#239 Dan Driscoll - U.S. Secretary of the Army

26:55And you would be doing it as more of a check the block exercise. For this exercise in D.C., that's not it at all. We have communities and neighborhoods that are suffering terrible, like a scourge of violent crime. And by having our soldiers there, it is making a meaningful impact. So I think last week I heard that carjackings in the city are down 85 percent. 85 percent. 85 percent since President Trump did this. And again, to your point, Sean, like no one's writing about it that I'm seeing. But like this is obviously making a difference. And this is the thing that I think happened in the last election.

27:30Americans are just sick of being double speak to. They're sick of the media contorting the story and telling them things that their own eyes are telling them are lies. And so from everything I have seen from the D.C. National Guard, they are doing noble missions. They almost all are happy to be in their own community, and it is going to make a lasting impact and kind of show our nation that we can recover these cities. We don't have to sit back passively anymore and just say, oh, the criminals have it. We got to move out to the country to be safe. if we can go in there with the might of the federal government, partner with local law enforcement, and take back these cities under President Trump.

28:07I mean, it sounds great. But what does it look like from the people that live there? You know, when I hear, I mean, I was in Iraq. I spent a long time in the Middle East, you know, and I've been a part of presence patrols. And when I hear presence patrol, I think of a convoy of Humvees with 50 cals and twin 240s on the top with, you know, of the turret and up armored. I mean, is that what it looks like or is it checkpoints or what is it? So specifically what it would look like is you would see soldiers most times from your community who are trying to help secure your community. And the way that I – a trailing indicator to me that they are being valued is the number of selfies that these soldiers are taking is remarkable.

28:54Kids are coming up. Grandparents are coming up. young and old are wanting to thank them for their service, wanting to thank them for doing this for their community. When we meet with the DC leadership, this is kind of one of the quiet secrets of the whole thing. If you actually meet with the police, if you meet with the leadership at kind of nearly all levels in my experience, one of the first things they say is thank you, please tell your members, please tell your soldiers, thank you. Like this is really helpful. We're really happy to have them in the community. I think if you look at what the DC mayor said last week, they're starting to build a plan around now that they actually have all of these resources and these law enforcement officers, they're leaning into the idea that they can improve their city.

29:33And I think this is exactly what President Trump wanted to do is empower DC and empower our nation's capital to fix itself with federal resources and build the momentum to go do this throughout the nation. What does it look like? I mean, if you thought of this, I mean, what does it look like if they get into, I mean, I don't even know what we would call it here. I was just going to call it a tick, a troop, a troops in contact. But I mean, you know, with the MS-13 gangs, the cartels, the Bloods, the Crips, I mean, you know, Hells Angels, I don't know. You know, there's gang members all over the place, you know, tons of different gangs.

30:08I mean, what does it look like if MS-13 pushes back against the National Guard and happens to fire upon them? I mean, do they have ROEs or? Yeah, I mean, I think they would see the full might and fury of our United States Army. They would see the full might and fury of the most powerful government in the history of the world. And I think the President and Secretary of War have been very clear that they are taking a hard line, and that kind of violence is no longer acceptable in our nation. And so I don't think we would ever wish that on our soldiers. I think anyone who has deployed on behalf of the nation knows the cost that comes from those moments.

30:48I mean, my dad is going on 80. And it never really clicked to me why when I woke him up my entire childhood, I'd kind of poke him and he'd sit up like a mousetrap. And the day before I deployed, we were at a Ruby Tuesdays in Watertown, New York. And we were talking about it. I just asked him if he remembered those moments in Vietnam. And he kind of was dodging the answer. I was like, seriously, like, do you remember them? And he said, oh, every night I have bad dreams on it. And it was like for 55 years, the man's been having bad dreams about his time there. You don't wish these moments of conflict on somebody.

31:20So I don't want to sound light or callous when I say it. But this mission to me, unlike a lot of the ones in the early 2000s, is a noble mission. It is purpose-built for our National Guard members to provide security to their own communities. And these are heroes who have raised their right hand and said they want to go do this mission. And so whoever it is that threatens our soldiers, they will see violence like an act of God coming at them, and they will see support coming from all directions. And I think that they will learn very quickly that the standard of what they are able to do in our nation has changed.

31:57What is the – I mean what is the long-term plan? I mean, they could move. These cells, these gangs, I mean, they could move to other cities and set up there where there's less pushback from the government. So, I mean, what is the long-term plan? I mean, we've seen a lot of cities that have just kneecapped law enforcement, Seattle, L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, New York. I mean, the list goes on and on. And so, I mean, is there a plan to – and I don't know how this works. You know what I mean? That's a state and local entity. So I don't know how much control, you know, the federal government would have over that.

32:36But I mean, what is the long-term plan? I think as it relates to D.C., if you talk to the president or his advisors or the Secretary of War or the Attorney General Pan Bondi, they are in it until it's done. And they are not defining that moment of done yet because it's gotten so bad that I think a lot of the purpose of this is to wake Americans up and make them realize that they have incredible power in how they vote. I think you made the reference, Sean. If you look at a lot of these cities, they keep voting in the same people. And I think a lot of this is kind of the water getting turned up on the frog.

33:15People don't realize you don't have to be afraid. You don't have to accept that when you park your car in the street, it's going to get broken into. You don't have to accept that your 12-year-old can't board a bus and go to the local convenience store and go to an arena to watch a sporting event and come back home. Like we as a nation can win this war and make ourselves safe again. And so I think the answer for it is it will last as long as it takes under President Trump to return us to a place of less than average violence when compared to pure countries around the world. And we're not near that yet.

33:49So it's essentially kind of leading by example to the local law enforcement through the National Guard. Oh, and law enforcement love it. Like when you talk to the local law enforcement, they've won the lottery. They have signed up. One of the amazing parts of being at ATF is I get to be around all these law enforcement, and they desperately want to clean up their own communities. This is empowering them with all of these new enablers that they just typically don't have. And so I think it's less modeling good behavior for them and instead empowering them to do what they are so good at and want to do.

34:22But they've just been under-resourced and underappreciated for so long. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. All right. All right, let's move on. So let's get a little bit of a backstory on you. Let's do it. Where did you grow up? So I grew up in the mountains, North Carolina, a place called Boone, Appalachian State's in my hometown. Went to a public high school up there. So it was about 400 kids in class. Kids would drive from all over the county. There were no private schools. It was an amazing childhood. Most of it's been outdoors, skiing, mountain biking, just playing sports. ended up my rising, when I was going into junior year, I ended up meeting this woman, Cassie, who was a rising freshman.

35:04I was 18 months older than her and asked her out. She couldn't date till she was 16. We ended up dating, I think, a couple months before she turned 16. She's now my wife. We've been together for 22, 23 years. So it was just an absolutely amazing childhood grown up up in the mountains. What got your interest in the military? So think about this. This kind of blows my mind when I think back to it. So the summer before, so I was going to UNC Chapel Hill for college, and the summer reading book from UNC Chapel Hill was this book, Absolutely American. So they had all the freshmen reading this book about these three guys who had gone to West Point and then deployed to Iraq.

35:45And my granddad had served in World War II as a decoder. My dad was an infantryman in Vietnam, as I was telling you. And then, so I had a ton of family members who had served. And it was always kind of like on the back burner. But I read this book as an 18-year-old and just thought, man, I cannot miss out on my generation's war. Like, I do not want to be the kind of person that I'm 40, 50, 60 years old. And they asked the veterans to stand at an event and I stay seated. Like, I need to go be a part of this. If this is what our nation needs, I need to go be a part of it. So I read the book, finished it, and just decided to graduate as fast as humanly possible.

36:24So took a ton of summer school, got out in three years, and went to basic training. What year was that? Went to basic in September 2007. Okay, so way past 9-11. Yeah. So you knew what you were getting into. Yeah, yeah. So it was right during the surge. And so you were at basic training, and I did that, and then officer candidate school. But everybody was talking about the surge in Iraq and trying to get you through schools. The gaps between schools was nearly nothing because we just needed more soldiers. We needed more second lieutenants. So went through OCS, did a couple of other schools, ended up at tank school or armor school at Fort Knox.

37:02And armor is an odd branch in the Army. you basically pair like very heavy tankers like the who are using these exquisite pieces of equipment with scouts who are kind of the lightest formation we have as an army so i ended up um choosing the scout path trading with a guy finished armor school um went to ranger school which um there are two distinct memories from all these army schools that stand out to me forever one is in basic i can remember it was like a couple of days after starting basic training and our drill instructor, drill instructor Wilburn, had picked somebody to lead our basic training platoon.

37:38And I thought I was more talented than that person. And I should have been the leader. So I just, after one of the formations went up and I thought rationally explained to her why I was a better choice. And as you can expect, Sean, that went terrible. And so I will never forget the humiliation of realizing that that is not what the Army is. And it is my job to shut the fuck up and do what I am told and not provide other commentary. And then the other one is Ranger School, where it's the only time I can truly recall. It was mountain phase. We were walking up a hill. I think I was carrying like a 249.

38:13And I slipped and I fell down. I just couldn't get up. Like, it was, I was exhausted. I was tired. We hadn't eaten. I had lost 25 pounds at that point. And like, I was shaking. I was shivering. I was cold. And I was broken. It just literally is this one moment I'll never forget. You're hallucinating. And it was just this thing that growing up in the mountains of North Carolina is like a reasonably comfortable middle-class existence. You're laying there and you're thinking, oh my God, like I am past what I am capable of doing. And it's like at that exact moment, guys pull you up, they grab your weapon, they say, hey, we'll carry it for a little while.

38:46We stopped. I can remember a couple of them like hugging me to get me to stop shivering. And it's this moment of vulnerability that like, at least for me was like the start of this moment where I realized like these were the types of people that were going to be in my life forever. And these were the types of people that were the best among us. And it was my, my wife will say of these times that had I not joined the army, she wouldn't have married me. Like she's very explicit about that. And it's not, it's because she has, she said it on many, even before this, even before this job, Because she says it just made me a much better version of myself.

39:23Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That is cool. Yeah, yeah. So then you deployed to Iraq what year? So got to 10th Mountain Division after Ranger School, 2nd Brigade. We were there about 8 to 10 months. We were originally supposed to go to Afghanistan, got swapped out to go to Iraq. We deployed in kind of the tail end of the surge, so 09. It's like right at the end of the surge, right before the handoff, through kind of the handoff. And so the way I summarize that time is like, I think when I talk to other buddies who have deployed there at different periods of time, I'd like to think that perhaps we were there at like peak stupid, where we would go out on these missions and we would be told the number one thing to optimize for was not getting hurt.

40:05They like just Americans had no appetite for soldiers getting hurt anymore. And I can remember talking to my captain and major and colonels and saying, well, if that's the thing we're optimizing for, just like don't send us out. We might as well just sit here because like we can't do our job if that's what you're telling us to do. And so I can hit some of the more insane stories from that time. But it's like it just makes me so angry to think back on you were risking the lives of me and the guys beside me and under me. And for something that just like there didn't seem to be a purpose or a mission at that point.

40:40For what? Yeah. For what? Did you see any did you see any kinetic activity over there? So by the time we were there, most of the dumb ones had been killed. So we would have IEDs and mortars, but no sort of like direct engagements of any sort of substance. We would do – one of the highlights of stupidity to me was like they sent in a camera crew. We were going to go after this IED factory. And it's like you just imagine it to be a certain thing. And you maybe have experienced something similar, but you're doing a factory raid. And so they took two of the platoons. They're under me. They're filming.

41:15We're doing the plan. We're getting the Humvees. We're rolling out. We're doing the cordon. We get to this place where they think they're making IEDs. We have the bolt cutters ready to go. We call up for the clearance, and we're told that the new rules of engagement that had gone into effect meant we couldn't cut this lock that was a gym lock that was like the size of a seven-year-old puts on her locker at school. And so we end up being told, you can't break locks anymore. We get back in the Humvees. We drive back over these IED-laden roads. And it was like at that moment, I was like, never again.

41:47Like, we have got to fix this as a nation because how could you possibly have risked all of these limbs and all of these lives and then let, like, a little tiny gym locker stop you from this mission? Holy shit. That may be the most absurd fucking thing I've ever heard. It makes my blood boil. There's a lock here, guys. Yeah. Let them keep making IEDs. 100%. We're out. Yep. What the fuck? It's fucking crazy. Wow. It's maddening. Unbelievable. Now, from this seat, because basically the idea was come back, try to get some experiences, come back and make a little bit of a difference. And you see how those types of preposterous decisions are output from our training to how we procure things to how our missions come to be.

42:34Very few people along the line think that they are leading to that sort of stupid outcome. But because few people own it and because very few of the decision makers center themselves around, well, wait a second. Before I decided this thing, how does it actually impact the O1, the O2, the E4? What are they going to have to do with what I am saying now? And that has been one of the things that with General George, we have tried to do with every decision to start to model the behavior of. I don't actually care how it impacts you and your Pentagon job. I want to know, how does it impact a soldier in the field who actually has to do the thing or carry the thing or train with the thing that you're talking about?

43:13Man, that's good to hear. That's great to hear. It hasn't been like that in a long time. So I don't know if I've ever seen it. But so that's commendable. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, we'll see if it works. We're trying our best. Yeah, well, it sounds like, you know, from our breakfast conversation that a lot of the, you know, the brute workforce of the military or the Army is pretty damn happy that you're in there. They're incredible. I think most of these problems are complex, and there's a lot of blame to go around, and we can cover that part whenever you want. But the upside is the American soldier, like I can say this with a completely straight face and not trying to be sycophantic, after getting out, ended up going to fancy law schools and working with fancy law firms and consultants and venture-backed companies.

44:03And you meet all of these really talented Americans who are good at their niches. But I would say, like, having been out for 14, 15 years and coming back and seeing the average American soldier, I would bet on them every single time to solve any problem our nation has. I mean, they are so talented. They are so innovative. Their give a shit is off the charts. I mean, it is just remarkable to me what our American soldiers are capable of doing. And I think if we can just unlock that talent and let them run at a lot of the problems our nation and our military are facing, we're just going to see amazing results.

44:39Nice. Nice. Let's talk about the road to Secretary of the Army. I mean, how did that come about? So, post-Army, so we're in Iraq, and I can remember we woke up, we're about to go out on a mission, and I read my email, and I had gotten accepted to law school up at Yale in New Haven. And I was so excited. And I called my then-girlfriend, Cassie, and I said, oh, this is awesome. I'm going to New Haven for law school when I get out. And the first thing out of her mouth was, well, I'm not going out there unless we're married. So I ended up proposing the first weekend back from Iraq. And then the next thing I heard is we're getting in the vehicles ready to roll out.

45:15And my driver, this guy Bo, looks at me and he said, hey, sir, I'm really excited for you. But could you just please not get us killed today? And so that brought me back into the moment real quickly. So getting to law school, ended up going, I guess, about a year and a half after getting back from Iraq. The day before school starts, I meet this guy who the Yale Law Veterans Association, which was three classes of law school or three years of law school, was comprised of like seven total people. And so one of the second years was taking out us first years to kind of give us the lay of the land.

45:54And that guy's name was J.D. Vance. And so J.D. takes us to pizza and he says, hey, I know a lot of you are going to be self-conscious. You've been out of school for a while. that you're going to feel like you are less than and not smart enough to keep up. But if you can just give it a couple of months, like you'll get your bearings and you'll find out that like you belong here. And I will just never forget that that was the first time I met JD and he was just an incredible mentor that entire time through. So spent a lot of time in law school, meeting a lot of folks, working at law firms, working for judges, ended up not wanting to do the law full time.

46:31So I went into finance. My wife had then gotten into med school in North Carolina, did finance for a couple of years. And then she was pregnant with our now nine-year-old Daniel Jr. living in a different city than me. So moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to where she was and full-time dad and for about a year, completely ran out of money. I think we were like negative$25 ,000 in net worth when my son turned one, ended up meeting a guy who had sold his business for a bunch of money and then spent the next kind of five or six years in like the private equity venture capital world, ended up as COO of a couple hundred million dollar VC fund that a friend ran.

47:10And that time was amazing because what you realize, and we give Silicon Valley a lot of credit for this. I think probably you've experienced this too, Sean. Most people that start their own business are scrappy and hungry and looking to provide value to their customer and they speed through innovation and they get there quickly. Silicon Valley kind of famously with the venture capital dollars could go even faster and even bigger to do that. But essentially, the model's been around since I would guess the beginning of humankind, which is if you think you have an idea that's going to be helpful, come up with a minimum viable product, get it in the hand of your customer, have them use it and learn from them.

47:46Do they like it or not? Pivot it and innovate it and make it better and then keep doing that cycle throughout time. And so those kind of lessons of how these companies were able to innovate and these amazing American success stories happened were incredibly valuable to kind of reshape my brain on how things could occur and when you had a good idea, how you could scale it really quickly. And so ended up doing that for a couple of years, quick pause for 10 weeks to run for Congress in the mountains, North Carolina, absolutely got my ass kicked. I think I outraised the field like two or three, two or three X and just got dominated.

48:24COVID hits. My wife ends up switching med schools, or excuse me, switching residency programs to be in North Carolina. We're down together as a family. And so I think it was like 23, 24 were the first two years in like 16 or 17 years that my wife and I had lived in the same city. It was a remarkable period of reset. I was helping the VC fund, traveling a bit, getting to be a much more present dad. We had our daughter, Lila. Then my wife's residency was ending, so she was in that for seven years as a plastic surgeon. She was going to do this one-year hand surgery fellowship in Los Angeles. We figured we'd test the West Coast out, try to do some trips with the kids, go see Washington State and Oregon, kind of let them experience that.

49:06We had this one-month gap. We were doing that classic vacation of taking the kids to Europe, and right in the middle of the vacation, JD called and said he had been picked to be the vice presidential nominee. So we were eating dinner in Zurich on a Monday night. Tuesday morning, I boarded a flight, flew to Chicago, Ubered to an outlet mall right outside the Chicago airport, bought a super shitty fitting suit, belt, and tie, and Ubered my happy ass up to Milwaukee for the RNC, and then started the next year of adventure. Damn. It was wild. Yeah, it's been a wild ride. I haven't been a particularly good or present dad the last year, but it's been a fun year.

49:45Is that the same suit? I'm just kidding. No, we're actually, we were like a month into the campaign, and this guy who had worked really closely with the president for a long time, this guy Nick, he comes up and he was like, hey, man, you might want to buy a new suit. And I was like, why? And he was like, you look like an intern. And so ever since now I have, I mean, they're not good, but they're better. Looks good. I appreciate it. But all right, let's get into Secretary of the Army. Yeah. So what are we doing? What's going on there? So a lot of stuff has been, a lot of the DEI stuff got cleaned up.

50:20It seemed like it was like overnight. It's been incredible. President Trump, Secretary of War, Hexeth, I mean, they have been laser focused on returning our army and our military to a culture of lethality and focus on the shit that matters, which is, at least for the United States Army, they are a killing machine that stands by and stands ready to be deployed by our president. And that is his purpose. And what peace through strength fundamentally means is the more aggressive and the more pre-violent they can be, the less likely you actually have to use them to do those acts because our adversaries are so afraid of them.

50:58And they have done, the president and secretary have done a remarkable job of resetting the culture, in my opinion, quickly. And then a lot of the things we in the Army have done with their air cover have been a couple months into being here with General Randy George, who's our chief of staff, and he's just awesome. I live a couple of houses from him. We spent a ton of time together. But we did something called the Army Transformation Initiative, which was essentially cutting$48 billion of spending on a bunch of stupid shit that we just didn't need anymore, that for all sorts of reasons we were still buying and reallocating those$48 billion over the next five years to things we actually needed.

51:37So those were like two buckets of things we did. Another bucket was the Army has kind of preposterously given away things like its own right to repair our own equipment, which is just sinful. So what that practically means, Sean, is you'd have these two$3 million pieces of equipment sitting on the sidelines for a year at a time. It was an$8 part that we knew how to 3D print, but we had given away our own right to repair that equipment. And so basically, this ATI forces us to take back that right. And the other thing that we did kind of in those early months was cut headquarters. So I'm sure you've seen this, but we have so many human beings, so many soldiers that sit in the Pentagon and sit in our headquarters formations and just are wasting their life away doing what they didn't want to sign up to do.

52:23And so we're pushing them back out to the unit. So we've cut down some of our four-star headquarters. We've gotten rid of a bunch of three-stars and two-stars and are just pushing them back out to the formation. Good. You know, let's start with a$48 billion budget cut. I mean, you know, a lot of people would say, I can't believe you're cutting$48 billion out of a defense budget, you know, for the Army. What did that cut? Well, so specifically what we were doing is cut to reallocate. And so this was not intended to be a money-saving exercise per se. We, the United States Army, spend$185 billion a year.

53:01I mean, it is an enormous amount of money. There's all sorts of ways I can tell you about how everything you build on an Army base costs 66.5 % more than if you build it right on the other side of the fence. There's all sorts of inefficiencies. So we're spending that$185 billion pretty poorly most times. But it's a lot of money. And so what we did is we looked at things like Humvees. The Humvee has served a purpose. We have over 100 ,000 of them. And it is pretty effective or reasonably effective at driving down a paved highway and keeping soldiers reasonably safe from risks like IEDs. What it is not good for is a world with drones.

53:41And if you look at the inflection point in war that's occurring in Ukraine right now, the Humvee just doesn't work for that. And so it does have some use cases, but we're way over indexed on it. So what we're doing with some of the cuts from not purchasing any more Humvees is we're reallocating those dollars toward these ISVs or these infantry squad vehicles, which if you're kind of picturing it, it's like a 1950s, 1960s Jeep, but a lot faster. It can go off-road and soldiers love it. And what's so amazing about it is it's made by General Motors and Chevy off the Chevy Colorado. And so you're taking this existing platform that has been millions and millions of miles of consumer use.

54:24We convert it with Hendrix Motorsports. So they're the ones that have all the race car drivers. They take these things. They're working with Chevy. They're making these ISVs for us. We're putting them in the hands of soldiers. They're cheaper. They're faster. They have a lower profile. Soldiers love them. And then what's amazing about these things, Sean, is when we need to repair them in the Indo-Pacific or in Europe or wherever we are, for 80 % of the parts, you can just go to a Chevy store and pick it up. And so instead of relying on these manufacturers who will hold us hostage with these replacement parts that oftentimes, we were talking about at a breakfast, there's parts on some of our equipment that we can't get till 2027, 2028.

55:05And it's a part we could print for a couple of bucks. And so what's amazing about things like the ISV, which is just the hardware side of things, is we are rethinking as an army not just what is the effectiveness of specifically what we buy, but how can we repair it in places like the Indo-Pacific. So it's not specifically a budget cut. It's a reallocation. It's a reallocation. So we essentially— So we're innovating. We're innovating. We found$48 billion to start that we are going to use and are using to buy the tools of future warfare. Damn, that's awesome. Yeah. That's great to hear. The downside is, Sean, as you might expect, that because we had$48 billion worth of things people thought we were going to buy, you have a 48 billion reasons why people are now angry with me and angry with General George because we've taken those dollars they thought they were going to get, that they thought were going to go in their congressional district, their state, to their lobbyist had thought that they had won that battle and were going to get handsomely rewarded for their work.

56:06and we have stripped it from them, and we are saying, no, no, no. We are going to listen to what soldiers are telling us, which is they love the ISV, and we're going to reallocate it to things like that. Man, you know, that's just great to hear. I mean, I was using the Humvee back in early 2000s. I mean, it's fucking obsolete now. Yeah. It is. I mean, there's all these new things out. 100 ,000 Humvees? 100 ,000. I think it's 104. And so when do you, I mean, how do you get the word from the bottom up of what these guys want? You know, because I've never seen it like that. So how are you reaching them?

56:48This is full credit to General George and our vice, General Mingus, and our sergeant major of the Army, Mike Weimer. I mean, these are warriors. They are incredible men who have grown up. A lot of them were in some of our more specialized like Delta units and Ranger battalions. And they have deployed to – and they have seen the failures of the system. And so before I even came in, they started something called Transformation in Contact, so TIC. And the basic premise of this, back to kind of earlier in the podcast, is to take the lessons learned from Silicon Valley and startups around the country and the world of this idea of minimum viable product.

57:30In our instance, our customers are soldier, and our innovation is oftentimes made by people outside of the Army. And so what they did is they said, hey, industry, and this was a small-scale experiment to start, bring your stuff out to our formations. We're going to identify a couple of brigades, a couple of battalions throughout the Army, and they're going to be our testbed of innovation. And they're going to take your stuff out to the field, and they're going to try it. And what ended up happening was soldiers loved it. These new – like these new – the soldiers we are recruiting can figure this stuff out incredibly quickly.

58:03They absolutely love training with it. And we're putting in a lot of instances the computer programmers, the developers, the manufacturers at JROTC, at our training sites with our soldiers. And the innovation loop is closing down. And so what's – there it's getting tighter. And so what's happening is the types of things that are being offered are better. So then that's good. The next part of it was, how do we actually start to procure that stuff? How do we buy things quickly at smaller scales? So instead of having onesie-twosie tryouts in the field, how can we have units starting to buy stuff?

58:37We've always been able to do it a bit with our special forces, our ranger battalion. They've been able to do these things, but our conventional army has not. And they just function differently. And so we wanted to take a lot of that model and apply it to the main army. And so for these ISVs, it was a really successful process where we essentially said, cut all the bullshit. We're not going to wind the procurement process through these 16 steps where anyone along the way can say no, and then it starts back over. And then, oh, by the way, everyone at each of those 16 steps has for the last 30 or 40 years in the bureaucracy been incentivized to do nothing.

59:10Basically, the only way you get in trouble as a civilian operating in the Pentagon is to do something that goes wrong. So there's two ways to avoid that. Way one is do things and not have it go wrong. But just as equally effective for your own career is to do nothing. So you're just incentivized to have the safety culture where you say no and just try to make it your entire time without doing anything. And these are not bad people. They're not patriotic. It's just that's the incentive structure. And so what we did for the ISV is we said we're going to put together a handpicked set of team. We're going to grab a contractor.

59:39We're going to grab somebody to write the requirements. We're going to put like the equivalent of a CEO over this group. Excuse me. and we're just going to say, figure out how to get this ISV. And they did, and it worked. And as an example of what we've done with that ISV, when Chief and I went out to the West Coast, we went to a company called Applied Intuition. And Applied Intuition does the backend autonomous software for a lot of vehicles that you would see on the road. They're like the software, their main competitor would be Tesla from the software side. And so we saw them and we said, have you ever done a Humvee or an ISV?

1:00:12Have you ever tried to make them autonomous? And they said, absolutely not. That would be terrible. There's too much paperwork. It's going to take years until we get it. We don't even know how we would make money with it. And we basically said, nope, it's a new day. We're just going to send you a Humvee and an ISV. We're going to drop them off. And they said, well, what do you want us to do with it? We said, take 10 days. Do anything you want. We don't care. Just show us what you can do. So probably 20 days from the day we visited, they sent us a video. They had taken it out to the field. They had made a Humvee and an ISV fully autonomous.

1:00:43They had hooked it in with their drone network. They had uploaded the repair manual for the ISV onto the screen so a soldier could interact with it and learn how to repair a part. Wow. And this is 10 days in from a company that had— This is 10 days in. So immediately, we sent a car carrier. We picked it up. We drove it out. And that thing's been tested for the last couple of months by soldiers. And we're just learning. And we're just trying to figure out, is that good? Is that effective? Should we partner with Applied Intuition? They've been amazing. But we as an Army can do this. Our soldiers are amazing, and we just have to get out of their way.

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1:02:22This summer, serve up the cookout classics, Oscar Mayer Hot Dogs and Heinz Mustard. Grill up a dog, add classic yellow mustard, or load it Chicago style. We all know it's not a cookout without Oscar Mayer and Heinz. So, let me just ask you this. I talked about this kind of stuff with Palmer Luckey quite a bit when he was on, but I mean, and he was talking about kind of repurposing all of our military vehicles, air, land, I believe, sea too, and not actually building all new infrastructure, you know, within the vehicles, but repurposing them and making them autonomous. So if you're in the rest of the Army and you make the determination, hey, this repurposed Humvee is incredible.

1:03:07We need it. I mean, will we see all 104 ,000 Humvees get outfitted with that and repurposed? Hopefully. It's not just a waste. I hope so. So I guess first to Palmer Luckey, he's an amazing innovator. He is the type of person. And I think that for decades, we as a nation have let that brain and that asset not be part of the DoD. And credit to Andrel, credit to Palantir, credit to a lot of these companies that fought through the last decade to be part of our lives because they showed us what could be. The Army is, at a minimum in a lot of instances, 10 or 15 years behind our commercial counterparts.

1:03:43And they have showed us that that doesn't have to be the case. We're actually really optimistic. And Palmer's coming next week or the week after. We have CEOs from, I believe it could be the best collection of CEOs to ever step foot in the Pentagon together from FedEx and GM and the Googles and the Andurals and all of these different companies want to help the DOD and want to help the Army. And so we're actually trying to bring them together and say, hey, let's start a relationship where it might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but in a year or a decade, we We want to be getting the best of what you're all working on, even if it hasn't gone to the commercials or it'd been released yet.

1:04:25And so it might be ChatGPT6. We the Army on behalf of DOD should be testing that and figuring out are there offensive or defensive capabilities? Where should we put it in the federal government if there are? And how do we start to apply that like China does so well? And so people like Palmer are exactly what we should be doing and aspiring to include in our decision-making process because he is such a successful version of just scrappy entrepreneurship and scrappy innovation and adding a lot of value to his customers. I mean, do you see, is there a shift in the primes? I mean, we talked about this a little bit of breakfast, but I mean, we see Enduro, Palantir.

1:05:04I don't know if you guys are doing anything with SpaceX or not, but I mean, we see all these new innovative companies coming out, like the ones that I just listed. Then we see, you know, the dinosaurs that haven't really innovated much for the past, what, 50, 60 years? Are we seeing a shift? Are these new generation defense tech companies going to take over the primes? I hope they do. I hope they do. I think the primes have held us fucking hostage for way too long and wasted a lot of money. So to start my reply, I went on record a couple months ago saying, hey, I would define it as success if in the first two years of my time at this job, I put one of the primes out of business.

1:05:48So as you might expect, I then met with every CEO of every prime many, many, many times. And I've gotten to hear more of this story. And so what's so annoying and what's so unsettling about most things in life, tying back to your very first question, it's complicated. So what ended up happening is in the 90s, late 80s, early 90s, the Army and the Navy and the Air Force and the Pentagon went to the primes that existed. There might have been, let's say, 50 of them. And we said, hey, the world is safer. We're not going to need as many of you. You all have to consolidate down because we just are not going to, our defense industrial base, we're not going to be able to support a big enough one.

1:06:30So they all kind of spent a couple of years consolidating down. And then what ended up happening is you basically, you learn more about how we spend money and how we show our demand signal. And so you may have Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll saying a thing, but the average tenure of a SEC Army I think is 23 months. So I rotate out, the next one comes in, they might have their own priorities. You have the Senate with its priorities, you have Congress, you have all of these bureaucrats. And so we're really bad at telling them what we want to buy in a way that they can believe and invest against that demand signal.

1:07:04And so what you end up having is things like cost plus come to be, where almost everybody says that is an offensive model and way to pay a provider of services because they're obviously incentivized to take longer to make more into their expense base so they can charge you more. Like everyone realizes that. And I think from the outside, before you take this job, you think, how is this possibly the case that so many smart people don't know this thing that I know? As it turns out, you get in and they all know it too. But it comes to be for a different reason, which is because they can't trust our demand signal, they basically have to say, all right, I'm going to work on this thing for you because you can't do it yourself.

1:07:42But you have to pay me along the way my costs because if you change your mind along the way, then I have to be able to recoup my expenses plus some profit because I have shareholders. And so as an example of the types of bad behavior that we incentivized, we basically created many and most, I would say, of the bad outcomes and bad actions that our primes do. And so that does not excuse them. I still think it may be healthy for the system to put one of them out of business. But I'm much more— Why do you think that? Do you think that sends a signal? I think one of the amazing parts of capitalism is you see the story of Mark Zuckerberg making billions and billions of dollars and you want to go build that.

1:08:24Another amazing part of capitalism is if you don't build and deliver something your customers want, you become a relic and you go out of business and the system resets and kind of the wave washes over the sand and it starts again. And the problem with our primes is they have integrated themselves so deeply and entrenched themselves in our defense department build cycles that it would be really hard for us to operate without them. And so I actually think it would be healthy for both us and them, for all of us to realize that this isn't intended to be a permanent relationship. They have to earn their way back in each and every time they build something.

1:09:01But in order to expect that out of them, that means we, the Army, have to change our behavior too, which is a little bit harder, and it's hard to say. And so I guess back to the original prime question, I think in a perfect world, what they're going to do is – and AUSA is one of our annual meetings where – I hadn't been to it, but I've heard it was kind of – some believed it was average in the past. What we are doing at our next one coming up in October is we're partnering with Y Combinator, which is a little dated, but I mean, they are an innovation engine for our nation. We're going to do a demo day where we invite small startups to come out, and we're inviting venture capitalists, government investors.

1:09:40We're inviting the primes. What we're hoping they're going to do is see things in partnerships and acquisitions that they can do to spark innovation, to push them forward and push them faster, and continue you to know that if they don't deliver on what they are saying they're going to do, they at least have a SEC army who is very tolerant of the idea of them not existing anymore. Oh, man, I'd love to hear that. I'd love to be there for that. You should come. We can put you on a panel. You can be one of our judges. I would love it. All right, we'll do it. Definitely. You know, let's move into, is that the part that you showed me at breakfast?

1:10:14This is the part. This is it. I want to bring this up. This is insanity. And I think a lot of people know that this kind of shit's going on, but that part, it looks like a$2 part. I think it probably is a$2 part, Sean. But it's a$2 ,000 part. Yes. And it's even more sinful than that. And so, this came from yesterday and we were visiting Fort Campbell on the 101st Airborne, which I got to go out with them and do a workout in the morning, which I can barely stand up and walk around anymore, but then I got to do an air assault out of a Chinook, which was just absolutely badass. And those are some of the parts of this job that are so amazing.

1:10:56And when I get out with soldiers, it just revives my spirit and my soul. The balance of those visits and what is so fucking infuriating is you hear stories like this all the time. And so this story, I will try to take this to a positive ending of the story, but we're going to start pretty dark. So, the darkness is, if you think back to what we did with that ATI and the right to repair, is essentially we have stripped away our right to repair a lot of our own equipment. And so, this was a 777, so one of our big kind of firing weapons that fires 155s. This was tied into kind of the wheel well and the components that keep the wheel on.

1:11:34And this part, if we want to get it from the manufacturer, it's currently on back order till mid-2027. So this$2 part that they're going to charge us, I don't know what the exact price is for this one, but for some of these, we can manufacture for$2 and we end up paying$200 or$2 ,000. But even more sinfully, we can't actually even get to the part, even though we know we can make the part. And so of our 777s at the 101st Airborne, which is one of our amazing units, I think 80 % of them right now are down. 80%. 80%. And this, they were showing me, one of them or few of them are down because of this one part, which we know how to 3D print.

1:12:14I think, Sean, you could probably take this to some of your buddies within two miles of the studio, and they could figure out a way to make this for you. And so the enraging part of this story is we have allowed these soldiers to believe it is the case that for a year, two years, three years at a time, we are not going to have them training and using and being ready to deploy with their equipment that we're giving them. and it's okay to let it stand by. So that enrages me. The next part that enrages me is - 80 % of that specific weapon system is not functioning. Yes, and many of them - How long has this shit been happening?

1:12:5020, 30, 40 years. Who's responsible for that part? This is the problem. And so this is where the story gets complicated. So if you were the maker of this part, you actually don't know when we want these parts. We, the army, can't commit to you most times in multi-year contracts. And so because of the way our funding cycle works from Congress, we are basically bound to only commit ourselves to spend money in one given year. So if you're the manufacturer of things like this, you can't trust me that in a couple of years, you're going to make any money for the cast that you make, for the manufacturing line you have to keep up.

1:13:28And so you have to hedge. And so you have to wait until I put in an actual order, and then you have to go spit out some number of those that will allow you to make a profit. And so what has basically occurred is these companies have been forced by us because of our kind of stupid spending models to essentially hedge their bets. But what that means is when we finally come to them and we say, hey, we need a bunch of these, go fast. They say, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's been a long time since you've given us this demand signal. We're going to have to turn on the engines and get the people retrained and get you the things you want to need.

1:14:01And we need a bundle of 1 ,000 of them until it's worthwhile for us. And so they've been losing, we've been losing, and most sinfully, the American soldier has been losing because of these models. And so that's the downside of the story. The upside and why I want people to feel incredibly excited about where their army is and how our soldiers are innovating is we can 3D print this part really quickly. I mean, lives have been lost because of shit like this. Unequivocally. So how did that happen? I mean, you just discussed it, but at what point in time did the U.S. military give up the right to repair their own fucking equipment?

1:14:40That is insane. That's as insane as not being able to cut a fucking bolt lock off an ID factory. It's utter, it's offensive. Like there's no other way. And this is the thing that I think nobody owned that bad decision. And so this is what we're trying to change fundamentally is after leaving that unit yesterday, I was talking to the commander and I said, hey, as an experiment, can you assign each one of those broken pieces of equipment and have an individual soldier own the responsibility of getting it back online? and I will take all of the risk. I don't care where they build the part. I don't care how they build the part.

1:15:21Just get it back online and let's see what happens. Because very worst case in this instance, the wheel falls off when you're pulling it somewhere. Some sparks may fly. There could be a slightly bad outcome, but this is not a helicopter flying out of the sky. This is a relatively low risk experiment to do. But what we haven't done is empowered our soldiers to go be the brilliant innovators that they are. with if you look at modern manufacturing and you look at the ability to 3D print metal parts, what we kicked off about a month ago empowers our general in charge of our material command to basically say, okay, I'm going to take on the risk for this.

1:15:59I'm going to scan it really quickly. I'm going to get a digital design file. I'm going to print it. I'm going to get it out to the field and I'm going to underwrite that risk. Or I'm going to ask my commanders down below me who have the deeper understanding of the nuances of the situation to underwrite the risk. But we're no longer going to accept that we can't repair our own stuff. And if very worst case, we accidentally violate a clause of a contract, who gives a shit? I've told everybody, we have a thousand lawyers, we'll fucking see them in court for 50 years. Doesn't matter to me, just go fix our stuff.

1:16:29And so this is the back to the upside of the story. The soldiers are feeling it. They're excited. They're empowered. We're giving them the start of this equipment to start to manage their own things. And then if you actually think about what warfare will look like in the Indo Pacific. President Trump talks about this. I mean, this is pretty obvious, but China is 60 miles from Taiwan. We're 6 ,000 miles. We have to get so much equipment over to ourselves to sustain the joint fight. The way that we're going to do that is not through the old model of parts and procurement. It is by innovating using things like 3D printers.

1:17:05So is this like a law or is this a mindset that we've adopted? Contract. It's a contract. So we signed a contract. So you would be selling the Army a thing. You would say, hey, I'll sell you this thing. But as part of this, it's kind of like a razor, razor blade model. I'll give you the razor, but I want to sell you the blades. And so I might mark down the price. And these are all the games that have occurred for 30 years. I'm going to mark down the original price of this thing I'm selling you because I know you're locked into me to buy all the replacement parts going forward. And I can charge you a 20x profit margin on that.

1:17:41And so the way the whole system has occurred is we, the Army, sinfully would enter these contracts where we committed to you, our vendor, not to repair our own stuff. But hold on. But hold on. But then you said that – and I understand the distrust, right? I understand the distrust. But then when you ask them to do it, then they don't – then there's pushback. Correct. So what we didn't do many times is we didn't set up requirements of, well, if you're going to say I have to use you to repair my own part, you can't charge me more than a certain multiple of the costs to you. We didn't tell them you have to keep parts on hand so that you are able to empower us to repair our own equipment at some certain time.

1:18:21And so what has occurred is you then have all this profit-seeking behavior from them, which is rational. but we can't keep our equipment up. Soldiers suffer and we don't have a very strong legal mechanism to go after them. And so what we have said is, fuck it, we're just going to do the right thing. Good. I mean, it sounds like a simple warranty could get you out of that contract. Hey, the wheel doesn't work anymore. That's exactly 100%. Or we'll find somebody else that will. Yep. Jeez. You know, kind of switching gears here a little bit. my attorney tim parlator we talk a lot about the military and what's happened over the years and and uh you know he's one of headsets guys but you know one one thing that tim brought up to me is how do i put this we were basically talking about upper enlisted upper brass you know and that a lot of the experienced guys the guys that were in it for the right reasons the the people that have been to war and they're hitting that that 05 06 level you know um guys have been e9s for a while that are that are moving up i mean we're seeing a lot of the experience leave at least we were in the last administration and and the previous administration and you know in in they leave because they get demoralized by the bureaucracy of the military and so we're losing really good guys like i'll bring up an example uh captain brad geary you know amazing career you know and and he got out you know he retired early for for other reasons that happened at buds but i mean basically what i'm saying is we we seem to be losing all the people that are in it for the right reasons that want to fight for the country that one uh all the things that you were just talking about see simplistic solutions to a lot of the problems that we're having and they're frustrated and they're fucking leaving and then we have guys you know that have never seen combat and a lot of them um there's like some kind of underlying jealousy or you know it's almost like they look down that you actually did the job on the ground you went to war you have combat experience and they hold that against you because because yeah maybe they're just not comfortable on their own skin and i've seen some of that cleaned up i mean i just saw jamie sands uh was fired he was one of the admirals in the in the seal teams and i've worked with him you know i mean it it's created a rot a rot within our defense capabilities and so what i want to ask is i mean Are you seeing that gap start to change where a lot of the upper brass and upper enlisted bureaucrats, the rot, are you guys removing them or pushing them back out to the field?

1:21:26Or are we rewarding the guys that have done the right thing and that are in it for the right reasons? That's hard. It is hard. I mean, it's hard to be, whether you're a special operator or a conventional guy. I mean, it's very hard to have a leader who's never fucking done the job, like Jamie Sands, who's, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm going to be honest. That's why I got out. I did a very short career in the SEAL teams. It was just shy of six years. And that is why. Jamie Sands is a major reason why I left and why a lot of people left and continue to leave. And there's hundreds of Jamie Sands out there.

1:22:09So, I mean, I'll just leave it to you. Yeah. I think the president and Secretary Hegseth have done an amazing job. The president has done this across the entire federal government. He's empowered. He's picked leaders who are unconventional. I mean, I'm a 39-year-old secretary of the Army with 1.2 million people and almost$200 billion under me. Secretary Hegseth, I think he would say the same thing, and he's done a remarkable job of getting embedded in the decision-making of picking our current leaders and our future leaders, where I think most secretaries of previously defense now of war might not have been as involved as our secretary is in those decisions.

1:22:50But he's not letting it happen passively anymore. He is digging in. And I don't have as much experience in the other services, but I think he's done a remarkable job across the entire Pentagon doing this. I think if I look at our leaders, the ones that come to mind at the very top, I think we have like the person running Europe for us is this guy, CD or Chris Donahue. He was a Delta guy for 10, 15 years. If you look at our superintendent of West Point, dealt a guy for 10 or 15 years. Our sergeant major of the Army dealt a guy for a long time. I think he was their sergeant major of the Army, Weimer, for 20 years, 25 years.

1:23:29Our vice chief of staff, General Mingus, I mean, we were talking about it at breakfast, but these guys are my heroes. I mean, you look at his hands and they're burned and his nails are kind of all funky looking because he ran into a fire to save people in his PT clothes. is our General George, who is the chief of staff of the army, has deployed many, many times Purple Hearts, the entire thing. And so I would say the middle is the harder place to spot. And I live within a couple of houses of most of those men I just referenced. And we have beers on each other's porches and whiskeys and spouses over and kids and grandkids.

1:24:07And you get to know the content of the character of those men. And my wife has remarked to me how amazing it is that as just a civilian, my seven and nine-year-old are getting to live with and get to know and learn from the absolute best our nation has to offer. And I mean this very sincerely. There are things I can offer to my kids. But those men and women in uniform are modeling behaviors for them that I'm so grateful that they're getting at these formative years. that is not to sidestep the issue you're referencing, which is the rot, which is any given individual, or if you look deep in the system, it does exist.

1:24:49You have a lot of people, particularly in the preceding four years, but probably for the last 30 or 40 years who've been shitbags, you have people that have avoided taking on the responsibility of their title and the duty that they had to the soldiers beneath them and beside them. I think if you look at the wars that we faced that a lot of us deployed in, yourself included, Sean, I mean, those were not a ton of like profiles encouraged sometimes of the people that would come in. They would mark their territory red. It would be yellow six months into the deployment. It would be green when they left.

1:25:21It would start back to red. And they weren't, I think, telling their leaders, hey, this mission is fucked. And you were risking my men and women's lives and limbs repeatedly with no clear leadership. And that did exist. And so I think I am both incredibly grateful and incredibly humbled to get to experience and lead and be in this space with these amazing people while at the same time under the leadership of Secretary Hegseth laser focused on any place there is rot. There is no time to let them remain in that job. We have got to either, to your point, kick them back out to the formation, see if they can learn what it's like to actually lead soldiers and be uncomfortable, or kick them the fuck out of the Army, because we don't have time with the threats worldwide to allow ourselves to continue to be just, in some instances, mediocre.

1:26:18We have got to be excellent. We've got to empower people to go do what soldiers do best. And when you get a good E9, when you get a good sergeant major, you can feel it. I was visiting a unit, I think it was in Hawaii. We were with the 25th. And this sergeant major, I mean, everywhere we went, he is walking out into the parking lot to pick up trash. He noticed that our security vehicles were blocking traffic. He peels off immediately. He directs traffic for 20 minutes. I mean, he is the definition of a servant leader. And so we have these amazing gems of leaders. And we just, I owe them, and Secretary of Hegseth owes them, and the president has empowered us to act on giving them the best colleagues they can possibly have.

1:27:01How do you think you fix this for the long term? Have you thought about that? I mean, because the administration could totally change in three years from today, and everything goes back to the way it was. So have you thought about how do you fix this for the long term? So that, I mean, you can fire everybody, but the way the system runs, I mean, you get rewarded for things that – the pathway to advancement seems off to me. I think you model the right behavior. And so, again, a strength and a weakness of our system, just our political model is you have these pretty big swings right now between political parties, which reference the will of the – which is because of the will of the voters.

1:27:49And that's powerful and that's amazing and that's sacred. For something, an institution like the United States Army, I think what we are trying to do is, and Secretary Hegseth does this really well, model what right looks like, model empowering the good leaders to make the hard decisions for their soldiers, model no doublespeak, model this idea that I blame the primes and I blame the legislators and I blame all sorts of the civilians, but the military leadership, the soldiers, the generals also own a portion of the blame because for many years they were performative. To your point, the best way to get promoted oftentimes was to not say the hard thing and to not risk that promotion because the farther you got up in the system, the more it was kind of based off how good your relationship was with the board picking the next one.

1:28:42And so you just weren't incentivized to create strife. And so I think what we are trying to do is model this idea that you need to be willing to go in there. And nearly every single day I talk to General George This might be our last week together, but let's just run at the problem as fast as we can. And if we get yelled at by senators publicly in our hearings, if congressmen call and threaten us, that's okay. That's the system working well. We just need to be willing to get fired and move on and hand the baton to the next leader. I mean, do you think you could quietly change the incentive structure to advancement without going under the radar of the Senate?

1:29:21Yes, for sure. And so we are actively working at, because everything I just described is an individual human issue. The systems are also what are going to lead to the good or bad outcomes that we want. And so systematically, we're going after our acquisition. Systematically, we're going after our training. Systematically, we're also going after how we promote people. And we're trying to get rid of things that I think we believe and the secretary believes were put into place to be more performative. And instead, what we're trying to do is reward those leaders who have measurably made the hard decisions and who may be a little bit rougher on the edge and have a little bit of a complicated history, have gone too far in some instances in an attempt to do the right thing and no longer reward the ones systematically who have just stayed plain vanilla and have managed to rise because they just stay right in the mean.

1:30:20Man, you're making me want to join it. How has recruitment been? We've been just fucking crushing. I am so excited every time I see the president to just tell him how. I mean, when I talk to soldiers and we try to be out of the building at least 50 % of our time, they can feel a difference under President Trump. They feel like they get to be the warrior class again. There are two different numbers we look at. Basically, the recruiting numbers are the leading indicator of the health of our army. from a human perspective is the recruiting numbers. So we hit our 12-month goal seven, eight-ish months into the year.

1:30:58We have probably 30 % in our waiting pool for the next year in our debt. We are just on fire. And then kind of equally or more important to my mind is our retention numbers. And so these are soldiers in our formations who are getting to see what our leadership is like, who are getting to see are we empowering them to be innovators, who are getting to see, are we preparing them for the next major conflict? And our retention numbers, we hit our 12-month goal six months into the year. And so we are on absolute fire under the president's leadership with people wanting to serve in the United States Army again.

1:31:32Are you seeing any pushback from the rot, from the upper brass that we were calling the rot earlier about how the systems are changing? So the problem with that class of person is they are very good at optimizing for the preferences of the day. And so what you don't spot as obviously is you don't spot them pushing back in a way that you can pinpoint necessarily because they optimize for whoever the current leadership is. And that's what makes them so hard to root out sometimes is you wouldn't see an offensive or like a kinetic pushback. You actually just try to sniff out, wait a second, when we leave power, are you the type of person that will continue to be a leader of men and women?

1:32:27And will you fight for them when we're gone? And so it's a little bit more tricky to spot. So I think I would say to your answer, I haven't seen a lot of it, but I haven't seen a lot of it because they're good at not showing it. So it doesn't necessarily mean it's not there. I mean, early on, there was a lot of rumors that a lot of these guys were kind of convoluting to get Hegseth out of there because of this. I don't know how true that is. I've got a couple degrees of separation from the Pentagon, but do you know if there's any truth to that? So my interactions have been, and I've said this on record, off record, on background, I have – Secretary Hegseth has been, I think, an unconventional pick deliberately from the president.

1:33:11And I don't claim to be as nearly as good as the Secretary Hegseth, but unconventional too. But from Secretary Hegseth's interactions with everyone I have seen in the building, he is a warrior leader. And when he gets up in front of soldiers, airmen, Marines, I mean, they are so fired up under his leadership that they – you can feel it. you can sense it. Like, it is just one of these human things where I think you have a, you can't fake that kind of stuff. They're proud to be there. They're proud to be there. They love him as their leader. They're proud to serve under him and under the president.

1:33:48And so from my perspective, I haven't seen it in any meeting. I haven't heard any soldiers say it. I've heard nothing but glowing rave reviews. That's good to hear. That's good to hear. Back to kind of recruiting. We were chatting at breakfast about, I think it was at breakfast, about the older generation always says the younger generation is weaker. It's just gone. Walked uphill to school both ways. Exactly. And so what I want to ask you is, and I don't know how much exposure you have, it sounds like you have a lot of exposure because you're actually interacting with the soldiers at all levels, all over the states and even out of the states.

1:34:30And so what I want to ask is more specifically about the Gen Z generation in the military. The Gen Z gets a lot of shit. I think they're very innovative and are very good at problem solving from a lot of the things that I've seen from Gen Z. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? So I went down to basic training maybe a month and a half ago at this point at Fort Jackson, where I had gone and got to go on some rotations and or do some lanes with these men and women who were three to five weeks into their time in the Army. And other than just noticing how old I've gotten when I contrasted myself with their youthfulness, it was remarkable to me some of the things they were teaching their cadre.

1:35:17And by that, what I mean specifically is we had started putting up drones on their lanes to show them what do they look like from the sky? How do they conceal themselves from these drones? And one of the things that was different about BASIC when I went through than when they are going through is that the BASIC training drill sergeants are actually now leading them. They're serving as their squad leaders. They're serving as their platoon leaders and part of the training cycle. And when I would talk to these drill sergeants, what they would tell me is each iteration of this exercise with these soldiers who had been in two to five weeks, they were actually learning new things that were making them better at the exercise that they were passing on to the next cycle of students.

1:35:57And actually, some of these lessons, when we were pinpointing it, were trickling up to the Pentagon. And so what's kind of so remarkable about that Gen Z crowd and their kind of tech savviness is we have to have it as a nation. Back to Ukraine being this kind of the Silicon Valley or the innovation point of war, what's happening is this mixture of digital tools and hardware tools are both being used to inflict violence on human beings. And I think we as an army, and if you look at my generation, we kind of understand hardware. I have a dash of digital experience, but you talk to these new soldiers coming in and they can pick up an FPV drone and they can figure that thing out in two minutes.

1:36:41And from playing video games growing up, this is kind of what's wild to me. I'm not a gamer, but will remark that I am just so bad at the controls and getting it to work. You give it to a 19-year-old and they're able to get it in windows. They're able to get it to open doors. They're able to get these drones into places that the rest of us can't just instinctually. And that may sound trite and that may sound like a minor issue. But when I've done raids with the ATF, the way they now do their raids is they knock down the door, they get a stronghold right inside the building. And then they spend like 15 minutes holding that stronghold and sending drones in to check all of these different rooms.

1:37:22And it's completely changed their TTPs. And I don't know that that's right for the Army, but at least we are now getting to mix in this new set of skill set, this new asset that we as an Army desperately know we need. And we know that when you look at what conflict looks like around the world right now, it is moving in that direction that we are over-indexed on a set of human beings like me that are pretty decent with a rucksack, pretty decent with hardware, but are pretty soft on the digital skills. And balancing that out with our new recruits is just an amazing asset for our nation. Yeah, that's, I love to hear that, you know, and so I want to talk to you about, you know, warfare is changing at a rapid, rapid pace.

1:38:04I don't even know if I would recognize the battlefield at this point anymore. And I mean, all the stuff with drones, the autonomous vehicles, I've interviewed Dino Mavrucas, you know, the founder of Saronic. Yep. And, and, you know, Palmer, Palantir guys, I mean, everything has changed so much in the past, since I was in 20 years. I mean, it's, like I said, it's almost unrecognizable, especially with the drone stuff. I mean, what does the future of warfare look like? So what it is not is, it is not like if you think of our most elite units from our time in, they'd come in low on Blackhawks quietly, quickly.

1:38:45They'd get dropped off a click or two from the objective. They would come up on the house. They would come up on the objective. They would room clear with like a choreography and a violence of action that was just like majestic. They would nearly always accomplish the mission and be gone quickly. When you talk to them today, that Blackhawk is not getting in unseen. There's acoustic sensors that hear it miles out. When they land, we, the United States Army, have owned the night for a very long time. We now have infrared drones that are out there watching everything. Sneaking up on the objective quietly when there's a drone overhead with ammunition just doesn't really work anymore.

1:39:22And so what we are having to do is reinvent ourselves from both that small specific conflict and specific issue to this idea that we haven't really faced a peer in conflict in a very long time as a nation. And going to war in Afghanistan or Iraq looks very different than what a long-term contested environment would look like 6 ,000 miles from our homeland. It just requires a complete rethinking of how we're going to do it. And it requires much more dependence, I think, on innovation. So the future fight looks like a lot more human and machine and instant connection between our humans and our things and our sensors.

1:40:06And it looks a lot more like layering and generative AI and compute on the edge or on the battlefield that can process through these really complicated questions and problem sets really quickly. Because if you think about defending against a drone swarm, I mean, the number of decisions that have to be made, you have a finite number of resources They're going to come at you from all sorts of directions. They're going to be working in tandem. And just one human brain is no longer capable of dealing with that problem. And so we are going to have a mix of machine, digital solutions, and humans all having to work together in concert.

1:40:41And just the energy required to make that work is incredible. So you think about how do we actually get all the batteries that are necessary out there? How do we get all the fuel? Like the requirements are just completely different from what I think you and I saw. And this is kind of back to that set of CEOs coming to the building in two weeks. What we're really optimistic that we can do is out-innovate our peer threats by bringing to bear the American industry and the American innovation and the American ecosystem of just problem solving that a place like a China, they have some very talented people, but they're a lot more homogenous in how they think about problem solving.

1:41:22And our strength as a nation is that we empower all sorts of people to solve our problems. And that unlocks all of these things that just have historically led us to be dominant. And so we are highly focused on systematizing that innovation. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense?

1:41:57There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. I mean, with all the autonomous vehicles and drones and, you know, all the new software, the Palantir stuff, i mean i would imagine that that would replace a lot of human beings in the military you know and i don't say that lightly because i wouldn't want to be replaced if i was in the military i don't want to think that a machine or anything can can do what i used to do as a seal and but you know now that i'm out and i'm on the flip side i'm like well that's less lives lost that's you know better families at home because you don't have the family dynamic of a guy that's deployed all the time and suicide rates and all that kind of stuff so i i and warfare is obviously just evolving and it is it is in my opinion making ground guys air guys you know the the the the typical stuff that we've seen since world war ii i mean it's it's i think that there is an element that is rapidly becoming obsolete.

1:43:35And so what does the future of Manning look like? So if you think about the kind of fight in the Indo-Pacific and the value the army in particular could have, I think a lot of people debate theoretically these kinds of issues and enjoy that much more than I do. I think my perspective is typically, to date, all of human history, the vast majority of it, has unfolded with human beings on land. Sure, humans are at sea sometimes. sometimes in their air, sometimes they're in space. But to date, there may be an inflection point for that too. Humans on land is where the story of humanity is unfolding.

1:44:12And so, I think if you think about conflict, if you think about war, I don't actually think we think that there will be a decrease in the number of humans involved as soldiers. I think those humans will be empowered with all sorts of tools that they just didn't have before. And I think the requirements of those humans will be different. Where with the 101st yesterday, one of the things we were talking about is we have this software factory as an army. And I was a little hesitant at first to think, why are soldiers doing software development for us? But a lot of what it is, is just empowering and training our soldiers to know what digital tools exist and how can they use those tools to achieve their commander's intent.

1:44:51And so if you start to think about it that way, after seeing it, I was like, oh man, maybe we should be training some number of soldiers per platoon to know what they can do. Because what that fight probably looks like in the future is getting soldiers on to the or near the objective, having them conceal themselves, having them figure out what assets exist in the community or the area where we're sending them, how do they tie in and bring in those assets, make it part of their toolkit, and then how do they fight from there? And so that to date is a, I mean, quantum computing could change this and generative AI models could eventually get to a point where as effective as a human brain.

1:45:30But until that day comes or if it comes, it is going to be an American soldier innovating on the ground with their peers and figuring out how do they do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission. And I would bet on humans in that instance every single time, empowered with these tools. Because one of the things that is worrisome about the digital environment is, if you look at what's happening with drones, the more tech savvy and the more digital a drone is, the easier it is to jam, the easier it is to take down. And we were talking about this at breakfast. It's actually these wired old school drones that are proving very effective.

1:46:06And then one of the most effective things against that wired drone is a net gun, which just absolutely blows my mind that we are back to net guns, but it actually is working. And so there's this balance between, and this is kind of similar with the Humvee and the ISV and how we think of the equipment we give our soldiers. We actually need a balance of digital tools and analog tools and a balance of robots and humans. And it is, there is not going to be a one size fits all solution for warfare, but instead a training and a mentality and a model that we, you are empowered to go figure out whatever you need, go build it, 3D print it wherever we send you in the world and go get on the objective and win.

1:46:46I would like to go a little farther into drone warfare. I mean, we just saw the event, you know, I don't know, was that six months ago maybe the event in Russia? Operation Spider's Web? Was that? Yeah, a couple months ago. Was that the Army? Where the Ukrainians used their drones and took out, yep, so a couple months ago in Russia it was. So essentially, and I think the exact numbers are Ukraine launched about$40 ,000 worth of drones into Russia and took out perhaps up to$10 billion worth of equipment. I mean, that should just absolutely and utterly blow people's minds when they think of the sheer scale that we think Russia created between three and four million drones last year.

1:47:30China is up in the tens to 14 million drones created last year. I mean, the number of these things that are existing in the world is just utterly staggering. How was that planned? Did you have any part in that? So if we did, we wouldn't talk about it. Okay. But I think what is publicly available is the Ukrainians through all sorts of different means. And you could let it go to your imagination how they did it, but it could be things like balloons. It could be things like driving over the border. It could be things, whatever the actual way of getting the thing into the country is. Many and most countries have pretty big borders, and you just have to get a drone in, which is not particularly difficult, and get in some number of hundreds of those, and then give them an explosive, put them up in the air, have a first-person pilot fly it into a thing.

1:48:21Like, it's not a particularly technically challenging problem that led to an amazingly effective hit against Russia. And one of the things we've talked about is, like, if Ukraine is the Silicon Valley of war and that's where the vast majority of innovation is coming, I mean, Russia is in that fight. So they're capturing a lot of that innovation, and yet they still lost$10 billion worth of equipment. Mm-hmm. You brought up an interesting point at breakfast when we were talking about this. You had mentioned this is how all of our helicopters, all of our planes, all of our predator drones and drones, I mean, a lot of our Humvees probably, tanks, everything, ships.

1:49:05Jeremy brought up Pearl Harbor. I mean, this is how we store all of our stuff. So what is our defense if cartels, Russia, China, name adversary, Venezuela, what is our defense if they are to smuggle$40 ,000 worth of drones over the border and hit some of our strategic bases? So I think the kind of amazing thing about President Trump is he just instinctively knows this stuff. And so when you think about Golden Dome, the way I hear him talk about Golden Dome is we have got to protect the skies of the American homeland. And so one of the ways that my brain has processed that is when you think of drones, it's kind of like this idea of like a golden mini dome where we need to, on a smaller scale, protect our skies from these threats.

1:49:58And so the good news is the federal government is all over this. The Secretary of War just signed a couple of weeks ago this GIATF, so Joint Interagency Task Force memo, that basically put the Secretary of the Army, so me and the Army, in charge of counter-drone for the Pentagon. And then one of the benefits of being ATF acting director at the same time is we've talked to – I've talked to the Attorney General. We've talked to the CIA. We're basically doing a whole of government sprint to scale our solutions that we have for this problem because we know how serious it is. And so this is one of the threats that our country faces.

1:50:38But every country faces this threat. I mean, this is going to be a threat on borders and arenas and stadiums and ports. And just kind of the entire world will face this new form of violence and this new scaled way to inflict harm on fellow human beings all at once. And where I am incredibly optimistic is the president saw this coming and gave the authorities to the secretary of war. And then he's passed it down to the army. And we are moving out of this problem with lightning speed to scale solutions. not in the coming years, but we expect to have kind of very public displays of how we are able to defend our nation in the coming like 60 or 90 days.

1:51:21In 60 to 90 days, that will be unveiled. Yes. Amazing. Amazing. You know, talking about, I mean, Secretary of War, what the War Department, I mean, what do you think about that? I think it's awesome. I think this is all – people can view it as a much more nuanced topic or people can view it as something that's performative or something that is more intended for media spectacle. I don't think that that is what the president saw in this at all. I don't think Secretary Higgs saw that at all. I think everything we've talked about today, this is just a furtherance of this very deep, legitimate belief that we have come off course as a former Department of Defense.

1:52:07And instead, we need to return to this focused mission of we exist to precipitate and effectuate war on behalf of our nation. And what that means is that means acting violently against others who threaten our way of life. And that is its purpose. And all of the other shit that we have optimized for over the last decades has made us – it hasn't just made us less effective in some instances. It's made us ineffective, and that is no longer sufficient. And so what the president is doing with this renaming, I think, is very important and exactly what the American people elected him for in November.

1:52:48Well, I mean, George Washington originally named it Department of War, correct? and then at some point along the line it became Department of Defense and then now we're back to Department of Warren and while I do understand everything that you just said and I don't disagree with it I do think that there's another side of this where you know sometimes I worry that are that the U.S. may be coming across a little aggressive I mean we saw the stuff with Greenland And Panama, definitely don't disagree with the Panama Canal stuff. But, you know, I mean, it's aggressive. The tariffs, now the Secretary of War.

1:53:30I mean, do you think that that paints a picture to the rest of the world that we are becoming maybe a little bit too aggressive and there could be some long-term problems from that? I think the entire concept of peace through strength. Like, again, I think this is just something the average human knows is true. They feel it in their bones. They saw it on the schoolyard with the bully. They know that the stronger you are, the safer you can be. And I think we've just gotten afraid as a nation of saying that and just being comfortable with the idea. When another nation faces conflict, the very first country they want on their side is the United States.

1:54:12They may say they don't like it, but that is because they haven't felt an existential threat in a long time. I am nearly certain that if we someday face a lead up to or an actual version of something like a World War III, no one will be complaining that we started to reorient ourselves to be the strongest possible versions of ourselves, to be oriented to this posturing of we are ready to deploy our soldiers to war at a moment's notice to keep our country safe. I am nearly certain in that moment, which is, again, the fundamental purpose of a nation is to protect its people and reorienting ourselves toward that, reorienting ourselves to this idea that we're not afraid for some people to say, I don't like that.

1:54:56That's okay. Don't like it. Don't be a citizen in our nation. Don't come visit. That's okay. You can choose a European nation to spend your summer and not come spend your tourist dollar here. I don't mind, but I think this idea that we should contort ourselves as a nation to a softer version of ourselves just so that we don't offend others with our words or our actions seems both incredibly silly and incredibly short-sighted and not the mandate that the president was given in November. He talked about doing all of these things, and Americans showed up in all seven of the battleground states, went to President Trump because of exactly this kind of true belief in what America can be and should be.

1:55:37Do you feel like this has pushed some of our adversaries closer together? I mean, we just saw, you know, Putin, Modi.

1:55:56And I mean, do you think that some of the things that I just rattled off, maybe one in particular, Secretary of War or Department of War? I mean, do you think that's pushing these guys to form their alliances quicker and start to come up with plans and how to combat us? I guess the honest answer is maybe. My instinctive answer was going to be no. And the reason I was going to, I'm going to disclaim the intellectual or hedge with the intellectual honesty of these are really complex issues, it could be happening. The reason I don't believe it's true is I think that that kind of friendship or that kind of alignment is so fragile that the odds that a future conflict where it would really matter to us, it would hold, I think is unlikely.

1:57:07I think all of their leaders are smart enough to know that. And so I think most of it is performative. I think when you look at what North Korea, as an example, sent to the front line, it seemed more performative. I don't think the Russians thought these 10 ,000 North Koreans that seemed to get slaughtered within the first couple of weeks made a meaningful difference. And I think if you actually look at the outputs of those nations, they are not relying on each other to build up their security. They're not relying on each other at scale for their economic growth. I think they are cautiously willing to be seen in a photo frame together, but it is not much more than that.

1:57:50Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I hope that's true. Who do you think are – I mean who do we – who's America's biggest threat right now? China. China. I believe that too. Why do you think that? I think if – I think you listen to their words as first. I mean I think they view us as their biggest threat. Their economy has been gangbusters for a couple of decades. It's their ability to just manufacture and output things that currently may not be tools of war but could be converted to tools of war at scale is pretty remarkable. Their innovation, the number of PhDs they are spitting out, the number of patents that they as a nation are being awarded is just unbelievable.

1:58:34And if you look at their focus on the long horizon and their tolerance for short-term pain, I think that in some ways can be a weakness of our system is that we can't focus on the long-term all that well. And our system of government forces us to think more short-term most times. And that gives a different set of strengths. But I think if you look at that collective set of characteristics for China, it puts them kind of far and away as our pacing threat. But that being said, I think when I look back to my Title 10 authorities to man, train, and equip the army and get it ready to deploy anywhere in the world on behalf of the President and Secretary of War, we are, General George and I, are hyper-focused on creating an army that not only will dominate the Indo-Pacific in a fight with China if we have to, but is ready to go anywhere in the world at a moment's notice and fight any conflict regardless of who it is against.

1:59:32And so that requires us because if you think of most of human history, I think most people who have thought they could predict the future have turned out wrong. And so we need to develop an army knowing that we may be used anywhere in the world at a moment's notice that might not be who we think or where we think we're going. Did you just say you think that China is leaps and bounds behind us uh no okay i thought i heard that i hope i didn't i mean they are they're very close to us and yes unequivocally outdoing us on manufacturing our supply chain the fentanyl precursors i mean list goes on the bricks you know all this stuff i mean they this i hate to say it like this but it seems like they have us or are close to having us at every angle.

2:00:24And, you know, I talked to a lot of innovators, a lot of tech guys on this show, all of them are saying the same thing. I mean, U.S. shipbuilding capacity is what, 1 % of the entire world. China's at 50%. There's also, you know, there's also the fact that they, you know, maybe some of that's a little over embellished because of the, you know, their companies depend on, on that narrative, but I don't know how many ships are actually war fighting ships. I think a lot of them are just container ships that they could repurpose. But I mean, what are your biggest fears with China? Well, so, and just to go back, because when this goes live and I listened to myself, if I had said I wasn't nervous of where China is, I'm going to be in Paris.

2:01:08So I hope that that's not what came across because China's incredible. Their system of government, what I was intending to say, gives them strengths in certain things because of what they can focus on long term, but it makes, I think, a lot of their outcomes more narrowly predictable. Meaning, if you look at DeepSeek as an example of something where their generative AI model kind of caught the world on fire when they released it, as far as I last know, much of the work that was done for DeepSeek was piggybacked off the innovation of open AI. And what China is really good at is fast following. It is really good at getting what we, the United States and other nations develop and quickly mimicking and copying it.

2:01:52That is a superpower of theirs. But we, the United States, also have strengths that I think when we lean into those strengths and empower them as a department of war, we have incredible outcomes. But back to the kind of question you were asking, what I am most nervous about with China is their ability to be hyper-focused on an outcome and they don't have to go through the same political cycles we do. Their pain tolerance can be a lot higher than us because they don't have to suffer the same sort of short-term political consequence that I think a lot of our leaders have to suffer through. And define short-term as two or four years, not that short, but much shorter than China's 100-year horizon.

2:02:33And I worry that they will view us from the lens of the previous four years as not strong enough to hold them back, not having the political will to engage with them, and that they have taken all of these technological leaps in the previous decade, and then it makes them more aggressive. And I worry that they act in a way that forces us to send our American sons and daughters to go engage directly with them. What are some of their weaknesses? We talk a lot about their strengths on the show. I think my audience is very well informed on everything they're doing and all the strengths and vulnerabilities that we have.

2:03:14But what are some of their vulnerabilities? I think you could just – I don't know if you saw the parade recently. I think what you get out of totalitarian governments is you get a – homogeneity is a lot easier to achieve. And homogeneity is a strength for some things. What it is not a strength for, in my opinion, is warfare. And so when you think of what China is really good at, I don't think the idea of commander's intent is something that they have ingrained into their soldiers. I think what that means for a listener who might not have served is the United States Army prides itself on this concept of commander's intent, which is if I work for you and you give me a mission, I want to make sure I know why you want me to do it.

2:04:04I push that down through my guys, and we go out and execute. And what that specifically means is there are all sorts of moments on any given mission where it is complicated, it is unpredictable, you don't know what to do. But with commander's intent, I don't have to wait. I can say, I think I know what you wanted me to do. I'm going to innovate in this moment. I'm going to make a decision. I'm going to be scrappy, and I'm going to go get the job done. What other nations do and what China does is they are a lot more myopically focused of, I've told you to walk 100 yards to the right, stand there, don't move until I give you the next order.

2:04:37and that can work in some moments. It works really well on parade fields. It works really well at personifying this idea of leadership. But in a moment, and you know this, Sean, when the bullets start to fly, you need men and women on the ground who feel empowered to go win the fight. And that scrappiness is what the American GI has had for so long. And I don't think if you look at China's leadership structure, I think the farther you get out from their core decision-making body, the worse the outcomes typically are. And I think they know that. So no critical thinking on the ground without immediate leadership there.

2:05:16I would guess they would self-identify as that being a problem. I mean, I think another vulnerability is the population decline that's going on over there. I mean, they had the one-child policy forever, and now there's this massive imbalance from male to female population. And, I mean, you know, men with men can't make babies. Science? At least this four years they can. You know, you could Google that. It'll probably give you something different. But I think that is a weakness of theirs that is not talked about much. Now, that being said, I mean, when we're talking about autonomous vehicles and the future of warfare and AI and all of that, I don't know how much that actually matters.

2:06:02A declining population. when they can, I mean, I guess they wouldn't be able to manufacture as fast. Yeah. But. And I think the problem with all of this is this is new to humanity kind of stuff. This is the ability to, through Neuralink, hook your brain up to a computer and what you can do with that and what you can do with the mixture of human machine and what you can do with drones kind of swarming around our ISVs as we go into conflict and just all of these different iterations of once if quantum computing comes and the speed of decision making, the ability to process complex information quickly.

2:06:38I think it's kind of outside of our ability to know what that is going to be. And so I think that there is a real possibility that some of the things China is pretty effective with today, when we hit moments of warfare and conflict, we are able to degrade those capabilities quickly, and they will have had an over-reliance on them in combat, where I think their safe self-driving capabilities may be amazing in Beijing. And they may be effective on the battlefield, but they also might not be. And I don't know that they have invested and continue to invest and train these exquisite human beings like we have in our soldiers that at that moment, where it kind of all degrades back to just humans on the ground with commander's intent, who's going to win?

2:07:27I am incredibly optimistic that our soldiers win that fight every single time. How would this, I mean, how do you envision this would happen if something were to kick off, if World War III were to kick off or China, U.S. war were to kick off? I mean, how do you envision that coming to fruition? So one of the kind of most complicated parts of this is this low earth orbit, where most of the satellites are. You could envision a world in a World War III scenario or somebody blows something up in the low Earth orbit, they create a debris field, and it takes out all of the satellites, all of the communication devices, everything in that kind of range, which changes warfare instantly.

2:08:06I never thought about that. And that's where this over-reliance on technology, you need to have redundancy at every single step. You need to be able to use cell phone towers. You need to be able to use the old school radios. You need to be able to use hand signals because in that moment of existential fight where everything is on the table, it's just not going to play out in this very clean way that we're predicting today. All we know is we need a depth of solutions and an innovative soldier and empowerment to them to go look at this space in front of them and decide what they need at that exact moment.

2:08:42What about Taiwan? Yeah. I mean, would that kick something off? We don't even recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country. I think there's only 12. Is there only 12 countries that consider them to be a sovereign country? So, you know, if China were to kinetically take Taiwan, which probably wouldn't take much, right? I mean, where do we stand with this? I think that that is one of these incredibly complicated questions that I am glad I am not the president. I am glad I am not the secretary of war. I would not envy having to be in that room to make that decision. But what I can tell you is if whatever the president needs the army to do, we would do it well.

2:09:28We would do it effectively. And as long as we are able to continue this momentum of returning our soldiers to this idea that the failure is not an option, we don't fight wars, we're winning wars. We would do what we needed to do, and we would overcome the enemy in that instance. Why would we do it? Why do you think Taiwan's such a strategic location?

2:09:56During, I'm going to, this is the first time in our two and a half hours, I'll give you a weekend. Well, I mean, they might, they could have been intellectually weak, but not intentionally weak. One of the things before I did my Senate hearing that you learn is you basically learn to deflect answers. You learn to basically say like, oh, that's a great question, Senator. Let me follow up. Or like you asked me a thing, the classic politician thing. What I want to be cautious about doing here is getting out in front of the president or secretary of war on such a current topic. And so one of the things you also don't do is answer hypotheticals.

2:10:31And so I'm going to dodge your hypothetical but flag that I'm doing it. And instead, I will say I think when we think about these things broadly, America for a long time, we have been an ally that countries could rely on. They could rely that in their moment of need, no matter what had happened that day before or the couple of years before or how trade talks had gone, when they needed us, we show up. We show up in force and we help them win. And so I think there is a lot of strength to be shown knowing that America stands by and stands ready to support our allies. And if you think and if it is very clear that the Pentagon and the president are picking and have identified China as our pacing threat as a nation, I could absolutely envision a world where that could be over a red line that the president has drawn.

2:11:24But I also want to be unequivocal in saying he has not told me that. And so I would stand by and stand ready with the army to do what we needed to do for the fight. I mean, I'll say it's such a strategic location, one, because the chip industry, and we rely on those chips, too. I think if we didn't intervene, that that would show tremendous weakness in that part of the world. And with everything that BRICS is trying to do, that might amplify it. And more, I mean, new sheriff in town, right? China. Guess what? You're on us now. When I was visiting Hawaii and Philippines and Guam, the domino effect concept of I think when you get out to that part of the world, we are currently doing, in my opinion, a very good job of joint exercises, talisman saber that we did in Australia firing a prison missile.

2:12:16And we are pushing forward a lot of our tech innovation. We are getting our soldiers onto the ground, into the theater, to be ready to help for exactly what you're talking about. So that most in nearly every country I have talked to loves it when they have soldiers on the ground. Because what they know is when America puts one of our soldiers on the ground somewhere, if you fuck with that soldier, you are going to have a beast coming behind you. And we have for a long time as a nation held that model. And I have no doubt under President Trump, if somebody harmed one of our soldiers, they would be hell to pay.

2:12:52Might not be able to answer that this. And if you can't, that's fine. This is an exciting setup to a question. I understand. No, I mean, I'm just saying that I understand that we can't lift the veil on all of our plans. And that would be detrimental. But kind of what I'm getting at is I don't think that if China were to take Taiwan, which a lot of people, I think, think that it would be kinetic because of all the show force they have there. They're building artificial islands to push the boundaries out. And so it looks like it might be kinetic. But I think what a lot of people don't know is that there's a two-party system in Taiwan.

2:13:35And one wants Taiwan, they want democracy, they want freedom. And then there's the other side that is very pro-China, one-China policy. And so I think that they're – I mean, I think China's smart. I think they know that we would probably intervene if they did go kinetic. I don't know what recourse we have through with the cognitive warfare that they are applying to the Taiwanese and spreading propaganda and why they need to have the one China policy. And it's, I mean, for lack of a better term, it's mind fucking these people out of thinking that they want freedom. them. And so if they are successful in that and they take the chip industry and they take Taiwan, you know, through a non-kinetic method, I mean, do we have a plan for that?

2:14:30What do we do if that happens? So without answering to the particulars, because as you flagged, I think that these are things we very rationally and deliberately leave decision-making space for the president and Secretary of War on. I can say kind of unequivocally, if you look at what we're doing with our defense industrial base, we are hyper-focused on building resiliency for things like chips. If you compare and contrast, and these are all publicly available information, the number of drones we're capable of manufacturing today versus the number of drones China's capable of manufacturing today, we are much less than.

2:15:12I'd say in six or 12 months, that number is going to be totally different. I think a lot of the ways that we make the situation you described less relevant to us as a nation, we would still be acutely aware of it and the president would make his decision and we would follow through, but it would be less impactful to us when we return manufacturing excellence to our nation. And so one of the things we, the Army, are doing that will probably in the next six weeks at the same conference I was talking about we're doing is We're looking at all of the assets we have on our depots and our arsenals and our bases.

2:15:47And we have lots of land. We have land that is already protected. We have land that is ready to have manufacturing facilities put on it. So as an example of a thing we are considering, we're going to invite a lot of private equity investors and larger companies to come to this event and look at what we have to offer them and look at our needs. And there may be instances where for like data centers, as an example, if you build your data center on our Army Depot or Arsenal or base, you use 90 % of it to sell, you give us 10 % of it, and we, the Army, can use that. And it's kind of this net positive.

2:16:24We are also looking at chips, and we're looking at brushless motors for drones, and we are looking at all of the things that we as a nation would need to continue to fight and win wars, and we are going to try to be able to manufacture the vast majority of that in our own nation. How close are we to seeing an end the Russia-Ukraine war?

2:16:47I think nearly every time I've been in the White House, I have heard the president and his team focused on bringing peace there. I think he rightfully says that war is a tragedy on a global scale. He is working to bring those two parties together to find peace. And I am optimistic that under his leadership, he will be able to do it. I want to stress though, that I think this is back to that media narrative. When people blame him for this, It's insanity to me that he's the only leader in the world, I think, that would be capable of if you had told me that the war concluded next week, I would believe it would be true under his leadership where I think nearly any other individual just couldn't bring those two parties to the table and get them to come to a place of agreement.

2:17:42And so I don't know what it ends up looking like. I don't think anybody does. But I think if you listen to what is occurring and you listen to how the parties are speaking about it, I think their respect for the president and the respect for our country increases the odds of it being done sooner rather than later, which, again, this was now my second politician answer is a little bit mushy and a little bit like of a sidestep. But I think on this one, no one knows is probably the short answer. That's kind of what I thought. last last subject okay israel okay what's going on what's going on there we see the gaza stuff they just hit qatar you're hitting all the hot topics just saving them for the end yeah i get it i get it um i think this is another um very very very it is very much divided it's a it's another one of those things that's dividing the united states i mean on one hand we have people that say Israel's our greatest ally ever.

2:18:41On the other hand, we have people that don't understand why they're an ally. And I understand both sides of this. But I mean, I think that the big fear amongst Americans is that we don't want to go to war for another nation. And so what is Israel's plan over there? I mean, they blew up some Catholic churches. We see all the kids in Gaza. We see all the civilians getting killed. I mean, the land there just looks completely decimated. And, you know, and then they hit Iran or we hit Iran, you know, because of them. I mean, what's going on here? So this next remark is not meant to be tried. It's not.

2:19:27I think any of your listeners, I think you'd feel the same. Anyone who's deployed to a war of any scale, it fucking sucks. Like, war is hell. I think the negative externalities, the civilians that die in these instances, is just a catastrophic outcome that has existed since the beginning of mankind when people go to war. And I think if you look at Israel and if you look at what kicked it off, their righteous anger makes all the sense in the world to me. I cannot imagine living with a neighbor who was inculcated from birth to hate me and want might kill me and wipe out my family and my society.

2:20:05That is a starting point. If you just frame it from that and then let the narrative, let the rest of the situation play out, I think is informative of why they are acting so aggressively like they are to basically finally get rid of this threat to their homeland. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say, when does the cost become too big? And I don't know that anyone knows what the answer is. I am optimistic that, again, with the president, his near daily engagement in this topic, with Wyckoff out there all the time, with how much the president has built up the trust of the Israelis, that he is willing and able and historically has stood by them.

2:20:53I think he is uniquely well-suited to bring peace. I think fundamentally the problem is I don't know if Hamas is willing to accept peace, and I don't know that they could actually control their own people in a way to perpetuate peace. And I think that's what fundamentally creates the quagmire of what does good enough look like to end the war. I think this, though, to me, is much closer to a Pearl Harbor incident for them than it is to an Iraq or Afghanistan or the United States. I can completely appreciate it. Well, I mean, Afghanistan kicked off because of 9-11. Yeah. A lot more people killed there than October 7th.

2:21:34Yeah. We didn't decimate entire cities. Yeah. Maybe Fallujah. Yeah. But not like that. I mean, 60 ,000 several months ago dead. 60 ,000. Yeah. That's a lot of fucking people. It's a lot of people. No, and this is where human storytelling, I don't want to be intellectually fraudulent in my reply, but my understanding from visiting there and from friends who lived there and from people who were in the military there, my understanding of the hatred and the proximity and the closeness and the ability for violence to be inflicted on the Israeli homeland again and again and again. is just different from what we faced with the threat in Afghanistan.

2:22:21The distance of miles made it so that I think we could get to a place we felt comfortable as a nation going pencils down faster. We didn't, and we should have. I think we look back and many and most people would say we should have set a mission, accomplished it quickly, and gotten back home. It was kind of one of those things. Abhorrent how we ran the thing, but I think it is fair to say what Israel is facing is different. Oh, God. What should I be asking you that I haven't asked you? Oh, that's a fantastic one.

2:22:56I think the other big part of this is, how do we, as an army, fund the types of ideas that come out of garages? I think if we look at the success of Silicon Valley, I think one of the questions, if I were you, I would ask me is, how are you going to take the lessons of Silicon Valley from scaling solutions really quickly and get them to soldiers? Because I think that's like one other leg of the stool that we've talked about how we actually buy. We've talked about getting in the hands of soldiers. We've talked about the systems for promoting and training our soldiers. I think the last piece of the last big leg is like how do we actually get dollars because people need dollars they have to go buy stuff they have to feed their families they have to like live long enough to get their idea from their head to the chalkboard to the manufacturing floor to the soldier back to the manufacturing floor to scale um and so like that's another kind of hard problem to solve i mean i think i think we're you know maybe this is off but i feel like we're off to a great start.

2:24:05I mean, through my interviews with all these founders of defense tech companies, I mean, these guys are gung-ho. And in the last administration, in Trump's first administration, we saw Google, Microsoft, Apple kind of turn their backs on American defense. And now, Now, you know, fast forward like eight years, nine years, whatever. Now it seems that the culture has completely changed in Silicon Valley. And then we see El Segundo rising up. And so, I mean, these guys are hungry. They're innovating. They want to make America and the world a better place. They're strengthening our defense tech. And so, I mean, from an outsider looking in, it seems like we're off to a great start.

2:24:54I love it. That makes me more optimistic. What we're trying to do as an army is cradle to grave funding. And so we spend so much money. And one of the things we've done so pathetically is we do like a performative funding cycle where we'll do something like an X prize and then nothing ever comes of it. When you actually see what it takes for these companies to survive and thrive, it requires consistent mentorship, consistent communication. and every company that's scaling faces this moment or the vast majority of them of kind of an existential threat and can they get to the other side of that thing?

2:25:29And I think what the venture world has done so well for a lot of companies in other sectors is they've given them those tools to succeed. I think for defense companies, again, kind of other than Palantir and Anderle from a while ago, it was really, really hard and they had to survive some pretty bad ecosystem environments. and what I'm hopeful for is that both they will start to pull others up. The primes will start to look around and say the best way to innovate is to partner. And then we, with our big purse strings, will say, we're going to bring in experts who can help you grow. We're going to deploy our dollars.

2:26:05We're going to monitor you from formation through your seed funding through Series A all the way up through that scaling because this may seem esoteric, I think, to some listeners, But fundamentally, this is how we will do it, and this is how we will create the pathway to success for the decades to come. Because all back to everything we talked about with what future war is going to look like, it is not just going to be big, beefy ranger soldiers kicking down doors, but it is going to be computer developers who are up all night in their garage innovating on the next thing to give to those soldiers to take out to the fight.

2:26:43And we as a nation have got to figure out how to do both. Did I read something the other day? I think I read something the other day that said that USG is going to be investing in some of these defense tech companies. I mean, what do you think about that? Is that good for us or is that bad for us? I think what you're referencing is that we might take a stake in some of the primes. I don't know the particulars of – because I saw the same thing. I think these are complicated questions and complicated problems, meaning if we took a stake in a prime as an example, I think we then may be incentivized as a government to reward that prime longer than we otherwise would have.

2:27:31It would be a stickier relationship with that prime, which could be valuable for that prime and could block out other innovators. And so you could both convince me that that's a good idea and we should have a 10 % stake of all the primes because of the bad acting and the number of dollars we put into their R &D and this idea that the American taxpayer deserves a return on all of those dollars. You could just as equally convince me that once we've done that, we are going to act in ways that continue to perpetuate inefficiencies in the system, block out the small and growing companies, and will lead to worse outcomes for soldiers.

2:28:05And so I don't know that we are moving down actively a path of doing that. But I think either direction, we could make work. Makes sense. Makes sense. I haven't thought too much about it yet. But yeah, I saw that and it caught my attention. So we haven't taken a 10 % stake in any crime. As far as I know, as of this moment, I haven't known. Perfect. Well, Secretary, I appreciate you coming and it was an honored interview. I am grateful for you having me. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. You want to shoot some guns? Let's fucking do it. All right.

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