know, this is not a threat.

I mean, I don't worry, I won't bore you, but I could talk. for a long time about this because NATO, NATO is, it's very easy to portray to the Russians that NATO is a genuine threat. You look back in the 90s, the assurances made to Yeltsin and Gorbachev that, that NATO would not move into former Warsaw Pact countries. And we did, right? So, you know, we've broken some, we've broken some promises and we can say, hey, that was a different administration, but Russians don't understand that. Yeah, they don't, because Putin's been longstanding, you know, so Putin can say with some justification, they are on our borders, they're taking us back. And the other thing is, the Ukraine, it has a visceral, for the Russians, there's a

visceral attraction to Ukraine. A lot of Russians have relatives in Ukraine. Ukraine was a symbol of the resistance during the Second World War. basket of Europe, et cetera, et cetera. You can go on and on. But there's a strong feeling that Ukraine should be part of Russia. But to your point, Jack, I agree with you at the same time. Russians do, because many of them have relatives, as fellow Slavs, they don't want to go to war, ultimately with it, you know. And when you look at the blows Putin took over casualties in Syria, you know, even the Wagner group or Mozambique, And he, you know, that came back, that was a blowback on the Russian government, especially when

the 240 contractors were killed in Syria on U.S. strikes. Right. And the Russians were reeling from that. But I think, you know, I really think that we need to up a game, too, because Putin is playing us. So, you know, when you read supposedly educated articles, and they are good, you know, New York Times, even the economists, they're talking about, yeah, sanctions, this and that. But if there's so much more we can do, as you guys know, so number one, you've got to present Ukraine as being, yeah, you can take, you can invade all of Ukraine tomorrow, but it's going to be indigestable, right? Right. You're going to have an insurgency that's going to make Afghanistan look very tame by comparison.

So we should be not only sending the information operations piece about that, but also acting towards it, putting soft into Ukraine. And the weapons we're giving them, you know, they're kind of, we are so far behind. We are behind. The Brits were even further behind. We're giving them ATGMs, you know, the javelin. Okay, so the javelin's pretty good. But the bottom line is that the Chinese and Russian ATGMs are our range ours.

And the Russians now have reactive armor. You know, they have things that can not in great quantity. But the point is that the javelin is not a great, it's not a huge. It's not going to win the war. Yeah, it's not going to win the war. So we need to, like, we need to really, it's going to take a little bit while, but up our game on what we're giving the Ukrainians. I mean, we should be mass-producing the job and giving it to them.

But more importantly, right now, before, like when they're on the border, we should be shutting down their C2 systems with OCO, with offensive side operations. We can do that. We know we can do that. Well, why the hell aren't we doing that? you know it's like just for periods of time you know 24 hours they cannot communicate um shutting and or shutting down russian banks right um we absolutely can do that you know so like little niche pieces of just a way to signal yeah so we talk about forced deterrent options right forced deterrent options for us

are sending a bunch of seals uh no offense you know um take this oil rig, you know, for a period of time. It's all, it's all kinetically oriented. So why are we thinking in the cyber world doing this kind of stuff? The Russians do it all the time. What do you think are the potentials for, you know, military or paramilitary operation sort of below that threshold of what we conventionally think of as war happening in Ukraine, be it on our side? From the Russians or our side. Yeah. Sabotize espion. Russians 100% for us and I'm you know I'm I know I'm a thin ice here but one of the problems that we have is we have to get everything like that through all four congressional committees right I mean I've dealt with this when we were when we were trying to get when we were trying to cause an insurgency in Mosul against the Islamic State right and we wanted them to

escalate to the point where they were actually killing Islamic State dudes. So we could get them to paint graffiti, we could get them to destroy media sites. But when it came to actually killing them, we were told, no, you do not have the permissions or authorities to have resistance, to civilians kill Islamic State guys. bizarre. Yeah, it's really bizarre. So we were dropping bombs on them all the day. Yeah, right. You know, and it's like, it's the same thing that we, it's, we, we couldn't, we had to get special permission

to send tweets or messages. Right. But we could drop bombs with much lower permissions and people. You can't, you j-dam an entire building, but why can't you give the locals like a snub I know, but you can't. Go and shoot the dude. Exactly. I know. Yeah. So, so, um, so we started to get messages back like FaceTime videos and things. And that was a cool thing. I mean, you probably read about this. But when I say we, it's the collective we. It wasn't me at all.

It was due to work for me or way smarter. We're raising resistance groups and modes all using FaceTime and Skype, right? And then we were getting Intel and they were waiting to do subgroup feeding. But then they started to send us videos of them actually executing, executing. Islamic State dudes, like, hey, how do you like this? You know, blindfolded guys being shot, dumped in the ditch.

You did good, right, America? Yeah, and we're like, holy shit, no. Can you not, can you just go back and rearrange their furniture or something, you know? And so, seriously, we went through this whole investigation process. Did you tell them to do this? No, no. And, you know, I'm thinking, the back of my mind,

these are bad dudes. They're the Claire Holtz-Whor. And you can't. Yeah. But you can't. But when we're coming back and saying, no more videos, please. Yeah. What you do is on your own time.

Right. This is not a sponsored operation by the U.S. government. And they're like, did you say a U.S. military? I'm like, yeah. But do we draw on their walls? You know, get them pissed. But I'll tell you, Andrew, I would love to hear your opinion about this. and it's a mystery that I don't know that I'll ever get to the bottom of,

but there were in Missoule during that time. There was a lot of assassinations, bombings, people who clearly knew what the fuck they were doing, taking out high-level ISIS guys. There's that group White Shroud that was cruising around doing fairly intelligent assassinations. And the human guys and people I've spoken to, they would bullshit over Chow about, you know,

maybe it's the Russians doing that. but the point I guess is that no one I know has ever really been able to point a finger and say who made that happen. Okay, so we did not have the authorities. The French and the Brits did. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying they did it, but they did. And so it's very interesting. So one operation that we think the Brits actually started, I captured it, you know, we captured a, you know, we captured a, on the set rap, I sent it to General Kraft, and who was saying, by the way, for the benefit of the listeners, he was the sojative commander. And we said, hey, this is kind of cool. This is happening, but we didn't do this, you know?

And he's like, yeah, that's really cool. And then I got an email from his deputy, General Rodas, Brigadier, who's a British guy, S-A-S- guy. And he said, Andy, can you send me that presentation? So I sent it to him. And then next thing I know, I get contacted by the SJA, the true story, associative saying, hey, Colonel Milman, that was secret no foreign. You just send it to a foreigner.

We're shutting your systems down. Stand by. We're sending an investigator around. I remember you telling this story. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, bottom line is. So here's the bottom line. It was an SAS operation.

I sent the results to an SAS dude and I'm getting investigated by the U.S. you know, for, I mean... What was the op? It was, it was, uh... Shut up. It was a, it was a UW time. Oh, yeah.

Like a little visibility. Come on, man. Disguised, wearing disguises. No, I mean, it was, it was just like sewing the seats of the same. It was kind of the things, Okay, it's the sort of thing that Green Berets say they do all the time. But then, lo and behold, they find out they can't do because they don't have permission. Right, right.

So, you know, I mean, from Time and Memorial, that's, I mean, if you start trying to talk UW, and I can say this to a Green Beret, right? You start doing, no, you start UW and they're like, no, you don't understand. This is our doctrine. Shut the fuck up, you know? I mean, it's, but the problem is doctrine's. moved on, doctrines become practice. And when we move into practice, we realize,

no, we actually can't do that shit. Yeah, you're right. That SF has a lot of like really good unconventional warfare doctrine. And a lot of it can be done under Title 10 in wartime. Yeah. But a lot of, yeah, a lot of the things that SF wants to do, wishes it could do, fall under Title 50. And you're not doing it without cooperation from other guys.

Yeah. I'm not, you know, I'm not from moment derogating. No, I mean, it's true. But I think, you know, here's the message, really, I suppose, is I think we need to re-evaluate what we, what we are the level of authority, a level of mission granting for stuff that we do, right? What do you think of some of the arguments that I've heard them go back and forth, actually, that all of these sort of things that, like, let's say, say are done in a joint environment between CIA and J-Soc, that all those sorts of operations should go to CIA or they should all just go to J-Soc. People debate back and forth about who should have those authorities and who should do

those types of operations. I think the balance is probably quite, you know, right as it is. Yeah. Here's my concern, though. And I'm not sure where the right answer lies because we're all, you know, reading now about TF9. It's very funny how TF9 is described in New York

Times as like this mysterious organization. But I mean, the newspapers have been reporting about TF9 for a long time. Since the beginning almost. Yeah. And we all know that actually TF9 was instrumental in turning the tide against

the Islamic State in conjunction with the SDF, right? So, you know, I'm, I'm, I I lean on the side of ethical behavior, but I am disturbed by the reports that, I think that the reports about TF9 striking civilians is a little, it's a little one-dimensional. You know, it doesn't bring in the context of the time when TF9 was actually,

that was the only, those were the only strikes occurring against Islamic State. We were, we were an extremist, you know. And the Islamic State had a third of Syria and third of Iraq. And the guys on the ground we had were SDF guys going, I am here, the enemy is saying, you know, I mean, it's so easy to say, hey, we killed all these civilians. And of course, everyone regrets that, but it was not that easy at the time trying to do. Yeah, I think it's also worth remembering. And also not to legitimize bad strikes, which I've covered as well. But at that time, that period in history, this country was like, go kill ISIS.

Like make this fucking happen. And there's a lot of pressure on the White House. I think Obama and then into Trump as well, like, why aren't you defeating these guys? Like, why isn't this happening? And they wanted it done fast. And we often had partner forces who were not going to really move forward without airstrikes. 100%. And the result of that, I mean, it's kind of inevitable that you're going to have a lot of civilian casualties.

And at the same time, we were not allowed guys on the ground, right? Right, right. So what angers me a little bit about this, and, you know, I support the hundred, you know, New York Times is great. Obviously, you know, it's a watchdog of democracy. I'm not the dude. You know I'm not the dude to saying, the media's our enemy. No, they, we need them. But the point is that those stories, again, are not in context. And the context is, we were restricted from advice, assist, and accompanying operations. You guys know, if you do not have guys doing triple, play, you don't have the same control, control or awareness of what's going on. So you can't then turn around and go, oh, you killed a bunch of civilians, but we don't want guys on the ground doing, you know, preventing that happening. Right. So there's some, yeah, it's, I, I, I, like you, Jack, you know, I mean, at the same time, you can look at the Kabul strike, and what angers me to is the New York Times conflates.

what happened in Syria with the Kabul strike, totally different. The Kabul strike was confirmation bias, it was incompetence. 100%. Syria was guys trying to do the right thing, really, really capable guys, but being restricted to some extent and also in extremists. You know, I mean, again, the Islamic State had a third of Syria, was 30 kilometers from Baghdad. You know, people forget this stuff.

Yeah, and I mean, not that far from her bill at one point. Yeah. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, it's anyway, you know, the story, it's a great example of good journalism, but not good journalism in the sense that New York Times, fact checks, fact checks. But you can fact check all you want, but unless you give the context, the wider context. Right. It is still not the whole story. Right.

Right. Yeah. So to your point, yeah, I toss this around a lot. Two special operations forces tier one from otherwise countries whose governments even now are considerably more liberal than the U.S. is. You know, I mean, well, maybe not. in the case of the UK, but previously, have special operations forces who can act without the approval of their parliaments, right? So the UK, S-A-S, they can act on cabinet approval, right? So it's almost

like on executive order. And same thing with the French. And so it's good and bad with that. You know, the French have probably gone off the rails a couple of times. No, I'm not saying as far as committing atrocities or anything. But in Iraq, their mandate, tier one guys, was to kill French citizens who had joined ISIS. Oh, shit. And so they would, you know, and they were very,

they were very, very open with me about that in northern Iraq. It's like, hey, dude, you know, there's no French word for dude, but it's basically... We don't want them coming home. It's like, hey, man, you've got your job, we've got us, and we will, you know, but their point was wrong in the sense that they were

we're going to do our job not tell you what we're doing and my point was then you're going to some of you guys are going to get killed coming through Peshmerga lines because they thought they didn't have to coordinate with us but that's what they were doing they were sending guys forward and killing French not French guys not by drone strikes but it was very important to them actually actually shoot them in the face

why I don't know just payback yeah I guess so you know I guess it was I guess there was some kind internal information operation thing going on. But it's an extraordinary piece. I mean, they did, and I think because we, if they started using drones, they would have to coordinate with the U.S., right? But it was one incident where they tried to come back

through Canadian lines, and a bunch of French guys were very nearly killed doing that. God damn, imagine that. Yeah, imagine the French public knew about that. Really? you know I mean it's publicized no I imagine if oh yeah yeah yeah exactly I guess they may do but how many French guys do you know this thing to do this very very few very few yeah but I mean you need to expand we killed we killed one American citizen Alwaka I in Yemen and that was a huge deal yeah for us that that we did it imagine a program we were specifically targeting Americans who joined terror organizations very much so that were drones and people think, do you remember the, do you remember the verbiage at the time, and bear

in mind, I am not tied to any administration, but it happened to be the Obama administration at the time, right? And do you remember President himself saying, well, drug strikes are, you know, they're different because they are way more precise, yeah, and which is surgical. Which is the opposite of the truth, everyone knows. Like a bullet to the face to me is

surgical. Yeah, yeah. Like a drone strike. No, a drug strike, there's a lot of things wrong with drone strikes, as you know. One is that the way you put together the targeting piece for drone strikes is dispersed, who have guys in one place who know things that these guys don't know. That's what happened in Kabul. You know, and then you had, as I said, confirmation bias and you had, frankly, you had political pressure of,

we've got to show action. We've got to show that we've taken revenge for the death of 13 Americans, 14 Americans. It was 13 Marines, 14 dudes, right, altogether, guys, girls and guys. Which is all understandable, but it's not excusable, you know, for our profession, right? Because that's what people remember us for. Right, exactly. Yeah, that sort of explains. And it's no reason to do it that way.

we have so much access to intelligence, we can be so much more exquisite. But when we insert emotion into the process and we do things in a way that skips, you know, skips checkpoints, then things go wrong. Well, in the terms of like Aliquari, the American. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

You know, that's, you know, that was a challenging thing, Right. Very accomplished Arabic speaking. Yeah. You can tell. Before drinking a bottle of LeFroyd. Yeah, Freud. But, you know, there's the argument that that's extrajudicial, that the fact that there was an American killed who was not given due process.

Yeah. And that's not how Americans do things. And we killed his son, too, supposedly accidentally. Yeah. Right. And. Yeah. And there's also the side.

did at what point is a is a terrorist a terrorist and you know and yeah and like in the future like with the french or even in the future for us you know would it be a valid shield for terrorist forces to just have an american there and say well there's an american here it's good it's a great counterpoint um you know i i i i don't i mean i'm just you know these things are ethical questions in the end that's subjective. Right, right. They're not, you know, you can have legal determinations on them, but legal determinations are often very much influenced by whatever the, you know,

the administration at the time. Remember all the things about enhanced interrogation and subsequently proved to be, you know, so it was in kind of that legal nether region, and this is the same thing. I mean, I suppose, you know, ethically I don't have a problem with it, but then I have to agree with you, you know, on both sides where do you stop and I have this I have a problem with

a citizenship doesn't matter so much to me but I do have a problem with how we treat if you do that then what about all the you know monsters within our own society right right at what point start ticking them out with drones right and especially if they get classified as domestic terrorists then do those authorities

roll over. But I don't know what the answer is to that. Yeah. And within our own borders. And then what about, what happens if we have guys here who are Uyghurs and have, you know, committed acts of terror and the Chinese government wants to take them out here? Right, right. Okay, I know I've grown, I've, wandered into the realm of the extreme unpopularity here. Shut up, man. It doesn't matter, we're Americans. We can do anything we want.

But, you know, you've got to think about these things, right? Well, you do. I mean, a lot of people say that, you know, you shouldn't like slippery slope arguments, you know, have no place, blah, blah, blah. But I believe in that. They have no place in this current world of no nuance. Right, right. Because, I mean, even if you look at our own Patriot Act, that has, that gets renewed every time it comes up without question. It gets expanded every time it comes up.

without question. And it, as did the AOMF, the AOMF, the AOMF authorization of military force. Right, right, right. And. I know the way Dave says, right, right, Anna. Yeah, because I know these things. Cold fusion. I know these things.

Right. But, but it's, I, I'm of the firm belief that any government, any government will never see power. Once it gets a little bit of power, it's going to hold on to that power. and then try to get more. So the more, again, I mean, I'm all about whacking Americans who are overseas committing terrorist acts, but I also am hesitant to just say, you know, gloves off because when does that apply to our own citizens? Then people start getting denied due process in the United States.

Like, I think it's a very challenging question. Yeah, it is. And, you know, ironically, it happened. when the president happened to be a lawyer, you know, which just, I think, goes to approval regardless of the administration. Yeah. You know, the administrations will find a way legally to justify just about everything, right?

Chuck, you're very quiet on this. I'm just listening to the conversation. I'm taking it all in. Who was it you said in a totally off topic, but it amused me, in a tweet. I bet he was, grunt what are those shirts with a cross rifle

grunt grunt style grunt style shirts and what did I say yeah it's like oh man you know I have not drunk that much whiskey

at all but it was the former secretary of state under Trump Pompeo Pompeo oh the pipe hitter guy yeah yeah I bet Pompeo where his grunt style t-shirts

did I say that I probably did That cranked me out. I probably did. Yeah, I thought it was extremely witty and all the point. What about pipe hitters that? Yeah. Did he use the term pipe hitters? He has like a whole thing, like the pipe hitters.

Yeah. He was like, join up and help us take America back. He was, and he, what was he a cav officer in the army? Jesus Christ, I mean, he was a fucking West Pointer. He was like first, whatever it was, first calf. And he was like, first calf, always riding to the sound of the gun. always first in the fight and Jack said technically if you're right into the sound of the guns you're not the first in the fight Which I thought that was pretty good too

Obviously he comes up with these things when he's been drinking because he doesn't I don't do some of these I don't even recall and like as you bring them up I'm like oh yeah That's that's a good zinger That's if I said if I said that that was pretty smart he's like my tweet a hero you know I mean there's like one line of He's built the loyal fan base he can he can dismant people and 140 characters. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Yes, I am a constant, shameless self-promoter. I have no hesitancy with it whatsoever. You know, we live in a capitalist society. So, got to be out there, pimping the team house 24-7.

No, I think, so the only thing, I don't think I've ever disagreed with you, you know, it's just so you guys don't kick me out now. However, how. However, if I do have to leave, can I have a little bit of Lefrogue on the way? Yes.

Well, I'll just to purpose. Can you open this? Of course, I know I'm horrible. Just to preface it. Jack and I have Disarremus on the show, so you're not a huge of the room. So all the helling and gnashing and teeth about getting out of Afghanistan. No, before it turned into a debacle, Jack's like, Jack said, hey, relax. I'm sure another war will come along soon to keep you.

happy. That wasn't wrong. No, it wasn't wrong. It wasn't wrong. But, and I agree with you, the war should have ended, but it shouldn't have ended the way it did. Oh, no, it's absolutely true.

That was ridiculous. No, it shouldn't have ended like that. Oh, my God. And it could have been done much better. This is the most ghetto thing I've seen. This is like amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you.

And that's, that's, That's great. That's, yeah. Is that a weak port? That's a very weak part. Come on, Dave. I should have known by your Arkansas accent that you would want more. So, yeah, absolutely.

So, I mean, it's probably not even worth talking about because your listeners are so tired of the story. But so... so horribly disillusioning for all of us. You know, I mean, there were ways and ways of pulling out. Right. And the point is, you know, we had pulled conventional forces out in 2014. We had lost less than 100 guys in the last five years.

And I know there are people cringing going 100 guys is 100 too much. But actually, you know, in terms of a war, that's not a heavy price to pay. I don't think it should have gone on endlessly. Yes, the Afghans should have stepped out of the plane, but the way not to do it was the way we did it. Right. You know, I mean, we... And now we're trying to...

Quite rightly. You know, we're trying to bring our European partners back on board with this whole Ukraine deal, almost too much. Even the Europeans are saying, make decisions, lead. Stop fucking asking us. what you want, you know?

Right. And instead, you know, we, we, but, but the reason why we're doing that is because we realized belatedly, we, I don't know why I'm using the we, but, um, that the Afghan thing was just like a fucking, it's awful. It's, you know, all of us are still shuddering about it. There's nothing good about it. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing was like disgraceful, but I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, I, can only speculate i mean one thing i did hear through the grapevine was that scotty miller had a

whole plan that he put forward yeah yeah and they're like no no we're not doing that yeah um and he was pretty much out at that and he predicted what would happen yeah you know um and the dude spent a lot of time there to say the least uh and shamefully you know mackenzie uh i say shamefully you know marines sent com commander um has been you know he's been a detourable ambitious dude or his life. And I think most of us thought, okay, whatever, that's the way most guys make general. But this really shocked, I think, a lot of us is the fact that his ambition carried him into the realm of destroying so much, you know, and not admitting to it.

I mean, and again, you know, I've told you my qualifications about New York Times and context, but nevertheless they were 100% right about that strike and and the pentagon kirby holy crap who dragged that dude up what a fucking idiot man he's like he is he sounds like he reminded me that guy in bag bag dad yeah back the bar yeah back the bar he was like no categorically not blah blah blah blah new york times is what here's the pictures his yeah uh the pictures yeah yeah maybe yeah maybe a few People got killed.

And you were just watching the shit going, shut the fuck up, dude. And why didn't Austin come in and go, okay, guys, I am so sorry, we got this wrong. You know, it was that slow peddling. Right, right, right, right. And we are abysmal about that. I mean, I've been, you know,

reporting for 10 years and working with PAO officers for about that long. Yeah, we select our best to be, PAOs. I have to go through a very tough process. I have noticed that the military, the Army does not. I wanted to be one. They don't necessarily hire like strategic communications professionals the way that, say, the CIA does. They oftentimes just take a lieutenant colonel who's at the tail end of his career and like, here you go, you got the job.

And some of them turn out to be good at their job and some are horrible. And I've been on the phone with some of them who want to like lock me up at parade rest and like tell me how it's going to be. Most are horrible. Yeah. But where the hell was I going with all of that? Well, what I was saying was that the public affairs officers, they will never come forward and say, we screwed up. We made a mistake. I've never heard that.

And I would be very interested to find another reporter out there who's heard that. But wouldn't you have more respect for them if they did? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, for the institution. Yeah. When a community comes forward. But not the public affairs officer, but we never saw Austin or McKenzie come forward and say, you know, McKenzie said, oh, is a terrible tragedy instead of saying, hey, we fuck this one up. Yeah, we're screwed it up and we're going to try to fix it. And then he goes, I hold myself responsible.

And I'm thinking, what does that mean, dude? Right. You still, you still, you haven't resigned. Right. Yeah. I hold you responsible too But nothing's happening to you So it's like, I don't know

Yeah, it's um You know and things have gotten so weirdly political now That depending on who your guy is Yeah yeah You know it was the same thing with the Obama With you know with with the drone strike and whatnot You know like it's a very nuanced question Yeah

We should you know Kill an American Who is who is legitimately a terrorist. You know, we can call, you know, homegrown groups, we can call them, you know, either terrorist or whatever. But it's tough to some, it's tough to compare them to ISIS or,

or, you know, Taliban or AQ or whomever else. But it gets nuanced, right? If you don't like Obama, then we should not be, then we should not be killing Americans. If you do like Obama, I agree with you and I disagree with you on one thing. Absolutely 100%. I'm so, I'm so shocked at the polarization.

And what's really scaring me is within the military, too. Yeah. You know, I hear officers in uniform express political opinions, and I can't remember hearing that before. And I'm thinking, dude, do you have any respect for the dudes who have to work for you? Right. And because they don't all agree with you, you know? Right.

And you see them pop up on Facebook and everything. And I don't remember that in the 90s. You know, we had plenty of reason to be disgruntled in the 90s, right? Various administrations, you know, not doing this, all that. Right. You know, we had toilet paper chained to the wall. I know. I mean, I suspect that Jack was a toilet paper thief back then.

A TPS? He still is. No, I mean, because you could. I'm seriously I know sorry I digress I remember a lieutenant I was with that TBS when we went to hotels in the weekend would stock up on toilet paper because our toilet paper in the barracks was chained yeah it was like and so he would like walk out of there with like six rolls it's half plight you know you have like I mean that's where the DOD budget was right right it's like you know um so Anyway, where was I? Yeah, on this. Yeah, so it does disturb me. I see dudes still active.

And I've been vilified for stuff I've written. You know, I've attacked plenty of policies under the Trump administration. Right. I mean, you know, how could you not? And the politicization of the military, I swear to God, I've only had one drink. And then, but then again, on the Biden administration. Right. So I'm in a sense, I'm bipolar.

partisan, but every time I've been shot by other guys in uniform who have just lashed out of me. And, you know, it's no good saying, dude, do you not just see this is a policy that I'm attacking? Right. Not the policy. Yeah, not the politician. We're very, we're very insular. It's a, it's a facet of who we are. And we eat our own. And you know what, but you're, you were a colonel, and I'll just say that you get, it says that like an accusation. It is an accusation. There's an accusatory finger. There's an accusatory finger here being pointed across the table at you.

Remember, Jack, one finger points at the you, the other four, three, I guess. Yeah. I'm pointing back. I told you, not until I don't drink, he's on the interviews. He's now, now he's counting his fingers and being challenged. My only point is that you guys, as officers, go work for, like, think tanks. I've had this rant on the screen before. You guys go work for think tanks.

He turns on the anti-office thing. I do. Oh, I do. I absolutely do. I don't work for... Oh, yeah, I guess I do now. I knew it. I fucking knew it.

But for... I'm not necessarily demonizing that even. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support, services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. But what I'm saying is that when an enlisted guy gets out and makes like Ranger coffee mugs or

something like that, does some like very mundane like the Ranger CrossFit gym or whatever. Like rifle coffee. Well, that's a that's a like multi-million dollar business. A little bit different now. But, I mean, I'm just saying that, like, the enlisted guys get out and they try to make a little bit of rent money and they get criticized by their peers for it. Whereas officers, it seems like you can get out of the military and go to work for, like, some, you know, shady, like, the Turkish government and lobby our country, lobby our government on their behalf against our own national interests. And, like, no one has anything to say about them pulling in 250K a year doing that. Yeah. So I agree totally and I disagree a little bit.

bit. So I don't think anyone criticizes, anyone criticizes enlisted dudes for going at for within our peer group. Remember, I was on the listed guy. Within our peer group, not like, not like the public. But I'm with you 100%. So there are guys who go to think tanks who, there are rules about working directly for a foreign government, but there are guys who go to think tanks who work indirectly for foreign governments as lobbyists. But you usually find honestly, Jack, those guys were not the guys who did well in the military. You know, they were like, I get it, jackasses, and they prop up their resume.

I think, I honestly, the guys I know, for the most part, Dave Maxwell springs to mind, you know, FD, former Green Beret, but a number of other guys try and be ballots. I really... Dave is a very smart guy. Yeah, he's a smart guy, and also he's in a right-wing think tank, but if you read his stuff, it's really balanced. Yes.

You know, it's, and I think there were a lot of guys like that, but then there were guys who got out maybe as captains because they couldn't get promoted, who now their way to get ahead is by lobbying for the UAE or Saudi governments. But it's Buffett, right? You know, because they're a member of the think tank. But they're nevertheless getting paid for trips and everything, and they write pro-s Saudi articles or pro.

That happens. And that, yeah, absolutely. I know I sound a little salty when I say these things. But the dynamic I'm just speaking to is that like Dave and I would be criticized for like doing this live stream. Is that like you're capitalizing on your military service to profit? No one criticizes you. But if you were an officer, you can get out and go work for some defense firm, like catch that Kush job, that golden parachute. and that is literally

your military service is what they are purchasing. No, no one really has anything to say about that. It gets worse. It gets worse. So it's not, Colonel, it's not the wrong, it's not the right rank to look at it. My accusatory thing. Yeah, I know.

By the way, by the way, you guys are not, I, by no means, no one criticizes you. In fact, my daughter has asked many times for pictures of Dave. I've sent them to her. Yeah. she's only 27. So I just want to tell you that there is definitely a eulogistic following.

But to your point, so I don't have a problem with colonels, not just because I was one, but the most part. But Petraeus? Stavridis. Say it. Say it. Yeah. Say it.

Say it. Cane. Do you remember, so Stavridis, think about this. Uh-huh. No, no, let's talk about betray. So Petraeus, Patraeus is tapping a civilian, right? She's an army intel officer. Oh, when you say tapping, you don't mean like tapping on the shoulder.

No, I mean tapping. Yeah, with a cap. To include, yeah, with capital T to include under his desk. And then giving her classified material, right? And yet he's still eulogized. We brought him in to the irregular war. Fair Podcasts. And the dude, you know, he's

because, and, you know, when I question that, I mean, I understand, but the response was, well, he has a huge following, and he does. And if you look on, especially among all the people he's tapped under his desk and given classified material, too.

But, you know, if you look at his LinkedIn followings, it's like when he posts something, and it's like, sir, you're amazing. You're so handsome. I love that. You know, it's just, we have this.

Sica fans. Sican. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I think this is peculiar to the U.S. You don't see it in the UK. You really don't. But Petraeus is like he's got this weirdness.

Stavridis. So, I've worked for Stavridis. So I'll be careful. But. Oh, well, say it. Come on, say it, Andy. Say it. No.

You know, he looked for a moment as though he's going to pour whiskey in my class, but he doesn't go and his own. He's selfish. I know. We understand this. Svirid, sir, he was always saying, everything that happened in Afghanistan, he was saying, this was what I commanded, you know, because he was Sakuya, right? So it was very loosely commanded.

But when shit started to go wrong, he just said. engaged himself. It was like, if I had been there, I would have said this. So, but these guys are multi-millioners. Yeah. McChrystal, same thing, you know? And I know I'm pissing people off right now. But I mean, it's, come on.

McChrystal is just a guy who wants to tell war stories, right? Yeah, I mean, nothing, you know, he did great things, but, um. But lost the war, just like all the others. Yeah. the dudes who had command in Afghanistan and they all made four star rank right and they all if you look back through to their messaging and task and purpose did a great article on this their messaging was always hey we just needed another three months yeah yeah yeah give me more troops um but no one was willing to say hey this war is unwinnable right and here is why and and uh

You know, it's interesting. We interviewed General Nicholson on the irregular warfare podcast. General Nicholson is a Marine. This has nothing to do with it. But, you know, he made the point that, yeah, we kind of knew that we were never going to make traction in Afghanistan. They did not have an emergent, educated middle class. It's like Pentagon paper shit. You know the war is not going to work. Yeah. So we could have won all these tactical vexed. victories it didn't matter. We were not going to do this. And you could have explained this 20 years ago. But in the meantime, we lost how many thousand, how many

thousand U.S. guys and tens of thousands, if not, 100,000s of Afghans, and trillions and trillions of dollars. And in the end, the Taliban triumphed. And literally, no one has been held accountable.

No one. No one's being fired. No one's. been, you know, it's like, to me, that's incomprehensible. I want to... And the dudes, the dudes who headed that now had the Brookings Institute or, you know, they were like,

or they eulogized. Right. Well, and, you know, like I've argued before, like, we won in Afghanistan. As soon as we wiped out AQ, that was our mission. That is why we went there. Yeah. Right? We went there to wipe out

AQ. We did that. however it transitioned into this war against the Taliban who could run back into Pakistan anytime they wanted whenever it became this war against the Taliban we were destined to lose because there's there's no way to defeat a force that is driven by faith and more and so and it has popular sport it has popular support in its area and we increasingly lost popular support yeah and they have a safe haven why are we there like you go in you wipe out a cue you're done. Counterinsurgency 101. Yeah. We were done. Like we changed the, we won and we go, well, we're already here. What else should

we do? You know? Yeah. No, that's, have I ever told this story before, Dave, about how when I was there in 2004, 05, he won it. The, I won, 10 magazines and two MREs and I won the war. Mullah Omar, personally, but it, surrendered to death. It was actually so quiet during that, that time period. Like, we had won the war. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. It's like New Jersey. No, it's better than New Jersey, right? It was more scenic and less finance.

That's accurate. Anything's better than New Jersey, actually. The officers that were, at least in my unit, were talking about that time that, hey, like, if there's no, like, Al-Qaeda left to fight, like, we should start going after the drugs. Why don't we go after the drugs? And it's just that, and I'm not saying that was, like, a high-level thinking process, but at a very low-level, like, Lieutenant Kavana. Captain level. But that's a bad level. First of all, Jack was using those drugs. But secondly, those drugs were... But secondly, those drugs, that's what they... That's what fueled their economy.

Right. That was one of the worst things we did was go after a... Yeah. You know, it's like... Well, that's the thing is, what do you do? You go to an opium farmer, because this really, this worked in the Golden Triangle. When you go to the opium farmers, you say, hey, you should grow oranges, you know? And we'll subsidize that. Or at a fraction of the price. Yeah, exactly. playing in Columbia Andrew, just to break up things a little bit from this doom and gloom conversation, this is

for you. Oh, wow. These are some athletic clothing. You can have from an upcoming sponsor. Is this a hint? No, I think you're, you're, but you're an affectionato. Like, you're a guy that works out all the time, right?

Yeah, I am. So I think this is right in your wheelhouse. There's some shorts and some T-shirts in there. I've got to hold them up. And you have to announce them, right? They're actually not a sponsor of this show. They are. Not yet.

Do you want me to, I can put them on now. Yeah, as long as you don't show full frontal male nudity on YouTube, we're okay. Is that, is that a policy on YouTube? Yeah, yeah. Really? If we see cock and balls, there's like, yeah, no. Really? I didn't know that.

What about very small cock and balls is that? Like a penis, but only smaller? Yeah. I think we'll still get banned. We're getting trouble for that. All right, I want to do that. They'll shut us down. This is awesome, nice.

We need you become so prudish. I guess it's been prudish for a while. I'm not prudish. It's, you know, YouTube. I don't run the YouTube. He's got a, it's like company policy, man. This is really nice. It is.

I've used their products working out. Oh, yeah? So, should we not say their name? Yes. Yeah, they're going to be partners with us. You got me extra large. You guys are so cool. Oh, is it extra large?

Yeah. No, I mean, normally I, I wear extra small so I can, you know, do. So you show the guns? Which way to the beach? Right, right. Did you get your tickets? I know you got me an extra pair of shorts. Wait, what size are these?

Oh, these are awesome, man. These are literally nice. What size are they, though? Yeah, I'm sorry if they're too big. No, don't worry, man. Don't worry. If you need to knot up some gym socks to put down in there, like we understand. No, I normally just use a pack of grapes.

I don't know, man. Can you see the size? Help me out here. Reading glasses on. I got to look at Andy's shorts. I'm going to have to get you another set, Andy. These are X-Ls. Okay, cool.

But you know what? These are super cool. They're really nice, aren't they? Yeah, the shorts will fall down on Excel. I swear to God, they will, you know. Even, you know. I mean, Excel is even big for me, and I'm kind of badass. If it was based on genitalia, Excel would be about right bit.

So I'm going to hit up some viewer questions here. What does Andrew Milburn think of the Ned Stark letters? It seems very related to the topic. Do you know what that is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were on War on the Rocks. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, actually, I thought those were great. So, Ned Stark. Game of Thrones. the net stock letters were articles written by a serving air force officer and war on the rocks took an unusual step in allowing him to be anonymous and so you know basically his point was some of the things that we were talking about careerism domination of careerism the fact that the wrong dudes were getting ahead the fact that the wrong dudes were getting ahead the fact that the the wrong measures of effectiveness were in place when it came to talent management. So bottom line is that the wrong guys were getting ahead. Yeah. And so that played out very interestingly.

The edits of a war on the rocks was at first reluctant to publish articles by someone who's anonymous. But I believe that in the end he gave his name and then the secretary of the air force at the time. offered him a job in the Pentagon. Really? Yeah, I'm forgetting the dude's name. Walsh was the, I think, I want to say, as the Secretary of the Air Force. Is that what, no, not the Secretary of the Air Force.

What does the Air Force call the most senior uniform guy? I'm going to be vilified for this. Yeah. Yeah. I would struggle on my better days, but now I'm a couple of drinks deep. Yeah, fighter chalk, you know, number one. Anyway,

and he said, no, I want to get out. But yeah, I think that... So he was active duty when he wrote them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you know what? He was active duty. I think he should have gone anonymous, right? When you write something like that, it's better to you. But who am I to say that? Because they

were among, at the time, Warren the Rocks' most read. Yeah. You know, that's one of the things about people getting promoted is, it is when you talked about, you know, the guys getting fired that you read. Yeah. And this one thing is that Jack and I've talked about, how a lot of times officers are held accountable for things that are kind of bullshit and not.

And totally out of their control. And not out of their control. If there is a DUI, a DUI, a crime committed or whatever. Yeah. And one of the things that we've talked about is like the problem with sexual assault is that it's the right thing for a commanding officer. Well, for within a command. Oh, I thought he said sexual assault's the right thing. No, no, no.

It's the right thing for the command to investigate. Yeah, absolutely. But also, you can see where somebody who's put the last 15 years of their military life, their career into it. And if they investigate, they're going to be held accountable, even though they have no control over it. And so what is the incentive for them to not investigate versus the incentive for them to bury it? And we can say that the moral thing and the ethical thing and the right thing is to investigate it. But we're all human beings. And until we're put in that thing where this could be my career, where often the military isn't firing people for their,

own lack of competence. They're firing people for things that their troops did on their watch, but that they had absolutely no control over. Yeah. No, I mean, that's a great question. So for me,

because I have daughters, you know, it was always kind of a thing. How would I feel as if, you know, my daughter was making this allegation? I can't you know I don't so I guess what I'm saying is the motivation shouldn't be fair of being fired or anything it should simply be you know hey it's the right thing it's the right thing to do yeah and

you know I here's where we struggle I think as a military so I am shocked and I think a lot of us are shot by reports of you know sexual harassment and sexual assault and um you know you know some of them heartbreaking you know you do girls who are very you know obviously you're very vulnerable in the military right and you know shitheads taking advantage of right and then you know there's the argument that women get ahead for the wrong reasons etc etc so I honestly I think it comes back down to this I think we bring in too many fucking idiots male I mean dudes who lack emotional intelligence.

So it gets back to, you asked me the question earlier, what should we do different about our selection process? We don't have a selection process for officers and military. I will defy anyone to tell me we do. We do not. You know, I mean, what? I mean, even the most selective process we have is the academy, is, you know, the path to entrance.

anyone who's been through the academy will tell you, you can, you don't necessarily have to demonstrate characterously as long as you don't like cheat or steal. Right. You know, if you're smart or you're athletically, you know, talented, you can get through. Right. And it's even worse if you're coming through the, you know, the Marine Corps PCL program or the OCS. You go for it. You talk to the OSO, who's a captain, and you're in. if you have the GPA and a physical fitness test.

Right. That's it. You make it through OCS. OCS doesn't test character. Right. OCS tests physical fitness, right? And very, no academic. No, I mean, shit, man.

I was academic on a man out of OCS, and I'm a rock, which shows you how low the standard is. Well, my point is that's, right? When you go into special forces or special operations, it doesn't matter what service you're in, you go through a barrage of tests, right? And to include emotional intelligence, and that is leaned on heavily during the assessment process.

And it's not, you know, it's, I mean, it's not perfect. Of course, we get dudes to get through who shouldn't. But by and large, it's pretty good, and it's getting more and more effective. We don't do that for officers. Right. We give them some fucking bullshit GCT score. They have to

score by 120 and, you know, an interview what I'm saying is you look at the Australians and you look at the Brits and it's not because I'm, you know, from their background. They put them through a four-day assessment, right?

Still too short. But nevertheless, during that time, sleep deprivation, barrage of tests, intelligence, emotional intelligence, everything, reaction courses, where they aren't given like the same ones we were given at OCS, but ones that are really impossible to see how they handle frustration, do they blame people, et cetera. So now four days, probably not enough.

I'd like to see a week of that. Sure. But why not? Look how much money you invest in office training. Look how much, how many people they bring under the influence. Where I'm heading on this is where stuff starts going wrong. And I have been, you know, I have lots of friends who are females in the military. Too many who have told me stories to say, oh, this is bullshit.

No, it's not bullshit. Right. It sadly, it happens way too many times. How do we, how do we, the way to deal with that is not fucking classes and policy. Right. It's to like change our talent management. Right. Stop promoting the dudes.

It shouldn't be brought it. Don't bring them in, you know. We've got to assess people. more better. David, thank you for your donation. Andrew says with Smedley Butler, there is also the issue of now one knows if the business plot was real or not. There's real evidence and a number of figures on the periphery who were tied to the NKVD. That's pretty wild. Really? Wow. There's no real evidence, yeah. Supporting Butler? I guess. Wow. One STL Marines. NKVD, by the way, is not a disease.

It was the forerunner of the KGB. Wasn't NKVD the East German? No, no, that was the Stasi. Okay. Stuart, thank you. He said... He knew that when he was sober. He did.

But his doctor did tell him, Jack, I'm afraid you have NKVD. I've had a shop for everything, and NKVD is a whole. one of them. Stuart says, late to the show, guys, just want to say hello to Andy and tell him that I miss his interaction and humor at the biennual exercises out in San Diego.

Oh, who's that from? Stuart O. I know who Stewart is. I'll tell you afterwards. Okay. Stuart, you're awesome, man. Jackson, will Marsoc ever have their own J-Soc CT unit? Oh, boy. Yeah, but why

would we do that? It's spicy. Is there already a J-SocC unit? There are two, in fact. But that's where the money is, right? I mean, that's the thing with J-Soc. Yeah, but going ahead, what's so important, what's so important is a lot of things that Mars Sock does very well, right? Working with partner nations, the bringing the kill chain to close, right, at company level.

I mean, that's what it's all about now. and I'm not just not just because I read Christian Bros.'s book, which is excellent, but because I have been an evaluator, or not evaluator, but a mentor at the Magtaft warfighting exercises looking at peer-on-peer, peer-on-peer competition conflict. And the bottom line is we've got to get better at being able to close the kill chain, that's fine, fix, finish, right, at at tactical level. The Chinese are kicking her ass and the Russians.

This is why we're worrying about the Russians in the Ukraine right now, because the Russians are less capable in the Chinese, but the Chinese are way ahead of us. Anyway, so I don't digress. The point is, instead of talking about CT forces, we should be really focusing on enhancing Mars' ability to do that.

I'll give you an example, right? So at company level, actually Moss Sox pretty good, they're advanced on this. At company level, and I'll keep this unclassified because we all want to continue working. And Putin is a subscriber to our Patreon. Yeah. So still maintaining the all-source intelligence capability that we have down at team level, the precision strike capability, right? not, you know, not freaking mortars or javelin,

but I mean things like the heroes, the Israeli, it's like a loitering munition, you know, 65 to 85K, right? So that is the way we went, being able to close the gold chain there, not kicking down doors anymore or shooting guys in the face. It is all about that. It's all about blue-collar drones, being able to swarm, loitering munitions are a big thing we started with switchblade switchblade

has a range of 10k it's like it's a child within that that you know that venue but the marine corps the problem with the marine corps right now you know I can say this guy I love the brain call but we're still focused on

close with and destroyed the enemy by fire maneuver using you know organic and non-organic weapons well fuck man organic weapons are like 60 millimeter mortar and you know I mean

the enemy is so the Chinese have a fire and forget anti-tank weapon that they can shoot from four clicks the Russians have a saclos the cornet from eight clicks we're just being

fucking outclass yeah closing it becomes a problem and we're right and you know it's like we churnout aircraft carriers, $12 billion a pop, and those things are already obsolete. They can't even as soon as we go to war with China,

those things are going to be streaming in the other direction to get a thousand miles between them and the first island chain because that is the range of the Chinese hypersonic cruise missiles. Anyway, sorry, big digression.

My point is simply this. It's, we, our mindset is so wrong in the military. right now. You know, we are locked into this process of acquisition, everything, and our enemies are running

away from us. And that is why Putin can show this kind of... Hubris, yeah. Because he knows, you know, I mean, bottom line is, I agree with you, Jack. He's not going to invade Ukraine because the backlash

is going to be too strong. I mean, you know, the sanctions and he knows that it's going to be like swallowing a hedgehog and it's going to be an insurgency. And that's going to come home. But there's no problem for him as far as it's not that he's worried about our

military our ability to counter him because we lack the will because we could counter him with cyber but we like the capability because the ATGMs were providing the Ukrainians are shite. They're not going to

you know, the lead, not the Russians don't have enough reactive armor for all their tanks, but you can, you know, their lead tanks are going to suddenly do that. And they learned from Grosny. They learned that the best Ukrainian defense is going to be in the cities. And they were just, you know, they will destroy in complete areas. They have no problem with that. Something I would like to, like, circle back around on with you. not to point the accusatory finger or anything again.

He's still doing that? But this is just, no, no, no, really. I'd like to hear your real thoughts. All I did was, you know, do you remember how I complimented him on Twitter? Yeah. And his petty comments. Yeah. And all he has done, it's like a, you know, like a proctologist,

is the point the accusatory finger. I'm not doing a prostate exam. I want to give you the opportunity to speak. Yeah. In your defense. No, no, not in your defense. Not in your defense, but I do want to hear an expert's opinion because we get asked this sometimes, too, here on the show, about Marsoc. Yeah.

And I would like to hear your thoughts about the relevancy of Marsoc. The capabilities. They don't take the water, actually, too. The capabilities that they fill that perhaps are not being filled by other services. Yeah. And kind of what their future is. Yeah. Because I think there's a lot of confusion, including with myself, about, you know, where does Marsa's,

Stee and the Special Operations Community and where are they heading in the future? Well, Jack, I'm very glad you asked that question. An excellent question and again, a tribute to your acute intellect. Yeah, no, no, seriously, I think what is not widely recognized except among people who have worked with Marshock is. So there's a number of things in their favor. I'm not saying this because I was in Marshock. Number one, so, you know when we talk about integration of enablers, like bring them all in, we struggle with that, right, most services, because there's always that barrier between operators

and the dudes who come in who are like the dog handlers. I really think that Marshock has done a great job in breaking down that tribalism barrier Because at all Marines and the guys who come in go through a pretty good intensive course, you know, the intelligence guys and, you know, even the logistics guys. Number one. Number two, even down at team level, you have the ability, if you're working with the partner in a nation force, you have the ability to find fixed finish at the team level. What I mean, you know, I talked about loitering munitions, especially if you're

you have also, you work in partner nation forces, and Jack, again, to your point, so Green Brays pride themselves on their ability to, I mean, that is what they're about, right, working by with them through partner nation forces. I would say, it's not an argument, I would say that Marsha guys are equally capable in that sense to include language capability. So now you've got an exquisite intelligence capability that does not belong in the Green Bray. community and you've got this ability of what part of nation forces you add to that precision guided weapons at team level right and there's one other component of this and I would say and call me bias but our selection process is extraordinary you know so the guys

coming in to Marsaq are you know you have to be a sergeant or a or a captain coming in and it's quite a narrow window you come in major you know So, and, you know, I've, I, as a regimental commander, I wasn't in charge of the selection process, but I was involved in it. And so you look at their fitness reports, their background, they've typically, you know, I know it's changed now. We've done, but before they've done a couple of combat deployments proved themselves. So you bring those dudes in, and they go through a battery of tests, which we took from the army, you know, And then they go through an assessment process, and then they go through the whole ITC. Look, I'm not saying that MArSalk is the best soft component.

I'm just saying that this is the reason why we evaluate it. It's not because of our amphibious capability, you know, because you can always say, well, you know, is that really necessary? No, probably not. And we don't compete with the seals and blue water, but we can do those missions, but at the same time it's that adaptability, the ability to go into any environment and be able to do all those things at team level.

That's extraordinary. Yeah. I'll shut up in a moment. But seriously, I mean, have you guys, you know, listen, I, as the regimental commander, unfortunately, you know, I had to fire a couple of company commanders. So I know we have defects in the system. but at the same time

across the organization I was continuously impressed I'm not here to tell you propaganda you guys have to understand if I thought it was broken I mean I'll tell you 100 things that have broken by the Marikol

but Marsok is a really really where do you see Marsac fitting in in special operations command in relation to all these other units I think I think Marsok is uniquely equipped for Indo-PACOM theatre against Chinese. I think, you know, for a long time, they've been practicing communications below the

threshold of detectable emissions. I think that there are, you know, again, precision-guided weapons at that level, ability to conduct, they've embraced cyber and operations in the information operations. What's it called now? Information Operations. Information operations. Right. To the point, you know, where you're messaging, opposing commanders, you know, texting, texting, local population. So it's a very, quite a sophisticated capability. And the only thing that I think, you know, they do say that they advertise now, I would like to see really incorporate at that tactical level across the board is OCO,

offensive cyber operations. We suck. Why can't we do this? You know, we have the capability, but we are like so, we, U.S., so restrictive about pushing those permissions down. And that is the way we change our enemy. The Chinese are deadly scared of us being able to do what we can in cyber, right? I mean, think about what you can do. You know, so we're deadly scared about, with, you know,

with justification about Chinese hypersonic weapons, they can easily sink a carrier, you know, at up to a thousand miles. But we have, we do. have the technology to to preempt that but we just don't advertise it we don't you know we don't

push it down we don't practice it. We don't we don't use it as a deterrent. And same thing that Russia, why are we not now right now fucking with the Russian army on the Ukrainian border? I think part of that and I don't know

because I'm not in that space but I think part of that might be because once you use those strategies, like once you do that. They feel it's blown. Right. Through digital forensics and other things like that, you can get to the bottom.

You can find out what, like you can infiltrate a system and loiter in that system. But sort of once you make your move, that a good opponent, will be able to forensically take apart the attack, even if what you're using is something they've never seen before,

they'll be able to reverse engineer it and determine how it was done. And especially like, I mean, we see this with like the advanced persistent threats that we find in our own networks. Like once they make their move and X-filled data, that's it. Yeah.

Right? Now, that doesn't mean that they won't come with new techniques and find new ways. But and usually they're in systems for six months to a year before we know they're there. Yeah. But once they make their move and we realize they're there, then it's done. Yeah. So it could be when it comes to those, you know, those offensive, you know, cyber operations,

it could be sort of like we're waiting for the right moments and waiting until we feel like it merits. I hope so. You know, I hope so, but I'm wondering with Ukraine, when's the right moment, man? Just fucking, you know, just do it. But the thing is... So you can do it, you're absolutely right, Dave. But you can do it exquisitely, right? So you could take out a division C2 node, right?

Right. I get it. You can't go back there again, but you've done it, you know? you can you can spoof things right even trying to even trying to incite blue on blue

right so so there's so much I feel that we could do that we're not and we we're talking about sanctions I get it man but you know and that will be that will be a deterrent but it's

it's not as stronger deterrent as we could do. And, you know, the, you know, I mean, you guys know this. And again, I'm not getting into a classifying role because I don't have special access, but we know the names. I'm sure we know the cell phone numbers of all the Russian commanders, right, brigaded and above, maybe division above, mass on the border right now. Why not sell them text? Sell them text, sorry.

I'm good. Saying, hey, listen, here's a picture of your family. Here's you. Fuck off. Yeah, we know you. We're going to go after you. That's what they do. That's what they did against the Ukrainians.

Yeah. Why, I mean, why can't we do that? Yeah. Hey, dude. I mean, obviously, we're not going to kill their families, but just... We can have somebody else do it for us. Yeah, no, I mean, just sow the seed. Hey, man.

Hey, nice kids, man. His, like, the high school graduation, we know you. We know your name. Yeah. I mean, you're going to start to, how can they have primacy in this realm? Right. It can't be. Yeah.

I mean. And then we just take it like a bunch. Yeah, we just take it, you know? They've done that to the Ukrainians. I mean, you've read about the dude who was, you know, the Russians call, it was GRU, but it was like a separatist, but they called his mom, or they tracked a call he made to his mom and then located them and killed him. They put him in a position where he had to call his mom because they called his mom saying,

hey, your son's being dead. Shit, we can play this too. Right. You know? Yeah, and I mean, I agree. I also think, though, because, you know, like when we've talked to people from SIOP, on the show and things like that. I tell you, you, talk to you guys from Syops.

They should not be in Syops. Anyone who says they are, I am a Syop's guy, should not be there. We're all, we're all should be experts in Syops. Those dudes are not. If it makes you feel any better. If it makes you feel any better, I mean, he barely said anything into, because, because. You forced me to drink that. I just drank water.

and then you said to do some sign. You take what you need to take. Let me tell you a story. We are so restricted. We are so restricted in this country by our own laws. Oh, 100%. It's easier to drop a JDAM on someone. No, you told me, this is like a mess night.

You told me you cannot make a head call during the actual interview. Since he was never in the Marines or Navy, he doesn't make head calls. So he goes to the latrine. Now, that's, like, horrific. And you let him do that, man. Well, now that he's gone, we can talk to you about that. So on, so siops is a underqualified field, right? We should all be in siops.

We should all understand this, right? Right. And so the problem right now is, as we pointed out, it's easier to drop a j-dam on someone than send them a text message. Right, yeah, absolutely. So it's not just a si-up problem. it is, it's a policy problem. Yeah, it's a legislative problem.

Yeah, it's like, you know, the example I just told you, I'm sure would never get through any policy gates. But then that's why we are always, that's why Putin can wind us surrender its finger. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if we could message all those dudes, hey man, we've got your bank account. Yeah.

It's like it's about to be toast. Oh, hey, here's your kids, too. I mean, obviously, we're going to fire through it. We know where your kids live, et cetera. Because they're Russian, so I'd be like, holy shit. And we could do the same thing to Putin. Yeah, we don't. We have, I call it the Lonn Rangers syndrome, right?

Like, I believe that our problem started with the Lawn Ranger. Honestly, because what did the Long Ranger do? He shot the gun out of the bad guy's hand. Never killed the bad guys, right? Yeah. So in the American consciousness, I think, or, you know, in like our ideas, somehow the good guy is supposed to win by remaining above it all. Yeah.

We don't have to kill the bad guys to win. We're good. But we do. But you know what? I agree with that too. You know, Lone Ranger or Sun Tzu, we don't have to use force necessarily. But the problem is we suck. So we let it roll on.

two, it escalates to fall. Right. And that's the thing is... And that's our problem, is we think it is morally reprehensible to text people to say, Hey, man. That's somehow fighting dirty. I know. Right. It's his...

We've got your number. And here are your kids. Here's your family. We don't have to do anything about it. Right. But, you know what, the alternative is to wait until that dude commands a division that rolls into the Ukraine and kills thousands of people. Right.

You know? Of innocent people. And I agree. So, I mean, it's like we're the most, we should be. I'm sorry. No, no, no. We should be what? Go ahead.

This is your show. Technologically the most competent country in the world, but we're not. We're losing our edge. And we focus on Gucci systems, right? Right. So we develop ISR platforms that cannot fly when there's an SA6. Right. Threat.

Right. Instead of producing blue-collar drones, right. Don't worry, Jack. We're almost done, man. Oh, thank God. Yeah. No, you're right, though. And to be fairly, I think that we do have,

we have amazing technical kickbook. And it took, I think it took our government a while to recognize. I hope you don't mind, Andrew. No, I, you're good. man. Dave's explaining the first time he was diagnosed with NKVD. Well, I was in the Navy, obviously. Fortunately, I was a corpsman and I could get a shot without being put in my medical record.

Awesome. So, you know, there's this a little thing between, you know. Between you, me, and the internet. Yeah. But no, the thing is, we have amazing technical capabilities, but so few of the guys that have those. capabilities would be allowed to work for our government because smoking the marijuana no not only that but because the way they developed those like I think we're getting better on that I think we I think I think we're bringing a lot of geeks yeah I

think I think we are too and the dudes who played it's you know Minecraft and everything well the miracle struggle is do we make these guys through boo-bag because it's like these dudes do not look like they could get through boot camp, but we really desperately need them. Right. No, and, and, you know, and that's true. And the thing is, is it, like, when you're 30, like, if you're the type of person that is good at that, chances are you were probably doing it when you were 12, 13, 14, and not always.

Yeah. And how do you become good at, like, hacking when you're 13? I think it has to be as common as masturbation when you're 13. I think those dudes. Computer hacking? Yeah. I think they have to. it's like, you know, it goes hand in hand, no pun intended.

But the problem is that the Marikol's facing now is, yeah, so these dudes are typically not the guys who are out doing pull-ups and running around this track. So are we ever going to get them through boot camp, you know? Probably not. Probably not. But you need them because... For something else.

Yeah, the Marikor is saying, hey, we are, you know, we are, we have to take down the we have to take down Chinese weapons systems you know in order to

secure the first island chain so we need these dudes he can help us do that but they are not that you know they're not

the typical Marines right they're like the Sanzibu Rijima guys so it's a cultural it is and the other thing

I think is it a lot of the people that are in that space tend to also be sort of anti-authoritarian

you know it's not that they don't love them America and it's not it's whatever they don't want to work for the man they don't want to work for the Marines yeah look at Google you know look at Google uh Mike says you guys should get some special operations capability specialists on the show especially socks FG H and I I don't know what the fuck that is oh it's marine terms it's like yeah you're right he's right yeah it's like all right I'm down yeah it's like uh you'll pass me

me the names. They'll ask me the emails and we'll talk. Isaac says, what is your opinion on Air Force drone pilot NSA, okay, reality winner who leaked proof of Russian interference in the 2016 election, but the government added extra stuff to her charges like she planned to join the Taliban. What? Did they really pile that charge on her that she was going to join the Taliban? Really? I didn't. No, I didn't know that. yeah I'm sorry I'm five miles back on that one yeah um there's one more here

all right Andrew says for what it is worth I prefer when my Batman kills wow that's a that's a little off topic Andrew but I get it no it's it's good yeah I mean in the end that's why it's called the kill chain right yeah but well I mean the kill part doesn't have to be... This show has come so far off the rails. I'm not sure it was ever on the rails. No, I mean, it's good. That's okay.

That's okay. It's built in the camera. No, I mean, killed and necessarily now does not have to be physically killed. Right. It can be, you know, disabled in so many ways. Yeah. It can be an execution of whatever type of plan. But we've, it hasn't come off the rails.

We talked about a range of topics. It is. It kind of has to be off the rails, I think. The first episode we did with you, episode 30. We talked about your whole life story, which was, like, fascinating. Yeah. Now, here we are on the follow-up, and it's like just free-ranging, free flow, free fire,

the mad minute, anything that happens, happens. Yeah, it is what it is. Culture. I want to hear, you talked about their regular podcast. Like, since we last spoke, like, what have you been doing lately? What have you been getting into? Oh, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I was kind of laughing with you guys two years ago.

I was still trying to figure out what I was going to do in retirement, and I was still trying to figure it out. But here are things that I really enjoy doing. So I figured out that I really enjoyed writing. It's when I'm writing, and we all, you know, we all PT, right, still? I know Dave does. He's like shaking his head, yeah. No, I mean, we do because, but it's not about the physical, you know,

at this stage of our lives. It's about mental. Yeah, at this stage of our lives, it's not because we're going to get super big or fast. We need to get over that wall or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's about mental, it's just maintaining that mental stability. I mean, that's to me what it is, basically.

So I do that, but writing, writing is all absorbing. So when I'm writing, I can't think about anything else, which is good. I think it's healthy. And I enjoyed writing. And maybe just shouting in the void, I don't know. But, you know, when I get really incensed about stuff that's happened, as I have done for a number of times the last two years, writing actually really, really helps.

So I encourage anyone out there to do the same. And the other interesting thing about writing is, you know, so feedback, right? So there's very, very, a lot of very angry feedback, typically, if you're right about a policy, you know, and it becomes personal, and you've got to become detached from it, and understand, hey, listen, I put this out in the public void, so, you know, whatever comes back. But what I do encourage people to do rather than just throw vitriol back at me is, hey, write an article, man. Yeah, tell me what you think about. Tell me what you think. I mean, listen. And that has not happened one time.

Yeah, I've heard this. I know. It's even a task and purpose. I'm tracking down, you know, I've written, task purpose has been awesome to me. And I've written three articles from them. And I watch the diatribe, you know, blow my articles. And it's like, hey, Paul, you know, is the editor.

I'm going to write a kind of article where you publish it? Absolutely do. Nothing, you know, because it's hard, right? Right. It's really hard. I've had the same experience I've offered when I've had people attack me on things I've wrote or people who work from me wrote and say, would you like to write a rebuttal? Yeah. I mean, the door is open, you know, make your case.

And same. I've never had someone follow up. Yeah, no. And because it's really, you know, it kind of gets to our social media focus. It's very easy to write an eserobic. couple of lines right oh by the way that jack does very well on Twitter but his acrobic lines are witty and Sun Tzu like yeah um but for the most part yeah for the most part you know it's very easy to put all this on my resume most part it's like you know

fuck you and uh so but but it takes it takes some effort right to put together writing is work it's really hard work yeah um But I love it because it absorbs me. It doesn't repay me. You know, I mean, seriously. So, I mean, to your point, Jack, because you accused me of being like a colonel. Which you were. I know, I know, I know.

No, I'm guilty. But, you're, I mean, and the point is so one of the benefits of being colonel is I have great jobs where I, you know, I dispense wisdom. It's like, dude, I like that. I like the way he did that, but have you thought about this or that, you know? And so you tell people that, yeah, you are wrong, but I understand because I'm much wiser than you. So that's part of my job that is quite lucrative and I enjoy it. But the writing piece, I enjoy more, but it's way less lucrative. You know, I would turn out an article that takes five hours and it pays maybe three.

300 bucks and then when task and purpose said we're going to pay you 500 and I'm like wow but but I've got to tell you and they are great because they have a very strict editorial thing so it goes back and forth but you know war on the rocks all those dudes they don't pay shit I'm war on the rocks by the way I'm going to say this on record holy shit say it's just shit shit you know when When you write an article for them, they want to change it totally. Go on their site now. They used to have great articles. Now that's like, holy shit. How is this role in that? Are they changing it just for the sake of changing it? Because an editor is trying to justify their job or is their agenda.

There was an editor. He's been fired now. But there was an editor who is like totally, I want to change your article into my PhD thesis. You know. and he was dreadful, and I looked at it. You know, he's like a resume. I was a ship driver.

I commanded six ships, but they were like rowboats. You know, they were small vessels, and he kept getting moved on. Anyway, doesn't matter. Was it, I mean, like I said, was there, because I'm not, I had. Irregular warfare initiative. I'm not paid to say this.

their articles are really good. Right. And that's where you're doing some of your podcasts now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm not just saying this. Who are they through, though? It's West Point and Princeton. Gotcha.

So it's like... I've listened to a few of those podcasts. Yeah, but the podcast, you know, the articles are great. And I'm not just saying that because I'm part of the organization. Sure. West Point and Princeton. And so when you write an article, it goes through both our editors, and they're really, you know, so the dude that I had to get my articles through

had written for the economist. You know what I mean? He was a really, really smart guy. Turned out he went to the same school as me in the UK, but they didn't help me. You know, I mean, and I look back out on his edits, and it really taught me a ton about writing. Yeah. Where it's war on the rocks

It goes through some dude who was like Hey, I know about this topic You know, but he doesn't know about this topic Yeah Was there, and I'm not familiar I mean, I know about War on the Rocks But I don't really, I haven't read You don't need to know about it

But were there, were there political I mean, were they conservative or left or right? No, I can't tell you for a moment, no It wasn't that It wasn't about that No, no, no, it's about... It was more about... Yeah, yeah, exactly.

No, no, no, they've been... You know, they're absolutely not about politics. They've been good about that. Yeah. And same thing with the Modern War Institute. They have backed me 100%. Because I wrote an article. The article wrote about Austin.

But in that same article, I attacked... What's his name? Josh Hawley? Who's he? He's a... Senator, Republican Senator, right? Who was, like, laying into Austin. He's a piecework.

You're looking it up. Look it up on Google. I think it's Hawley. H.A. Yeah, Judge Hawley. What a piece of work. What a fucking... Who's talking shit?

Oh, my God. He has... That dude... He's one of these guys who is, like, always forefront on anything military without... ever having been in the military.

He almost extreme right wing. He was a dude who after the 6th January... Give me into a refill there. Sixth January, you know, the attack on the Capitol. Yeah. He gave them the high five. He just like, doing them salute. And I'm like, how does this dude not get fucking fired?

but he comes back and you know so my point was this I was attacking Austin's policies but I said in that article I derive no pleasure from the fact that Hawley you know hold him of the calls

the calls no pun intended you know because Holy is a fucking piece of shit basically you know he's a whereas at least you know Austin's served in the military. It's not about respect or anything. It's about Austin should not have reached that rank.

You know, he should have retired as a colonel. I worked for him at CENTCOM. But it's not a, you know, it's not a personal thing. Right. I respect the fact that he's done what he's done. Right. Right. And I mean, that's one of the challenging things. And again, that

comes down to the, like, the politicization. Yeah. Give him another chance. He's going to get it. We'll give it to him. The politics. C caveat. Alibi, pass. I can't say it either, man.

It's not days far. No, neither can I. Criticization. That's the first time I've said it right off the bat. That's because you're like six streams. I have to be real. Why are you counting? I'm not,

I cannot do anything that you guys could at this point. I'm done. But, you know, but the thing is, is that there are times when, There are times when, you know, and I'm like, I'm good. It's true. This truth is coming out. I'm good, man.

And, you know, and I don't have a beef with the, I love the military and I love the U.S. But there are times that the military should not be defended. I mean, there are times, or not the military. And so you can't take a political stance on it that the military or because somebody was in the military is always right. and at the same time you can't take the stance on it that it's the military so it's always you know it's always fucked up

and you know and it's always going to be wrong it's like there are people there that are doing the job no you've got to be nuanced Josh Hawley is a piece of work man look him up all lessons look him up the dude should not be I don't know how he is elected

Jack I sense we're tracking down. This is good. You think so? You think we need to wind down? You think we need to wind down? Yeah, no, it's good. No, is there anything else? We should talk about it. Brian

says, for what it's worth, for comic geeks, bad guys die in the MCU. Yes. Okay, okay. High Tide says, what was T.F. Hydra doing with French families in the IDP camps over in Syria? Were they only targeting the fighters

or families who defect also? Holy shit. That's spicy. He knows about Hydrit, huh? That's spicy. Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know. I wasn't going to ask that.

I wasn't going to name the name of the task force. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, but Hydrid is the task force here. Yeah. So the dude, obviously, what's his name? High tide. High tide.

High tide obviously knows a considerable amount about that task force. That's pretty spicy. That's a pretty spicy question. That's a pretty spicy question. Folks out there, I don't know what to say. I mean, have we reached an impasse? Are we there? I don't know.

I mean, have we had enough? I have, or things are going to start? We all have full glasses, but like, if Andrew wants to start wanting things down, we start wanting things down, no, no, no, no, I don't want to, if you're getting bored with our company, I'm not, holy shit, if you feel like this is an interrogation. No, but like you said, I mean, you are a criminal. You're in. You're in the company.

No. The only reason I said that. I saw Dave lean over to puke over there and behind the chair. And I'm like, and so why is peaking? And so I know you put the button on mute, so the listeners couldn't hear. And that's the only reason I said that. That was just a reboot. That's how you start tonight.

I can interrogate you all night. I have no problem with it. This is what I do professionally. So, no, but if you want to wind things down, if you're like, no, we need to kill the stream. you'll kill the stream this interview is over this interview is over too many penetrating questions no no go ahead man too many penetrating questions no go ahead

no I like more socks stuff I like penetrating questions and you're asking where it's going but I don't like waking up with my boxer shorts on backwards and a mop on my head but I don't think that's where we're heading there we are heading there we are heading we're in that place right what do you don't like they've been that place four or five times

this week I mean let's be fair Let's be fair. Every time we have these in studio, give me some credit. And we typically stretch these interviews way past the point of no return. And yes, it's true.

We should have ended it 45 minutes prior. Dave told me he hates it when he wakes up in the morning and a rubber drops out of his butt in the show. But there's nothing wrong with that. Because I feel like I could have had a love connection and I remember nothing of the evening.

When your farts smell like latex He's like, well, what happened there? I do hate it. I love these intellectual conversations. It's like very... Yeah, we're bringing you back. We're bringing you back to like, you know, 1997 for you.

Your articles about Somalia, what were they about? You had a couple... There's like a series of them that came out recently. Yeah, yeah. So the reason why I talked about Somalia, so I had...

I had like a kind of a niche get in with a magazine called News Looks. Hold on, the girls look like they need to pee, but they said they can't. Go and pee. Oh, are you good? Yeah, go and pee. No, you're not gay. No, there's an audience here tonight that we have bored to death. Yeah, we have a live studio audience.

They're bored to death, and they're like, we're telling all these worst stories. They're like, yeah, okay, that's how it happened. Yeah, I'm sure. And they're like, and they wanted to get up, and they were first time tonight, they were active. Yeah. They got up and... You could just put the block in the door and go if you need to go? Yeah, yeah.

Please. Are you sure? Oh, God. That's my fiance speaking. She's fine. She's not going to be fine if we ever got married. Anyway. Somalia.

Somalia, yes. True love is blonde. It is blind, isn't it? It's like, put a block in the door. Go and pee. Poor girl. We can pass you a glass. You'll be right.

Anyway, yeah. So here's the reason why I started to write about it because I wrote an article about the death of the 14 service members who died in Kabul Airport, right? You know, and I try. You know, I understand. this we're on the profession we understand hey this is an implicit understanding that this may happen to you so I don't want to make it too emotional right but at the same time I'm like hey this didn't need to happen right and I explained

why it didn't need to happen it was again not not being emotional but then I started a you know I and then I wrote another another article about how curious it was. After that happened, a lot of Americans, not the article, but the deaths, when people found out that I had been in the military, people were saying, oh, I'm sorry for a loss. And I'm thinking, hey, it's

your loss too. You know, I have no greater connection to these people except we served in the same, you know, in uniform than you. It should be your loss. Then I realized, of course it's not. Of course it's not. They have no skin in the game. They are, you know,

most Americans, don't know someone in the military. And so that made me think back to Somalia. And kind of the transition. And I know that some of your more erudite listeners will say, hey, you're making it too clear. But there is a transition. So in Somalia, which I happen to be involved in the first landing in Mogadishu.

And actually, I know this sounds like I was just notorious. chest beating but the first engagement with ID's forces right which escalated ultimately to Black Hawk down blah blah blah and then the decision to withdraw US forces from Somali but my point is that that the decision to withdraw US forces after the last of 18 dudes had exponential effects right So you could argue that. I'm not saying it's conclusive, but you could argue that. The, you know, and then follow up on that, Clinton, you know, it doesn't matter what administration.

The administration's reluctance to be involved in Bosnia, no, I'm sorry, Rwanda than Bosnia, where, you know, sent messages, right? And then you get the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. you get the bombing of the U.S. coal and they get 9-11, right? So you could say all that is unconnected. And I have no special information to say disconnected. All I say is it is probably connected, right? You know, the signal that, hey, we took 18 casualties.

We, you know, maybe... The inertia. A thousand Smiley's were killed in that engagement. But backtrack, you know, it's contacts. We saved thousands of lives by our intervention. You know, I'm, exactly. And the sense that, hey, all we need to do is bloody a few Americans. And they walk back out.

Right, right. So, so I wrote, that's why I went back to Somalia, because I was personally involved in first, the first landing, I was personally involved in the first decision to open fire on dudes and ID forces. is and I understand why I was investigated after that. I think that was healthy. I think the turnover, obviously, from UNITAF to UNISOM was very unhealthy, subsequent perception of taking up sides.

You know, there's a number of things that went wrong that I try and outline because I feel so that was kind of the beginning of bad things. Right. And I'm concerned that the same thing is happening. now. That's why I wrote that. And again, I'm not worried about administrations. It's not about Republican and Democrats. It's we cannot be seen to disengage from the world. Right. And we have the memories of Kabul, fresh in mind. We pulled out of Somalia, and it's like this was a clear message that we can't simply think, hey, if it doesn't, if we don't see it happen, it's like

a tree falling in the forest. It's never going to affect us. Right. What do you think? Like, I'm really interested to ask this about the big picture and what you see as far as post-global war on terrorism, if you will, post-counter terrorism, dealing with Russia and China. And what do you see is the current world order and what do you see it as evolving into the future

from a national security standpoint? Yeah, so I think, I think, vis-a-be China, we're in deep trouble. And I don't, you know, I'm not being a chicken little. I just think that we need to alter our culture, and that's the only way to put it. I've given it, you know, I've given examples. The Chinese right now, if we went to war of China,

if they invaded Taiwan, they would invite it, invade Taiwan, right? Right. And any, as I said, any carriers, we wouldn't be sending carriers there. they would be steaming any carriers we had within a thousand miles would be steaming away because you think it's that bad i do i do like we would back down yeah i i would hope we wouldn't back down completely but i think we have no leverage right now i think what we should be doing is reassessing

what we're putting money in for acquisition system i think we should be arming the taiwanese with blue collar drones, right? Just like the Turks, the DP2, loitering munitions, things that they can destroy Chinese ships and landing craft at a distance. Not the fucking NSM, you know, the naval

strength missile that we keep touting. I mean, like mass produced not Gucci gear, and we should be overtly training the Taiwanese and resistance techniques. I mean, we can't have horror, aren't we? Well, no. I, I, I, what do you, what do you think should be, and it gets, I think that's given a lot of

publicity. I think we're just training Taiwanese and basic shit. And just kind of like, yeah, and we're like, oh, look, what we did, we got dudes saying, no, we're not. I'm sorry, dude. No, it's okay, but it gets, it gets challenging when it comes to corporate interest, whether you're talking about technological interests and, you know, like Hawaii or, you know, Hawaii or whatever, in, you know, in our electronics

or you're talking about some, but simply as simple as Disney, you know, and their sort of capitulation to the Chinese and things like that. Facebook. Yeah, what do you think should be our like sort of stance? Yeah, that's really,

we're a really difficult position, right? So we are a libertarian democracy, Carr-Reilly, liberal democracy, and small aisle. we can't strong arm our companies in the way that China does. And so Google, ironically, I'm using Google as an example,

but has withdrawn from Project Maven and everything that they were helping us with developing AI. What they don't realize, maybe they don't realize, is they unwittingly providing the Chinese with a ton of information. Right. I mean, that's where Google and other U.S. companies is where the Chinese are accumulating a lot of their capability. I don't have an answer, Dave.

I wish I did. Yeah. It's challenging. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, you know, a Trumpian dude who's like, fuck those motherfuckers. Right. Because I understand that we have to pay a price for being who we are. But at the same time, but you know what? I do have an answer in the sense that we can challenge them in their own game. why you know we have to stop pursuing these high-end acquisition systems acivy right the marine corps

amphibious combat vehicle multi billions and billions of dollars already obsolete from the moment because the chinese have a man portable right not like the cornet man portable anti-tank weapon top down a standoff of at least four kilometers we think more right so my point is we're generating all this stuff from aircraft carriers

through to armament vehicles that are already obsolete we've got to step back close down all our programs and focus on unmanned unmanned shit it's like wasn't one of the findings

from the 9-11 commission that there is a failure of imagination. Yeah, yeah. That's 100% what's happening now. Unmanned, you know, unmanned, semi-autonomous. We will never be totally autonomous. And the reason why is because of ethical reasons. Not, you know, we cannot, we always have to have a human

in the kill chain. The Chinese don't care. They are focusing on autonomous, totally autonomous weapons that will close a kill chain without any human in the loop. Right. And so I see something, I'm using just one example, the Marine call the ACV. I'm like, what the fuck are you thinking, man? You are producing this armative vehicle with less armor than we have right now.

No reactive armor. A, you know, gun range of two clicks max. I mean, it's, and it's going to take six years to produce and cost all this money. and it churns, it consumes so much diesel. We just can't, we can't feed it. One of the things I try to remind people of that when they try to say that a conflict with China is impossible, that it won't happen, that it's unrealistic, and like, God help us, I hope they're right. Yeah. But when we talk about a conflict with China that we're going to go to war over the San Francisco.

or some rocks that are barely visible at low tide off the coast of the Philippines. And it's like, you're right. We're not going to go to war over that. But when a aircraft carrier gets sunk and you're going to have on the 24-hour news cycle, you're going to have these sandlers. Now you're at a significant decision point. Well, you're going to have these sandlers that are portrayed. They've been killed and they're, they're,

going to be shown on the evening news with the American flag fluttering in the background behind their picture and they're dead and that's just going to go 24 7 and at that point it's like you're right we're not fighting over the Senkaku Islands we're fighting over

all these sailors that died on this aircraft carrier and at that point it's kind of and it becomes an emotional escalation so that is why in a sense Ukraine is important because the Chinese and watching. You know, Ukraine it's a

it's the analogy to Taiwan is but honestly what do we do as a nation because we have had you know 20 years of war. People are exhausted

fed up from it or or yeah not even just fed up I think people just tuned it out right? Yeah yeah you know I would say they tuned it out early on right? Yeah like they like year too right? No one gave a shit.

And this is going to sound partisan, maybe in part it is, but, you know, the media has not helped. Like, during the Bush administration, every day the media reported how many U.S. deaths there were in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then as soon as the administration changed to Obama, like that, stopped, right? But I would argue it doesn't matter because no one gave a shit. So even when it was being reported. unless you had a son or daughter in the military, unless your neighbors in the military, no one gave a shit.

I agree. It was like, how is the stockmark doing? Right. Right. And how much does bread? How much bread cost me? Right. And I get that because we can only care about so much

that affects us directly, right? But the question is, is that even if the Chinese do sink a U.S. carrier, like what administration who in the administration, whether this administration or another administration or Republican administration, whatever, what is the cost of war with China?

And at what point, because if China comes out, that's great. If China comes out and says it was an accident. Yeah. Right? If they, because they're good at propaganda, obviously, if they come out and say, are bad.

Right? how will the U.S., the public, not the politicians, because politicians are often driven by the public opinion, how will the public respond to, well, do we engage in a full-on war with China now? Like, what do we do about this? So I think, I mean, that's a great question. So I think we are lagging behind in our messaging, right? We are, we, we, it's just, we're so incompetent. I mean, we should be messaging everyone from she down that, hey, listen, this is what will happen, you know, if you do X, right? But we don't, and we need to back it up to you.

And what do we do to back it up, though? Well, you know, the problem is right now, the aside from, so there's like there's a slow and fast response, right? So the fast responses we need to demonstrate our offensive cyber capability, right, which is significant. When you look at what edge we have on our adversaries right now, it doesn't lie in kinetic weapons. It really doesn't. We like to think it does. It does not. But even the F-35.

I mean, Chinese pretty soon can shut down the F-35. It's a flying computer. but cyber yeah absolutely so selective cyber operations which the Chinese and the Russians are already already doing why not and then to your point slower cycle we need to like run away from all our just shut down every acquisition system that is useless like the ACV we are generating platforms that already obsolete right and we need to focus on hypersonic weapons like the Chinese have and on long range precision weapons down to the tactical level and most of all sensors right cross-board mass produced yeah so I want to use

term yeah unmanned systems basically why we still have that mad systems it's ridiculous. The ACV is mad. As soon as you put guys in something, you have to layer on laser protection that make it extraordinarily expensive, but it's still vulnerable, right? Right, right.

You know, and we've talked about this before. Bio technology. But, you know, the idea that even like our Blue Force trackers, right, things like that, you know, how vulnerable they might be. Because unlike Etsy or Amazon or, you know,

Google or whomever else can put their systems out to like these bug bounty websites and say, hey, hack this and tell us what our vulnerabilities are. It becomes very hard to do that with, you know, what we want to be a secure system. Like the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense can't give like the code or can't say, hey, please invade this system for BFTs and tell us. So it's a place, you know, where when we have, you know, like the advanced persistent threat number one, which is a Chinese, right, it's, it's a Chinese government group of hackers. Yeah. Basically.

That's supported by the Chinese government. And so many of, like in Russia, so many of the ransomware, so many of these hacking activities are, even if they're not under the direction of the Russian government. They're supported by the Russian government. Right? Yeah. But in the U.S., it's it's like... It's very, so, yeah, it's like our commercial in China,

commercial enterprises around the Communist Party. Yeah. Basically, I mean, they're influenced by it. And, no, I understand. It's, it, we walk a fine line, but at the same time, we lack education

as a society, the fact that you know Google step back from Operation Maven right and and I can't help thinking that DOD has morons in charge you know that they can't sit down with Google guys and saying hey hey man this is what it's about you know it's like hey you wouldn't run this company in China yeah like China is and the we do have we do have idiots you know in in key positions PEOs is one example and we have commanders who think it's It's beneath their purview to go and talk to commercial companies and say, hey, guys, here's what's going on.

Right. It's why we need your help. And it's not about you've got to be patriots. It's about, here's the alternative, man. Do you want a totalitarian, you know, totalitarianity, I'm having some rule of law? Right. Or, you know, do you support theirs? I mean, it's not about being American.

Right. Well, I mean, and that's, I mean, it's the same thing with Disney, right? I mean, they want the money from the Chinese market. Yeah. I get that. But if you were a company that was like born and raised and operating in China, you wouldn't have any say over what you're doing here. Yeah, 100%.

So, Andrew, tell me what, if any, is the difference between, episode 30 and episode 130. What? Are you disturbed? No, I'm not disturbed. I'm just throwing the ball into your court. So I've become wiser. How so?

No, here's why. So a couple of things. So when I did episode 30, I think I was still you know, kind of under the auspice of the military. I was a little more wild to that sense. And don't get me

I still you know I mean I I write because I love yeah it sounds calling it but I love the country I love the military What I hate conversation. Yeah what what I hate is Are all the people who are fucking it up right? It's like the You know our our ethos our background our culture. It doesn't have to be this way We don't have to have many stupid so many stupid people in our profession right? they need to be expunged. And the other thing that has changed is, you know, in the last two years, it's been COVID,

but it's also been an extreme emphasis on political polarization, even within our profession, right? And so that disturbs me too. You know, people can say, hey, listen, it was worse than 1968, it was worse. But you know what? In 1968, yes, it was worse than American society. But in 1968, within the military, yes, there were some racial tensions and everything.

But by and large, people held together, right? And now that is what disturbs me about our profession, is you have people becoming increasingly politically polarized. And they forget, you know, they forget what we're about. Does that make sense? You're talking about specifically about some of the issues around the vaccines? That's one of them, yeah. Did you have the anthrax vaccine?

Yes. I had it. I didn't. Whoa, day. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no. It's an anti-vex vaccine. I've got words.

I've got words. I had the, I had the anthrax vaccine not once, but twice. Yeah. Because the army fucking forgot about my, or they misplaced my vaccine. records and so they gave me that series not once but twice i was in the same position yeah fortunately i was a civilian at the time so while it was highly encouraged like cross you know crossing over anti-faxa over into yeah yeah yeah no we understand you iraq no we get it we when they describe what would happen yeah like the series so here's my point here's my concern and i'm not

you know i'm the last dude to say oh my god this generation does not But, holy shit, the anthrax vaccine was certainly not a debacle, a debacle. And we were like, okay, I got it, man. I'll take it, you know. And so it disturbs me now that you have guys not just not only saying, I don't want to take it, or we've got a lieutenant colonel of Rancourt going on fucking YouTube again. Not Scheller. No, there's another one.

There's another. Yeah. sequel to Shella. Oh, wow. Speaking out about the vaccine, you know, and I'm like, so there is definitely, that, that works, that concerns me. I mean, you've, you've seen my articles. I relish dissent, but it's got to be disciplined descent.

Right, right. Not just like, I don't want to fucking do this, you know? Yeah, it's not just that I'm a douchebag. Yeah. Not that they've refused, you know, at that level. They said that it would bleed. for like three days. I was concerned because they told me

they told me I wouldn't have kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was having a lot of trouble at the time getting an erection and so I was concerned about that. The anthrax vaccine did not like a fucking... This interview

is going to get demonetized for two seconds. Whatever. But we've committed. It didn't help me. No. The antirex. I was sitting in Saudi Arabia, getting right across the border, and they're like, hey, we want to give you the Sathranes for the vaccine.

I'm like, oh, yeah, sure, what's it about? Like, well, it's not FDA approved. We're giving it the troops. It'll be like nine shots at once, and you'll bleed for like three days. I'm like, I'm good. Yeah, it would be okay. How many cases of anthrax are there currently in Iraq? Yeah, yeah.

None. And Dave had no problem getting an erection at that time. I just want to say that for the record. They didn't say anything about erections. Like a baby's arm with an apple in its fist. Or a walnut. But anyway, my, you know, my point is we all rogered up to it, right or wrong. Right, right.

I mean, it's like, so I can't, I know this sounds very outdated, but I cannot find sympathy for people who say I'm not going to get vaccinated. because, you know, look at what smallpox vaccine did. Right. 300 million people died in the 20th century from smallpox. Right. You know, and uncountable numbers of people are blinded or disfigured for life. And so no one said, hey, don't want to get a smallpox vaccine.

Right. The whole world was because they knew what the alternatives were. I am a bit confused by these folks, particularly their Navy SEALs. They're Navy steals who don't want to get the vaccination. Yeah. Of all people. Well, it's lemishes their biceps. But it's like, what the fuck?

Everyone, you got how many, you got like 27 vaccines when you came into the military. And this one, this one vaccine is like, nope. Troubles you. That's one step too far. That's one step too far. I can't do that. But I'm going to, and ask somebody who had the vaccine and the booster. Right. I will argue on the other side that the topic became so political.

Yeah. It became so political. 100% that when the government starts mandating something, there are people who are going to say, like, no. But all those previous vaccines were also mandated. Like we didn't have a choice when we came into the military. Look, I mean, people going to get their food vaccine every year without a thought. And I'm not, like, I'm not saying that the vaccine didn't work or that it was, you know, not important or whatever else. But also, there was a lot of misinformation going on from both sides.

For sure. You know, in the beginning. You know, a lot of the stuff that Fauci said has turned out to be not true. Like the whole lab origin thing that was like blown off is concerned. conspiracy now is being, oh, it probably was. Could have been. You know, could have been. But the whole thing was so political.

Like, I don't blame people for being, they're not necessarily anti-vaxxers, but I don't blame people for being, you know. Sandouts? Yeah. For being, I'm not doing this because even the stuff they said that if you have the vaccine, you can't get COVID, you can't pass COVID. None of that's true. Well, who said that, though? that's on multiple like multiple people said that

within the government and on the news like and that is well people in the government said you cannot get COVID if you get the vaccine yes because that's not scientific at all but it was being said I would be interested to see like who in the government said that well let's see

what Google says but I'm not interested in what Google says I want to see who in the government said but that's what I'm saying is Google tell me who this is why you're going to get high ratings because you're arguing. No, this is how we're going to get being off.

No, this is why we get demonetized because we mentioned COVID. Not even my comment about getting a Siffy after. No, the heart on, I can only say that after Donna leaves. No, no, no, no. She's going to laugh.

I think there's a commentary out there that like, that the vaccine was like 100% sure you're not going to get COVID and it's the end. And I have not, myself, I'm not aware. of any government official that said like 100% you're not going to get COVID

if you get the vaccine. Look, I remember when it was in early January, Trump like declared COVID like a national emergency and banned flights from China and people call them xenophobic. But what does that have to do with what I just said? What I'm saying

is that the whole thing has been political. Any 100% is being political. It is. And any national much less global phenomena will be political. Yeah. We'll be political.

Especially now. There's no question. Anytime. I don't think when the Spanish flu hit that it... No, you're right, man. The vaccine. It actually was political and there were people who were anti-masters. Yes.

But it was also political in the sense of when the Republicans, when the Republicans saying this is a problem, people, the Democrat, the, like the head of the health in New York, was saying go to the Chinese New Year Festival. Everything's fine. This isn't a problem. Right? In the very beginning, like the positions were switched.

So all I'm saying is that it's very like this goes back to our, to the origin of this topic is the people who won't get the vaccine, I understand where they're coming. We're going to Joe Rogan. Jack, Jack's going to like. It's coming after for another sketch. I have to pour another scotch. Jack, you've, like, done very well.

This is, like, half the bottle here. No, it's, no, it's way more than half. Jack, how do you say that's... Way more. Viewers. On a sign, no, put it on his side. No, put it on his side. You'd be the judge.

You'd be the judge. Seriously, put her on his side. That's how you tell. We're right here. We're right here. Like, ship in the bottle. Oh, okay. Like this?

Yeah, it's way more than half. So on wed... So, on wed... You're like, tilting it that way. On wed, indeed. July 22nd. He's still got him on the Vax. Gold standard study confirms

MRI vaccines preventing them off. Get them off. All right. Well, no. Can I get them off? Can I cut the feed? Jack, get me off. Dave, you're right.

100%, man. No, it's just political. That's all I'm saying. It is political. Anything that is a global phenomenon is going to be political. He said that. He said that.

Off of that whiskey. He said global phenomenon. If you, if you, It's slipping away. No, no, and we can get into the details and fight each other, and I'm sure we will. But all I'm saying is that any sort of topic that is a global phenomenon is going to become politicized. And if our barometer is like we're going to throw any argument out of the window because it's politicized, then we're not going to discuss. Disgush means discuss.

Thank you. Discussion. Any sort of global phenomena because they have all become political. No. This all tracks back,

though, to the idea of people not getting vaccinations. Let's talk about the Ukraine, man. Yeah. How many?

True love is blind. I know. True love is mine. That's why I love you, Jack. I think you're a good-looking man. I agree, actually. Yeah.

But Jack does not need to wake up to our morning with his boxer shorts on backwards on a mop on his head. I might though. It's happened before. Look. But the difference between need and desire are two completely different things.

It's very philosophical. Andrew's saying, oh, and my Batman comment was off topic. Yeah. I don't get it. He's got us there, I guess. So Michael said that the our Amazon link doesn't work. I posted an Amazon link that does work.

What's a tat on your right arm, man? It's a Sumerian seal that is... Oh, you like seal? Not like, oh. Oh, my. Sumerian, really? I have been shamed. I have been shamed.

So basically, I am deeply shamed. The seals can trace their heritage back at Gugamesh. I am deeply shamed. I'm deeply shamed by this revelation. No, this, it's a, it's a Sumerian seal. It's on a vase in the Louvre. No kidding. I love it.

It's called the vase if it's in the Louvre. No, it's fine. It's fine. Give him a break. It's the bars and the Louvre. So what is... The point is, a dude who is a former ranger

has a seal. Has a seal. No, it has a tattoo from the Louvre. Yeah. You should... A seal Louvre. Oh, seriously. You should like congratulate them.

I'm going to have to resign my position as a notionary army person. So what is the boss? Where did he get that done in Paris? No, no, God damn it. I got it done in fucking, like...

Oh, he resorts profanity. You know, I would... The last... Yeah. He cannot... He cannot explain himself. No, last... It was in Carmel, New York, when I was 21 years old.

Oh, you had that since you had 21? Yeah, yeah. Before I deployed to Iraq for the first time. It's French. man I'm 38 now I'm like pushing on like senior citizen

status at this point he's way old than that I know I remember I know you got you two you two you two are about to have like apples sauce like spoon fed in your mouths and I love having anything

spoon fed yeah anyway no and so this is it's good man it looks good Jack I like this the intertwined serpent is the Mugizida which is the god of knowledge and inches humor I love it

And yeah, the eagles were like the cherubs. How did you show them? How did you get that done, man? This is an important question. I took the design to a tattoo artist and I showed him. And they, yeah. So Donna and I are going to get a tattoo, but it's like an Arabic thing. It's like fairies and...

Make sure it says the right thing because I've seen a lot of things. I'm nothing against fairies, but what's it? Life. It's like the Arabic. depiction of life. You guys are looking at me. Why not? I'm not passing judgment.

I just don't know what the fuck we're talking about right now because I'm drunk. What? What? You told me you would never get drunk again, man. I lied. I lied.

Two years ago. Do you have any tattoos now? I do. Only a morin call one. Show them off. Where'd you get it? Oh, shit. Come on, come on.

Get naked on the stream. I'm not getting naked. Get naked on the stream. Okay. Come on, come on. There you go. There you go. Oh, that's hot.

That's hot. Where'd you get that? Is that the Eagle Globe and Anchor right there? Yeah. So it's Palm Springs. Palm Springs, California, 1998. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

It's a work of art. That is art. That is art. Hey, who's the guy who... That is art. Shit. I remember his name in a moment. O'Man.

Greg Ollman. The dude who tattooed Greg Ollman did this. He did... I'm not saying this is better than whatever he tattooed in Greg Ollman. And Greg Ollman, didn't he, like... Why are you frowning at me? Because you're here shirtless and showing off the Eagle of Gouldman, the anchor. I'm slightly...

intimidated. So if you guys were listening to this on a podcast? It should at least be in our Patriot. Yeah. It should be on all Only fans. It should be on our only fans. Yeah. Great Goldman. Anyway. What are those Nips? Those are the Somalis that are you shown off. Nip's is not a nice time. Here on the stream. Nips is going to push us into the realm. No, no, no, no. It's not illegal. We're within the balance of the end-user agreement. We're all good. We're all good. We're all good.

You should do MacBee's sod guys and get gnaug. So last time... That's some legit shit. That's very nice. Jimmy Wong. And remember, last time we were here... Take your pictures. Take your pictures. Come stand up.

Stand up. Last time we were here, Dave did wave his penis at the camera. Yes. And they said that was not sufficient to make it pornography. No. No. Because it's barely a blitz. Yeah. It's like waving...

Anyway. It's like... I want a point. I bet Andrew said he wouldn't do that early. I'm trying to get into my shirt. He wouldn't do that earlier in the show. He is shirtless at at fucking midnight. I just wanted to, I didn't want to say how much better Jack is doing this show than in episode 30.

Because in episode 30 by this time, when I were still talking about it. Jack was completely silent. He was like, he was drunk. He was so. You know, when he said, oh,

between us we drank two bottles of whiskey, he drank a bottle of half. Yeah. Yeah. We were like, we were like the Puritans. We were the Amish of the group. Oh, I'm with you, man.

And Jack was like completely, like, spaced out. Just, I'm like, Jack isn't saying much. But then he didn't remember the interview the next day. Right. Shit, man. This might, okay.

The readers, we've lost the listeners. So, anyway. You know a way to put on the shirt back on. You guys. Oh my God. You guys suck. This podcast is so fucked up. Like, what has become of my wonderful podcast?

No, he had a lot of the intellectual conversations. His shirtless, like, get a cap on his shirtless pin. We had a lot of intellectual. It started off very, very normal. And, like, we're a legitimate, serious podcast. And by the time we took, like, two and a half hours in, and we drank, like, two bottles of whiskey. And it's like, it's so fucked up.

And Andrew Dunbar says, I want to point out that Andy said he wouldn't do that earlier. I said I wouldn't do that earlier. But you guys fucked me up. Oh, my God. Hey, show me your tattoos. And I couldn't roll on my sleeve. No, I know.

Listen. It's totally our fault. Zach just donated $10. Okay. Well, now we have $10. Yeah. Because he loves the mitts. I'm going to go piss again.

And for Christ's sake, I hope that you guys are fucking finished by the time I get back. No, we're good. No, save, stay, say, let's close down. Let's close down. No. Jack, you can make it, man. Like two minutes, I'll be back. Jack's going to reboot.

Jack cannot rebut. boot. When you're in that state, there's no rebooting. Jack is like, come on Dave, you're with me, man. We're right here. Okay. We're right here. But we're two former Marines. Yeah, that's exactly right. Like, most people don't know that

of me, because I don't talk about my Marine Corps and Navy Pass. Actually, Dave has had an extraordinary pass. Every single service, special operations. And that's why Jack is in the head. Yeah. Or the latrinas he would call it. A latrine.

No, I don't. I call it the head. And that's why he's saying you're here. Yeah. I'm here to translate, basically. Okay. Should we say goodbye to everyone? I don't know. We should say goodbye. Yeah. Have we reached that point?

Yeah. I mean, right there, I feel like. Yeah, I think we, when Dave snuck it out, when he like, almost fell. Yeah. When he almost fell, I think that was the end to and intelligent conversation. I think Jack was saying,

this is it for me. Honestly, I think it was probably the end of intelligent conversation like 45 minutes. So guys, pick up Andy's book, check out his Twitter, check out his... Okay, I'm going to speak from the heart. You honestly, even if you're not, I mean, if you're watching our podcast

and you probably are into, you know, military history, but if you really want to read like a real history and not just of the events on the ground but of what somebody goes through definitely check out um when the tempest gathers i you know by by andy it it or Andrew apologies you're no you know by and you're you're you're okay i mean i got to i got to give the formula oh it's and he's good but it honestly is one of the best books i've ever read because you're not just reading about this military thing that's happening,

but you're reading about a very personal journey. And you talk about a lot of very personal things. And I really, really respected that the first time I read the book. You know, you are very vulnerable in the book. Like you write, you write honestly with your own. heart on your sleep. You know, your heart on the page. I can't, even if you are not into military history, reading it, if you just want to read

a really great involved personal account, I would recommend checking out. Come with us, man. Come into the circle. Bring me back in. Bring me back in. Let's bring check in. Talk me down. Talk me down.

Jerry, Jay, says, I'm lucky. I cannot drink any green bray or Marines. I was in the Navy. I was in the Navy. And trust me, you can out drink somebody who is in Navy. And none,

thank you, one. Someone check on Jack. Jack's back. Jack is back. Somebody check on Jack. I'm alive. I'm alive for now. You know, the last time there were comments, I went through for the first time, Dave, comments from the last time they're like,

are you guys okay? you're drinking so much whiskey and one dude's like oh my god you need to and one guy is like you need help we get comments

sometimes like that on just our regular like streams like oh as you know a veteran and somebody who my shirt's on backwards man but we get criticism of all the time

this is not my boxer shorts last time. Yeah. You guys need to check out episode 30. Andy is phenomenal on that. Jack is great up until like the two-hour point

when Jack just becomes a presence. incomprehensible, right? Yes. He's like... At that point, he's like a bogal and forget. J.P. Ortega...

Anything you want. J.P. Ortega just said, Andy should host a podcast right now. I think so. Yeah, I do. I do, I do, but it's like not good. You want to sign us off? Yeah, yeah, let's sign off.

All right. Andrew. Thank you. Before his rights. First off, buy his book. Please check out his book. You will not be disappointed, I promise, when the tempest gathers. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. That's the only thing I'm going to add to these very early, like, gentlemen. Oh my God, I slowed my words. We're all soaring our words at this point. Okay, back to Jack. Jack, finishing comments. And, but back to you, Andrew. I got to Jerry, Jay.

Finish this podcast off. Sign us off. Tell us, listen, where can we find your book? Yeah. Where can we find your articles? You're awesome. Where can we find Andrew Milburn? Please Google me.

Absolutely. Yeah, so all my articles for better or for worse will show up. and on for Amazon, yeah, when the tempest canvas, please do buy it. And I will compensate you in some small way. Thank you. He'll compensate you with the thrill of the journey of the heart. Good night. That's a lot.