#178: Going Where Government Can’t - Grey Bull Rescue Founder Bryan Stern

Americans are valuable commodities. America’s adversaries know it and too often, when given the opportunity, our enemies kidnap, arrest and hold hostage Americans in an effort to get what they want. The United States Government maintains robust diplomatic and military programs to bring Americans home; but the process is often slow and bureaucratic. Bryan Stern https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryancstern/ isn’t waiting around for permission to act. He’s the founder of Grey Bull Rescue https://greybullrescue.org/, a nonprofit that specializes in pulling people out of the worst situations on Earth including conflict zones, collapsed governments, and failed evacuations where no one else is coming. Since its founding, Grey Bull has led over 700 missions in more than 70 countries, rescuing thousands of Americans and allies left behind. From SOF Week 2025 Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ sat down with Bryan to talk about what it means to lead through chaos. They broke down the rescue of 117 Americans from Afghanistan in 2021, how Grey Bull makes life-and-death decisions with limited information, and why Bryan believes the phrase “No American Left Behind” isn’t negotiable; for the government or its citizens. We also discussed the future of rescue operations. As global instability increases and our enemies get smarter, the need for fast, precise, off-grid capability is only going up. Grey Bull is filling a gap where the government can't move fast enough and showing what’s possible when the mission comes first. This episode is about courage, clarity, and acting when no one else can. Because leadership under pressure means getting the job done, no matter how impossible it looks. Highlights 0:00 Introduction1:57 Welcome to SOF Week 20253:58 The Mission of Grey Bull Rescue8:03 How do you choose who to rescue?11:48 Government Entities Relationships15:56 Founding Grey Bull Rescue25:03 Making Bad Deals32:45 Finding The Next Battlefield47:21 Overcoming Fears of Taking Action Quotes “Our mission is to rescue Americans and allies from denied areas, war zones, and natural disasters wherever the government is not.”“I answer to two people and two people only: God and the families of the people we’re trying to rescue.”"Bureaucracy doesn’t bleed. People do.” “I deploy knowing that the first idea I have I know will fail.”“I’m not trying to be in the way. I’m trying to help.”“I live every day like it’s September 12th.”“As an American, we move heaven and earth to get your back.”“We have never successfully negotiated with anyone.”“Right now, everyone should be deployed.”“We got the tools. We just have to think about the problems the right way.” The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by University of Health & Performance https://university-hp.com/, providing our Veterans world-class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Our SOF Week 2025 Series is made possible in part by Accrete.ai https://www.accrete.ai/; solving business’s most complex challenges today through the technology of tomorrow. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ and the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802, read on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-jedburgh-podcast/, and watch the full video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The Green Beret Foundation. The opinions presented on The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of my guests and myself. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy, nor does the Green Beret Foundation endorse any political candidate or any political party.

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

• 0:02Fran Racioppi?

  Americans are valuable commodities. America's adversaries know it. And too often, when given the opportunity, our enemies kidnap, arrest, and hold hostage Americans in an effort to get what they want. The United States government has robust diplomatic and military programs to bring Americans home. But the process is often slow and bureaucratic. Brian Stern is awaiting a round for Permission Act. He's the founder of Greyball Rescue, a nonprofit that specializes in pulling people out of the worst situations on earth: conflict zones, collapsed governments, and failed evacuations where no one else is coming. Since its founding, Greyball has led over 700 missions in more than 70 countries, rescuing thousands of Americans and allies left behind. From Soft Week 2025, I sat down with Brian to talk about what it means to lead through chaos.

• 0:47Fran Racioppi?

  We broke down the rescue of 117 Americans from Afghanistan in 2021, how Greyball makes life and death decisions with limited information, and why Brian believes the phrase, "No American left behind isn't negotiable" for the government or its citizens. We also discuss the future of rescue operations. As global instability increases, our enemies are getting smarter. The need for fast, precise, off-grid capabilities only going up. Greyball's filling a gap where government can't move fast enough and showing what's possible when the mission comes first. This episode is about courage, clarity, and acting when no one else will. Because leadership under pressure means getting the job done, no matter how impossible it may seem. The Jedberg Podcast is brought to you by University of Health and Performance, providing our veterans world-class education and training

• 1:31Fran Racioppi?

  as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Our Soft Week 2025 series is made possible in part by Accreed AI, solving businesses' most complex challenges today through the technology of tomorrow. Follow the Jedberg Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube. And we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

• 1:56Fran Racioppi?

  Brian, welcome to the Jedberg Podcast.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

• 1:59Fran Racioppi?

  It was Soft Week 2025. There's only going to be like, I don't know, 19,000 people come through this place. I think that's where it was last year. We had Stu Brayden yesterday. He said they're expecting 23,000, 24,000. But they're outfitting soft for the next generation right over here on the other side of this wall.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Thank goodness, because I was nervous.

• 2:19Fran Racioppi?

  Well, we appreciate you taking a few minutes, coming in and sitting down with us because we are going to talk about wrongful detention. We're going to talk about hostages. We're going to talk about your work at Gray Bull. This is something that for me, and I don't think I ever set out for it to be something that was near and dear to my heart, but it is. And I worked very closely and have over the last several years with Hostage US, you know, gotten to know you over the last year or so and your efforts. We had the opportunity to have many, several of folks who have been wrongful detainees, political prisoners, hostages of terrorist organizations, have come on the show, like Michael Scott Moore and Jessica Buchanan, Jose Pereira, have all come on and told their stories. And then just last week, we had the chance to sit

• 3:02Fran Racioppi?

  down with the former special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Karstens, former Green Beret. So we got to talk to him, go through his experience over the last five years, really from the strategic level of what it takes to when the country says from a national strategy, you know, national security strategy, we've got to go recover these people. But you're on the other end of that. You're working from the ground up at the tactical level. And so I thought it was a great opportunity, as we've been talking over the last couple of months of putting this together, to really start looking at that division, you know, and that divide. And how do you in Gray Bull, support the national strategy, when you're not a government organization?

• 3:45Fran Racioppi?

  And then how do we juxtapose that to, you know, Roger being a presidential appointed official, who actually has to go out and execute diplomatic policy? So we're going to get into it all, but we got to start, let's talk about Gray Bull. Let's talk about why you think this world of wrongful detention, political imprisonment, and hostage taking is such an important aspect of your work, and why we can't lose focus?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Roger's an awesome guy, awesome guy, good friend. We've had a love hate relationship for forever, but he's a rock star. I'm his biggest fan. Yeah, wrong to say that there's a divide. There isn't a divide. I like to think that we all work together because at the end of the day, whether in the Spiehaas office, the FBI, JSOC, Ninja Places, agencies, whatever it is, or at Greyball, I like to think that we're all Americans that believe in the right thing and we're all doing the right thing, even if there's friction and tension sometimes, and there is, it happens, it's part of it. You know, Army Navy game is a tradition based off tension, right? And rivalry and who's better, who's worse and all those things. But there really isn't a divide. There really isn't. We very often get frustrated policy

• 4:49Speaker 02

  sometimes, but never at the people that are trying to execute those policies. Greyball Rescue, very simple, we do two things real well. We do rescues and evacuations, and they're very different. They're very different. The real big difference is, is the threat to the person that we're rescuing. So if you're driving on the road and you blow a tire and you're in the middle of the desert, you're kind of in a bad spot, but pretty much you're okay. Really what you need is a really awesome Uber, right? You're in a bad spot. If you don't get out of there, you're gonna be hurt or dead or whatever. But at the end of the day, you as a human are okay. If I then take you and stick you in that car and I set it on fire, that's a rescue. The threat paradigm changes. We do a lot of both. When we talk about people held, we talk about people being hunted, which

• 5:32Speaker 02

  we do a lot of. Our focus at Greyball Rescue is very simple. Our mission is to rescue Americans and allies from denied areas, war zones, and natural disasters, wherever the government is not. Why the government isn't there, I don't care. More importantly, if you're the person that we're rescuing, you don't care either. What you know is, is you're in a bad spot and you don't want to be there anymore. You don't care if Roger comes to get you, if Greyball Rescue comes to get you, or the ladies auxiliary of the VFW comes to get you. You do not care. What you know is, is you're in a bad spot and you don't want to be there anymore. We've done 729, uh, my team and I have done 729 missions that turns into 7,128 people since August 2021. So the numbers are quite staggering.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Wait a minute. You're talking about 7,000 people in four years? Correct. Now, some of those will give you a good example. We did 293 in one day, right? When Governor DeSantis You see Governor DeSantis to DeSantis Airlines from Israel? There's a fat guy looks just like me, big fat guy in a Mets hat coming off the plane. Well, Governor DeSantis was a partner of ours and he paid for the aircraft. So when October 7th happened, my team and I blew out right away, right away. We knew the airspace was going to close. We didn't know exactly how bad in the scope of October 7th would be, but we knew it was bad enough and we knew Americans were going to be in trouble and we knew it was going to get complicated, trigger for us. So we launched and the first thing we did was we got on the ground in Israel.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  We also started doing things in Gaza, knowing that Gaza was going to be a problem. Fast forward, months later, we got five hostages out of Gaza, five American hostages out of Gaza because we were two steps ahead, because we're two steps ahead. So we did 293 in one day, right after October 7th. That was an evacuation. Then we did a rescue subsequent to that inside Gaza. So we one theater, one real conflict with two of our flavors, if that makes sense.

• 7:25Fran Racioppi?

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• 8:12Fran Racioppi?

  How do you prioritize what you want to go after? Because there's a whole range of these things. I mean, you've got hostages that are taken primarily by terrorist organizations. Have wrongful detainees.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 8:25Fran Racioppi?

  Who are normally taken by nation states. You have political imprisonment, which is normally done by nation states and governments because they want some negotiation.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  They need a card. They need a card to play.

• 8:39Fran Racioppi?

  Versus like, you know, a terrorist organization which may want money, they may want recognition. You know, there's a number of different things that might drive that. How do you go through your assessment process to say, hey, this is what we're going to get involved in and this is what we're not?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  So we're very sensitive to biting off more than we can chew. The result of that. Cause you're an independent organization. You don't have the ass of this behind us. I answer to two people and two people only. God and the families of the people we're trying to rescue. That's it. We don't break laws. We don't need to break laws, but the reality is, is bureaucracy doesn't bleed. People do. We're very sensitive to committing to something that we can't do. So because of that, we have a hundred percent success rate because we don't do things that we can't do. So it's a good stat, but an unfair stat at the same time. It's, it's kind of cooking the books. For us to initiate an operation, for us to start the game, I need three things, three things.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  I need a requirement. I need some poor guy or poor girl who's in a bad spot somewhere, right? Or a situation where I can say probably there will be one, right? That's October 7th. When we deployed, we didn't have a single name of who we were going to rescue, but we knew that they would be there. I need my crew, my team. I need a team that can operate in that operating environment, whether that's Russia, whether that's Gaza, whether that's Israel, whether that's a hurricane. And depending on the operating environment will dictate what we need in the equipment and the comms and tradecraft and all those things. And the third thing is funding or entirely donor funded, which sucks. Being a nonprofit, I've been government, I've been a government, I've been military, I've been a government civilian, I've been a contractor. I've been in private business and now I'm a nonprofit and that being a nonprofit is the hardest thing I've ever done.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  To people that have successful nonprofits, I don't know how you do it. I have no PTSD from my career, but I tell you what, I have nightmares from nonprofit stuff. So we need those three things to be green on my decision-making board for me to go, okay, we've got game. Let's go. Sometimes very often we launch without the appropriate funding and we try and shake and bake and make it happen. But it's very, very, very difficult because again, from a planning perspective, we have 729 missions. I have never successfully executed my plan A. Yeah. Not once, not once. It's a fundamental difference of philosophies. When an O D A goes to do an operation, whatever it will be, doesn't matter. You're gonna go do a D A, gonna go do an S R thing, you know, whatever it is.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  You know what you're gonna do, and then you build contingency in for that just in the event of I deploy knowing that the first idea I have, I know will fail. Yeah. For sure. We rescued a kid from Russia. This kid, Karila Alexandrov, who's actually here at SOF Week. Oh, really? Yeah, he's here. He is the first American victim of war crimes alive since World War II, arrested by the Russians, falsely charged with 11 counts of espionage, held by the Russians, tortured by the Russians, the whole nine yards, which his case led to the first indictments of war crimes in the history of the United States of America on the justice.gov website. That's him. If you Google Russia war crimes FBI or whatever, it'll come right up. Attorney General Garland and Director A of the FBI announced it a couple of years, about a year

• 11:49Speaker 02

  and a half ago now. When we did that operation, what actually worked was Plan Kilo. I went through A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and the reason why he's alive is because of Plan K. Imagine if it's a Green Beret. Sir, don't worry. I'm on my Plan K and everything's going well. Doesn't work that way. We don't have that problem because we don't answer to anybody. I'm not an O5 trying to make O6. I'm not a GS13 trying to get my bonus. We don't have that. Right. We're 128 people strong. No one's paid. I have two paid employees. So everyone else is a volunteer? Correct. And why is the question? Yeah. Why? Why? Why go to Haiti and hang off a helicopter, maybe getting shot down, captured

• 12:34Speaker 02

  by the Haitian gangs and barbecued and eaten by cannibals? Why do you do it? Well, for the same reason that we all do it, for the same reason that you do this podcast, because you believe in service. You believe in the country. You're a service member. Our oath when we joined didn't have an expiration date on it. My passport says United States of America on it. That means it's fine print on the picture page. You can't really see it. It's right under the signature. Yeah. That says if you've got something that looks like this, someone will come for you. You have to really look hard to see it, but that's what it says. If the government can't do it for whatever the reasons are, honestly, I don't care if it's a policy thing, a money thing, a resource, you know, whatever. I don't, there's optics issues, there's political issues, all those things. That's all great. That's where we come in. We're the last resort. We are never the first option.

• 13:20Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  When we did the 293 people from Israel, I debriefed them personally. Every single one of them called someone else for help. And we're told, no. You call me, I say, yes.

• 13:32Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  That's the difference.

• 13:34Fran Racioppi?

  Talk about the relationship that you have with the government entities.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  We have a really good relationship, depending on where. And not everyone, um, if government me was being briefed by nonprofit me, as government me, I'd be reticent. I'd be at least skeptical. So we get a lot of that. That says, nothing we do is classified. So if you Google Greyball Rescue, you Google Brian Stern, you get, you know, 800 pages of Google now. Front page of the Moscow Times, no kidding. Front page of the New York Times, no kidding. So depending on where, but we can be, you know, we're not part of their calculus. So we're a challenge sometimes for them, right? At the same time, the, the people that really get it, use us as a resource very often. We have dozens

• 14:22Speaker 02

  of cases that have been referred to us by the FBI, by State Department, by different agencies, all kinds of things. We transmit up without any expectation of getting anything down.

• 14:32Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  And the big, especially what we do is our denied area stuff. And we're working in Russian occupied Ukraine, 100, 200, 300 miles behind enemy lines doing things. I don't want to be in the way. So if ninjas are going to come and do a thing.

• 14:45Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  I don't want to be there. I'm not trying to be in the way. I'm trying to help. Right? So, so far, they've never said, don't. We've had a little bit of friction with deconfliction and some of those things. But no one has ever said, look, Brian, you need to walk away from this. That's never happened. In fact, we've had quite the opposite. We've had more of, hey, look, man, on behalf of my official role, I'm telling you that we can't support you. But privately, bro to bro, go get them.

• 15:12Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Go get them. And wish you the best of luck, man. And, you know, God bless you and your team and like that. So at the action officer level, we have awesome connectivity. And at the very senior level, right? General Fenton knows us. My board is awesome. My board is Vice Admiral Pibus and Major General Linder and Major General Clark, Troopy, and Mike Durant's on our board. And we have some real powerhouse people, also not paid.

• 15:37Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  They're with us because we're good, not because we suck. Um, but because of that, we have credibility that. An excellent past performance that's ever happened, right? How many rescues has WarCom or USAC done this year? And that's okay.

• 15:52Fran Racioppi?

  We can't talk about it. We're at soft week.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, well, and that's okay. And there's lots of reasons for that. And those reasons are those.

• 15:58Fran Racioppi?

  Their restrictions are different.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, those reasons are usually very valid reasons. I'm not picking on them. The reality is, the reality is, I can go anywhere I damn well please.

• 16:07Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  And that is not the case if you're government.

• 16:10Fran Racioppi?

  Sure.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  It's just not. I can go sit with anyone I want, anyone. I was invited to Abu Nisra's funeral, the guy, the leader of Hezbollah, who the Israelis detonated. I got invited to his funeral. He's like the Osama bin Laden of the Shia world.

• 16:24Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Imagine if you were an agency case officer and you were invited to Abu Nisra's funeral and you want to go target some people in Lebanon. You'd be told no.

• 16:31Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  You'd be told no.

• 16:32Fran Racioppi?

  Hundred percent.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Even if you got the access, you would be told no. That's not the case officer's fault. That's not CIA's fault. That's a lot of good reasons for that.

• 16:40Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  You know?

• 16:42Fran Racioppi?

  Let's talk about how you get into this.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:44Fran Racioppi?

  So you came into the army, you served in the infantry.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  And I started off as infantry guy for like a minute and a half.

• 16:49Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, but the infantry was awesome. I was an infantry officer. I loved it.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  You know, and I came in the nineties, so Bill Clinton's president, you know, at Charlie two five eight at Sand Hill. If your drill sergeant had a combat patch, it was a really big deal.

• 17:02Fran Racioppi?

  They were a Vietnam vet.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:04Fran Racioppi?

  Or yeah, yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, does it work?

• 17:06Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  He might get a Bosnia guy, maybe, right? So, you know, guy, if like I had a drill sergeant, I had a C I B. It was like, as a private. It was like, yeah, that's right. My drill sergeant's got a C I B. What does your douchebag have? Nothing. You got Pathfinder badge? How adorable. My guy's got a C I B. You know, so it was like, uh, it was those fun years. I don't come from a military family at all. My grandparents' brothers were in World War Two, I guess. I didn't know them. I had no real military influence. If you will, my father was a lawyer and a judge. My uncles are dentists and stuff. My mother was in fashion and finance. I was supposed to be an architect or a lawyer.

• 17:45Fran Racioppi?

  All from Queens.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, my, the high school I went to, we have three distinguished alumni, Donald Trump, John Gotti Jr. And me, we're the only three that ever made anything of ourselves.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  All from Queens, definitely.

• 17:57Fran Racioppi?

  Not a bad group.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  And remarkably similar, you know, and, and we've all been shot at, you know, you know, all that. So remarkably similar in uncomfortable ways. And then got recruited into counterintelligence and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. CI is, um, uh, is a passion of mine. I'm a very, very proud CI guy. Most CI guys are, um, there's like two kinds of CI guys. I'm the fun kind, you know? Um, and just had this really, really, really awesome run. Was in New York City for nine 11, working in New York for nine 11.

• 18:28Fran Racioppi?

  Wait, and you were a first responder in nine 11?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hard to talk about this environment, but, um, I was working, I was working in New York. I was, I was in E4 in New York, right? Specialist Brian Stern, right? Type one each. And I was getting out. There was nothing going on and, um, yeah, I was getting out. I was doing my thing. Nine 11 happened. When Tower two got hit, I was kind of at the base. I was at like the, uh, exit hole of Tower two. I was kind of right under that. So all the debris and all that stuff fell right on top of us in the plaza. And, um, I've been at war pretty much ever since. Uh, but literally, literally since Tower two got hit, uh, was in both collapses, uh, which is a nice way of saying I'm a moron because I went the wrong direction. They, they fell in reverse order. Tower one got

• 19:15Speaker 02

  hit, then Tower two, but Tower two fell first. So when Tower two fell, I went the wrong way and then Tower one fell. I was in the wrong spot. It was kind of sucked. And ever since then, uh, literally, I mean, I'm on gravy time. I live every day like it's September 12th. Uh, nine 11 is a very important part of who we are, what we are, and led, really truly led to our journey in this game during the withdrawal of Afghanistan, right? August 2021. So like 20 years later, almost, I was preparing for my speech for the 20th anniversary of nine 11. Which was just a few weeks later.

• 19:46Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Just a few weeks. And I'm working on my speech, which is a very emotional thing for me. You know, I lost friends in the morning of nine eleven. My city was ruined on the morning of nine eleven. This is now twenty years later and I've been to a lot of war and lost a lot of friends in war. Right? Since nine eleven, I'm watching the fall of Afghanistan on TV. That sucks. Spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, lost a lot of friends in Afghanistan too, as we all have. All that stuff. So I'm going through two very emotional. Experiences. I'm watching TV. Watching this terrible thing. And I'm working on my speech at the same time. And I'm sitting in my living room. Here in Tampa. It's breaking news on TV. It's the imagery of the C seventeen taking off and the Afghans falling from the wheels.

• 20:29Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  And I said to myself. What planet am I on? Twenty years later, almost to the day. The Taliban are back in charge. We're getting our asses kicked on TV. And people are jumping to their deaths as a better play. Of staying where they're at. Caused by some of the same people. Twenty years later, almost to the day. And I said, ain't happening. Can't do it. I was in the private sector, making tons of money. I had clients and doing consulting. I worked on a movie, Mile Twenty Two, like. The worst movie ever made. But we kill a lot of people in the movie, so that's cool. But like, TTPs are severely lacking. All kinds of dumb stuff, but I was out. This part of my life was behind me. I was done with this part of my life. I never thought I'd think about Afghanistan again, never thought I'd be going to Afghanistan ever again.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  That this part of going to sandy places and getting diarrhea and taking Cipro was behind me. But I couldn't watch it on TV. I couldn't. I couldn't just sit there. I know how to do infills. I know how to do exvills. As an SF dude, probably you've never chartered a plane before in your life. Probably not. In my career, I've done many, many, many, many, many.

• 21:35Fran Racioppi?

  Well, I was General Linder's aide, so actually I do know how to charter.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  So you know how to fly like Bondo V, because General Linder. The dapper green were red.

• 21:44Fran Racioppi?

  Well, that was, well, that was before he then actually went off and ran an aviation company. But maybe that was the precursor. We must have spoiled them when he was, when he was.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Well, that's it. Once you fly, once you fly private, you never want to go back. You know, it's like, once you shoot with a red dot, it's like hard to go back to it. It just is. But yes, that's what happened. I got some guys together and um, I looked at it as like a dude's trip, right? Like one last blast. One last blast. Let's get the band back together. Governor Otto in the north is a friend, I would call him. We have lots of relationships. I've worked all these borders. I've been to Shorcom Bandar a million times. I've been to Termez a million times. I've been, I know this region with the back of our hand. I know these streets real well. 20 years of working in this region. I really know the area, really know the people. We've got friends. And I was like, we'll go for a couple, two, three weeks. I got a couple of guys together. Matt Herring from UDC USA, great company.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Has a really awesome company that does um, everything with munitions. They buy and sell and broker munitions. They also manufacture. They do R and D for propellant and stuff. Really cool company. Not military. He packs his bags and comes with me and a couple of other guys. And we go, we fly to Uzbekistan, we get to the border and we are working. And I told them, they were like, look, we're busy. We have jobs. We have companies. We have stuff. And my pitch to them was just like, look, it'll be a few weeks. I gotta be back for my keynote in New York. I gotta give a speech.

• 23:06Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  This is gonna come and go. We'll do our part. We won't watch it on TV. We'll help out where we can. And um, that's like three years, almost four years ago. Since then, we've done Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, Haiti, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Gaza. Maui wildfires, fires in California, Hurricane Ian, Hurricane Milton, Hurricane Helene. And uh, Idylia and I'm missing one. There's one more in there. So that turns into 729 missions. We've grown. We've changed. We pivoted from one, we had one nonprofit that everybody left. There are new nonprofit that's Grayble. All those same, you know, same characters, just new, you know, same mission, new name.

• 23:49Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  One of those things. And um, really it's been. The most amazing experience of my career. I've been doing this my whole life, my whole life. And I've worked in all the cool places with all the cool people and all the cool units and units that don't have names and squadrons that are cool and in the cool troops and the cool squadrons and the cool commands and all those things and agencies and stuff. And I just had a really awesome run. I was very like all over the place. More kind of proliferation stuff would still play. I had a really awesome career. It pales in comparison in every aspect from a leadership perspective, from a contribution, from an impact perspective. 7,128 lives saved. Everyone's got a mommy. Everyone's got a daddy. Everyone's got a brother

• 24:32Speaker 02

  and a sister and a dog and a cat. Our impact is like nine X, 10 X. Yeah. And it's the true, truly that there's nothing, nothing I will ever do. Again, I mean, this is it. I'm having way too much fun. There's way too much need. We just came back from Haiti rescuing Americans there. We got operations going on in every COCOM. We are global. I'm in every COCOM. We're like nonprofit JSOC. It's crazy. Which, sorry, Admiral Bradley, who's my old boss. I didn't mean it like that. You know, JSOC is awesome. We all know, like, whatever. But we're a global operational element funded entirely off donor money, which is remarkable. And we don't have any big donors. Yeah. We don't have any whales. Right. You know, we're grassroots, mostly veterans.

• 25:17Fran Racioppi?

  Transitioning out of the military is about more than polishing a resume or attending a LinkedIn workshop. It's about rediscovering your purpose and forging a new path that's worthy of your service. At the University of Health and Performance, veterans are offered transformative GI Bill-approved programming designed to help take them to the next level with confidence. Nestled in the heart of the Ozarks, their 800-acre, all-inclusive campus features world-class training facilities, modern living spaces, and miles of trails for reflection and growth. Here, veterans find a structured, immersive environment where they can explore their strengths, develop new skills, and build a life that not only honors their past but prepares the future.

• 25:58Fran Racioppi?

  Well, when you look across the world, we have about 200 Americans that are taken every year. And that's, in addition, I think the Human Rights Council, if I have that correct, estimates that there's something like 1.1 or 1.3 million people globally who are wrongfully detained from all nationalities. And I think absolutely incredible number on both of those scales. I mean, you know, one American is too many, let alone 200.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. And some Americans that are being held are, it's different circumstances with everything, you know? But the reality is if your passport looks like my passport, as an American, we move heaven and earth to get you back. And if we got to do a deal, you know, Roger got a lot of criticism. Roger got these hostages out on a thing. I don't want to talk too deep about it, but Roger and President Biden at the time got a lot of flak. They did a deal to get an American out that was not equitable. And the message was it was an unfair deal.

• 26:56Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  It's always an unfair deal. It is.

• 27:00Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. It's an unfair event.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  It's, it's.

• 27:02Fran Racioppi?

  It started from a position of the.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  No, no one wakes up and says, I hope to be unlawfully detained. And once you are unlawfully detained, everything about that entire thing sucks. Everything. There's no good at the end. Even when you come home, it's still bad. The trauma that happens in captivity with Carillo and Terry Gaetley and Robert Platt and Swadee Merkese and guys that we've gotten out, what they'll tell you is they are scarred for life. It's almost like losing arms and legs. They're forever changed. It's more than PTSD. It's more than Carillo for about two years, he would get squeamish around looking at someone in a uniform. So a rent a cop, a fireman, doesn't matter, anyone in a uniform triggered him because the people that tortured him were all wearing uniforms and he just associated

• 27:49Speaker 02

  that and all kinds of weird things like that. So if you're an American and you're unlawfully detained, I don't care if we do a bad deal or not. You hope for the best deal possible. You do. You hope for the best deal possible, but the answer is bring them home, you know? Bring them home. And if we got to bend over a little bit. Okay, just because we do a bad deal does not mean we're not the greatest country on earth.

• 28:12Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  There's a reason why half of Guatemala is trying to move to America.

• 28:17Fran Racioppi?

  In a caravan.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  It's not because we suck, it's because we're awesome, right? If we have to do an unfair deal to get our people back, so be it. We got plenty of money, we got plenty of resources, and the people that screw us over, generally speaking, at some point, pay for it later.

• 28:32Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  We're, um, not forgetful that way.

• 28:35Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, you see that with like the Israelis too, you know, I mean, we're, I think they're operating somewhere around what, a hundred or two hundred or one? It was like, what, twenty, twenty-five or? The number of Palestinians that they were releasing for one Israeli hostage, you know, was a huge number, I don't remember it off the top of my head.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  It, yeah, and again, you know, Israel, you know, Gaza is a, not the best situation, obviously not, right? But if you take a step back from a mindset perspective, whether you like Israel or not, their entire strategy, their whole thing, fits on a three by five index card.

• 29:13Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  And it says, "The pain will stop when you give us our people back."

• 29:16Fran Racioppi?

  That's it.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Over to you, over to you. And bottom line is, you've got AKs and I've got an air force. So, this is gonna hurt your people significantly more than it's gonna hurt mine.

• 29:26Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  And I want my people back. And I will do whatever it is I need to do to make that happen, even if it means I'm unfair, even if it means I'm disproportionate, even if it means I turn your entire area into a pile of rubble.

• 29:39Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  I will do what needs to be done to get my people back. While I don't agree with all of it, I do agree with the mindset. I do agree with the mindset. I agree with that completely, as a guy who volunteers and doesn't get paid, and three weeks ago I was hanging off a helicopter in Haiti to rescue two kids from Nebraska and California. My team and I will do what needs to be done to get our people out. And if that means we have to cause some trouble, I guess that's what's gonna have to happen. And if it means that we have to put ourselves at risk, I guess that's what's gonna have to happen. And if we have to put the bad guys at risk, I guess that's what's needed. Hopefully, we can all get along. We're a rescue team. We're not assassins. We're not trying to get into a gunfight at

• 30:21Speaker 02

  all. We haven't lost a single person on my team. 728 missions down to scratch.

• 30:26Fran Racioppi?

  Well, we see these things end in a variety of different ways. Like we've seen Jessica Buchanan

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 30:31Fran Racioppi?

  rescued by SEAL Team Six. We've seen Michael Scott Moore be released for a couple million dollars. We saw Brittany Griner, Evan Gershkovitz, released for Russians who were imprisoned in the US for various crimes and in Germany, too. So we've seen a number of different ways these things can end. How many of the events that you're participating in ended in some sort of negotiation? How many ended in some sort of ransom payment? How many are you running in and grabbing somebody?

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Great question. Okay, so this is where

• 31:05Fran Racioppi?

  Because they're all different.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  They're all different. Now, to answer your question, we have never successfully negotiated anyone. Now, having said that, having said that, and the reason why is because I don't have Russian prisoners hiding in my basement in Tampa.

• 31:21Fran Racioppi?

  Right. You don't have anything to give them.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  In the world of leverage, I come to the party completely unprepared.

• 31:27Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Completely unprepared. I

• 31:29Fran Racioppi?

  Like I can owe beer, like whiskey.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Now, at the same time, we bring our wasta and we bring the, very often, we're the only Americans there, right? We're the, almost always, we're the only gringos running around. So we're able to say, hey, look, you could talk to me, or you could talk to Dev Brew. I'm nicer. I promise. You do not want to talk to Red Squadron, I promise you. It will be very self-correcting and it will not end well for you. Let's figure out a way to work together on this thing. The reality is, is I can't call Red Squadron from Dev Brew. I couldn't. I don't have that. But very often, they don't know that. We use a lot of, the way we work looks more like Ocean's Eleven. It's more like a magic trick.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  So, Kirillo, the kid, uh, who's here? The war crime from Detroit? He was held about, uh, 250 miles behind enemy lines by the Russian FSB and the DNR, which is a subgroup of the Russian forces, tortured, everything. We had to 50 something checkpoints without a single piece of paper. They still have his passport, they still have his underwear. He was not released. Today, the Russians don't know how we did it. They don't know. It's a magic trick. It's like David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear in front of 3,000 people. 3,000 people saw the Statue of Liberty disappear. They'll pass a polygraph. They saw it, they heard it, they were right there and right in front of their very eyes, Statue of Liberty disappear. Probably, he didn't actually make the Statue of Liberty disappear. So for us, we're only operational.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  We try and negotiate always, always, always, always, always we try, but the reality is, is we don't have much. We don't have much. So we use tradecraft, deception. We do a lot of military deception. We do a lot of false flag operations. We do a lot of recruiting sources and getting people to do things that they're not predisposed to do, not realizing that they're doing it. So it's, we're an operational element. I wish I could negotiate. I'd be happy to. I probably have better contacts in many of these bad guy organizations than the government does because of who we are and what we do and where we work. But we've always tried, but always failed. In different negotiations.

• 33:37Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. As you look forward into the next couple of years, you know, we sit here at soft week. We talk a lot about innovation. We talk a lot about technological advancement. We've heard in General Fenton at the SOCOM level, we've, you know, we've heard the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of the army, everybody talk about the importance of, you know, investing in technologies that are going to be foundational to the next fight. You know, how do you view the next battlefield and where do you see these types of activities? Cause at the end of the day, you know, it's the soft truth. Number one, people are more important than hardware. You're in the people business. The hardware is great, but where are you fitting into that next battlefield?

• 34:19Speaker 02

  So in all the places that General Fitton, who's a friend, in all the places that General Fitton is worried about and is talking about and concerned about and making decisions based off those AORs and those specific countries and all these things, generally speaking, not in all the places, but we're either operational there, have been, or could be. And the question is how, right? How is that possible? I'll tell you, because we, our TTPs are from the Jedbergs. We're two-man teams, three-man teams, single-man teams of big package for us and for our nasty stuff.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Four dudes, if you can't fit in the car, we're like, we're one vehicle deep, right? One vehicle deep. We just like the Jeds, right? And the dudes are parachuting to occupied France in a suit and tie with a bag of cash, some radio crystals, a knife and a 45 and like, you know, good luck, laddie. We're here to help. Yeah, you know, and go make friends, find Germans, kill them. We do the same thing, except it's go in, find Americans, save them. Yeah. But the TTPs are the same. The only thing that's really changed are things like communications have gotten better. GPS is obviously, you know, that kind of stuff, but the TTPs on the street have not changed. So when we talk about technology, technology is great.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Technology is great, but for denied areas where we like to hang out and contested areas, technology is a double-edged sword. Yeah. Anything that squawks, it's why I wear a Rolex. You won't find me with a, you know, No iPhone. altimeter, you know, altimeter, you know, I'm not part of the big watch club. I was never cool enough. I'm not that guy. I'm a CI guy, I'm a team guy or SF dude, you know? I didn't qualify for the big watch, but it's important to understand that old school tactics still work. Yeah. You know, everyone I know still runs a two-point sling, right? There was that single-point sling fad that came and went, right? And then there was the three-point sling. Never worked. Right? Never worked. The secret to the three-point sling is, is that it doesn't work. And the secret to the single-point sling is, is that's annoying, right?

• 36:27Speaker 02

  The two-point sling has been around since like the Revolutionary War. Yeah. Is it works. Our TTPs and our tactics that we employ in these denied areas, in these contested areas, small teams, which is what SOF is going to need to do. Right? And you can be incredibly effective, incredibly effective if you're just a little creative, a little innovative, and then use technology where it's appropriate. Right? And there's other technologies bad, but I can't carry a 30-pound drone quadcopter thing across the border from Poland into Ukraine, and then you'll go to Zaporizhzhia, take a boat into the river, and I'm in the occupied area. Why would I bring a backpack drone thing?

• 37:09Speaker 02

  I wear Adidas and a bag of cash. It's just easier. It's just easier. I wear a tracksuit.

• 37:13Fran Racioppi?

  It's different tools.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  And different instincts. So I think technology is great. I think it's really important to think about, you know, here at Softwick, I think it's really, really, really important to not think about everything like we're still in Jalalabad, right?

• 37:30Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  I've seen a lot of that with a lot of these vendors, like, here's my giant Gucci thing that requires all this infrastructure to make my Gucci thing work. We're never gonna have fobs again. We're just not. We're not. If you're lucky, it'll be a floating something if you're lucky.

• 37:43Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Other than that, we're never gonna have that stuff. We're just not. How do you know? Ask the Ukrainians. They'll tell you all about it. Ask the Israelis. They'll tell you all about it. Israel has logistics problems going from Israel to Gaza. Gaza is 20 miles by seven. It's smaller than Tampa. It's smaller than Tampa. And even in there, they struggle with logistics. The other people you can ask is the Russians. They have big-time logistics problems. It is really hard to get stuff from Moscow to Zaporizhzhia. That's a whole pain in the neck. So, technology is awesome, but it needs to be the right kind of stuff. It has to be based off what we think we will need for this kind of fight and understanding that kind of fight. You know what I don't see out here? There's this great company

• 38:29Speaker 02

  that makes this little dashboard thing that you can do secret writing on. You write on it, and you push a button, and it erases itself. I use this thing religiously. It's like eight bucks on Amazon. I forgot the name of it. It's like, it looks like it was like an iPad, like a...

• 38:42Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  And you write on this thing, and you push the button, it erases itself. It's like eight dollars. Best piece of kit in my gear bag. overwhelmingly because if I'm taking notes and I see a guy stop me, I push a button and I'm clean and you can't recover it. There's no onboard cash. I could take notes. I could write down my plates. I can see, I can do for SDRs and stuff and trade, all the trade craft spook stuff. Right? But if I come under scrutiny, I pushed a button, right? We did an exercise where you tried these things out. We have like a notional bad guy who's gonna be a cop. First thing he did, pushed the button. And he's like, oh, oh, thank you. Thank you. Check, please. Eight dollars, nine dollars on Amazon. They're not even here. That piece of kit should

• 39:24Speaker 02

  be issued to every human guy, every CI guy, every team doing ASOT stuff, or any of the, like, all the third groups should have this, all the seventh group should have this. It should be a standard piece of equipment.

• 39:36Fran Racioppi?

  For nine dollars, not nine thousand dollars.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Correct. Correct. That's the difference, right? I think here at SOF Week, there's some really cool technology that's here. Uh, comms, comms in these contested areas is overwhelmingly the big deal. The Russians in the early days of the war, they were able to DF and get rounds on target in about six minutes. I think ours is like two days or some crazy number. Like, they're really effective. So if you come hot, if you emanate, they can see it in the RF space. So secure comms, data comms, all those things are really important. But I think it's important to think about how we're gonna fight these wars. And they're gonna get fought. They will. Iran, I've been saying it for a long time. I think that Iran is nuclear capable already.

• 40:17Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  I do. I think that they got the stuff and we just don't know. I really do. Or we do know and we're not talking about it. I think China takes Taiwan. I do. I think Russia takes Ukraine. They have. You know, I think the cartels, you know, the Houthis, not that long ago, the Houthis couldn't get toilet paper.

• 40:32Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Yemen was the largest humanitarian crisis on earth as per the United Nations.

• 40:37Fran Racioppi?

  That was only

• 40:38Speaker 02

  About years ago, six years ago. Now they have guided missiles hitting Hungarian Airport in Tel Aviv.

• 40:43Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. That report out of there last week too, was that it was a hypersonic missile too, which I'm not sure if that was accurate or not, but that's scary.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Imagine if Mohammed Atta in the morning of 9/11 had hypersonic missiles.

• 40:54Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  That's what we're talking about.

• 40:56Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Right? So that the whole thing has changed from a soft perspective, from dudes that are gonna have to go deal with this, right? And we have to deal with this turd, right? This mess. Soft is the best answer overwhelmingly. If I have a choice of deploying an ODA from Seventh Group to go make friends with the cartels? Or sending a B-52 and doing, you know, bombing Guatemala? Oh, ODA sounds better to me.

• 41:21Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Well, it's a strategic deterrence. That. That we have, you know, as an organization, Stu Brayden, head of Global Soft Foundation, is out here yesterday, and he said, "The thing that's needs to be discussed is that soft's time is now."

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:35Fran Racioppi?

  This is soft's time. Not tomorrow.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 41:38Fran Racioppi?

  Today.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Right now, everyone should be deployed.

• 41:40Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Everyone should be deployed, doing something, anything. Because the enemy is afraid of us.

• 41:46Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  And they're also really afraid of the unknown. They don't know what they don't know. So if they know that every soft element is somewhere doing something? Anything, loudly, proudly, deception, doesn't matter, whatever it is, just doing things? Even if we get hurt a little bit? It's better than, you know, full-on, you know, let's go, large-scale combat operations. I don't want to see the US Navy launching torpedoes against China. The best way to defeat China is from the inside out and taking away their friends.

• 42:16Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  That's last time I checked what SF is really good at.

• 42:20Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Last time I checked, it's like, the whole Robin Sage thing is predicated on that. So we can be good at this, we are good at this. We have to assume a little bit of risk. Just not exactly palatable sometimes, we have to get over that. And then employ technology that enables that.

• 42:36Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  I would argue, don't rely on technology, rely on the dudes, the men and women that can do these things? And then enable them with the tech that they need without getting caught. And bring it to the enemy. That's exactly how we do it.

• 42:48Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, well, and it's also one of the soft truths, which is that you cannot create competency after emergencies occur.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 42:55Fran Racioppi?

  So, you know, if we're looking at, you know, where's the employment of soft now? To prevent the emergency, you know, this is where it is. And we've got to live by that value, and we got to get out there and do it.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  I was talking with a former very senior leader yesterday over a cigar. And um, he asked, you know, what would you do? And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, you know, if I gave you SOCOM and took away all the restrictions and like you're, you know, you're, there's your god, god president and us, you know, in that order. He's like, if I made it where you are godlike. So what do you think? I'm like, well, I could decrease fentanyl. I could stop them, solve the fentanyl problem, no problem. I could do this, I could do this. And I go on this whole thing. And he goes, well, how would you do that? I was like, I would just use the tools that we have.

• 43:41Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  And he was kind of shocked. But we don't have a capability problem. We could see golf balls from outer space. You know, we've got cool stuff. We have the best people. We got good people. We've got every language. We've got every culture in the military right now. Every country in the world is probably represented, probably. We've got linguists, we've got the stuff, we've got the tools. Who does to think about the problems the right way? I would argue that we're thinking about, oh, my God. Yeah, I was on this panel and they're talking about Russia's stuff. And they asked me, well, you know, what would Moscow, you know, aren't you worried about what Moscow says? No, why would I? You think Putin is gonna kill and rape less Ukrainians or more Ukrainians or anyone for that matter? Because of me?

• 44:26Speaker 02

  He doesn't care about me, I don't care about him. Who cares? Who cares? When we did this kid, they thought it was an inside job. The Russians executed thirty-nine Russian IOs, Russian intelligence officers at the O5 and above level. They took out the, yeah. They thought it was an inside job. So they came in, they killed everybody. They executed all their people. They all thought that they were working for me. Sucks for them. But it goes to show, you can have a kinetic effect without ever squeezing a trigger. The Israelis taught us this with the PIPA operation.

• 44:58Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, we talked about that.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Three innovative guys, a little bit of supply chain smart, took out three thousand bad guys. They took out more people. Then Al Qaeda did in the morning of nine eleven.

• 45:12Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Without firing a shot, they weren't even in country. They weren't even there. They weren't in Lebanon. They did it from Cyprus and Turkey. They weren't even in the country. No troops at risk. No people at risk. You're just being smart and creative about it.

• 45:27Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  We're vulnerable, okay? They're vulnerable too, I promise you. They got the same problems that we have. That they do. Hey, we just have to think about it that way and not care so much and not be so sensitive of, oh, my God, if we get caught. If a SDV team is caught off the coast of China, that'll start World War III. No, it won't. No, it won't.

• 45:46Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, well, you're talking about the also the use and implementation of clandestine and covert operations and and really not a capability question, it's a willingness issue. And so we had on John McPhee, you know, John Shrek McPhee not too long ago, and he talked. We did talk about the pager incident and talked about, you know, the fact that as America, we have the most capability of any country in the world. But do we have a willingness to use it? And so that's where we have to really start thinking about where can we apply this thought process?

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:14Fran Racioppi?

  To do things in a different way, because as you said, you know, the the tank battle's over. We're not going to be able to, and we have an episode coming out actually on Friday this week. By the time this airs, it will have been out for a while, but with Mike Vickers.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Oh, that's true.

• 46:28Fran Racioppi?

  Former ASD Solak and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, but also, you know, Green Beret, paramilitary case officer, but we talk a lot about clandestine and covert operations. His book, you know, By All Means Available.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:42Fran Racioppi?

  You know, was Ronald Reagan's directive to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan in the eighties. And they said, Mr. President, what do you want us to do? And he said, by all means available, we will win.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:53Fran Racioppi?

  Um, and that was the directive that, you know, they had to go out there and do that. And, you know, I think we do have to look at where. We cannot let the fear of being unsuccessful or some sort of, you know, political backlash affect our ability to operate

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 47:14Fran Racioppi?

  and have success, not on what we can call the limited battlefield, to prevent the nation state on nation state superpower versus

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's worth the risk to me.

• 47:25Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  It's worth the risk. And, you know, that's where I'm at is we don't have a capability problem and we have really creative people and really innovative people. This show is about innovation. But if the willingness isn't there, then creativity gets stifled. Because the creative minds will answer the requirements that are able to happen. So if I'm willing to fly a drone, well, then creatively, I'm going to figure out a way to fly a drone cooler, better, smarter, whatever. If you tell me, I just want you to don't bring pain, whatever that means, you know, that when President Trump was president the last time, his maximum pressure campaign.

• 48:02Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  His message was, is I don't know what to do. I just want them to feel bad.

• 48:07Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Just hurt them in a way that their mothers feel it. Go. And lots of really good things happened from that, you know, from that moment that a single Purple Heart was issued out until Abbey Gate. The years, years of Americans not getting tore up. So we have the capability. We have the talent. We have the people. We have excellent leaders, excellent leaders. Oh, yeah, I look at the leadership within SOF. And I mean, these, you know, 20 years later, you know, our leadership is extremely experienced. You know, General Braga, Admiral Bradley, General Fitting, these guys grew up. You know, 20 years, the whole career is worth of war and combat and getting briefed and different ideas and things that worked and things that failed and all kinds of things.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  I mean, our leadership at that level is awesome. Below that, though, there's this gap in motivation or willingness or creativity, and that's Stimey's creativity. The answers are all there, but you gotta ask the right questions.

• 49:06Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  And I think General Fitton is asking those right questions and he's trying to inspire creativity. I know Admiral Bradley is an extremely creative guy, so he's getting ready. But that is what needs to happen. We have to put all cards on the table and say, look, here's our end state. I don't care about what we need to do, what we can do, our capability.

• 49:25Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  What are we trying to do here? What are we trying to do here? What are we trying to do here? I want President Xi to feel pain? I got asked by a guy recently, what does success in China look like from my world? And the answer is President Xi coming to us, asking for help. That's what I want.

• 49:43Fran Racioppi?

  It's important to understand what the definition of war is. And we have certain fundamentals, you know, when we talk about the elements of national power. You know, we have to say that, you know, a true war encompasses all of the elements of national power. And often we default, especially because our military background and thought process, you know, comes down to, well, you know, they shoot us, we shoot them, you know, that's war. And it's like, no, like, you could be at war when you bring in, you know, diplomatic, information, military's component, economic, you know, and then even within our conversation with Roger, we started talking about, you know, what about the financial aspect of things, you know, and you have, you know, intelligence, you have all these other aspects that can come in and, you know, that's what war is.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:26Fran Racioppi?

  It's not just.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  It's not bang back.

• 50:29Fran Racioppi?

  Downrange and see what comes back. It's the totality of everything.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, we're able to do this. There's a real belief, I think, when I talk to people like, oh, man, we're all screwed up, like, oh, man, like, what are we gonna do?

• 50:41Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Oh, like, that's just crap. That's not true. That's not true at all, right? And I know that because on a shoestring budget.

• 50:50Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  My entire operating budget is like a rounding error for Lugna Greece and the SOCOM motor pool. Right? Like, SOCOM spends more money on paper clips than I do every year, you know, all in. So it can be done. 729 missions later, 7,128 people later.

• 51:07Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Small teams, doing what SOF has always done. I have not invented a single tactic. There's no piece of gear that I have that SOCOM doesn't have.

• 51:19Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  There's no people that I have that SOCOM doesn't have, or agency, or someone, right? We don't have a capability problem. It's just a way of dissecting the problem in a way that gets us to where we want to be and a willingness to do so. I would argue in DOD, we have the willingness. Not everywhere in government has the willingness, and that's also part of it.

• 51:40Fran Racioppi?

  Well, what we know is you do. So, we appreciate you taking some time. It's a busy week. You got a lot going on. You're doing great work. We need you. We need your team out there continuing to bring Americans home. As you said, it's stamped on our passport somewhere in there. It may not actually say it, but when you have it, you know that that's the oath and the bond that we have to all American citizens, and we appreciate everything you're doing.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Thanks, thanks. GreenBeretRescue.org is our website. You can follow us on social media. Social media is really helpful for us. It's how people find us. That's our 911, right? And we're entirely donor funded. We're always looking for partners and friends to help us out. We'll bring you out there. So, you want to come out and play? I'll bring you out, Fran, you know?

• 52:19Fran Racioppi?

  We got, we got a whole Green Beret Foundation of guys who are ready to do stuff. So, let's make it happen.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  That's a shameless plug, but I appreciate it. Thanks for having us, really do.

• 52:27Fran Racioppi?

  Awesome. Thanks.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 52:31Speaker 03

  American Jedbergs went on to form the Foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jedburgh Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Rychowi. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X or Threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families.

• 53:15Speaker 03

  Thanks for joining us on this episode. How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.