303: Always Look for New Information. The Psychology of Military Incompetence.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:44 - On The Psychology of Military Incompetence. Norman Dixon. 2:28:21 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:51:59 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 303 with Kerry Helton and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Kerry. Good evening. Also, joining us tonight is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So Dave, I've been sitting on this for a while, sitting on this book for a while. I think, I think I've been sitting on it for almost a year. Almost a year I've been sitting on this book and I've been waiting for the right time to cover this book. And I don't think there's a better time than right now. The reason that I don't think there's a better time than right now, you'll figure out as soon as I say the title of the book.

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  The title of the book is on the psychology, on the psychology of military incompetence. On the psychology of military incompetence. And what does that mean? Well, one thing it means is as we look at military leaders, a lot of times people think, oh, this individual is in the military. They must be awesome. I mean, look, it happens 100% in the SEAL community. Oh, this guy was a SEAL. He must be of the highest character, must be an unbelievable leader, must be a great runner. Right? Must be great at pull-ups and swimming, must be the best shot. Right? So, so people make assumptions about the SEAL teams.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, if you were SEAL, then you must be able to survive at a minimum of 78 days with, you know, nothing but a loin cloth and a toothpick. Right? That's, that's kind of, you can, you, you, you're picking up what I'm putting down. Right? Same thing happens with leadership. You think, oh, this individual is in the military. They made life and death decisions. They must be incredible leaders. And we can also attribute that to leaders in the past, too. Oh, this person was a general. This person was, you know, a military leader in the 1800s, in the 1600s. They must have military brilliance.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, this book disputes that not whole, not, not, not as a whole. And he makes a very important point. And I had this discussion with Jason Gardner the other day. After the Afghanistan podcast, Jason's like, well, there's a lot of good leaders. And I said, yeah, there absolutely are. And I've worked for a lot of incredible leaders in the military. But to blanket all leaders in the military and say, oh, they were in the military. So they're awesome is a bad move. And you can actually say throughout history, there have been some really bad leaders. And it's relatively consistent that you get bad military leaders, bad senior military leaders. So this is something I was interested in.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  This book is written by a guy named Dr. Norman F. Dixon. And, and I don't really remember where I originally heard about the book. It might've been one of the like algorithmic recommendations. Which, do we hate the algorithm? Kind of, but sometimes we're a little bit stoked about the algorithm. So I might've been an algorithm. It might've been, maybe somebody recommended it to me. But I look at it and obviously I like the military. That's what this podcast is. We do all kinds of military subjects on this podcast. Obviously I like psychology as well. And the, much of the Jocko Underground podcast, we've covered a bunch of psychology. But when it comes to military stuff, I like military books that are written by military people,

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  not books that are written by theorists or even historians and academics that haven't been there. So I don't normally like those kinds of military books that are written by someone that wasn't in the military. So I wasn't sure if this book would make the grade.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  Then I did some research and here's the deal. The author, Dr. Norman Dixon. MBE, which is British like thing, Most Excellent Order of British Empire, which you're given for your achievements in the arts and sciences. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1956, Doctor of Science 1972, 1976, he was awarded, sorry, 1956, did I say 1956 Doctorate in Philosophy? 1956 Doctorate in Philosophy. Doctor of Science 1972, 1976 awarded the University of London Carpenter Medal for, quote, "work of exceptional distinction in experimental psychology."

• 4:35Jocko Willink?

  Right? So the guy has some, some clout. Bringing home some hardware. He's bringing home some hardware. He's a professor, emeritus at, of psychology at the University of, University College of London. Author to other books besides this one. One's called Our Own Worst Enemy. Gotta like that title. Another one called Unconscious Processing, another one called Subliminal Perception. So that's all impressive.

• 5:04Jocko Willink?

  Still wasn't sure if it made the grade, but what tied it all together for me is that prior to all the stuff that he did, he was in the British Army from 1940 till 1950, and that means he fought in World War II, was wounded in World War II. Wounded, and this is a quote, "According to him, he was wounded, quote, 'largely through my own incompetence,'" which is, we at least, we're coming out of the gate with some humility, which is nice. But it gives, it means his perspective is, he has that perspective of a soldier, of someone that's fought, of someone that's been in combat, and he can overlay that on his academic knowledge. But the book is, I mean, you're gonna see real quick that this book is pretty,

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  it's a pretty incredible book, and, and I don't know how many podcasts we'll do on it. I'm assuming it'll be two, maybe three. Um, I don't know how much we'll even be able to get through, get through today. But with that, I'm gonna start off with the foreword of the book, which is written by a guy named Jeffrey Wawro, hope I'm saying that right. If not, I apologize to Jeffrey Wawro.

• 6:15Jocko Willink?

  Professor of Military History, University of North Texas, Director of their Military History Center. And this is, this is his.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  His forward to the book, which the reason I wanted to read the forward is because it starts to lay out the themes inside this book and you start to get an understanding of where this guy's coming from. Anything make sense so far? This is a book that I was burning through highlighters. It's almost one of the books where you might as well just stop highlighting because you're highlighting everything. So here we go. The the forward to Norm Dixon's on the psychology of military incompetence. Norman Dixon's on the psychology of military incompetence is a classic that should be read, not because it is true in

• 7:05Jocko Willink?

  every detail, but because it offers the military historian, analyst, or student, an important method to discover and rank the manifold reason for military error and defeat. That's a bold statement coming out of the gate. What he's saying, the manifold reasons for military error and defeat are found in this book, coming out of the gate strong. And there's a couple notes in there, not true in every detail. The reason for that is the way the book is laid out, it covers a lot of historical battles and wars. And I think that I think that Dixon was sensitive, being an academic about the way historians would read it and be like, well, actually that date is wrong. And so he's he covers that himself too and says, look, ballpark, we're in there. This is

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  what happened. It's not, and I didn't go and fact check everything, but ballpark, this is what happened. So it's not a historical reference. And he says that later, continuing on Dixon just deploys psychological theory in a lucid accessible way and applies it in several case studies spanning the 19th century and 20th centuries. He is in some ways constrained by chronology. The British officer types he scrutinizes are creatures of their age, Boris conservative and authoritarian. And this authoritarian piece that he's talking about.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  This may be the underlying theme of the book, this authoritarian attitude and personality type and what it means and what it does to you and what it does to your people.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  Continue on, "They went to stuffy boarding schools and endured tyrannical parents and schoolteachers. They enlisted in a class system that expected snobbish conformity. And yet, the deeper you read into the book, the more you realize that the specific circumstances of Raglan, Hague, Montgomery are less important than their lifelong enlistment in the military hierarchy that constrains and often warps behavior."

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  And you can see he's starting to throw out names Raglan, Hague, Montgomery. So that's what this book is. He refers to individuals and shows what they did well, what they did bad. And he does cover good leaders as well.

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  "At the heart of this book is a thesis that all can accept. All human decision makers are victims of a chronic hazard, that emotion and motivation unconsciously distort and bias all thought and perception."

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  Right? It's like crazy. This is what we talk about all the time.

• 9:39Jocko Willink?

  Detached from your emotions.

• 9:42Jocko Willink?

  You get distorted. What are you writing? "Ego clouds all decisions," right? That's what he's talking about. "Man's needs, biological, social, or neurotic, act on his perception of the world around him and the decisions he makes. No one, in other words, operates cleanly." What a good thing to remember. "No one operates cleanly. You all have it going on." I did the Underground podcast a while back and I talked about the fact that we're all insane.

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  And that is something... The definition of insanity is that your world doesn't match reality. And the fact of the matter is, my world doesn't match your reality, Dave. I know we're probably pretty freaking close because we work in the same job. We have a similar background, but there's no way that you see things exactly the way I see it. Kerry, you and I have a similar background, but there's no way that we match up. Our realities don't match, so that means we're all insane. It's just a matter of what degree. And that means everyone you interact with is kind of insane. That means their reality is different than yours. So when you're in a leadership position, you're dealing with other people. Their reality is different than yours.

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  So when you're making a decision and they hear that decision, their reality is different than yours.

• 11:10Jocko Willink?

  No one, in other words, operates cleanly.

• 11:15Jocko Willink?

  Singleness of mind, a key ingredient of successful command is always under siege by doubt, worries and distractions. We all churn through a sludge of life experiences that have formed us and left us with key strengths and weaknesses.

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  The challenge for military commanders is all the greater because the stakes of their decisions are so high and because they operate in stressful environments amid hunger, fatigue, heat or cold, sleep deprivation, and the relentless ticking of the clock.

• 11:47Jocko Willink?

  Not for nothing did Napoleon call unforgiving time the grand element in warfare, which is epic because lately I've been talking about the, the, the leadership loop. And the number one thing I said you have to consider, the number one thing that's in the front of my mind all the time in any leadership situation is time. What is he called? The grand element, time is what you have to think about. And sometimes the thought is, oh, we got plenty of time, which is cool. But you've got to think about that. People that don't keep time in front of mind, they're always behind. They're always behind.

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  Bro, we're two paragraphs.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Dude. I know. And I almost said something.

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  Go ahead. Go ahead. What do you got?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  I just, I always like hearing how these people write. And the word like, this is a good writer. This guy writes well.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  And this is just the forward, bro.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  But the fact that he went through all those things, he was talking about heat, cold, and I don't remember all the words. Uh, and when he got to time, he added the, the additional component of unrelenting.

• 12:51Jocko Willink?

  Unforgiving.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Because the heat, we can, it, it, it can relent. Or we've got maybe some technology that, that we're gonna wear a coat or some cold weather. Like, we can mitigate all these other things.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  But time is unrelenting.

• 13:06Jocko Willink?

  There is no mitigation.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  And, and that is, that will be forever.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  Forever.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  We're not gonna technology our way out of the time issue. Like, oh, we'll just slow time down. Like, we can manage the heat and all those other elements. I just like the way they, he adds that piece to it and what's already like just a good, the way he writes is awesome.

• 13:23Jocko Willink?

  That's why as a leader and as a person, it has to be the number one thing you think about. It's the only thing that will give you no, no slack whatsoever. No, zero. That's it. It, that clock is ticking.

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  Dixon uses several case studies to elucidate military incompetence. He begins with the Crimean War, which Britain undertook in an era of rapid industrialization, prosperity and commercial dominance. Wouldn't it, what do you think if you've got rapid industrialization, prosperity and commercial dominance? You just go crush everyone on the battlefield? Wouldn't you think that? Victorian Britain was the last word in efficiency. Yet its military stumbled from one bloody disaster to the next, piling up 21,000 mostly avoidable dead. How could this be in view of Britain's world leadership? Much of it Dixon finds had to do with the command performance of 66-year-old Lord Raglan.

• 14:20Jocko Willink?

  An extreme introvert who died of severe depression during the campaign. Raglan drifted like a rudderless ship. The officers under him suffered a familiar dilemma. If they took matters into their own hands, they could be accused of insubordination. If they let the rudderless ship drift further, they could be accused of incompetence. That's a catch 22.

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  Ultimately, nothing was done.

• 14:47Jocko Willink?

  And the British troops and taxpayers bore the brunt of their systemic and command incompetence, of which the notorious charge of the Light Brigade was but the thin end of the wedge. Since authoritarian organizations, again, you're gonna hear this word, and it took me a while to pick up on it, even though it's really obvious to me right now, this authoritarian attitude is, is like this underlying, one of the underlying themes throughout this, since authoritarian organizations like the military are masters at shifting blame, the time honored tactic of the cornered child, the British Army survived the fiasco of the Crimean, Crimean War unreformed.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  So they went through all that, 21,000 dead, who knows what the price tag was, no reforms. A major theme of this book is in the incorrigibility of military organizations, they must be removed from their pedestals, cracked open and filled with daylight, which is another way of saying, subjected to rigorous scrutiny and review. Unfortunately, they rarely are.

• 15:51Jocko Willink?

  Raglan's folly, which made the Crimean War, in Dixon's judgment, the prototype for protracted military incompetence, was followed by the Boer War. Somehow, despite the similarities of the two campaigns fought far away for imperial interests, Britain applied no lessons learned from the Crimean Campaign. London's performance in 1899 was even worse than 1855, its quote, "military incompetence straining credibly to the breaking point."

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  Indeed, the British officers took pride in their amateurness, their clubby good fellowship, and their conviction that any effort at self-improvement were bad form. I'm gonna say that again, imagine you're in a group of people where self-improvement is considered bad form. They clung to unhelpful routines like sand crabs clinging to seaweed in storm time. They battled guerrillas on the South African veldt with luxuriant baggage, including pianos, gramophones, chests of drawers, polo mallets, and mobile kitchens and bathrooms. They're fighting against the Boers.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Savages.

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  Just, just horrible.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  General Redvers Buller commanded the expedition like Raglan. He was in over his head. He lacked command experience, imagination and confidence. He was passive and defeatist. The boers swept over him like a torrent. He never stopped retreating and the press nicknamed him reverse Buller.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  Field Marshal Douglas Hague's command in World War I is an obvious place to stop and relish the psychology of military incompetence. Since Dixon's book, there's been a vigorous debate about Hague for and against, but few would dispute that Hague's psychology had much to do with his mediocre to abysmal performance as British Expeditionary Force commander. He was an old cavalryman with an outmoded view of warfare. He'd been ruled as a boy by a stern religious mother. He was solitary, aloof, and inspired by an obsessive need for order. And this is another one of those things. That's sort of the authoritarian mindset. You want everything to be organized. You want everything to be in order. And I'll say,

• 18:20Jocko Willink?

  and I'm not a, I'm not a super psychological nerd or psychology nerd, but he definitely dips into like the childhood stuff, probably a little bit more than I would. And the reason I think I don't dip as much into the childhood stuff is I've known people that had authoritarian parents and didn't end up like this, right? Had whatever, hyper religious, strict parents and ended up, you know, in every level, every type of different person. I've known people that had total hippies for parents and let the kids do whatever they want. And I've seen those kids end up in different places on the spectrum. So I don't know if I, I don't know if I, I don't know if I correlate these things as much or put as much weight on the upbringing as Dixon does.

• 19:08Jocko Willink?

  But that's just me. It's interesting to know. Could be, it's definitely a contributing factor, depending on how your personality reacts to it. Cause I mean, we, you and I have kids, Dave. The kids are different. Like, the kids are different. You could put them in a controlled environment with the exact same situation. Cause you know, oh, the one's the middle child, the one's the oldest. And so, oh, this, so that means you treat them differently. Well, even if you put them in a controlled environment, they got personalities. And that personality's gonna come out. Yeah.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  Um, so obsessive need for word. It took him too long to grasp just how radically technology like machine guns and heavy artillery had changed warfare and rendered most of what he'd learned at staff college in the 1890s obsolete.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  Incredibly, Hague insisted to the end of the war that the battles he was engaged in were not, quote, "normal warfare," which is just a bizarre mindset. Like, this is a normal. We'll get, we'll get back to normal. This is just happening right now. This is normal.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  That, that's again, that reality versus mindset or perception. Like, this is reality. This, this is your normal.

• 20:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Then he hasn't figured that out.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Negative.

• 20:21Jocko Willink?

  He's insane.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Insane.

• 20:24Jocko Willink?

  Worse, he gave his subordinates the singular gift of the authoritarian, defined by Dixon as a terrible, crippling obedience. Officers had to implement Hague's vague instructions. He left much in doubt because he was so unsure of himself or be replaced and disgraced.

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  Hague's influence was awful. British officers under him were expected to attack and show, quote, "offensive spirit," even against the most invincible defensive fire. This was to demonstrate, quote, "pluck" and, quote, "dash" and, quote, "optimism." Can you even fathom that shit? You're in World War I, and my address to you, Dave, is like, "Hey, Dave, all right, listen, mate. What I want you to do is, just, I want you to charge with all your heart and show that, to show the enemy that you've got some pluck and some dash."

• 21:21Jocko Willink?

  By, by the way, yesterday, you watched your entire battalion get mowed down, or your friend's battalion get mowed down.

• 21:30Jocko Willink?

  To shelter in the trenches was to exhibit the disqualifying sin of pessimism. Dave, what's wrong, mate? What you doing down there in the trench? Why don't you get up there? Go on. Go on, son.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  It's the disqualifying. Like, it isn't like, hey, hey, let's, let's pull Dave out of his funk here is like, oh, he's he he gets incapable of doing this because he's, his behavior reveals that he's pessimistic.

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  Pessimistic about living.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  And this is a guy who you said, I think the quote was, took too long to recognize the impact of the machine gun. How many engagements with a machine gun do you need before you go, oh, yeah, things are different now?

• 22:06Jocko Willink?

  You don't even need one complete engagement, by the way.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:09Jocko Willink?

  You get, you get one volley of fire and you go, oh, shit just changed.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Everybody get back in the briefing room. We need a new plan.

• 22:21Jocko Willink?

  All armies began the great war like this, but only Hague kept it up until 1917, coldly firing officers who wouldn't follow his ghastly directives. Prudently dispatched from a chateau dozens of miles behind the lines. Dixon's brilliant description of the military authoritarian fits Hague like a Savile Row suit. Superficial toughness and ordi- ordi-liness are, quote, "a brittle crust of defense against feelings of weakness and inadequacy." The authoritarian keeps up his spirits by whistling in the dark. He's the frightened child who wears the armor of a giant. His mind is a door locked and bolted shut against that which he fears most himself.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  The imagery is outstanding here. This guy is, yeah, he's hitting it on the head.

• 23:13Jocko Willink?

  All readers will appreciate the drift of Dixon's book, which might be summarized in George Bernard Shaw's wartime quip that, quote, "The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office."

• 23:28Jocko Willink?

  Micromanaging and stifling of initiative are byproducts of the hierarchical military system. A yearning for old certainties like the horse and the battleship, even when tanks and aircraft carriers made them obsolete, is understandable only when psychology is deployed. There is unquestionably, in any military, in any epoch, a prevailing culture of obedience and group loyalty, a deliberate process of military socialization. As two esteemed psychologists wrote in their 1989 work on the social psychology of authority, "Once the military culture of obedience is established by training and service, men

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  are, quote, 'governed not so much by motivational processes, what they want, as by perceptual ones, what they see required of them.'" Dixon sees fear as the common denominator in the general psychopathology of military organizations. And this is interesting, fear of the bad performance review. Not fear of getting shot, not fear of a machine gun, but fear of a bad performance review. Not surprisingly then, fear of failure overshadows hope of success, leading to complacency, group think, and bad decisions. So if I'm afraid of a bad performance review, I probably don't want to do anything, right?

• 24:50Jocko Willink?

  My go-to is like, I'm just gonna sit here and we're not gonna do anything. At best, I'm saying, well, if that's what Dave's doing, I guess we'll all get in trouble. Dave will get in trouble first, so I'll do what he's doing.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Status quo.

• 25:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, status quo all day. Attacking the flaws in a military plan was as dangerous to an officer's career in 2003 as in 1901. Officers around Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and US Central Command CENTCOM Leader General Tommy Franks had to bite their tongues when even the most preposterous plans were floated. The same went for officers in Vietnam. Pushing for a low-intensity counterinsurgency war as opposed to a high-tempo conventional one was not the way to get ahead in an army that had made firepower and mobility its mantra.

• 25:43Jocko Willink?

  Military organizations, Dixon tells us, can create incompetence, uniformity, and a graying hierarchy. The system all too often creates mediocrity, as bright officers adapt to the plan and institutional priorities which are frequently at odds with reality and best practices. A recent example of this would be the US Army's decision not to deploy large numbers of ground troops to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 2001. He was trapped in eastern Afghanistan, near the Khyber Pass. The Army had only to cordon off his cave complex and escape routes with troops.

• 26:24Jocko Willink?

  But so insistent was Secretary Rumsfeld on keeping the force small, in order to demonstrate the stripped-down power of the Army and its expeditionary potential, and to leave troops off-ramp for an invasion of Iraq, that CENTCOM Commander Tommy Franks didn't insist on reinforcements. Nor would he have anyway, nor would he have anyway, for Franks took pride in never contradicting the famously cantankerous Rumsfeld. In the clinch, Franks lacked moral courage and common failing among ingratiating authoritarians. Bin Laden escaped and would remain at large for 10 more years.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  Cognitive dissonance is another danger of the military organization. Memoirs from CENTCOM and Washington remind us that most clear-thinking officers recognized the failures of Rumsfeld and Franks even in real-time, but felt compelled to keep silent. The one who didn't, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, who insisted that massive numbers of US troops would be needed to stabilize a defeated Iraq, was ridiculed and driven into retirement for the crime of speaking truth to power.

• 27:41Jocko Willink?

  This reinforces Dixon's point that it is not stupidity that leads to incompetence, but rather the dead hand of the authoritarian personality.

• 27:52Jocko Willink?

  Which is an interesting take. So he has to say that throughout the book because it's real easy just to say, "Oh, these guys were stupid," but they're not stupid. In many cases, they're really freaking smart. Military organizations all too often force their members to act incompetently. When asked by President George W. Bush to distinguish his views on the 9/11 wars from Rumsfeld's, General Tommy Franks weirdly replied, "Sir, I think exactly what my secretary thinks, what he's ever thought, what he will think, or whatever he thought he might think."

• 28:33Jocko Willink?

  Given the dreadful stakes in the wars, this was incompetence on stilts. Franks, like General William Westmoreland, is a fine example of the Peter Principle, also referenced by Dixon, by which leaders are promoted beyond their capabilities to an unimaginable level of incompetence and efficiency. So the Peter Principle says that, "Oh, Dave did a good job as a squad leader. Let's make him a platoon leader. Okay, did a good job as a platoon leader. Let's make him a company commander. Oh, he did a good job as a company commander. Let's make him a battalion commander." But he's not capable? So he's not capable, but that's his position. He's not competent in that position, but that's his position. And what you end up with is everybody promotes to... Now, you don't get promoted to brigade commander, but it doesn't matter. You're a battalion commander.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:19Jocko Willink?

  So now we have a bunch... Guess what? All the other battalion commanders, or most of them, all the same thing.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  They're all promoted to their level of incompetence.

• 29:25Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  Of course, General Franks thought that he was being submissive and funny. He was speaking what Dixon calls throughout the book bullshit. Keeping up appearances in this way is the essence of authoritarian structures, proving one's reliability even in a bad cause. The internal politics of bullshit in war or peace inexorably become a substitute for incisive thinking. This decreases initiative and increases dependency. There is a huge irony for the pattern of modern warfare from Dixon's period to our own has been to require more and more independence and initiative as information and intelligence pass more quickly and in greater volume down the chain of command.

• 30:09Jocko Willink?

  So even though we've gotten worse and we've become more authoritarian, the flow of information and the ability to maneuver and think for yourself has increased. So we're going in the wrong direction.

• 30:22Jocko Willink?

  Dixon forces us to reconsider the assumption that military organizations operate as effective teams.

• 30:31Jocko Willink?

  In fact, they are often anything but effective.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  The difficulties Britain's interwar reformers, JFC Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart, had in inducing the British Army establishment to, quote, "thresh the grist from the chaff in conventional theories of war," as Fuller quoted, "are legendary." Fuller in the 1920s saw new technologies like the tank and the airplane as able to leap from the muscular warfare of the Great War to a faster, quicker, deadlier, less destructive, mechanized warfare that would administer quick, relative, bloodless, shot-through-the-brain, not the interminable pounding with flesh and guns that had characterized World War I.

• 31:17Jocko Willink?

  So you had people after World War I that, and we've covered in great detail, B. H. Liddell Hart in this podcast, hey, we don't need to do it that way. That way didn't make much sense. Liddell Hart in 1926 considered the British Army's problems of institutional rigidity and stuffiness so great that he equated it with illness, arguing for the Army's, quote, "inoculation with the serum of mobility."

• 31:44Jocko Willink?

  The Army was unmoved, forcing gadflies like Liddell Hart into early retirement. God, you know what? We don't really like what you're saying. Why don't you retire?

• 31:56Jocko Willink?

  Dixon's account of Liddell Hart lacks the more recent scholarship on the rather slippery British theorists, but he rightly cites that the captain, as just the sort of man a military organization finds intolerable: brash, bright, insightful, eloquent, and opinionated.

• 32:16Jocko Willink?

  That's who we don't like. That's who we don't want. We don't want someone that's bright, that's brash, that's insightful, that's eloquent and opinionated. We don't want that person.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  It's a potent human being right there.

• 32:28Jocko Willink?

  It's a potent human being. It's, it's gotta watch out for. And it's interesting because, you know, maybe if Liddell Hart had read his own book and maybe taken a little bit more of an indirect approach on some of these things, he might've done a little bit better convincing the chain of command, right?

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 32:45Jocko Willink?

  He didn't get to read his own book. He didn't have that luxury, unfortunately for him. Cause he went hard and told them they needed the, to be inoculated with the serum of mobility. That's a rough thing to say up the chain of command. You're telling your, your leadership, they need to get inoculated. There, you need to, you need to completely change what you're doing. You need an inoculation. That's a, that's, that's a bold attack. That's a frontal attack. That's a direct attack. Nothing indirect about that. He became what? He became a prophet. He was a prophet. And what happens to prophet? He told us what happens to prophet. They get fired.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  They get stoned.

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  They get stoned. They get crucified. That's what happens to prophets. And he was a prophet. And what happened to him? Got drummed out of the army.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  There seems to be a, a place where there's a transformation that happens where these,

• 33:36Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't want to call them students, but th- these kind of rebels become the prophet though, right? Like where there, it goes from a kind of a detached perspective to a, no, this is what needs to happen. Why won't you listen? You know, putting that kind of thought forward. I feel like they become, you know?

• 33:57Jocko Willink?

  If you start to get emotional, which, which can happen, especially when you've got lives at stake or your, you know, you just pointed to Hackworth's book. Hackworth reached a point where he, he was trying to persuade people and talking about how we should do it and did it with his own battalion and showed what the results were. You know, we need to do a counter insurgency. We need to, we need to be not going head to head. We need to act like gorillas.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  We need to fight like gorillas. He was doing that. He was showing the results. But at a certain point, like you just said, you are correct. A certain point, they say, you know what? We gotta stop doing this. And they become a prophet. And they become martyr. And Liddell Hart became a martyr and got drummed out of the army. David Hackworth became a martyr, got drummed out of the army. Whether that helped or not? Didn't help immediately. Liddell Hart's last act in uniform was to submit an essay on the mechanization of the army for a military competition.

• 34:59Jocko Willink?

  Liddell Hart lost to an essay titled Limitations of the Tank. That's crazy, right? You can't make that up. You can't make that up.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Little bit of irony there.

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  And they about to get blitzkrieged, like you read about. You know what I'm saying? They got blitzkrieged, straight up. That's what went down.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 35:26Jocko Willink?

  On Britain's failure to embrace armored warfare in time to effect the fighting of 1940, Liddell Hart recalled, "If a soldier advocates any new idea of real importance, he builds up such a wall of obstruction, compounded of resentment, suspicion, and inertia, that the idea only succeeds at the sacrifice of himself. As the wall finally yields to the pressure of the new idea, it falls and crushes him." So he, that's him saying he did become the martyr.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:57Jocko Willink?

  This is the process of military incompetence. Vested interests, bureaucratic turfs, defensive services, and uncertain leaders all contribute to a stifling of innovation and all too often, a scapegoating of innovators. Inevitably, Dixon cites the great French statement, George Clemensso, in this context. Quote, "War is too serious a business to be left to the generals." That's no joke.

• 36:31Jocko Willink?

  Fuller, who had commanded Britain's tank corps in World War I, later said, "Fighting the Germans is a joke compared with fighting the British." "The blimpish generals, conservatives of a dead military epoch, simply would not be budge." "To be fair, there was no easy solution." "Britain had to prepare for war simultaneously in Europe against the Germans, "and all across its empire against a range of potential enemies like Italy, Japan, "and Indian or Palestinian nationalists." "Tanks might work against the Germans, "but they'd be acquired at the expense of the tools needed to fight the small wars "around the fringes of the empire." "That was no excuse for lethargy." "Yet lethargy is precisely what flourishes in the world of the authoritarian,

• 37:16Jocko Willink?

  "where vigorous debate and reform are interpreted as a frontery." "Can't even debate. Can't even debate. We're not even having debates around here." "And you can picture that authoritarian platoon commander, "he doesn't want to hear a debate about the way we should do this mission." "Doesn't want to debate about that." "The authoritarian CEO of the company doesn't want to debate about how we're gonna move into this new market area." "He wants people to shut up and do what I told you to do."

• 37:48Jocko Willink?

  "In France, Charles de Gaulle battled the same sort of establishment." "He wanted a small professional army, highly mobile and leveraged with air power." "His ideas broke against the power of the old sweats, "like generals Maurice Gamelin and Philippe Patein, "who looked back serenely on the victory of 1918 "and saw the future as just an elaboration of that, not something new." "Tanks, Patein, characteristically snorted, are the Sancho Ponzas, "too weighted down to fight." "Sancho Ponzas is a character in Don Quixote. "He's like a comic relief, big fat guy that can't really fight."

• 38:28Jocko Willink?

  "That criticism recalled Don Quixote himself, "who told Sancho one fine day, "too much sanity may be madness, "and maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be."

• 38:42Jocko Willink?

  And of course, there was no more twisted authoritarian than Joseph Stalin, who literally destroyed the reforms of Marshal Mikhail Turketshevsky. Turketshevsky's deep battle idea might have made the Red Army as formidable as the Germans in time for World War II. It called for "linked and simultaneous destructive operations" and "mechanized operational warfare carried on the backs of tanks." Stalin killed Turketshevsky and all of his acolytes in the Purge of 1937. Got some good ideas, whatever. The general had studied the Germans too closely. He appeared threatening and suspicious to Stalin precisely because of his restless

• 39:24Jocko Willink?

  mind and broad professional circle, the two things that should have made him a fine model officer, not a criminal.

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  The army that survived the purges was a scarcely improved version of the clumsy peasant force of World War I. It would perform about as well in its early campaigns.

• 39:45Jocko Willink?

  Imagine you're France and you get done with World War I and you're like, "What do we need to change? We won."

• 39:54Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, the Germans were like, "We lost, what can we change?" Maybe if they would have won, they wouldn't have changed what they did, would have come up with the Blitzkrieg.

• 40:07Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of which, for the victors of World War I, the victory proved intellectually crippling.

• 40:14Jocko Willink?

  Old weapons mean old tactics, and whereas the Germans were plucked clean of weapons in 1919 and forced to begin anew with tanks and aircraft, the victorious Allies clung to what had worked: infantry, artillery, and field fortifications, which reached their apogee with the Maginot Line. All of this reinforced a military tendency to do nothing.

• 40:36Jocko Willink?

  Nothing was safer in the crabbed minds of these men than the risk of failed ventures.

• 40:44Jocko Willink?

  To Dixon's mind, it is the military authoritarians' lack of emotional maturity that makes him or her so dangerous to the organization, even one seated liberally with other authoritarians. Passive, dependent, insecure, they are, in Dixon's word, frightened children in the army, in the armor of men. The worst mischief happens when they are promoted to supreme command, not because they overreach, but because they have risen to that rank by obeying orders. Suddenly, with no one above them, they become unmoored, which is a scary thing, right? Who gets promoted? I'm promoting the person that obeyed me. If I'm an authoritarian, who's getting promoted?

• 41:28Jocko Willink?

  That's the way I should have framed that question. I'm promoting the person that obeyed me. I'm definitely not promoting Dave Berke that asked me a bunch of questions every time I put out some word. I'm definitely not promoting Kerry, who's, you know, got some comment at the end of my briefing. That seems a little bit undermining. You're not getting promoted, neither you. I've got a yes man over here, getting promoted. They compensate for their, for this weightlessness with procrastination, with more bullshit or busy work, and a retreat into familiar routines and habits. In battle, they might waste their men or suffer a paralyzing compassion for them.

• 42:08Jocko Willink?

  And you're, like, I don't know, in the Navy, or maybe I'm getting this from Hollywood, I don't know. No, I think it's from the Navy. We called, you know, polishing your boots, chicken, chicken shit stuff, right? Do you guys have anything like that in the Marine Corps?

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Definitely have that term.

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Would you, would you apply the term chicken shit to polishing boots, to pressing your uniform, to starching your eight-sided cover?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Doing things that you know mean nothing.

• 42:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Chicken shit? Marine Corps, Kerry, confirm?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  So.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  Disconfirm?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Negative. I, I, we didn't use chicken shit in my era.

• 42:54Jocko Willink?

  Younger generation.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. New Corps.

• 42:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You guys called it chicken poo.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Chicken poo. Poultry.

• 43:02Jocko Willink?

  But that's a real thing. So what's interesting is he goes into this and says, you know, if I don't know what to do with Dave, like I'm not sure what we, guess what I do? You need to polish your boots.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's the distinction. Cause as I'm saying that I was like, hey, the message isn't like, you don't need to shine your boots or have a good looking uniform. Cause that stuff doesn't, actually that stuff does matter. But that stuff matters in a different, much like when we hear what Hackworth's rules were. Hey, here's what I'm gonna do. Here's why we're gonna do it. Here's the reason why those things are important. As opposed to if I gotta do a lot of punishment, and I gotta make you do stuff with your time that is a complete and total waste of time. That's what the term, my recollection and maybe a generational thing is like, what are we doing? We're sitting around, um, we're gonna, uh, um, what do we do the?

• 43:49Jocko Willink?

  Strip the floors?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Wax the floor. Yeah. We're gonna strip and wax the floors again. Why?

• 43:53Jocko Willink?

  You can tell I was an enlisted guy.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  There you go. Yeah. So.

• 43:56Jocko Willink?

  We stripped and waxed the floors.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the distinction right there. You know, and there's this, there's a meme out there now. It's this famous picture. It's a picture of a marine, um, with like a squeegee, like squeegeeing the, you know, the parade deck in a rainstorm.

• 44:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 44:10Jocko Willink?

  Just get some. Yes.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  We did have a green weenie was the go-to. You're getting the green weenie there was what we'd call that. Yeah. Right. So I mean, yeah. But another thing he, he was talking about kind of the hallmark or the, I don't know, fricking, um, sentiment in this authoritarian regime. He said lethargy and paralyzation. And there's this type of language that that kind of punishment doling out does to troops. That it's just this, I don't even care. Like I just don't, I don't care. You know, and that's kind of that chicken shit or green weenie vibe that you get when that's the kind of, kind of leadership.

• 44:59Jocko Willink?

  History is littered with such examples. General George McClellan was paralyzed by his vast responsibilities as Lincoln's General in Chief. General Ludwig Benedek had excellent chance to destroy the Prussian Army in 1866, but he didn't dare. General Bazin stood with a concentrated French Army between widely separated German Armies in 1870, but failed to strike in any direction, effectively permitting the Prussians to unite their armies and win the Franco-Prussian War. One historian accurately described Haig's command in World War I as a "floating helpless

• 45:44Jocko Willink?

  whale." So slow was Haig to issue detailed, direct instructions to his subordinate commanders and solve the problem of the German defensive fire. Officers with General Maurice Gamelin, who commanded the French Army in May 1940 when German Panzers knifed across the mews, described Gamelin as "stricken by a dull and pervasive fear." Instead of leading a counterattack against the Nazi invaders, the French general sat passively in Army Headquarters at Vincennes. A colleague there described him thus: "He was like a submarine without a periscope." U.S.

• 46:27Jocko Willink?

  General John Lucas landed on undefended beaches at Anzio 1944, yet fearfully dug in instead of thrusting to Rome, giving the faraway Germans time to react and circle him and lengthen the war. Man, that fear of making a call. That's every one of those examples is just, "I'm afraid to make a call." The best generals, Dixon concludes, have been the mavericks. Leaders like Erwin Rommel, Horatio Nelson, and Napoleon Bonaparte, men who had the intelligence and confidence to resist and roll back the negative psychology of the military organization. Unfortunately, the average general is not this sort of man.

• 47:09Jocko Willink?

  Dixon notes that military leaders are often chosen for their affability or appearance. Like General Buller, big boned, square jawed, or General Neil Ritchie at Tobruk, a great air of decisiveness. But the bluff appearance too often masks doubt and pessimism. As T E Lawrence would say, in the same context, too much body and too little head. You know what's interesting about this is, I was talking to somebody at an event I was just at. And there's a certain military, like a military bearing, right? We use that term military bearing.

• 47:49Jocko Willink?

  People can utilize military bearing, and you see leaders do this in the military all the time. They utilize military bearing as a, it's like a defensive mechanism. You know, you talk like this, you put the word out, you, you, you, you fur your brow a little bit. And you say, no, this is what we need to get done right now. And, and they get good at it. They become brow beaters, but they're so good at it that people are like, well, I mean, okay. I mean, that's, they kind of back off and, and becomes a technique. So it's beyond just the way that they look, but they start to learn how to act. That's gonna just kind of allow them to sort of get away with either not doing something or doing something that doesn't make sense.

• 48:32Jocko Willink?

  They just kind of, you know, drop their voice a little bit and, and sort of, you know, stand up straight, get that posture going and look someone in the eyes and say, you, you, you need to stand down. So Dave Berke raises his hand and says, hey, boss, I'm wondering if we should worry about that high ground. Hey Burke, you need to worry about what you need to worry about. And people get good enough at that little act that Burke submits, right? Cause you're asking an honest question, but you're not quite, it's an earnest question. You're not even, you're, you're asking a real question. And I come at you with the, hey Burke, you didn't, don't need to worry about that. You need to stay in your lane. I got this covered. And your response is like, oh, okay, you know, Roger that.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  That plus seniority.

• 49:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  Plus a little bit of rank or whatever on the collar there. I mean, that's.

• 49:20Jocko Willink?

  That'll shut down all kinds of pushback.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Shut it down.

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  Shut down all kinds of pushback.

• 49:26Jocko Willink?

  Is that how you operate, Dave?

• 49:30Jocko Willink?

  Dude, you see that? I call that brow beating. You guys ever heard that term before? Brow beating? Yeah, I call that brow beaters. And there's plenty of leaders that that that's their leadership style. That they, you know, they could write a book if they were to try and write leadership strategy and tactics, it would just be called like leadership through brow beating. And they could go through, listen, when someone starts to ask you a question, first of all, you need to elevate your voice a little bit. You need to elevate your voice just a little bit so they know. You need to furrow your brow, which I'm a pro at, right? I got a, I was born with a furrowed brow. You could furrow your brow, elevate, you know, get your posture a little bit more rigid so they can see that you're not backing down, raise your voice and speak in very direct tones. Burke, look, you need to worry about your part of the mission.

• 50:14Jocko Willink?

  And that, like you said, that shuts stuff down. That's the frequency right there. Yeah, just right in there. Right in there.

• 50:24Jocko Willink?

  Right in there.

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  PID'd, I just PID'd a thing, right? I've been seeing that quite a bit lately, too.

• 50:38Jocko Willink?

  "Without a sharp and adaptable mind,

• 50:43Jocko Willink?

  the incompetent general succumbs to cognitive dissidence, rejecting or ignoring unpalatable news or intelligence. General Arthur Percival at Singapore was this type, simply refusing to credit that the Japanese attack his fortified island base." And we ran through that on this podcast. That guy's getting reports, "Hey, the Japanese are literally surrounding us." And he's like, "Yeah, they're not going to attack." "To explain the average general, Dixon has to resort to ego psychology. The average general, like so many average men and women, is trapped in the neurotic paradox." And here's the neurotic paradox. "The need to be loved leads to twin quests for admiration, on the one hand,

• 51:28Jocko Willink?

  and power and fame on the other." So you want to be liked, but you want to be powerful until you got this thing going on all the time. "Naturally, the two quests collide violently. More power means that more people dislike or envy you. The great leaders rise above the paradox by performing competently and taking praise, promotion, and criticism in mature, measured stride. Like Kipling's 'ideal man,' they quote, 'meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.'"

• 51:59Jocko Willink?

  But most of Dixon's subjects, and the reason, look, Dixon concentrates on the bad. So that's when he says most of Dixon's subjects, he concentrates on the bad. He doesn't concentrate on the good leaders. There's plenty of books about good leaders out there. "Most of Dixon's subjects, like most of our own, are not great but merely ordinary, weak, and often petty, hence the need to understand and apply the psychological component of history." Dixon's book is in two parts. The first presents the case studies, the second the psychological behaviors such as snobbery and anti effeminacy which contribute to institutional languor. "In every man, an earthy, hungry id battles with an intelligent, tactful ego overseen by

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  a watchful superego." This is good. "Man," Dixon writes, "is basically a battlefield, a dark cellar, in which a well-bred spinster lady and a sex-crazed monkey are forever engaged in mortal combat, the struggle being refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk." That's what's going on in your head. "This is the fate of every human. Excellence, mediocrity, or incompetence hinge on how smoothly the monkey, the spinster, and the bank clerk settle their differences." Reading about older wars, one might suppose that modern times deliver more modern officers. That the Victorian parenting and grim public schools that formed Dixon's case studies are

• 53:28Jocko Willink?

  relics of an irrelevant past. Not true. "American parenting and high schools have apparently contributed no less to military incompetence. Consider the record. In World War I, General John Blackjack Pershing had to fire two American Corps commanders, six division commanders, and 1,400 brigadiers, colonels, and other officers for incompetence. This was remarkable carnage considering that America fought for just six months in that war." Damn.

• 53:58Jocko Willink?

  George C. Marshall, who served as a Colonel on Pershing Staff in World War I and then presided over the US Army in World War II as Chief of Staff, was anything but incompetent. Marshall was in many ways the modern, the model general. Sound and mind and body, he wrote in 1920 that "an ideal officer was of, quote, 'the optimistic and resourceful type, quick to estimate, with relentless determination, and possessed in addition a fund of sound common sense which operated to prevent gross errors due to rapidity of decision and action.'"

• 54:34Jocko Willink?

  For Haag, optimism, and that's the World War I general, for Haag, optimism had been an abstract and silly concept. The spiritual willingness to, always to attack. For Marshall, it was a human concept. The spiritual inclination to see a glass as half-full, to find a way around difficulties, and win in spite of them. That's a big difference. Haag thinks optimism is you just go. Marshall's optimism is you can figure out a way to win. It's a big freaking difference.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  You've been warning people for a little while now, and I've been stealing this, about the idea of lessons learned actually being a problem. There's some risk in there. As we fight against bias, you've talked about bias on Underground, you talk about bias in a lot of different ways, and certainly on the leadership consultancy side, when we're talking to people about ways to make sure that you don't run into problems in the future, lessons learned can actually contribute to making mistakes in the future, because you will pull these lessons, thinking somehow that it, it sort of predetermines the next outcome. If the situation's the same, we know what the lessons are, we're going to apply those lessons, we're going to control the outcome. And there's a little part of me just really struggling to hear, hearing you read this, and yes, there's some hindsight being applied here, but, but-

• 55:53Speaker 01

  How do you look at World War I? And reflect on that and say? We won. When you, when you like barely didn't lose. And you could play semantics all day long. Yes, I know we won compared to the Germans who lost. But in a sense that this is a, this is a validation of the tactics that we input. This is a, this is the lesson learned of what we did work because we won. And the idea that we can take that. And capture this as a, as a reinforcement that the things that we did were the right things. That's why we were successful and setting in stone. Again, there's all in hindsight here. I understand that.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Looking forward of, nobody knew in 1919, what was going to happen in 19, you know, the 1940s. There was, we have that understanding now. But even in that time, how do you look at that war? And reinforce that what we did was the right thing when you're on the quote winning side. It's insane.

• 56:52Jocko Willink?

  It's insane.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  We won.

• 56:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we won. Let's do it again.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Harder. Yeah.

• 57:01Jocko Willink?

  That's one of my favorite sarcastic favorite jujitsu coaching calls is, oh, Kerry, that arm lock's not working. Do it harder.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  I've heard it. I've heard it.

• 57:14Jocko Willink?

  Marshall also insisted on flexibility of mind to nullify authoritarian tendencies. He blocked the rise of time servers and other mediocrities. Marshall called them calamity howlers for the way they exaggerated difficulties and spun excuses for their failures. And noted that such leaders inexorably demoralized their units and infected them with negativity. Man, exaggerating your difficulties.

• 57:47Jocko Willink?

  Of the 42 senior generals who took part in the US Army's last maneuvers before Pearl Harbor, only 11 would command units in combat in World War II. That's freaking savage. That is savage. They were firing some people. The rest had to be fired or sidetracked as deadwood. Dozens of American generals would lose their posts in the course of the war. To officer in American Army that expanded 35-fold in three years, Marshall put every candidate through his paces, shifting them into ever more burdensome and pressure-packed jobs, promoting those who excelled. Those who fail, Marshall grimly noted, are out at the first sign of faltering. Which is interesting to me. I thought, I immediately thought to myself, oh, so that's zero debt, zero defect, right? So now we're scared.

• 58:32Jocko Willink?

  But then it, it doesn't say failing, it says faltering. It means when the time to step up came, you might have made a bad decision, okay, well, you're okay. But if you faltered, I don't know what to do. You're out later. That's a huge difference. Maybe I'm reading a little bit too much into that, but I'll go with it.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  It's a pretty specific word to choose there, though. Falter, right?

• 58:54Jocko Willink?

  Not fail. Not fail.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Not, you know.

• 58:57Jocko Willink?

  Marshall was the exception who proved the rule. By 1944 and 1945, the United States enjoyed massive superiority over the Germans in men, tanks, guns, and aircraft yet plotted into Germany. The dynamism of 1941 to 1943, when Dwight D. Eisenhower and Marshall had pruned the deadwood and shot younger officers up the ladder, was replaced with an emphasis on methodical teamwork that would harness America's material superiority. It was like war by General Motors, with a risk averse corporate strategy, more concerned not to lose than to win swiftly. This was precisely the attitude that shaped the post-war US Army and Korea, and Korea and Vietnam. Officers could no longer be relieved for cause

• 59:42Jocko Willink?

  as that would generate embarrassing publicity and congressional inquiries, so they were often left in their jobs.

• 59:51Jocko Willink?

  Seventy year old Douglas MacArthur, who commanded the Korean War from Tokyo, possessed every trait of Dixon's most incorrigible authoritarian and committed every possible error, nearly precipitating an American defeat and World War III. In Vietnam, General William Westmoreland's disastrous leadership was initially viewed with great hope. Westy succeeded a string of incompetents who had misconstrued the war, and given the South Vietnamese relentlessly bad advice on how to win. First Samuel Hanging Sam Williams, then Lieutenant Colonel, or sorry, then Lionel Splithead McGar, then Paul Harkins, the last derided by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara as, quote, "Not worth a damn."

• 1:00:35Jocko Willink?

  Westmoreland was supposed to be different. But he proved the perfect military incompetent, dim, blinkered, unsure of himself, lost and unmoored as a commander. He had actually refused to hire Vince Lombardi as coach of the Army Football Team when he was Superintendent of West Point in 1960. Quote, "This was not the kind of man I wanted around cadets," Westy said of Lombardi. His game plan in Vietnam would be no Schruder.

• 1:01:06Jocko Willink?

  One might ask how it could be otherwise. The Vietnam War was directed by a particularly vexing incompetent General Maxwell Taylor, the ultimate pleaser, who as presidential military advisor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then ambassador of South Vietnam, flattered first John F. Kennedy and then Lyndon B. Johnson into believing that they could eat their cake and have it too. That is, fight the Vietnam War with limited means and public support and still win it. And I read that, not great. Limited means and public support? He's saying limited means and limited public support and still win it. Like the military and civilian advisors gathered around George W. Bush in 2003, Taylor was obsessed with White House access and was willing to suppress conflicting opinions

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  to conceal stubborn facts to keep it that way. On the ground in Saigon, Wes Moreland rather too eagerly brought Taylor's fraudulent talking points to life. And Westy, after all, was just the sort of average Joe who got his ticket punched in the US Army of the 1960s. He'd never been to staff or war college, only to a cooks and baker's school, and then a 13-week management course at Harvard. He never read, so Harvard Business School formed him into a McNamara-like "organization man," all charts and graphs, the PowerPoint General avant la lettre. I didn't know what avant la lettre meant. I had to look that up. Means he was a PowerPoint General before

• 1:02:32Jocko Willink?

  there was such a thing as a PowerPoint General. Literally means before the letter. His search-and-destroy strategy was an unmitigated disaster, not least because of the destroying went on in the South, not in the North of Vietnam. Westy doggedly shelled, bombed, burned, and poisoned hundreds of villages, succeeding mainly in increasing the number of insurgents and losing support of the South Vietnamese people. The United States dropped twice as many bombs on Allied South Vietnam as on the enemy North. More bombs, in fact, that have been dropped in all theaters in World War II. Wes Moreland's mantra was firepower. Like Dixon's incompetence, he hid in the only thing that he, an artillery

• 1:03:17Jocko Willink?

  man, knew. A man intending to lose a war could hardly have done it with more efficiency. That's a freaking rough assessment. The fact that his civilian commanders were no more acute, and their judgment in no way excused his incompetence strategy, he was relieved in 1968. The Iraq War reprised the Vietnam Incompetence, with the incurious, unassertive Tommy Franks succeeded by General Ricardo Sanchez, who, one historian labeled "the William Wes Moreland of the Iraq War." Sanchez had leaped from division to army command and was the embodiment of the Peter Principle. As a State Department onlooker said of him, "All trees, no forest, not a strategic or political thought."

• 1:04:03Jocko Willink?

  When General David Petraeus took over in 2007, he introduced effective counterinsurgency strategy, but too late to prevent the dissolution of Iraq into sectarian fragments or to buttress plummeting American support for the war. Senator Chuck Hagel asked the marvelously prophetic question about Petraeus's troop surge, quote, "What is the point of bringing the violence down with US troops if it will merely resume once the US troops are withdrawn?" Hagel had served as a grunt in Vietnam. He knew military folly when he saw it.

• 1:04:43Jocko Willink?

  Nixon's detailed case study ends in 1944, but he has a go at more recent history in the last chapter, surveying the martial lunacy of Vietnam and the staggering irrationality of the Bay of Pigs invasion, clearly implying that there is no end of military incompetence. And indeed, the military ineptitude displayed in the decades since Vietnam, most shatteringly in the Iraq War, shows that military incompetence and its psychological roots cry out for continued study and application. This book is a template and deserves its classic reputation. On the psychology of military incompetence is also a vital corrective to what we are experiencing

• 1:05:27Jocko Willink?

  today. The uncritical adoration of veterans, troops, and their officers by the American public, and more ominously, by presidential candidates in Congress. Living as we do in an age of nonstop semi-war, the need for clear, unsentimental thinking is more important than ever. It has become routine for candidates running for commander in chief to describe their global strategies, thus, quote, "I would check with my generals and follow their advice", end quote. Dixon jerks us back to reality with our civic responsibilities. What if the general or admiral is an incompetent authoritarian, blind to the true situation, leading the country into a ditch? What if the general is a well-mast authoritarian type who cannot

• 1:06:11Jocko Willink?

  learn from experience, who denies, rationalizes, deflects blame, and creates scapegoats, the last usually, quote, "the folks in Washington"?

• 1:06:21Jocko Willink?

  Indeed, what deficient American commander has not made this his swan song? Quote, "At least in blank, I knew who the enemy was. Here in Washington, I don't." End quote. A failed Iraq war commander was the last to try that wheeze, an old perennial that bloomed during Korea and Vietnam too. Read this book, absorb its lessons, and you will be on your guard against this infantilization to revere the uniform without first peering inside. Indeed, Dixon cites a path-breaking Swiss child psychologist in this regard. Quote, "The adult who is under the dominion of unilateral respect for the elders and for

• 1:07:06Jocko Willink?

  tradition is really behaving like a child."

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  And that was just the foreword of this book.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, that's Jeffrey Warrow. And this, he wrote that in 2016, or that's when this edition is. I got an older edition too. You know, I got the old school hardcover one. Cause you know, that's how I roll. Cause I know when we, when we, when this podcast comes out, people can go out and buy those, those old school ones. I might've got mine. I tried to get as many off as I could off the market.

• 1:07:40Jocko Willink?

  We roll into now into Dixon's preface. And he starts this off, and I probably could've, I probably could've and probably should've started off this whole podcast with this note that he makes out of the gate. He says, "This book is not an attack upon the armed forces, nor upon the vast majority of senior military commanders who, in time of war, succeed in tasks which would make the running of a large commercial enterprise seem like child's play by comparison." So, I should've started the podcast with that. Cause let's face it, they're, they're going to go hard in the paint. We're already feeling that.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  And it can be very easy to think that any critique of the leadership of these wars or people in leadership positions specifically, it can be very easy to interpret this as shots at those people. But really, and I think this is what's going to be done in the book too, is it's going to be more a breaking down of these leadership, you know, failing leadership tactics and, you know, leadership roles or, you know, how these guys are doing it more so than these guys themselves. You know what I mean? Am I close there?

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately not.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  No?

• 1:08:54Jocko Willink?

  Dixon goes hard in the paint.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  He's just straight calling these guys out.

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  These guys are gonna get called out.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, based on his note there in the preface, it sounded like he was gonna go a little different.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  But he's going hard. Yeah, he goes hard.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  Goes hard.

• 1:09:08Jocko Willink?

  There's no punches.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Roger that.

• 1:09:09Jocko Willink?

  And, but he, but, and he doesn't spend as much time. He does, he does talk about some of the good military leaders, but he spends most of his time talking about the bad military leaders and how just bad they were and why they were bad and the mistakes that they made. And it wasn't like, well, you know, he was really making a good decision based on the information he had. So, no, no, he wasn't.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:09:31Jocko Willink?

  He was, you know, we're gonna get to some stories that'll make you sick to your stomach.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  Oh shit.

• 1:09:34Jocko Willink?

  Some of these stories will make you sick to your stomach. And, and, you know, Dixon served in World War II. Dixon was wounded. Like, this guy knows what's up. He's probably had some incompetent leaders. So, he's gonna go hard. But, and look, I served with incredible leaders in the military. Incredible leaders. Incredible. Individual, I don't know if there could be better leaders than some of the leaders I served with in the military. So, this book isn't an attack on the armed forces or all leaders. Neither am I. And that's not what we're doing here. But there are some bad seeds. And we need to learn from

• 1:10:16Jocko Willink?

  that. Cause there's some legit things you can do to take corrective measures and watch out for this. Especially if, just like everything else, if you aim this book at yourself.

• 1:10:29Jocko Willink?

  If you aim this book at yourself and you, every time I hear, every time I say authoritarian theme, instead of thinking like about your boss or about some subordinate leader that you have, if you instead think, oh, how am I authoritarian? Cause that doesn't, oh, I do that. Oh, I lean in that direction. If you start thinking like that right now, that's, that's the benefit. That's what you should be trying to do.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Pretty much wiped out my page of notes here.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Did I just, did I just jack your notes?

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  No, that's legit, man. I kept, I, you know, like I've said this a thousand times, I get the coolest part about being on this podcast is I hear the stuff in person, live for the first time.

• 1:11:11Jocko Willink?

  Did you order this book when I told you to order it like a year ago?

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Yes. We, but you've been sending me screenshots of like, you've been dabbling with this thing for a while. I've known this thing's coming, so it's cool. But it's still mostly brand new, like the, this is all new and I get to write stuff down. And part of it is just trying to think about how this makes sense in my own head. And I wrote down like five minutes ago, there's a lot of risk with this book. And the risk, as I'm listening to you, is that it's going to be a validation for the listeners, that there's a bunch of other screwed up people out there and they're the problem.

• 1:11:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, the other people.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  The other people.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  And what I wrote down, I go, you mitigate that risk by this, by assuming this guy is talking to you. Not about other people. He's talking about you. And the risk that you are a reflection of those behaviors. And the only other thing I wrote down that, that I was thinking about in sort of anticipation of this is that it's not just these individuals. As flawed as they are, and I'm glad that we're, we are, I'm glad all of us are taking a minute to go, hey, listen, this is not just us taking shots at all these people in the military to be, be critical of them. Cause leading is hard, the military is hard and there's a whole bunch of reasons. But there are flawed individuals. The other piece that compounds that for this, which is again, something we can all think about, is that there is a system

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  that promotes that, that validates that, that reinforces that, that helps create and take the worst of these behaviors and magnify them. And does your company, does your team, does your family, does your household, does your business?

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Do the exact same thing.

• 1:12:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And just to add one more little thing that that you said, which is a hundred percent right. You're right. The military can, in many ways, take these people with these tendencies and promote them. It can do that. It also, even prior to that, attracts these people. Cause you know, the authoritarian person likes, likes, um, things to be controlled, likes uniformity. What, what, you, you know, if you're, if you're a, a, in college and you like uniformity and you're looking at your, your dorm room going, gosh, I wish everyone would just be quiet at night. You're like, oh, you know, I'm gonna join them. I'm gonna join the military.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  The idea of rank to that person.

• 1:13:26Jocko Willink?

  Exciting.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  You mean, you mean to tell me?

• 1:13:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  I put this on?

• 1:13:30Jocko Willink?

  And people will listen to me.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  People will listen to me? They'd have to do what I say?

• 1:13:34Jocko Willink?

  I'm in.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Oh. So the idea of, of uniformity is not a bad thing. It's an, it's an attractive, isn't it? We literally wear a uniform. That attribute is a positive in so many ways for those of us interested in the military. So just to both of what you're saying, that idea like, oh, those things you go, man, I don't want a bunch of yes men, uniform, thinking, you know, uh, uh, group think. Actually, uniformity is hailed as a positive attribute in many ways across the military. So much so, like,

• 1:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  The more you look like the person next to you, the better you are.

• 1:14:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  Hey, that uniform looks exactly like this regulation. You're my guy.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You think about who's getting attracted to this. Look, do you get guys? Men and women that are patriotic, men and women that want to challenge, men and women that want to take care of their people and lead? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. You do. Like you get all kinds of people. Do you get someone that just wants to put their rank on and finally get listened to? Lieutenant Cali, right? In NOM. They, you know, you do read the backstory on Lieutenant Cali from the, from the My Lai massacre. It's like, oh, he was, no one respected him in his life. He had to go through OCS a bunch of times. He wanted that freaking rank so bad. It was probably like the most rewarding thing he ever got. Was to get that, finally get that rank and people would just shut up and listen to me. So that's what you, that's what you're tracking. So we, are you doing that in your company?

• 1:14:55Jocko Willink?

  What kind of people are you tracking into your company? Scary.

• 1:15:02Jocko Willink?

  It is however, an attempt to explain how a minority of individuals come to inflict upon their fellow men depths of misery and pain virtually unknown in other walks of life. That's a freaking heavy sentence. Like, that's true. Like, hey, if you're in business and you're an authoritarian, okay, cool, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna drive some people crazy, whatever, right? Well, you're in the military, you're causing depths of misery and pain virtually unknown in all other walks of life. This book involves the putting together of contributions from a great many people, historians, sociologists, psychologists, and of course, soldiers and sailors. It is hoped that none of these will feel misrepresented in the final picture which their contributions make. For errors of fact and for the opinions

• 1:15:46Jocko Willink?

  expressed, I alone take full responsibility. Okay, he's taking some owner, ownership. In the writing of this book, I also owe a great debt of gratitude to all those who gave generously of their time to reading and discussing earlier drafts. Their encouragement, criticisms, and advice have been invaluable. And he goes on to think about a freaking page and a half of people, names, names, names, names. And then finally, he gets to this part. And, and by the way, one thing that's interesting that you couldn't have predicted is this guy's really funny. He's got that dry British humor, humor throughout the entire book, and he's awesome. So, he brings the heat. You know, you, Kerry's like, I'm sure he's not, you know, taking, oh, he's taking shots. Not only

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  is he taking shots, but some of them are pretty damn funny. So, he says this, he says, "Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to that handful of people who would probably prefer to remain nameless, whose hostility and dismay that anyone should write a book on military incompetence provided considerable, if unlooked for, confirmation of the relationship between militarism and human psychopathology." So, like, all you people are like, you shouldn't write a book like that. Exactly. You're the reason why. You are the reason why.

• 1:17:06Jocko Willink?

  So that's his opening. Um, now we get into chapter one. Like I said, this is going to be a slow roll with this book. Um, he starts off with a quote.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  At least it's a really short book.

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Clausewitz. Um, "We only wish to represent things as they are and to expose the error of believing that a mere bravo without intellect can make himself distinguished in war."

• 1:17:32Jocko Willink?

  And bravo can be used as a noun, I found out after reading that quote, means someone that's like a daring man. Daring man isn't good enough. By now, most people have been, have become accustomed to, one might almost say, blasé about military incompetence. Like the common cold, flat feet, or the British climate is accepted as part of life. Faintly ludicrous, but quite unavoidable. Surely, there can be nothing left to say about the subject. He's coming out of the gate. Look, yeah, military incompetence, whatever. It's the way it is. It's like flat feet. Some people got it. In fact, military incompetence is largely preventable, tragically expensive,

• 1:18:12Jocko Willink?

  and quite absorbing segment of human behavior. It also follows certain laws. That's a bold statement. "The first intimation of this came to the writer during desultory reading about notorious military disasters. These moving, often horrific, accounts evoked a curious déjà vu experience, for there was something about these apparently senseless goings on which sent one's thoughts along new channels, making contact with phenomena from quite other, hitherto unrelated contexts, and then back again to the senseless facts. Not now quite so senseless, until gradually a theme, continuous as a hairline crack, could be discerned throughout the stirring tales of

• 1:18:56Jocko Willink?

  daring do." Those big sentences. What's he saying in that? What he's saying is, he started reading about all these military disasters, and as he read them, he would think about another one, and he'd think about another one, and what he started to see was a thread that connected them all together.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  If this pattern was real, and it meant what it seemed to mean, certain predictions would follow. These were tested and found correct. Yet other pieces began falling into place until gradually the mosaic of elements took on the semblance of a theory. This book is about that theory. It is concerned with placing aspects of military behavior in the context of general psychological principles. This sounds fine, a cheerful marriage of history and psychology. Unfortunately, however, such a union may not be entirely agreeable to some of potential in-laws. Judging from the attitude of some historians, putting together of psychology and history is, to say the least, bad form, while putting together of psychology and military history is positively indecent. There are at least two reasons for this anxiety.

• 1:19:56Jocko Willink?

  The first is that since there are few things more annoying than having one's behavior explained, there exists a natural distaste for explanations of historical figures with whom one perhaps identifies. So, he's saying, "Look, I'm gonna write this book. It's about psychology, and it's about military history, and that's not gonna be popular." Because a lot of people relate to those military figures, those historical military figures. And when you start talking about why they made those decisions, some people are gonna get offended by that. So that's the first reason why this is a risky book. The second reason is a distrust of reductionism, of the idea that anything so complex as a

• 1:20:40Jocko Willink?

  military disaster could possibly be reduced to explanations in terms of the workings of the human mind, and this by a psychologist of all people. So, "Oh, you're gonna tell me all this stuff took place, and it was because of this dude, you know, had a weird psychology about something, that's what we're gonna say?" In answer, one can only say that, of course, historians know more about history than do psychologists. Of course, historical events are determined by a complex set of variables, political, economic, geographical.

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Climactic, sociological, but ultimately, history is made by human beings. And whatever other factors may have contributed to a military disaster, one of these was the minds of those who were there. And another, the behavior to which these minds gave rise. So there's all kinds of things that are playing into these disasters. And yes, uh, uh, the, the climate and the ge- the geography and the economics, all the things are playing into it. But you also had these human beings' minds. And how did their minds end up that way? Now, these are complex variables. Hence, it has been necessary to play down the other factors in order to focus more clearly upon the psychological determinants.

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  Consider the analogous case of aircraft accidents. Dave Berke, glad you're here. Nobody would deny that aeroplanes crash for a number of different reasons. Sometimes, working independently, sometimes in unison. But this does not mean that the selecting out for particular study of a single factor such as metal fatigue necessitates dwelling on other such variables as bad weather, indifferent navigation, or too much alcohol in the bloodstream of the pilot. So just because the, the pilot was drunk, doesn't mean you can't look at the metal fatigue that it put on the wings. The case for a reductionist approach, however, also rests upon other considerations, namely,

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  that the nature of military incompetence and those characteristics which distinguish competent from incompetent senior commanders have shown a significant lack of variation over the years, despite changes in other factors which shaped the course of history. So, you see failure, failure, failure, failure, all these different failures. And there's been a, a lack of variation of what caused the failures from a psychological perspective, even though the factors, uh, the, the, the environment has totally changed. So it's not like, well, you know, you had horses, and so, but you failed, and you had tanks, and you failed. Wait a second. What's the common thread? Oh, the mind.

• 1:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Whether they are well-equipped or ill-equipped, whether they are in control of men who are armed with spears, or tanks, or rockets, whether they are English, Russian, German, Zulu, American, or French, good commanders pretty much remain the same. Likewise, bad commanders have much in common with the other, which is what we say all the time. Sometimes we'll get asked the question, "Well, you know, what makes this type of person a good leader?" It's like, it doesn't matter what, it doesn't matter if they're a frontline infantry leader, or a financial consultant company, or a construction company. The leadership characteristics that make the good leaders are all the same.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, humble leaders usually do better, no matter the situation.

• 1:24:05Jocko Willink?

  It's ridiculous.

• 1:24:08Jocko Willink?

  One rewarding byproduct of writing this book has been the many enjoyable conversations I've had with people in the armed services. Here again, however, a small minority viewed the enterprise with dismay, as something lacking in taste, if not actually bordering on sacrilege. So he's having conversations with people, telling he's gonna write this book, and they're like, "Whoa, why are you gonna do that?" He got a little footnote here, it says, "It is fair to add that certain common characteristics of those civilians and servicemen who took extreme view, provided a very useful clue as to the possible origins of military incompetence."

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  It's you.

• 1:24:43Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Sacrilege.

• 1:24:48Jocko Willink?

  You should not write a book like that.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:24:53Jocko Willink?

  To this understandable sensitivity, I can only say that no insult is intended. In point of fact, for the devotees of the military to take exception to the study of military incompetence is as unjustified as it would be for admirers of teeth to complain about a book on dental careys, which means decay. In an imperfect world, the activities of professional fighters are presumably as necessary to society as those of police, prostitutes, sewage disposers, and psychologists. It is just because we cannot do without these callings, except possibly the last, that any serious attempt to understand the peculiarities should be welcomed and indeed taken as a compliment, for it is a token of their importance that

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  we should merit such attention. So we're freaking, you gotta be kidding me. Why wasn't this book, why isn't there just like decades of these books being written for every situation, every war that's taken place?

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  Moreover, it is only by contemplation of the incompetent that we can appreciate the difficulties and accomplishment of the competent. If there were no incompetent generals, it might appear that the direction of armies and the waging of war were easy tasks, well within the compass of all who had the good fortune to reach the highest levels of military organizations. However, it is not only when contrasted with the inept that great commanders look their best, but also when seen in context of the organizations to which they belong. The thesis will be developed that the possibility of incompetence springs in large measure from the unfortunate, if unavoidable, side effects of creating armies and navies. This is to your point earlier, Dave. We create these things and they kind of produce, or at least have a tendency to produce incompetence.

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  And therefore, when you're a good leader inside of an organization that produces incompetence, you're actually doing double good. You get two gold stars. For the most part, these tend to produce a leveling down of human capability at once encouraging to the mediocre, but cramping to the gifted. But cramping to the gifted. Viewed in this light, those who have performed brilliantly in the carrying of arms may be considered twice blessed. I guess I just stole that from him. For they achieve success despite bad features of the organization to which they happen to belong. This alone would seem to justify an unabashed excursion into the realms of military incompetence, but there are additional grounds, if anything, more pressing.

• 1:27:19Jocko Willink?

  They, they concern the related issues of cost and probability. While few would dispute that the cost grows exponentially with the growth of technology so that the price of wrong decisions must now be reckoned in mega deaths. The chance of military incompetence remains a matter for debate. We might hope that this would be a declining function for better education, more realistic values, greater fear of immeasurably worse consequences, and an increase, decrease in jingoism. But there are strong grounds for taking the pessimistic view that the chance, like the cost, continues to increase with positive acceleration. This is getting worse, what he's saying.

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  Hey, don't you think, hey, look, if you were gonna go out and you're gonna fight with swords and you're a bad leader, you're probably gonna get 50 guys killed. Now you're gonna go out and fight with artillery and machine guns, now you're gonna get 1,000 people killed? We must be making improvement. We're not. In fact, it's getting worse. Several reasons may be advanced for this depressing hypothesis. Firstly, the gap between the capabilities of the human mind and the intellectual demands of modern warfare continues that expansion which started in the 18th century. It is probably opening from both sides. While modern war becomes increasingly swift and deadly, and the means by which it is waged increasingly complex,

• 1:28:46Jocko Willink?

  the intellectual level of those entering the armed services as officers could well be on the wane.

• 1:28:53Jocko Willink?

  Ouch. He wrote this in 1976, just saying. He's like, hey, if you go to the military right now, you know. This tentative supposition is based on the fact that fewer and fewer of the young consider the military to be a worthwhile career. Again, this is post NOM, he's writing this. One has only to look at the contemporary recruiting advertisements to realize the evident difficulties of finding officer material. They spare nothing in their efforts to convince an unresponsive youth. The services are depicted as glittering toy shops where handsome young men enjoy themselves with tanks and missiles while basking in the respect of lower ranks, hardly less godlike than themselves. And their eagerness to drum up applicants, these calls to arms,

• 1:29:36Jocko Willink?

  attempt the mental contortion of presenting the services as a classless society in which officers nevertheless remain gentlemen.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  The clear implication of such expensive pleading can surely be that the market for a military career is shrinking, to say the least.

• 1:29:55Jocko Willink?

  To meet this fall off in officer recruitment insufficient has been done, in the writer's opinion, to improve the real as opposed to the advertised incentive value of military career. Again, this is written in the 70s. So you didn't have long lines at the recruiting offices in 1973 when he was writing this.

• 1:30:13Speaker 02

  You can see how one might have this outlook on the military during that time, for sure.

• 1:30:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, skip a little bit here. In short, possibly less able people are being called upon to carry out a more difficult cost task with a heavier price tag and the highest levels of responsibility, which are staggering. In the Vietnam War alone, the military commanders were responsible for executing policies which cost the United States $300 billion.

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  Seems cheap now, coming out of Afghanistan at a $2 trillion price tag. They were responsible for releasing 13 million tons of high explosives, more than six times the weight of bombs dropped by the United States in all theaters during the whole of the Second World War. They were responsible for the delivery of 90,000 tons of gas and herbicides. And they were responsible for the deaths of between 1 and 2 million people. These are great responsibilities. Errors of generalship on this scale would be very costly. Of course, many of the arguments put forward in this book are equally applicable to other human enterprises. That's why we're freaking interested in this stuff. Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that incompetence occurs more frequently in military

• 1:31:29Jocko Willink?

  subcultures than it does in politics, commerce, or the universities. There are, however, apart from the heavy cost of military disasters, special reasons for studying cases of military ineptitude. So this applies to everywhere. That's why, I mean, this is what we do for a living in Afghanistan front. This is what we do for a living. But he's gonna call out the reasons why he's gonna focus on the military. The first is that military organizations have a particularly propensity for attracting a minority of individuals who might prove a menace at high levels of command. And the second is that the nature of militarism serves to accentuate those very traits which might ultimately prove disastrous, which is what we just talked about. Dave Berke likes people to listen to him, and he realizes there's a place he can go,

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  he can put a freaking gold bar on his collar, and he becomes the man. In theory, then, errors of generalship could be prevented by attention to these causes, you would think. Thirdly, the public has, at least in the democracies, some real say as to who should make its political decisions. This does not apply to generals. So, hey, look, we get to vote you out. If you're a president, or you're a senator, or you're a representative, we can vote you out. Can't vote out a general.

• 1:32:46Speaker 02

  Chairman of a board. You know, you look at business, you know, anything like that. Not the case here.

• 1:32:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we can fire you from your position.

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:32:55Jocko Willink?

  Even the worst government and the most inept prime minister could come up for possible dismissal every so often. This is not true of armies and navies. We may have the governments we deserve, but sometimes had the military minds which we did not. Fourthly, if one of the main differences between military and political organizations is the degree of public control, that between the military and commerce lies in decision payoffs.

• 1:33:26Jocko Willink?

  And he's got this note here, "So relatively trivial and unimportant are most academic decisions that it would be arrogant to discuss them in the same breath." This guy takes shots at the academia quite a bit for a guy that's a freaking professor, or he was a professor.

• 1:33:44Jocko Willink?

  "A wrong decision by a company chairman or board of directors may cost a great deal of money and depress a sizable population of shareholders, but military errors have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and untold misery to civilians and soldiers alike. But the case for a study of military incompetence rests upon other issues. Not the least of these is the need to examine a view of military behavior diametrically opposed to, though in no way less extreme than that of people who would vehemently defend senior commanders against even the faintest breath of criticism." Well, this is what I was talking about earlier. We think, "Oh, this guy was in the military, so he must be squared away."

• 1:34:22Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:34:25Jocko Willink?

  "This other hypocritical stance seems remarkably widespread. Thus, for many people with whom the author discussed a central topic of this book, the notion of military incompetence struck as an immediate and responsive chord. Rejoiners range from 'you will have no shortage of data' to surely that's the whole of military history." So when he told people he was gonna write this book, they go, "Oh yeah, you got plenty of data on incompetence, and isn't that just the entire military history?"

• 1:34:54Jocko Willink?

  But when pressed for details, there was a tendency to become vague and retire behind a 1066 and all that attitude to the subject. Psychological causes were usually reduced to a single factor, low intelligence, or, as one historian put it, "the bloody fool theory of military history." So, look, you got people that made bad decisions, they were stupid. Doubtless this view has been contributed to by such books on military ineptitude as Alan Clarke's "The Donkeys," an abrasive critique of the generals of the First World War. Certainly, its title, taken from the famous conversation between Ludendorff and Hoffman, and such captions as "donkey decorates a lion."

• 1:35:39Jocko Willink?

  So, this book, "The Donkeys," this is a quote that you guys, you guys ever heard the quote, "lions led by lambs?" So, here's the original quote, "According to the memoirs of Field Marshal von Falkenhain," cited by Alan Clarke, Field Marshal van Ludendorff's comment, "The English soldiers fight like lions," was greeted by his friend, Major General Max Hoffman, with, "True, but don't we know they are lions led by donkeys?" And they got a picture in this book of, you know, some general giving a young soldier an award, and the caption is "donkey decorates lion."

• 1:36:23Jocko Willink?

  The contents of this book imply, however, that while stupidity may have possibly played a part, limited intelligence was certainly not the cause of the behavior for which the generals had been criticized. Judging from the spate of books among which the donkeys appeared, it looked as if the taboo had been lifted on peering into the military woodshed. But mixing our rural metaphors, the Ernst Wall sacred cows were once more being transmorgified into nothing more than very unsacred asses. Transmorgified, had to look that word up. What is that? It means magically change, magically changed, so transmorgified.

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  Thus, one historian has ascribed a series of military mishaps to boneheaded leadership, another spoke of, quote, "the long gallery of military imbecility," while a third has said of British soldiers that their fate was decided for them by idiots. So that's what they're normally, you know, this guy was just stupid. And as you read this, as you read this book, you realize these are smart people in many cases.

• 1:37:30Speaker 02

  And that's such a dismissive take on that, you know, it's just like, oh, that guy was dumb, you know?

• 1:37:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's exactly the point he's making.

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:37:41Jocko Willink?

  Is, oh, oh, yeah, the guy was just stupid. You, you, you, and, and you know what's funny is how often do you? How often did you hear throughout your life, oh, yeah, that guy's smart has no common sense, right? That's like a common thing. Oh, that guy's, oh, they'll say, oh, he's really book smart, which is a, a, a dig.

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:38:02Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't matter how smart you are, if you can't make good decisions. And these people are actually smart in many cases.

• 1:38:10Jocko Willink?

  The view taken here is that besides being unkind, these views are probably invalid. The hypothesis of intellectual, intellectual incapacity leaves two questions quite unanswered. How, if they are so lacking intelligence, do people become senior military commanders? Which is an accurate statement. I mean, you can't be a senior military commander if you're stupid.

• 1:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Maybe, maybe occasionally. And what is it about military organizations that they should attract, promote, and ultimately tolerate? Those whose performance at the highest levels may destroy the organizations that they represent. To answer those, these questions, however, it is first necessary to discover what the job of generalship entails and how it could be done so badly or so well. This, the bare bones of good and bad generalship is examined in the next chapter in terms of information theory.

• 1:38:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you know, as I was going through this book, trying to decide what, you know, what I'm going to read. I just had to go hard in these first couple of chapters to lay down

• 1:39:08Jocko Willink?

  the background, the context. And so it's almost like all that right there is starting head towards what we're talking about.

• 1:39:17Jocko Willink?

  The main part of this book is divided into two halves. The first is concerned with case histories, examples of military ineptitude over a period of some hundred years or so. Much of this material will no doubt be all too familiar to the reader. It is included here and the selections made with two main purposes in mind to provide an aid memoria and because it is believed that common denominators of military incompetence emerge most clearly when looked at in a longitudinal study. One special virtue of this approach is that the highlights, it highlights the influence or more often regret, regrettable lack of influence of earlier upon later events. So throughout he's covering these histories and as you cover these histories, you can see that there's just nothing learned. You

• 1:39:58Jocko Willink?

  know, it's even, I guess maybe worse, or at least the same ballpark as you're talking about Dave. Oh, they took these lessons learned and they made them rigid. And just as bad as that is that we just didn't learn anything. For the most part, cases of incompetence have been taken from British military history. Far from being unpatriotic, this apparently one-sided approach springs from a sentimental regard for the forces of the crown, whose record of valor and fighting ability is second to none and whose ability to rise above the most intense provocation either from a civilian population as in Northern Ireland today, or from the lapses of their top leadership in days gone by must surely occupy a unique position in the history of warfare. So he's like,

• 1:40:41Jocko Willink?

  hey, I'm going to talk about the Brits. Nothing against the Brits. In fact, the Brits have the unbelievable history, but that's what we're going to look at. The second half of the book is devoted to discussion and explanation. It is subdivided into two parts. The first concerned with the social psychology of military organizations and the second with the psychopathology of individual commanders. And I'm telling you, I was like, oh, well, maybe I'll just do this. Maybe I'll just do that. Maybe I'll just do one part. The context is so strong and he doesn't play around, he doesn't, he doesn't wait until the end to start explaining things. He's doing it throughout the book. So, and, and as you said, and as I said, you know, you gotta aim this book at yourself.

• 1:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Man, it's uncomfortable. Sometimes you're reading this thing and you're like, oh, oh, man. Like, oh, I did that. I did this. You know, you can feel it.

• 1:41:37Jocko Willink?

  The approach here is essentially eclectic, drawing upon ethological, psychoanalytic, and behaviorist theories. It attempts to explain military ineptitude in light of five inescapable, if unfortunate, features of human psychology. These are: One, man shares with lower animals certain powerful instincts. And again, these are like the root of what he's talking about. These five inescapable parts of our brains. So, we share with lower animals certain powerful instincts. Two, unlike lower animals, most men learn to control,

• 1:42:20Jocko Willink?

  frustrate, direct, and sublimate these instinctual energies. So, right, we got control over some of these things. At least we're supposed to. We can at least frustrate them. That's a good word, right? We can at least frustrate them. Three, while by far the largest part of this learning occurs in early childhood, its effects upon adult personality are profound and long-lasting. Again, this is where, you know, you get into like, you know, Freud, and how you're raised, and all these little things that are in your childhood. And I don't know if that's right or wrong. I don't know if that's right or wrong. Because I think I've seen people that have been raised all kinds of different ways, and end up all kinds of different ways. But I think the end result is you end up with a personality, regardless

• 1:43:03Jocko Willink?

  of where it comes from. You end up with a certain personality, or certain personal personality aspects that we can PID, we can identify them. Four, residues of this early learning, and in particular, unresolved conflicts between infantile desires and the demands of punitive morality, may remain wholly unconscious, yet provide a canker of inexhaustible anxiety. Again, really tying our behaviors to what, how we got treated when we were kids. And if you got, you know, the room had to be clean, you had to clean your plate, like all those little things. And again, chiming if you guys think I'm wrong, I've known people

• 1:43:45Jocko Willink?

  that were raised in a totally strict environment, and they end up on one end of the spectrum. And I've known people that raised in a totally strict environment, they end up in a totally different person. Are there some root things that are overlapping? Sure. But I think we have to look.

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  And maybe it's just the way psychologically things play out, you know, but

• 1:44:08Jocko Willink?

  they're there.

• 1:44:08Speaker 02

  Does he say unresolved?

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  So I think that has, I think that word jumps out at me. The unresolved part, I think, I think a lot of times people are able to come to terms with something from their childhood and, and then own it, right? Move past it. Um, I think it's the unresolved part that lingers, right? Where there's still, there's a bit of broken something there that hasn't been addressed. And because of that, it continues to plague the individual as they try to move forward.

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  So maybe, so maybe if I know you two and you both were raised, you know, in this super strict way. And yet Kerry was like, you know what? You know, my, my mom was just a little bit crazy and that's cool. And, but Dave was like, it couldn't let it go. Maybe that's what makes Dave, you know, a little bit, a little bit harder in that respect. Or maybe you're both raised by, you know, the hippie parents that didn't care. And, you know, Kerry was like, yeah, I don't need to care about anything. It's all good. And Dave was like, you know, I'm, I don't want to end up like that. And you end up with a more militaristic mindset.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  Or a trauma hippie mom wrecks the van. Johnny moves on, you know?

• 1:45:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  Dave doesn't. Dave, Dave bears the scar, right?

• 1:45:29Jocko Willink?

  This thing hitting close to home to you, man? What's going on here? Bearing the scar?

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  I'm just saying.

• 1:45:33Jocko Willink?

  K dog.

• 1:45:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I really do. I think it comes down to.

• 1:45:39Jocko Willink?

  All right. Uh, the last one, when this anxiety becomes the driving force in life's endeavors, the fragile edifices of reason and competence are placed in jeopardy. So that's scary. Again, regard, for me, regardless of the source of this personality trait that you end up with. If that be, it doesn't matter where it came from. If you have it and it becomes the driving force in your endeavors, that's where we run into a problem. And I don't want to say it doesn't matter where it came from, but regardless of what you think of that, we know someone that's hyper, either egos out of control. Like, it doesn't really matter. I shouldn't say it doesn't matter where it came from, but there's nothing we can do about where it came from.

• 1:46:24Jocko Willink?

  But if I understand that Dave has a massive ego, I'm not sitting there going, well, you know, do I need to have him sit down on the couch, you know, and like, let's go, go hypnotism and break down where he got this giant ego from? Or am I just gonna go, okay, he's got a big giant ego. How do I work through this? How do I get this? You know, how do I approach him with ideas? So we can, we can dwell on that a little bit, where these people, how these people end up like this. And I think that is important to an extent is if you can understand somebody a little bit better, you can maneuver better. But regardless, they end up, you end up with these personalities, different personalities. Um, I knew a guy, um, I mean, I know you know, there was a whole slew.

• 1:47:08Jocko Willink?

  Cause when I got in the Navy, so it's 1990, this had to be similar for you. There's a whole slew of my friends in the SEAL teams who parents were just straight hippies, just freaking hippies. Like conceived at Woodstock and whatever, like just straight up hippies. And yet they took the most militaristic life that they could, being a commando, right? So how's that work?

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe it's a reaction to that, you know?

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  And vice versa, have you ever known someone that had that hardcore, strict religious upbringing? And how do they end up wild freaking maniac, you know?

• 1:47:44Speaker 02

  I feel like that's the generic go-to, right? Where it's like the rebel, you know? Came from that strict Catholic school, you know, whatever. They just go the other way.

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  And it's weird, cause you, that's not, neither one of these things is like, oh, you went to a strict Catholic school, now you're a rebel. No, there's plenty of people that went to a strict Catholic school and they become strict Catholics. So that's, I think this is why, and again, I'm not a psychologist and I don't even know enough about psychology. But I'm saying regardless of my opinion, cause that's all it is, is an opinion. The result that you get is, oh, this person has a very rebellious attitude and he's in my platoon, how do I deal with him? Or this person has a massive ego, he's in my platoon, how do I deal with him?

• 1:48:29Jocko Willink?

  It says here, "In due course, we shall examine the scientific basis for these propositions and their relevance to a theory of military incompetence. Because this is a book about incompetence rather than competence, about disasters rather than successes, these chapters may appear to take an unnecessarily jaundiced view of the military profession and to dwell more upon what is bad rather than what is good in man's attempts to professionalize violence. But without teasing out and enlarging upon the less pleasant features of a multifaceted phenomenon, there could be no theory to account for those human aberrations which have caused so much unnecessary suffering as war."

• 1:49:13Jocko Willink?

  As Clausewitz wrote of war, "This is the way in which the matter must be viewed, and it is to no purpose. It is even against one's better interest to turn away from the consideration of the real nature of the affair because of the horror of its elements excites repugnance." So, we shouldn't not look at war just because it's freaking savage.

• 1:49:38Jocko Willink?

  "To the reader who recoils in disgust from these chapters, I can only say that the theory they advance is based upon the emergence of a pattern, of which each small piece may in itself seem trivial, possibly ludicrous, even obnoxious, but which, when put together with other pieces, begins to make sense. This interdependence between the parts necessitates keeping an open mind, and however much one may dislike or disbelieve the existence of individual trees postponing judgment until the wood is seen in its entirety. For the reader who is obsessed with trees and thinks that history should be left to historians, ideas about soldiering to soldiers, and that psychological theorizing should never go below the belt, this is the moment to stop reading and save yourself some irritation."

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  We're rolling into chapter two, which is generalship.

• 1:50:31Jocko Willink?

  War is the province of uncertainty, three fourths of those things upon which action in war must be calculated are hidden more or less in the corral clouds of great uncertainty. Clausewitz. In a situation where the consequences of wrong decisions are so awesome, where a single bit of irrationality can set a whole train of traumatic events in motion. I do not think that we can be satisfied with the assurance that, quote, "Most people behave rationally most of the time," end quote.

• 1:50:59Jocko Willink?

  This, this is a quote that I say to clients all the time. Hey, people are crazy, including you. You've got to deal with all these crazy people. So assuming that people are going to behave rationally is a dumb thing to assume.

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  And the additional layer that you already talked about earlier is what's rational to me is not rational to you.

• 1:51:18Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  So even my expectations of what I think you would do as you would consider rational, like this is a totally rational thing for me to do, and it's exactly opposite of what I would do.

• 1:51:27Jocko Willink?

  Which is crazy that you and I can have those two opposite views.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:51:31Jocko Willink?

  But that's the reality.

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, war is primarily concerned with two sorts of activity. The delivering of energy and the communication of information. This is a crazy thing to think about, the delivering of energy.

• 1:51:48Jocko Willink?

  In war, each side is kept busy by turning its wealth into energy, which is then delivered free, gratis, and for nothing to the other side. Such energy may be muscular, thermal, kinetic, or chemical. Wars are only possible because the recipients of this energy are ill-prepared to receive it and convert it into a useful form for their own economy. If, by means of, say, impossibly large funnels and gigantic reservoirs, they could capture and store the energy flung at them by the other side. The recipients of this unsolicited gift would soon be rich. So, and the other side's so poor that further warfare would be unnecessary for them and impossible for their opponents. It's a very interesting way to.

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  I've never heard it put that way.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  It's the truth, right?

• 1:52:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:52:37Jocko Willink?

  Creating energy and hucking it at the other side.

• 1:52:40Speaker 02

  For free.

• 1:52:41Jocko Willink?

  For free.

• 1:52:41Speaker 02

  Gratis.

• 1:52:42Jocko Willink?

  And only because they can't handle it.

• 1:52:45Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, such levels of technology have not been reached in the Vietnam War alone. The United States delivered to Indochina enough energy to displace 3.4 billion cubic yards of earth, 10 times the amount dug out for the canals of Suez and Panama combined, and enough raw materials in the shape of fuels, metals, and other chemicals to keep several major industries supplied for years. In fact, apart from a little slum clearance, this abundance of energy was wasted, consumed in the making of 26 million craters, and laying waste of 20,000 square kilometers of forest and the destruction of enough crops to feed 2 million people for a year. However, while the reception of energy is still totally uncontrolled, this is certainly not true of its direction and delivery.

• 1:53:30Jocko Willink?

  Indeed, these have become a matter of some sophistication and the prime concern of the military and naval commanders. Theirs is the job of deciding how, when, and where to dispose of the energy which their side makes available. They do this by occupying nodal points on a complex communication network. In other words, the ideal senior commander may be viewed as a device for receiving, processing, and transmitting information in a way which will yield maximum gain for the minimum cost. Whatever else he may be, he is part of a telephone exchange and part computer.

• 1:54:02Jocko Willink?

  These, the common denominators of generalship, are depicted in Figure 1. And now he's got this figure here. And this is a, we're gonna go like a little bit of OODA activity, so Dave can get all excited. He's got this first section, which is input. This is what, this is the input that you're getting. You've got the program that you're on, the broad strategy, the directives from the government, the orders from higher military authority, etc. You've got information about the enemy, about your own troops. This includes strength, disposition, morale, intentions, supplies, capabilities. You've got miscellaneous information, weather forecasts, time of year, moon tides, limitations of staff, communication. So you've got all these things that are, you've got your input.

• 1:54:43Jocko Willink?

  Now, the input that you get as a leader gets pre-processed by the staff. What the staff is doing is they're receiving it. They're putting it through a decision process. They're running it through a program of their own previous experience. They got their memories. How good is their memory?

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  And then you get this output,

• 1:55:09Jocko Willink?

  which eventually brings you results. And by the way, that's a loop the whole time. So you got, that's the decision thing that's happening. You got information. You're processing it. You're bouncing it off your experiences. You're bouncing it off your, your staff.

• 1:55:25Jocko Willink?

  You run that loop until you figure out what you should do, which is pretty straight, which is seems complicated. And you can already tell it'd be hard. It's gonna be hard to make a really like a solid decision. And then you've got this other section here, which is called noise. And this is what, this is what screws you up.

• 1:55:44Jocko Willink?

  External enemy action, inadequate intelligence sources, diluted chief of staff, et cetera, et cetera. Internal, defective senses or memory. So those are like, you got all kinds. We could list a million things that are external that are distractions and noise. Internal, you've got defective senses, emotion, rigidity, stretch, stress, dissonance, alcoholism, neurosis. There's all kinds of things freaking, you're a disaster. You're a disaster is what you are. So, he says, so, so I just kind of like described what this diagram looks like. For those who don't relish in flow diagrams, let it suffice to say that on the basis of a vast conglomerate of facts to do with the enemy, his own side geography, weather, et cetera,

• 1:56:29Jocko Willink?

  coupled with his own long-term store of past experience and specialist knowledge, the senior commander makes decisions that ideally accord with the directives with which he has been programmed, ideally. But these ideals are hard to meet

• 1:56:42Jocko Willink?

  for there are two main reasons. The first is the senior commanders often have often to fill a number of incompatible roles. According to Morris Janowitz, these include, include heroic leader, military manager and technocrat. So that's what you gotta do if you're a leader in the military. Heroic leader, military manager and technocrat. To these, we would add politician, public relations man and father figure and psychotherapist. Cause that's what you're doing. The second reason for a breakdown is what communication engineers call noise in the system. Noise is what interferes with the smooth flow of information. Its destructive power hinges on the fact that senior commanders, like any other device for processing information,

• 1:57:22Jocko Willink?

  are channels of limited capacity. If they want to deal with more information, they will tend to take longer about it. If they don't take longer, they will make mistakes. Here we are using the term information in a special and perhaps its most important sense as the "that which reduces uncertainty." So that's what information is. Information is that which reduces uncertainty.

• 1:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Let me expand on this a little. Acquiring knowledge involves the reduction of ignorance through the acquisition of facts, but ignorance is rarely absolute and its reduction rarely total. Doesn't matter. You're not going to know everything. And you're not going to know nothing. Hence, reducing ignorance can be regarded as reducing uncertainty about a given state of affairs. It follows that an unlikely or unexpected fact contains more information, i.e. reduces more uncertainty than one which is already expected. He's going to go into that hard, that what I just said. It follows that an unlikely or unexpected fact contains more information, i.e. reduces more uncertainty than one which is already

• 1:58:33Jocko Willink?

  expected. We already expected it. Well, it doesn't really help me that much. But an unexpected fact is less readily absorbed than one which was expected. Ooh. I wasn't expecting this to happen, so I'm going to kind of reject it. If this is less than crystal clear, consider the following example cast in a suitable military context. The message in this case consists of an intelligence report which states, quote, "enemy preparing for counter attack," end quote. It goes on to detail strength, disposition, date, and likely sector for attack. Now, this message, factually so simple, contains amount of information which differ greatly from commander to commander. To General A.

• 1:59:20Jocko Willink?

  Who anticipated such a counterattack? It conveys very little. It merely confirms a hypothesis which he already held. In fact, since he had already made extensive preparation for a counterattack, the intelligence report when it came was largely redundant. So that's General A. Hey, I was expecting this. Cool, got it. In the case of General B, however, the same message was quite unexpected. So little had he anticipated an enemy counterattack that the news was charged with information. It reduced a great deal of ignorance and uncertainty. It gave him plenty to occupy his mind and much to do. And I'm going to dive into that part right there because this is really important.

• 2:00:03Jocko Willink?

  Finally, we have General C for whom the message was so totally unexpected that he chose to ignore it with disastrous results. It conflicted with his preconceptions. It clashed with his wishes. It emanated, so he thought, from an unreliable source. Since his mind was closed to its reception, he found plenty of reasons for refusing to believe it, like British generals after the Battle of Cambrai or American generals before the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes of 1944. He ignored it at his cost. Its information content was just too high for his channel of limited capacity.

• 2:00:45Jocko Willink?

  And so those three examples. And when I, when I first read this, I thought, General A, it doesn't contain much information because he was already expecting it. General B got a lot of information from it because he wasn't expecting it. And it seems like General B might be in a better situation because he was, he got more information, but that's not true. And it all boils down to this last thing. Its information content was too high for his limited channel of capacity, of his limited, uh, channel of limited capacity. I think an advantage that I have and that I try and teach other people is to have an open mind and to, and to not,

• 2:01:29Jocko Willink?

  when new information arises, to, to absorb it and, and accept it and be like, okay, this is new information. I take it with a grain of salt, of course, but I'm not.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  And go even further than that. It's not just that my mind is open. It's that I'm, I'm actually trying to anticipate what's going on. I'm actually thinking, well, what are they probably gonna do? You know, they're probably gonna do this. And but I don't dig in on that. You know, the enemy could probably attack from the west, but I don't know the enemy's going to attack. The enemy's probably gonna attack from the west, but they could also come from the south. And you know what? They could come from the east, north, doesn't matter.

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  I think that when you said the word anticipation was the piece, as I'm hearing you talk about it, you hear those three generals and you think, oh, B is the right guy.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, even you thought that too, huh?

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  No, no, I don't. Actually, I'm trying to explain the logic as it seems at face value.

• 2:02:26Jocko Willink?

  As it unfolded in my head.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, oh, I could see people going, oh, B is the best example because

• 2:02:31Jocko Willink?

  He got the most information.

• 2:02:32Speaker 01

  Oh, man, this changes everything. Holy cow. And clearly sees the worst because he's like, I can't accept that in my brain. So we're not doing that. I don't acknowledge it and to his folly, like it's gonna, the whole team's getting wiped out. But when you said anticipation, because I think of it as you've, as we talk about it, as we teach it, and as you've discussed it, which is, I'm gonna do these things. I'm gonna make these moves. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to create a situation that unfolds a certain way. But I know, I know it doesn't go the way that I expect, which is I am anticipating a bunch of other potential options. Now, I don't necessarily know which one it's going to be. But when you come back and say, it didn't go, let me say it differently. It went this way, and no matter what this way is, you go, okay, I can see that. I can see how our moves created this outcome.

• 2:03:17Speaker 01

  And maybe not even what you want, or maybe not even what you expected. But the other ones aren't unexpected, which makes it so much easier to go, okay, cool. Now I've got the information. Here's the adjustments we're gonna make. Or hey, we'll continue down the path if it's the way we want it. But the anticipation that the outcome is not what you want.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  That word, that's the piece for me that resonates, which is the best situation to be in is, "Oh, it was different than I wanted, even a little different than I expected, and I'm not surprised by that."

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  I don't get caught mentally off balance very often.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  Because you don't predetermine the outcome.

• 2:03:53Jocko Willink?

  Because I don't lean too hard. Now, I'm not saying I don't lean, but I don't lean so much that when that resistance isn't there, I just fall on my face.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I steal a comment that you made from your second platoon commander over and over again. The context he was using, it was someone on your team doing something that wasn't really smart. And it's just a simple saying of, "You gotta expect these things to happen." But I overlay that onto everything I can think of, which is, "Oh, that didn't really go as expected, but I'm not that surprised by it." Like, yeah, I kind of expect these things to happen. And just the idea of saying, "You gotta expect those things to happen," and other people thinking, "Holy cow, this is a level 10 emergency. This is an unsolvable tragedy." It's like, no, I'm kind of used to these type of things going the way that people don't expect, and we can actually solve this. I can absorb that and make some changes. No factor.

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. Don't overcommit to your brain.

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  Overcommit the outcome.

• 2:04:51Speaker 02

  The other thing about this example is with this mechanical dissection he's doing of all this stuff, he talks a lot about the capacity. And with General A, you've got

• 2:05:06Speaker 02

  very little capacity left over from what you were expecting, right? So you've got your expectation of what's gonna happen, and you've got some capacity left over to dedicate to what's actually happening.

• 2:05:20Speaker 02

  Guy B, or the General B, let's say, it takes him by surprise. So now he has to do so much more backend work that General A's already done, and he's got all this free capacity, that now he can dedicate to what's actually happening. And the third guy has got so little, you know, that he chooses to willfully ignore what's happening rather than take on the challenge of, you know.

• 2:05:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if you did one of those games where you have to look at something for a short period of time and remember as much as you can, if I said, "Okay, Dave, I'm gonna show you a car in this next picture." It's a Ford Bronco and I want you to remember as much about it as you could. You'd be like, okay, here's the color, here's the license plate. But if I said, hey, Kerry, I want you to go and I'm going to show you a picture. Tell me as much about it as you can. You'd be like, get half, a quarter of the information because you just don't have that much. Your capacity is already taken. It's overflowing.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06:20Jocko Willink?

  With stuff.

• 2:06:20Speaker 01

  Trying to make sense of the picture.

• 2:06:22Jocko Willink?

  License plate, you're trying to figure all this out and you're just overwhelmed. So that's what we're trying not to do.

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  Right. And I think also too, just from a leadership standpoint, you're thinking about people, there aren't three versions of people out there. There's seven billion versions of that. So this is a, this is a dial across all those spectrums and certainly you can categorize that. And those examples are good examples, but even inside there, you don't just get three.

• 2:06:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:46Speaker 01

  If you got a team of 26, you're not, don't bin them into three categories and presume they sit in those bins.

• 2:06:51Jocko Willink?

  I bet you that you could probably break it down into weight classes though. And not end up with seven billion, but end up with like nine weight classes.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  You know, and it's really just, there's a spectrum inside there. Yeah, for sure.

• 2:07:04Jocko Willink?

  It's like, oh, you're between, you know, 170 pounds and 185 pounds. Like we know what kind of, we know you're.

• 2:07:11Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 2:07:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, you're, you're like leaning really hard. We know what you're going to do.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:17Jocko Willink?

  This continues. One particularly hazardous aspect of the relationship between information and decision processes concerns the revising of decisions. It seems that having gradually and perhaps painfully accumulated information in support of a decision. People become progressively more loathe to accept contrary evidence. So this is everything we're just talking about. You make a decision, you've got some information. And now we're not wanting to accept anything different. As Edwards and his colleagues have shown, the greater the impact of new information. The more strenuously it will be resisted, which is actually crazy.

• 2:07:59Jocko Willink?

  It's actually crazy. Dave's like, I'm heading north. I'm, hey, I'm heading north. We're heading north right now. We made the call. And I'm like, hey, actually, bro, there's like enemy up there. And you're like, we already made the call. Like, are you sure? Total resistance. There are several reasons for this dangerous conservatism. New information has by definition, high informational content and therefore firstly, it will require greater processing capacity. Secondly, it threatens a return to an earlier state of gnawing uncertainty. And thirdly, it confronts the decision maker with the nasty thought that he may have been wrong.

• 2:08:35Jocko Willink?

  No wonder he tends to turn a blind eye. I mean, I talk about this in one way or another, all the time, all the time. Isn't it scary to think, I'd rather just be wrong than go back to just being uncertain? Look, we're going north, bro. There's, there's enemy up there. Yeah, but at least I know where I'm going.

• 2:08:56Jocko Willink?

  Freaking disaster.com, dude.

• 2:09:01Jocko Willink?

  So much for a broad description of this most vital dimension of knowledge, its prior improbability. Let us return now to the other side of the coin, the problem of noise. Noise, as we saw, is the enemy of information. Noise takes up channel space and thereby disrupts the flow of information. The more limited the channel capacity, the greater disrupting effects of noise. The more noise, the less information can be handled.

• 2:09:28Jocko Willink?

  And, and again, as I read this, I look for some of the things that I do wrong, some of the things I do good. Man, I am a noise eliminator. I am a freaking noise eliminator. There's stuff going on around me that doesn't matter. I like give it no, no, I don't give it a second of my energy.

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  Just to be able to recognize what is noise and go, hey, that's noise. We're gonna, we're gonna filter that out as opposed to the overreaction that most people have. And, and I keep in my own head, going back to things that I recall. As you're, as you're reading this, I've been thinking a lot about Banda Brothers. And there's a character in there, if you haven't heard it, it's the, the book is awesome. The, the, The TV series is like incredibly good. It's very rare that I take a book and will and see the the TV version and go, that was really, really good. The TV version is awesome. There's this character Captain Sobel, who is kind of like this tyrant of a leader. And there's a scene where he's leading this platoon and he runs into like, I, I think it's like he's maneuvering to get to some objective and and he ends up up against like a barbed wire fence.

• 2:10:31Jocko Willink?

  This fence isn't supposed to be here.

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  It's supposed to be here. It's not on the map. And this guy's like, sir, we can, we could just go, we could just cut the fence. And he's like, yeah, but it's not supposed to be. And he spends all this time reacting to the idea that this fence was not on the map. And the people around him like, sir. It's like a barbed wire fence. We could get through this thing in literally five seconds. But that noise of the fence that's, it's not supposed to be here. And he was incapable of responding to what appeared to be this. And it's the inability to go, oh, oh, hey, this is a distractor. Hey, this is noise. We need to filter this out.

• 2:11:03Jocko Willink?

  I would say that's actually a better example of this isn't what I expected and therefore I can't accept it.

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  Well, part of that, yeah.

• 2:11:09Jocko Willink?

  It's beyond noise because noise is like, well, there's other stuff going on, but here's what, he's seeing something with his own two eyes. And he's like, hey, the, this isn't supposed to be, the, the map doesn't have this.

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny you said that because I've been thinking about him for about 30 minutes. And I chose this as the example, but where it really indexed for me was when you gave her those three examples. And I'm like, dude, that's Captain Sobel, man. This is in the character that they, he talks about in this book to reveal what this character was like. And it brought me back to authoritarian. You know, he'd do uniform inspections. If you had one thing off, you lose your weekend. He was just such a follow the, to the, to the detriment of every, himself and everybody around him. But you know what the military loves? A uniform platoon. They all look the same. Uh, it's just a character, but it's, it's that idea that the incapacity to, to acknowledge those things and be able to deal with them and having in real time and go, hey, this is no factor. And everybody goes, oh, oh, okay, cool.

• 2:12:02Jocko Willink?

  It's just a character, but it's also a complete and utter caricature of this authoritarian leader. We can probably just start referring back to him throughout this, the rest of this book. It's so strong.

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  A glance back at figure one suggests that not only does a senior military commander receive more than his fair share of information, but the communication system of which he forms a part is peculiarly susceptible to noise. This may be external in origin ranging from the static on a radio link to the delusions of a chief of staff. Or it may be internal, ranging from such peripheral sources as poor eyesight, a common feature of the generals of the Crimean War, to such central and usually more disastrous causes as defective memory, brain disease, neurosis, and alcoholism.

• 2:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Noise from all these sources may act upon the flow of information through a general's head and eventuate in decisions varying in gravity from the mildly inept to the utterly catastrophic. But decisions hinge upon more than available information. They also depend upon "payoffs," the anticipated consequences of choosing one course of action rather than another. Payoffs may be positive or negative, beneficial or costly. They are the criteria according to which decisions are made. Obviously, if a commander gets his criteria wrong, if the possible loss of self-esteem, or social approval, or fear of offending a superior authority is given greater weighting

• 2:13:43Jocko Willink?

  than more rational considerations, the scene is set for calamity. So there you are, trying to make a decision and you're weighing if you're gonna lose self-esteem, or if you're gonna lose social approval, which is crazy. But we know that happens. The possibility of this happening is increased by the fact that the fog of war, unlike uncertainties which attach to most civilian enterprises, extends not only to the input, but also to the payoffs. Not only does the general have to make decisions on the basis of a great volume of dubious information and to meet a program of perhaps questionable validity, he may also not know the costs and benefits of what he does propose.

• 2:14:26Jocko Willink?

  He is like a man who places a bet without knowing the odds, or where the bookie might be found once the race is over. This is a freaking hard job.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  As well as those problems which are inherent in any communication system, the human decision maker is the victim of another hazard. Namely, that attention, perception, memory, and thinking are all liable to distortion or bias by emotion and motivation. As needs arise, whether they be social or biological, neurotic or adaptive, so they act upon a way man perceives his external world, what he attends to, the sort of memories which he conjures up, and the decisions which he makes. He is like a computer, which has not only to receive, store, process, and deliver information, but also has to postpone sleep, cope with hunger, resist fear, control anger, sublimate sex,

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  and keep up with the Joneses. When it is considered that the capacity for perception and response, for memory and thought presumably evolved for the satisfaction of needs, it is a remarkable achievement at the best of times to keep these informational processes of mind free from bias by the needs which they were originally designed to serve. So you've got all this stuff going on in your head. You're genetically built this way to have these thoughts, and have these pulls, and have these biases. And it's like, it's hard as hell to keep that stuff and make your operating system as clean as possible. And then he says, "In war, such an achievement borders on the miraculous." And this for very one simple reason.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  The effects or needs, the effects of needs upon cognition are maximized when the needs are very strong and external reality is ambiguous or confused. It is under such conditions that need and emotion have the greatest freedom of maneuver, the greatest capacity for imposing themselves upon the uncertainties of thought. These are the conditions which obtain in war. And that is freaking important. This whole idea that emotion has the greatest freedom of maneuver and the greatest capacity for imposing itself on you during times of uncertainty. And this is why, this is why people get crazy.

• 2:16:45Jocko Willink?

  This is why people get crazy when you go on deployment in a combat zone. This is why somebody that's acting normal and seems to be good to go, and all of a sudden you get on deployment and they get crazy. Because that emotion starts to come out.

• 2:17:01Speaker 01

  I remember I wrote a note to my buddy, a good friend of mine, just to recount this idea. I was lucky enough that I was one of the first units to deploy after 9/11 to go to Afghanistan and start dropping bombs out there, which was at the time like the best thing ever. It was like what I wanted to be doing. Oh, 9/11 happened and everybody was sort of scrambling to go. I came back and then Iraq was, we knew that Iraq was gonna happen relatively shortly after we came back within the year. And I remember writing a note to a buddy of mine who was getting ready to go to his first combat deployment. And I just said, "The people around you are gonna do crazy things. People that you think you know are gonna do things that totally catch you off guard." That was like my first lesson from just, and that's a very small degree compared to what he experienced in World War II. And the biggest takeaway

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  when he was asking, "Hey, what can I expect?" It had nothing to do with the tactics. I said, "The people around you are gonna do things that catch you off guard. They're gonna surprise you because the situation's gonna, their circuit breakers are gonna pop and it's gonna blow their minds."

• 2:17:59Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. And that's a warning I've given people as well of, you get right on deployment. I remember explaining to someone, "Hey, it's gonna get wild." And meaning, people are gonna start acting crazy and, you know, having people say, "No, they're not." I'm like, "Okay." You know, fast forward two months. It's like, "Bro, what's happening with this dude?" I'm like, "Remember when I told you people were gonna get crazy?" There you go.

• 2:18:29Jocko Willink?

  Contemplation of what is involved in generalship may well, may well occasion surprise that incompetence is not absolutely inevitable, that anyone can do the job at all. Particularly, is this so when one considers that military decisions are often made under conditions of enormous stress, when actual noise, fatigue, lack of sleep, poor food, and grinding responsibility add their quotas to the ever-present threat of total annihilation?" He's like, "Hey, bro, it's a miracle anyone can pull this shit off."

• 2:19:02Speaker 01

  I love this sentence, "actual noise."

• 2:19:04Jocko Willink?

  "Actual noise," and that's in italics.

• 2:19:06Speaker 01

  Totally, man.

• 2:19:07Jocko Willink?

  I hope I said it in italics, because it's in italics. "Indeed, the foregoing analysis of generalship prompts the thought that it might be better to scrap generals and leave decision-making aspects of war to computers. A similar argument has been advanced in connection with medicine. Why leave diagnosis and therapeutic decisions to fallible human brains when a computer could make them with far less chance of error? The answer, of course, and this no doubt contributes much to the relief of generals and doctors, that computers make poor leaders and indifferent father figures. They may be quick and efficient, unprejudiced, sober and alert, but withal, remain cold fish.

• 2:19:50Jocko Willink?

  They do not inspire affection with its consequent desire to please, nor do they exude a bedside manner. Paradoxically, they are also perhaps just a little too infallible. They are, moreover, as far as we know, devoid of feelings. What is worse, quite indifferent to outcomes of their decisions. But while all this militates against computers as leaders of men, so-called leadership qualities in military commanders are just as dependent upon the various factors outlined in our flowchart as are any of the other responses which a general makes. Prejudice, ignorance, fear of failure, overconformity, and sheer stupidity may disrupt leadership

• 2:20:35Jocko Willink?

  decisions as surely as they interfere with planning or technical decisions. All are products of the same brain." Man, there's a lot going on. One last point. A senior military or naval commander does not, indeed cannot, act in lonely isolation but is fettered by the organization to which he belongs. He is like a computer or telephone exchange whose modus operandi is based on rules which may have little relevance to the tasks it is called upon to perform. Imagine a telephone exchange that, for the honor of the post office, has to follow the

• 2:21:15Jocko Willink?

  rule that all telefonists should have red hair, 38-inch busts, and heavily-lidded eyes, and one has some idea of the restricting effects which an organization may have upon its own functioning. In these chapters that follow, we shall be examining some well-known cases of military incompetence to discover if possible, the precise reasons for and the common denominators of these events. For the moment, however, let us consider one brief and less well-known incident, which illustrates how the smooth flow of information through the brains of senior commanders may be so distorted that their decisions prove catastrophic. The culprits in this instance are naval, not military commanders.

• 2:22:00Jocko Willink?

  The place is Samoa, and the date 1889. Seven warships, three American, three German, and one British are lying at Acre in the harbor of Apia. They are there as naval and military presence to watch over the interests of their various governments in the political upheavals that are taking place ashore. Accordingly, they anchor in what has been described as one of the most dangerous anchorages in the world. For to call Apia a harbor at all is at best an unfortunate euphemism. Largely occupied by coral reefs, this saucer-shaped indentation

• 2:22:41Jocko Willink?

  lies wide open to the north, whence the great Pacific rollers come sweeping in. In fair weather, Apia provides an uneasy resting place for no more than four medium-sized ships. For seven large ships and numerous smaller craft, under adverse conditions, it is a death trap. This was the situation in which the seven men of war witnessed the first bleak portents of an approaching typhoon. So we've got seven ships inside this little harbor, which this little harbor actually has an open mouth to the sea. Full of reefs. Full of reefs. Full of reefs. And it's big enough for four ships. There's seven in there.

• 2:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Even to a landsman, a rapidly darkening sky and falling glass, squally gusts of wind, and then a lull would bode ill.

• 2:23:35Jocko Willink?

  For seven naval captains, the signs were unmistakable. They knew they were in a region of the world particularly subject to typhoons, which in a matter of minutes could lash the sea into a furious hell of boiling water. They knew that such storms generate winds traveling at upwards of 100 knots, gusts that could snap masts like carrots, reduce deck fittings to match wood, and throw ships on their beam ends. They knew that this was the worst month of the year, and they also knew that only three years before every ship in Appia had been sunk by such a storm. In short, and in terms, and in the terms of our flow chart,

• 2:24:17Jocko Willink?

  their stored information, coupled with present input, pointed to only one decision: to get up and get out. And as if this was not enough, the urgency weighing of weighing anchor and putting to sea was respectively suggested by subordinate officers. So you've got a freaking massive storm approaching. By the way, what was it, a year, three years before every ship in the harbor had been sunk? We've got subordinate officers that are saying, "Hey Captain, we should get out of here." But the captains of the warship, but the captains of the warships were also naval officers, and so they denied the undeniable and stayed where they were.

• 2:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Their behavior has been described as an "error of judgment" "that will forever remain a paradox in human psychology." When the typhoon struck, its effects were tragic and inevitable. Without sea room, their anchors dragging under the pressure of the mountainous seas, their hulls and rigging crushed by the fury of the wind, three of the warships collided before being swept onto the jagged reefs of Coral. Another sank in deep water, two more were wrecked upon the beach. Of all the ships in the harbor, the only survivor was a British Corvette, which, thanks to its powerful engines and superb seamanship, squeaked through to the open sea.

• 2:25:44Jocko Willink?

  Why did the naval commanders versed in the ways of the sea and provided with ample warning thus hazard their ships and their lives of their men? A superficial answer might be pride, or fear of appearing cowardly, or fear of criticism from their superiors. These matters are to be pursued in later chapters. For the moment, the apparently incorrigible behavior of these men illustrates how decision process can be thrown into disarray by noise of internal origin. And how, in this instance anyway, incompetence cannot be attributed to ignorance or ordinary

• 2:26:24Jocko Willink?

  stupidity. The focus of that is, this is an internal noise. It's internal. They knew what was coming. They could see what was coming. There's no lack of communication. They were watching the storm come. They have the history. They have, they know what's happened in this harbor before. There's like, everything is clear. And yet, the decision by seven captains, I guess six, one of them made it out. Sounds like he squeaked out, though. They all make the wrong decision. How does that happen? No external factors can be blamed in this situation.

• 2:27:06Jocko Willink?

  It's internal. It's internal noise that comes from our own psychology. So, well, two and a half hours deep. I say we call it for today. This book is gonna be...

• 2:27:34Jocko Willink?

  There's so much in this book, and I'll start to speed up a little bit, I think, as we push into the next podcast, hit some of the high waves for the section where they cover the historical disasters. But like I said, it's not like he just talks about the historical disasters and explain what happens. He starts to explain why decisions are getting made, where the ego comes into play, who's offending one another, what these internal decision disasters are caused by. And I'm telling you, it is a great warning for all of us, military, civilian, business, family. And you can probably already see

• 2:28:19Jocko Willink?

  the, this is what we talk about all the time. This book, these topics are what we talk about all the time, and the examples bring them to even clearer light.

• 2:28:35Jocko Willink?

  We'll get into it on the next podcast. Until then, Kerry, we are trying to prevent our own incompetence as much as possible in every aspect of our lives.

• 2:28:49Speaker 02

  We are.

• 2:28:50Jocko Willink?

  What can you recommend us to try and mitigate our own incompetence? That's not a very high goal, is it?

• 2:28:58Speaker 02

  Mitigating?

• 2:28:59Jocko Willink?

  Our own incompetence. What do you got?

• 2:29:02Speaker 02

  So we want to battle incompetence. We want to be more capable, not less capable. We want a clean operating system.

• 2:29:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I like where you're going with this.

• 2:29:14Speaker 02

  Operate clean, right? So how can we do that? We're going to do that with a little bit of Jaco fuel, a little Discipline Go, a little RTD in a can, possibly some afterburner orange or mango mayhem from the big dog, Echo Charles.

• 2:29:34Jocko Willink?

  Who?

• 2:29:35Speaker 02

  The big dog, Echo Charles, the Hawaiian.

• 2:29:38Jocko Willink?

  That name rings a bell. Oh, the guy whose job you took?

• 2:29:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, I forgot his name.

• 2:29:45Speaker 02

  The big dog, Echo Charles.

• 2:29:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, people are gonna freak out.

• 2:29:50Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 2:29:50Jocko Willink?

  K-Dogs on here, they're like, wait a second, what happened to Echo Charles?

• 2:29:53Speaker 02

  Cover move.

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:29:55Speaker 02

  About that.

• 2:29:56Jocko Willink?

  So he couldn't make it today?

• 2:29:57Speaker 02

  Echo Charles was otherwise detained.

• 2:30:00Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 2:30:00Speaker 02

  So K-Dog had to-

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  So K-Dog had to step up to the plate. How did it feel in the hot seat over there?

• 2:30:06Jocko Willink?

  Cause you've been behind the scenes.

• 2:30:08Speaker 02

  I've been behind the scenes a little bit. I've been in the, I've been in the background.

• 2:30:11Jocko Willink?

  You've been on the other side of the camera.

• 2:30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:30:13Jocko Willink?

  Now you're front and center.

• 2:30:14Speaker 02

  Now we're in here.

• 2:30:15Jocko Willink?

  And maybe Echo's like, he's on the ropes.

• 2:30:20Speaker 02

  Hey, Echo is an institution as far as I'm concerned. And I, I'm-

• 2:30:25Jocko Willink?

  That makes one of us.

• 2:30:28Speaker 02

  I am happy to fill in though, man. Honestly, it's, uh, it's super cool to sit at the table. I've said this to you and probably Dave too, man. Hollowed ground. The people who've sat around this table, man, it's, it's something special. So super cool to be able to do it, uh, today, for sure.

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  Right on. So we're getting some Jaco Fuel, JacoFuel.com.

• 2:30:47Speaker 02

  JacoFuel.com.

• 2:30:48Jocko Willink?

  We're getting some discipline go, going to Wawa and just clearing shelves. That's where we're at. If you go to Wawa and you clear a shelf, let me tell you what you're doing. You're helping every other trooper in America. That's what you're doing. Because as other convenience chains see what's going on at Wawa, they're like, oh, oh, okay, we got it. So roll into Wawa and just get some, just clear shelves.

• 2:31:13Speaker 02

  Wawa's got something going on right now, right?

• 2:31:15Jocko Willink?

  They do, yeah.

• 2:31:16Speaker 02

  With discipline.

• 2:31:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if it's October, when you're listening to this, yeah.

• 2:31:19Speaker 02

  Right on.

• 2:31:20Jocko Willink?

  You, you, you buy one and you get another one for a buck.

• 2:31:22Speaker 02

  Maybe missed it.

• 2:31:23Jocko Willink?

  Which is kinda dope. We didn't miss anything. This comes out tonight, tomorrow night. Yeah, K-Dog's just gonna roll right in, hot.

• 2:31:31Speaker 02

  Get, get out to Wawa for that BOGO action.

• 2:31:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, look at you. Let's not get one though, cause it's a buck.

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  Buy one, get one for a dollar, right?

• 2:31:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, joint warfare?

• 2:31:43Jocko Willink?

  Super Krill.

• 2:31:45Speaker 01

  These, these things are all battle against that noise we're talking about.

• 2:31:49Jocko Willink?

  Body.

• 2:31:50Speaker 01

  Body noise.

• 2:31:51Jocko Willink?

  Physical noise.

• 2:31:52Speaker 01

  That elbow noise.

• 2:31:54Jocko Willink?

  You got some elbow noise.

• 2:31:56Speaker 01

  Always. Well, not, you know.

• 2:31:58Jocko Willink?

  I got some shoulder noise. If I'm telling you, if I don't, if I, if I miss out on joint warfare, it's a problem. That's why I don't miss out on it.

• 2:32:06Speaker 01

  Joint warfare and super krill, that's my, that's my go to man. Get rid of that noise.

• 2:32:12Jocko Willink?

  How about that malt?

• 2:32:14Speaker 01

  Dave, you get on that malt train?

• 2:32:16Jocko Willink?

  Are you still on strawberry?

• 2:32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:17Jocko Willink?

  Dude, you've been on strawberry for a while.

• 2:32:19Speaker 01

  I don't know what's gonna ever, I mean, I, I have them all. I got a lineup in my closet or my, my pantry, but it's, it's like, um, you know, it's like afterburner orange for me. That's what I'm going to. It's strawberry is the best.

• 2:32:31Jocko Willink?

  Do you, so right now you're drinking what? Dax Savage? What do you got over there?

• 2:32:35Speaker 01

  I got a DAK right in front of me.

• 2:32:35Jocko Willink?

  So at the, at the, at the gym here, we were out of afterburner orange, which I know is no big surprise to you.

• 2:32:43Jocko Willink?

  But do you ever think eh? I almost wavered today on Taco Palmer. I was like, you know, maybe I'll go Tropic Thunder. Cause Tropic Thunder, especially when it's cold, it's freaking legit. But you're still strawberry.

• 2:32:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:32:59Jocko Willink?

  And milk strawberry, that's it.

• 2:33:00Speaker 01

  Dude, I mix nothing in that. It's strawberry and milk. And that's it. I don't like, and hey, no criticism, that's your game, but like in the stuff that people put in there and like I, I put it in a shaker cup, I shake it up and I drink it and there's nothing I want to add to it.

• 2:33:16Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles over here, he's gotta go to the grocery store. What? You know what I'm saying?

• 2:33:20Speaker 01

  The frozen banana game changer all day, all day. That frozen banana, something about that consistency.

• 2:33:26Jocko Willink?

  Putting out word, huh?

• 2:33:27Speaker 01

  Oh man, she's nailed it.

• 2:33:28Jocko Willink?

  How does it, when, when you, you gotta blend it then too. That's a whole issue. See, here's the thing with me. I like to eat, sure, but you know, some people, they, they, they, they have like a whole, it's a, it's a ritual, right? And they're gonna get, they go to the store and they're like picking stuff up and then they fire up the grill and, you know, I got a nice grill and everything.

• 2:33:50Jocko Willink?

  You I'll put in the microwave like I'm not I'm not firing that thing up. I'm one of those people.

• 2:33:54Speaker 01

  We're looking for efficiencies.

• 2:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I will. I will open up a can of chicken from Costco and just that's dinner. If my wife didn't make good food, I would just be eating, you know, a a can of of of chicken.

• 2:34:10Speaker 01

  You'd be on that K dog.

• 2:34:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'd be on the K dog routine. It's the single life, homie. You're just full on in it.

• 2:34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, two cups of green beans, some Hawaiian rolls. It's good to go.

• 2:34:21Jocko Willink?

  You're ready to rock and roll. So, but you know what is good? That's why I'm not I'm not exploring the freaking half frozen, well ripe banana or whatever it is we're doing. Right? I'm over here. I'm with Dave. I'm like milk, milk, we're good.

• 2:34:35Speaker 01

  But here's the thing for me, that milk milk combo, my scale, you know, I'm giving it, I give it a 10. I'm giving it a 10. It's like I'm just suffering through the seven, six point negative. It's a 10.

• 2:34:45Jocko Willink?

  That's where I'm at.

• 2:34:46Speaker 01

  Other stuff you're doing, you know what's going to get you to a 10? And that's where I'm at right now. So I don't need it.

• 2:34:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I I'm the same way. Now, I will say, I'm I'm not solo on one flavor right now. I'm I'm bouncing around. I bounce around. I used to go like one month on a flavor. And then I go in three weeks on another flavor. Then go back to another flavor for a month. I'm kind of, I'm kind of getting crazy right now. I'll be, you know, I'd be even doing, you know, mixing it up during the day, you know? Lunch is going to be some peanut butter. Dinner is going to be some mint, right?

• 2:35:18Speaker 01

  Got some variety going on. I'm over here closed minded, not free thinking. I got strawberry. I'm going to stick with strawberry for about 25 years. We'll adjust some other time down the road.

• 2:35:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, la la for the drinks. Vitamin shop. Get all the stuff at the vitamin shop and jockofuel.com. What?

• 2:35:35Speaker 01

  Commissary?

• 2:35:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. Navy commissary. That's right. That's right. Good call. K dog.

• 2:35:41Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. We're in there, man.

• 2:35:42Jocko Willink?

  We're in there. Um, jockofuel.com. If you, yeah, also subscribe. If you subscribe, you get the shipping for free. What up?

• 2:35:50Speaker 01

  Just where do we stand on greens?

• 2:35:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, we have, we have greens, Jaco Greens. They're amazing.

• 2:36:02Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 2:36:02Jocko Willink?

  They are amazing. They really truly are amazing.

• 2:36:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:36:05Jocko Willink?

  They are, they are, they're hard to make. If you look at the ingredients list, it's all organic. The whole product together is not certified organic because we haven't gone through that process yet, but every ingredient in there is, I think every ingredient is organic. So it's, it's hard to make it. So that's why I'm not talking about it a ton because people that are kind of in the know. Like, I'm not trying to screw them and just tell everyone that this is the greatest beverage.

• 2:36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:36Jocko Willink?

  It certainly, it certainly is the greatest greens, but not even close. It's not even close. It tastes delicious. The, go look at the ingredients list too. It is the best quality, sweetened with monk fruit. You know what I've been doing is I've been having that like, let's, because sometimes, you know, I get done with a steak at night and I want dessert, but I'm full. So that milk is sort of looking like a little bit much. Outcomes the greens. Outcomes the greens. It's like what, like wine people, they drink whatever it is, a port. Right? A port. Can I get a glass of port? When I'm feeling that way, since I'm a freaking savage, I'm just ordering up a class, a glass of greens.

• 2:37:20Speaker 01

  Shaking up the greens. I brought it up and I don't want to alienate the, the listeners who maybe don't have access and, and you can edit all the stuff out if, if.

• 2:37:28Jocko Willink?

  No, people have access, but.

• 2:37:30Speaker 01

  Here's the deal on the greens. You want to go back to the three categories of leaders, which is the fully anticipates the outcome, shocked by the outcome and can't process the outcome. When I drank my first container of greens, I was squarely in category C. Like, what is happening? It, the, the dip, the delta between what I expected and what I got, it was insane. Those things are, it is unbelievable how good they taste for what you think it's going to taste like because it's greens. It was an absolute mind blowing experience.

• 2:38:04Jocko Willink?

  Well, I've been doing it in the morning and it, it does give you like the little bit of kick, right? That other kick. It's just good to go. So yeah, listen, if you, if you go online, you order the greens, awesome. If, if we're out, we're making them more as fast as we can. I apologize. Logistics wins wars. Um, we're working it. We're losing that war right now. We're in the game and we'll try and get you some more. That's like the kind of thing you want to subscribe to. Cause you want that order getting filled.

• 2:38:33Speaker 02

  Don't want to be waiting.

• 2:38:34Jocko Willink?

  When are you drinking it, Dave?

• 2:38:35Speaker 01

  Every morning. It's like so just immediately into my habit pattern. I haven't, I haven't, since I got it, I haven't missed a day. It was, it, it's everything you just said. I just want people to realize like what you think you're getting with greens. Like everybody knows what greens are cool. They're healthy. You sort of need to stomach them and just kind of like hold your nose and, and get to them because they're good for you.

• 2:38:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Go to your lawnmower, get the clippings out. Put it in the blender. That's what you think you're getting, right? And you're not.

• 2:39:00Speaker 02

  The, the Origin Media team did this, uh, like double blind video, like double blind study video from the emergent cap. And it's awesome, man. People are just like all day. Oh my gosh, this is greens.

• 2:39:12Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't even, it doesn't even compute that it can be that good for you.

• 2:39:17Speaker 01

  Category C.

• 2:39:17Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:39:18Speaker 02

  Speaking of Origin, speaking of Origin, we got, uh, Gee's Rash Guards apparel coming out of Origin, USA.

• 2:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:39:26Speaker 02

  Uh, doing boots up there now.

• 2:39:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're doing it all. I'm gonna, we're, we're gonna make everything that we use in life. That's the goal. The goal is to make everything that we, that we use in life and we're gonna make it in America. And let me tell you what, that's a, that's no small task and we're getting it done. Jeans, boots, we got work pants coming out.

• 2:39:50Speaker 02

  I saw those on the ground.

• 2:39:51Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you what, man. That's another thing. Like we're going to make them as fast as we can. As soon as people get a pair or see a pair, they're, they're going to be gone. And you know what? We, we're, we're up in our capacity. Again, logistics wins wars. I know that and we are working it.

• 2:40:10Jocko Willink?

  And it's, we're in a good place because the rest of people that do this, they gotta rely on a foreign supply chain. Even in some cases, a communist supply chain with literally fabrics that are made by communists who,

• 2:40:25Jocko Willink?

  you know, have a dictatorship in their country and they're paying people, you know, one dollar a week to make the material. So this is like a strategic for America, strategic for America. That's why we're doing it. Could we, hey, could we freaking cut some corners and up that profit margin by whatever? Sure. We could, but we're freaking not going to.

• 2:40:51Jocko Willink?

  So if you want some, if you wear clothes, then you might want to get your clothes from a strategic partner of yourself. And that is us at Origin USA. What up?

• 2:41:06Speaker 02

  I got nothing else for that, man. Dirt to the shirt, baby.

• 2:41:10Speaker 02

  We, if you're also looking for clothes to say, represent the path, you can find those on Jaco Store, JacoStore.com. We got Discipline Equals Freedom. We got Take The High Ground on there still.

• 2:41:26Jocko Willink?

  I like how you're co-opting some of Echo's phrases. You're kind of like, you're utilizing them, you know? Not totally copying them 100%, but you're catching the vibe and you're putting your K-Dog spin on it.

• 2:41:40Speaker 02

  Hey, I've just been watching the master work from the corner of the camera. Shout out Echo Charles. Yeah, man. So got all that going on at JacoStore.com. Also have a t-shirt subscription from the big dog Echo Charles called The Shirt Locker, where he makes rad shirts with layers from the podcast. So if you're, if you're about those layers, if you listen to the podcast, you're like, yes, like I'm about the layers. Check out The Shirt Locker. Echo's cranking out a new shirt every month with a different layer from the podcast presented on them.

• 2:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Both of you are wearing a Shirt Locker shirt right now, the Sog, the Sog t-shirt.

• 2:42:24Speaker 02

  We represent, right? We, we come here to, to get after it and we're representing that, right? And so me and Echo like sometimes show up wearing the same shirt. Today, me, Dave Burt showed up rocking the Sog shirt, which is legit.

• 2:42:41Jocko Willink?

  The Sog support. So Echo showed it to me. He's like, he's approved for. And I said, hey, man, we can't be running around just throwing Sog on to a t-shirt and being good with that. Any more than you can just throw a Trident on a shirt and be like, oh yeah, I'll just represent. So the way we got around that is by putting support on there. So it's like, you know, like when if you're, if you're, maybe you support a local biker gang, but you're not in the biker gang, but you got friends, you can wear that biker gang stuff, but you gotta have support on there. You're, cause you're not trying to claim at all. You don't, we're not trying to claim SAW, but we freaking support SAW 100%.

• 2:43:24Speaker 02

  100% absolutely. Um, so all that's going on at uh, Jaco store.com.

• 2:43:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, subscribe to this podcast, wherever you subscribe to podcasts. We also have Jaco Unraveling and that's with Daryl Cooper, DC. We just did one about Afghanistan. That was kind of the lead up to this one a little bit, just because we were debriefing what happened on Afghanistan and, and clearly there's some military incompetence that has risen up in the ranks. And we started to address that on, on Jaco Unraveling with Daryl Cooper. Got the grounded podcast, which we haven't done in a while and Warrior Kid podcast. I know I gotta get back on that one. So subscribe to those, check them out. Also we have Jaco Underground, Jaco Underground.com. We have a, a secondary podcast where like I started

• 2:44:14Jocko Willink?

  off talking today about how we talk about psych, psychology on that one quite a bit. Cause that stuff interests me and that stuff also helps you understand the world. And if you understand the world and you understand people, you can be a better leader, you can be a better person, you can be a better mom, dad, whatever. Yet it didn't quite, some of those subjects don't quite fit into this podcast. So we made Jaco Underground, Jaco Underground.com. And that's, that podcast is like a little reward for support because we wanted to create a alternative and alternative platform in case of these platforms.

• 2:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Which they haven't caused any problems yet. They're, hey, we're on board. We're here. We appreciate it. We appreciate the platforms. But you can't put all your reliance on something that you have no control over. And we don't really have any control over these large platforms. So we wanted to make something just in case. Hey, we'll be here. But just in case things get wild, we got the Jaco Underground.com. So thanks. If you want to subscribe to that, it costs $8.18 a month. If you can't afford that, look, we still want you in the game. Email [email protected]. Appreciate that. We got a YouTube channel where we put up this video. You can see the new Sog Underground or Sog Shirt Locker t-shirts on there,

• 2:45:32Jocko Willink?

  which is cool. Subscribe to that. And also Origin USA, if you want to watch what's going on, @Origin, strategic partner of America. You can go to Origin USA. Check that out. Psychological Warfare made an album telling Echo, helping Echo Charles get through some moments of weakness. Maybe he needs one for, you know, coming to work.

• 2:45:57Speaker 02

  Definitely check out Psychological Warfare. Very legit though.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Flipside Canvas Dakota Meyer. If you want to hang cool stuff on your wall, check that out. Books, new book coming out, Final Spin. Dave, what's your assessment?

• 2:46:10Speaker 01

  Read it. It's so good. And stand by for the audiobook. There's some.

• 2:46:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. So on the audio, if you get the audiobook of that, I read the audiobook. And then we did, Dave and I did about an hour conversation about just

• 2:46:27Jocko Willink?

  a review, talking about the characters, the character development, the lack of character development, the plot development, the lack of plot development, the words used, the lack of words used, just all these things that will, will definitely be interesting. And it's, it's been amazing so far. The books, the books coming out.

• 2:46:44Speaker 02

  You should do like a virtual book signing or something would be cool to get that out there.

• 2:46:47Jocko Willink?

  I think I am doing a virtual book signing and I'm not 100% sure where, and, and actually. Check this out. Speaking of virtual book signing in November, I'm going to do two Jaco Lives. Jaco Lives, we're going to do one in, it looks like San Diego, California in November, and then Austin, Texas in November. I think those are the only dates. Look, things are wild right now with the the COVID and the protocols and all this stuff and people are really sketched out, especially some of the some of the places you can give, you can do these events. Some of them have whatever. They're freaked out about it. So we found some places that are down for the cause. So we're going to do a gig. I'm going to do a gig at Jaco Live, November in San Diego and November in

• 2:47:33Jocko Willink?

  Austin, Texas. So keep an eye out for that. It'll be an intro to Final Spin. It gives you time to read it. The book does not take long to read. So you'll be able to get the book, get the book when it comes out, November 9th. And then by the time November 13th or November 20th, which I think are the dates on those two, I'll be there. And you can ask me questions about it. I'll talk about some of, uh, some of where all that came from. The darkness in my brain. Uh, that's Final Spin. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocols. Discipline = Freedom Field Manual.

• 2:48:08Jocko Willink?

  Way of the Warrior Kid, 1, 2, 3, 4, Mikey and the Dragons, About Face by Hackworth, Extreme Ownership and the Economy of Leadership. Check out these books if you like books. If you don't like books, get the audiobooks. That's my recommendation. Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. Leadership is the solution.

• 2:48:27Jocko Willink?

  What's the problem? The leadership is the solution. What's the problem? Leadership is the solution. That's what I'm trying to tell you. And that's what we will tell you and that's what we will teach you at Echelon Front. Go to echelonfront.com. Look, if you want to come to one of our live events, the next live event that we have is in Las Vegas. The muster, October 28th and 29th. Two days. It was a deep dive into this information.

• 2:48:53Jocko Willink?

  We also have field training exercises. And we have a thing called EF Battlefield where we go and tour battlefields. Check out all that stuff. Go to the events at Echelonfront.com if you want us to come work with your company. Same thing.

• 2:49:08Jocko Willink?

  We also have an online training academy called Extreme Ownership Academy. Extremeownership.com. This is, this stuff is not easy. And you don't get good at it by reading a book and be, oh, cool. I'm good to go. It doesn't work that way. You need to work at it continually. Go to Extremeownership.com. Come and ask me a question on there. I'm literally live. How long are we on there for today? An hour and a half?

• 2:49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:32Jocko Willink?

  Hour and 20 minutes, I guess.

• 2:49:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:34Jocko Willink?

  Dave and I are responding to your questions. Leif is on there. Jamie's on there. Like we are there. JP's on there. You want to ask us a question? Come and ask a question. Live. And it's not crowded. You will get your question answered. How's that?

• 2:49:52Jocko Willink?

  Extremeownership.com. If you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. She is helping all kinds of people get through all kinds of struggles.

• 2:50:10Jocko Willink?

  Go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org if you want to check that out. And if you want more of my lengthy lectures, which today was absolutely one of them. You want, you want to hear Kerry's chiming in? You want to hear Dave's analytical appraisals? You can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram, on Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles, but he's not here today. So don't follow him. Instead, check out K-Dog. What is it, K-Dog? Kerry Hilton?

• 2:50:43Speaker 02

  Kerry underscore Hilton.

• 2:50:46Jocko Willink?

  You couldn't get Kerry no underscore Hilton?

• 2:50:48Speaker 02

  I tried. I hit the guy up and everything. No response.

• 2:50:52Jocko Willink?

  He denied you. Oh, you were trying to make that social media move?

• 2:50:54Speaker 02

  Hundred percent, man. Give me my name, bro.

• 2:50:57Jocko Willink?

  Is he, is his name Kerry Hilton too?

• 2:50:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. All one word. And, uh, yeah, I shot him a message. I was like, you know, very civil. Hey dude, uh, you know, interested in your handle? Is that something I could get off you?

• 2:51:10Jocko Willink?

  He's like, that's my name, bro.

• 2:51:12Speaker 02

  No response, dude.

• 2:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:13Speaker 02

  Seen, left me on red. It hurts, but you can find me at Kerry underscore.

• 2:51:18Jocko Willink?

  Left me on red.

• 2:51:19Speaker 02

  Left me on red. So had read the message and just.

• 2:51:22Jocko Willink?

  So my kids harass me because I do that in real life.

• 2:51:28Jocko Willink?

  Like they're talking and I just don't respond and walk away and they say, oh, you're gonna leave me on red.

• 2:51:34Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:35Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 2:51:35Jocko Willink?

  And I, I think I do that fairly regularly.

• 2:51:40Speaker 02

  I mean, you've done it to me.

• 2:51:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there you go. Hundred percent.

• 2:51:43Speaker 02

  Dave, can you relate to this?

• 2:51:44Jocko Willink?

  Dave, I left you on red before?

• 2:51:47Speaker 02

  I try not to interact too much.

• 2:51:51Speaker 02

  But sure.

• 2:51:53Jocko Willink?

  Actually, actually, you just sent me, I was like stupid busy over the last few days and you, I, I, I just remembered that you sent me some texts that were absolutely left on red.

• 2:52:07Jocko Willink?

  And then Dave Berke, at David R Burke. And look, thanks to all the men and women out there right now in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, who are competent leaders,

• 2:52:23Jocko Willink?

  who are holding the line in a violent and unpredictable world. And also thanks to our competent police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. You have an incredibly difficult job,

• 2:52:40Jocko Willink?

  but you keep us safe and we appreciate it. And everyone else out there,

• 2:52:46Jocko Willink?

  open up your mind.

• 2:52:50Jocko Willink?

  Don't be the person that is loathe to accept contrary evidence to what you already believe. Don't be that person. Don't get stuck in that rut. Open your mind, free your mind. And become better by continuing to always absorb new information. In fact, look for it, seek it out. And keep getting after it.

• 2:53:18Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Dave. And Carrie. And Jaco. Out.