311: Jack Murphy On The Use Of The Military During Social Unrest

Jack Murphy is an eight-year Army Special Operations veteran who served as a Sniper and Team Leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion and as a Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Freefall team in 5th Special Forces Group. In this conversation, we discuss the use of military personnel on American soil during periods of social unrest, what it takes for a soldier to disobey unlawful orders, what average citizens can do right now, and how the state of the press is evolving in real time. You can purchase Jack's book, Murphy's Law, here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 =============================== Blockset by BRD is your hosted blockchain infrastructure. Blockset enables enterprises and developers around the globe to deliver high-quality blockchain-based applications in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost. Using the services provided by Blockset, businesses can build professional custody solutions, accurate and near real-time portfolio management solutions, auditing platforms, commercial block explorers, and much more: blockset.com =============================== Crypto.com is the only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link https://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Jack Murphy is an eight-year Army Special Operations Veteran, who served as a sniper and team leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion, and as a Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall Team in 5th Special Forces Group. In this conversation, we discuss the use of military personnel on American soil during periods of social unrest, what it takes for a soldier to disobey unlawful orders, what average citizens can do right now, and how the state of the press is evolving in real time. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jack, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is Blockset by BRD. They're basically like Amazon AWS, but for the blockchain industry.

• 0:53Anthony Pompliano?

  BRD's been around for years, they were one of the first Bitcoin wallets in the App Store, and now they've launched this product, Blockset. It's hosted blockchain infrastructure. Blockset enables enterprises and developers around the globe to deliver high-quality blockchain-based applications in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost. Using services provided by Blockset, businesses can build professional custody solutions, accurate and near-real-time portfolio management solutions, auditing platforms, commercial block explorers, and much more. Go check them out at blockset.com. Again, it's blockchain infrastructure. If you're a developer, blockset.com. Our second sponsor is Crypto.com. They're an all-in-one platform that allows you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, and

• 1:37Anthony Pompliano?

  invest crypto all from one place. They've got a mobile app, the Crypto.com mobile app, that has over 1 million users currently using it. You can download and earn up to $50 using my code, Pomp2020, or use the link in the description when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. Crypto.com, they allow you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, or invest crypto all from one place. Crypto.com is not only a great URL, it's also the place where mass adoption is happening. Then lastly, I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com.

• 2:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, let's get into this episode with Jack. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Jack here with me. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 2:58Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. So for those that don't know you, you have lived many different lives based on your background. Maybe kind of just give us an overview of where you grew up and then how do you get into the military and some of the work you did there?

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. I grew up in suburban New York, a town that started off, it's called North Terry Town, and we changed our names in the 1990s to Sleepy Hollow. I graduated from North Salem High School and joined the Army at 19 and went into infantry basic training and then the Ranger indoctrination program and served in 3rd Ranger Battalion in the Army and deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. And from there, I went over to Special Forces and I served in 5th Special Forces Group, deployed back to Iraq. And then I got out of the Army in 2010, went to college, majored in political science at Columbia, graduated in 2014, and have basically worked in journalism and media

• 3:56Speaker 02

  ever since then, really heavily covering national security, particularly the special operations community, the intelligence community, clandestine covert operations. Those are kind of the things that I normally cover.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you're in the Ranger Battalion and you're getting deployed, maybe talk a little bit just about the work you guys are doing there and then how that differed from once you'd gone through all the Special Forces training and you went back. What was the difference in terms of the types of missions and the work you guys were doing?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah, so the differences between Special Forces and Ranger Regiment are pretty stark. The two units have different missions. Rangers will typically work in platoon-sized elements, maybe even up to company or battalion-sized elements, depending on the scope of the mission. Special Forces operates in 12 man teams called ODAs, Operational Detachment Alpha. And their Special Forces operates in a more decentralized environment. You know, there's no one really telling you how to do your job. There just isn't time for it. And you're all NCOs on a Special Forces team. You're all sergeants. So you're really expected to know your job and to just do it without being, I mean, literally,

• 5:08Speaker 02

  there's nobody and there's no time to hold your hand and micromanage what you're doing, particularly on deployment. So when I was with Ranger Battalion, we were a part of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq. We were actioning targets, hitting multiple targets during every 24 hour period. They're, you know, considered time sensitive targets. So we're just going out again and again and again. The churn was very quickly. In Special Forces, I was working as a senior advisor to a Iraqi SWAT team, about 100 people. So I was almost kind of like the company commander really for them. And I trained them with some of my other teammates on the ODA. We trained them every day.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  And then when operations came to us, we would be, you know, the senior tactical advisors taking them out on missions.

• 5:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so as you're doing this, how much kind of understanding do you have both about what's going on on a much larger scale, right? So I was in the military through the National Guard, deployed to Iraq. And for us, where there was no kind of special operations training nor mission set, we basically knew, hey, here's our mission today, but didn't have great insight into like how we fit into a much larger battle plan that kind of leadership would have foresight into. We were much more just, here's your mission, go execute that mission, come back. For you guys, did you have more insight into kind of the broader plan and kind of the, you know, the genius behind the madness, if you will?

• 6:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Or was it very much kind of here's your target, here's your mission, go execute, come back?

• 6:45Speaker 02

  I mean, I think we had a very cursory understanding of what the larger strategic picture was. You know, similar to what you mentioned, I think that there was a notion. You know, when I was in Ranger Battalion doing those types of missions that we were trying to degrade, defeat and destroy what we called Al Qaeda in Iraq. So we're trying to put them on their heels, put them on their ass and kind of short circuit the insurgency. In Special Forces, it was 2009 by the time I was there with SF. So the mission was more about getting the Iraqi military to stand up on their own two feet. To build, you know, to some extent, building capacity in the Iraqi government so that the American forces can withdraw.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  I mean, a policy decision had already been made that we were going to pull out of the country. So that was about as much as I could tell you on the, you know, big strategic level. For the most part, it is, you know, hey, this is your little part of the world. This is your mission and you know, you go and execute it as best you can.

• 7:45Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And what was the impetus for you to go from the Ranger Battalion to want to go on the Special Forces side? I know some guys get kind of recruited and pulled up, some say, you know, raise their hand and say, I'd like to volunteer to go do this. Where did you fall on that and understanding that you'd already been deployed before to then want to go through the Special Forces training? A lot of people outside the military would be like, that's crazy. But kind of talk through a little bit of the logic there.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Well, I think there were a couple of things that played into it for me personally. You know, growing up in Ranger Battalion is great. I think it is absolutely the best place in the Army for a young soldier to go. But it's also not necessarily the place that you'd want to spend your entire career. It's very regimented, it's very disciplined for good reason. But you, as you look at it, you think, you know, do I really want to spend the next, you know, eight years, the next 12 years, however much longer I'm in the Army, do I want to spend it yelling at privates because they're wearing the wrong color socks? Like, is that my thing? And also, you know, the mission, it's kind of more of the same. I mean, I think I was only in Ranger Battalion for what, like three years? And I think we seized Boston Airfield on Fort Benning like 12 times.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I mean, at a certain point, you're like, okay, like I'm ready for something new. And Special Forces offered that. Um, so I, and I also had met a lot of SF guys at other places during my army career, like when I went to Ranger School, I'm shooting in the all-army competition, um, things like that. I crossed paths with Special Forces NCOs and got to pick their brains a little bit about their job and what they do. So it was, um, I, I, I'm happy with it and what I did. I mean, I, I thought it was a good choice for me.

• 9:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then talk a little bit about the, uh, Special Forces training. I, I always tell people if they want to, uh, to understand it really in depthly, to go read the book, uh, Masters in Chaos, seems to be one of the, the better written books on the topic, but, um, just kind of what was your experience like going through that while the United States is at war, um, you know, two different countries?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it is interesting and that all of your NCOs, all of your instructors are combat veterans. They're all coming out of theater and now they're trying to get you ready, um, get the next generation of guys ready to go into it. It was, uh, it was interesting. Uh, you know, I went through Special Forces Assessment and Selection in winter of 2005. Um, it was, it was a ballbuster, you know, I won't lie to you. I came right off my deployment in Iraq with Ranger Battalion, came back and did a training cycle with Ranger Battalion and then went right into Special Forces selection, like literally the next day I was on a plane, got there. So by that time, uh, I finished SFAS, I was mentally and physically exhausted.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Like I, I won't BS you about that. Like I was, I was just done by the end. Um, but I got selected and, uh, and then you start the Special Forces Qualification Course. That includes, um, you know, you small unit tactics training, you go to the Survival Escape Resistance Innovation Course. Uh, you get your language training. In my case it was Arabic. Um, you go to your, your MOS, your Military Occupational Job Training, um, for Special Forces. In my case I was a Weapon Sergeant. Um, so that was a pretty cool course. And, uh, and then the cumulative exercise at the end of it is called Robin Sage and it puts you into a simulated unconventional warfare scenario. Uh, and that was, it, it takes place in, in literally in communities in North Carolina,

• 11:09Speaker 02

  where you integrate with a local population and you meet them and work with them and. You know, it ranges from, you know, you could end up taking literal Boy Scouts out on training missions, training combat missions in Robin Sage with Boy Scouts. To, you know, I was in people's houses drinking red wine with them, you know, trying to make, trying to rub shoulders like these guys are like partisan forces. I went to church with somebody else and we did a little like handshake where he had, he handed off like the secret note to me with the intel on it, like in the middle of a church service. It's a really fun exercise, a very useful exercise also in introducing, you know, Green Beret students to what their job is supposed to be.

• 11:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and then as you deployed with this fifth group, did you know that, you know, hey, I'm going to spend another one or two years doing this and then eventually I'm going to go ahead and transition out and go to school and have some master plan? Or basically just take each year kind of one by one?

• 12:08Speaker 02

  No, I, I, I did kind of take each year one by one as it came. I, I did have some idea in my mind I would have, you know, liked to have stayed in for a career. And I'm, I'm the type of person like I'm, I'm just about job satisfaction. I didn't care about careerism. I don't care if I, I don't need to be the sergeant major of the army. I don't care. Um, you know, if I got to be the senior 18 Bravo on an ODA for 12 years and then, you know, finish the last couple of years, it's like the intel NCO on the team, that would have been fine for me. I, but I, I mean, I just saw just the mind crushing, soul crushing bureaucracy of the army and what was going on in that unit. And it just gets to the point where it's like, man, why am I here? Like, why am I even, why, why am I doing this?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  If all of the initiative has already been taken out of your hands, if all the decisions have been made, that you don't have any ability to plan things or to make things better in the unit. Because, you know, your higher headquarters, this is in Garrison, that your higher headquarters is, is, you know, engaging in that handholding and that micromanaging. It's like, what am I doing here? You know, like some, someone told me at one point in the unit, he was like, you know, if you treat a boy like a man, he has to man up. But if you treat a man like a boy, he's going to default to that. So that, that was kind of my experience there and what led to me, you know, ultimately leaving the army in 2010.

• 13:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a great quote. That couldn't be more true in terms of how you treat people. It's basically how they end up acting. When you were on deployment with special forces teams, any like memorable moments outside of kind of the combat and the things that people really focus on. I think a lot of people don't understand kind of the camaraderie and the like non-mission type environment and how that's just very different than what they probably expect.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny you ask that because just yesterday, my daughter was asking me something about like medical issues or like do I, oh, she's asking if I go to the doctor, do I have to get a shot? And I was like, oh, let me tell you about when we learned our medic told us, taught us how to give shots in the army on our special forces team. And like one by one, we'd each take turns putting on the rubber gloves and your buddy would drop trowel and you'd grab a big handful of his ass in one fist and then take the shot, the vaccination needle. And our medics like, yeah, you just throw it like a dart, like you're playing darts, you throw it into a dartboard, right into the ass cheek, give him the shot and pull it out and put it in the sharps container. So you're, you know, that's probably not something that people do on their normal everyday job, grabbing their buddy's ass and sticking a needle in it. But no, hey, it's the army.

• 14:45Anthony Pompliano?

  The reason why I'm laughing is because a lot of these things are, they're lifesaving measures, right? You know, all the different training organizations and kind of courses they put you through. But when you're in the military, there's definitely a different view of it. And it's almost like you gotta joke around doing it because it's so ridiculous. But you do understand that long term, like, hey, it's probably good that they're training us on all this stuff.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And the medics, we have the best trained medics in the world without question. And they're very good about kind of spreading that knowledge around and teaching you as much as they possibly can. Because, you know, on the battlefield, there aren't enough medics to go around. There never are. So each soldier has to be a first responder, has to be, you know, have combat lifesaver skills. So they really, you know, do a lot of cross training with you.

• 15:32Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so when you decided to go ahead and leave the military, what was the plan? Did you know, hey, I'm going to go to school or kind of how did you end up at Columbia?

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Oh geez. I mean, yeah, I did not have a real solid plan. I did plan on going to college. I started looking at colleges. I was actually looking at using, trying to use my GI bill to go to school in London. That was kind of my plan, but the, the problem with that, as great as the post nine 11 GI bill is, one limitation it has. Is that if you go to school overseas, the BAH they pay you, the housing allowance is based on a US national housing average. So you'd be getting paid like 500 bucks living in London. Like that's just not going to work. So. Went to school in the United States. I started off in my first year in Mercy in Dobbs Ferry. And then I transferred to Columbia in Manhattan.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  And, you know, initially I was a business major, international business major. Then when I transferred, I think I was a history major and then, and then tossed that aside. I ended up going to political science.

• 16:38Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so as you've kind of gone from, you know, a teenager to a ranger, special forces, to then having a grad or a college degree from Columbia. Through all of that, like what was kind of the, the North Star for you, right? I'm always interested in this idea of, most people I talk to, they actually don't have one, right? It's kind of their, they're figuring it out as they go. And then eventually they like find something and they go all in on it. You've spent the last, call it six years or so around media and journalism and, and kind of all of this. International relations, political science, special forces stuff. And it seems like, like you kind of found that thing now, but did you have that before you graduated?

• 17:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you have interest in media or is that just something that kind of naturally you progressed into?

• 17:27Speaker 02

  It's something that I naturally progressed into. It wasn't a plan or anything like that. It was just a series of of things that sort of happened and then, you know, finding what I what I enjoy doing. And if you think about it, I've kind of kept a foot in the same thing all along. I mean, I wanted to be in the Army since I was a little kid. I joined the Army and I did that. And then since leaving, I've covered the military. And I I've been to Syria a couple of times as a journalist. I've been to Iraq a couple of times as a journalist. I've been to South Korea. I've been to the Philippines, working in that capacity. And I cover these issues, you know, journalistically all the time. So I've kind of always kept a hand in it.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  And I mean, if there's any north star, I think it it's just my my own curiosity and wanting to know how things work. To find, you know, to find the secrets, what are what are the what are the secrets that our government is keeping? Behind the curtain and trying to uncover those and discover those things.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  And beyond that, you know, reporting what's true and what's accurate. And, you know, cutting through that, because I think there's just this very fascinating place where there is, you know, what is true? And there's what you're allowed to say. And those things can be two different things at the same time. And when that situation occurs, I think it's very interesting. And I think that's a that's a fun place to work as a journalist.

• 18:51Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so when you go back to, I'll call them combat zones, not all of them are actually designated that way. But the places like Syria, Iraq, and and just kind of have higher levels of danger. How is it different as a journalist versus when you're carrying a gun, you know, Special Forces or a Ranger? Like, there's different mission set that you're there to do or a job to do. But you also have different equipment, like one's a camera, one's a gun.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:15Anthony Pompliano?

  How did you kind of think through that or level set that mentally?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Well, it's a hell of a lot more dangerous for starters. You know, like I was saying before that we have the best trained medics in the world. When you know, when you're in special forces or Rangers. Well, when you're a journalist, you don't have a medic standing by, you know, to help you if you get shot. You don't have airstrikes on call if you need them. You're not armed. I, you know, you just do not, you don't have the logistics. You know, and it's very invigorating and almost intoxicating in some ways. That you get to find your own missions and find your own stories. And you negotiate safe passage through closed international borders. And you're doing these things that the army would never, ever have let me do.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  I was able to go places and talk to people and do things that the army would freak out over. So you have this freedom and this self-initiative, that's this self-reliance on yourself. But you have to make all these things happen because nobody's going to do it for you. As a, you know, as a freelancer, as an independent journalist, you know, nobody's looking over your shoulder. No one's telling you to go left, go right, it's all on you. But you know, it's also exhausting and difficult and, and it is quite dangerous. So, I mean, as far as my approach, I'd say, you know, two of the people who I guess inspired me from a journalistic perspective is Robert Young Pelton and Jim Morris.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  The latter being a journalist for Soldier Fortune Magazine, who served as a Green Beret in Vietnam. And Robert Young Pelton was a journalist, he is a journalist who, you know, he was all about kind of just like embedding with local rebel forces and just going into places like Chechnya, going into places like Somalia, kind of fearlessly. But without, you know, he was never asking anyone for a hall pass. You know, was the, was the impression I got and I really admired that. And, you know, I think he wrote a book called Come Back Alive, that I read it when I was a very young soldier, that kind of, I think, trickled off and rubbed off on me in a lot of ways.

• 21:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so any situations where as you're there as a journalist, some of the special forces training and things like that end up becoming an asset to you, obviously just naturally, I'm sure, staying out of danger, not going places that you shouldn't go, you know, some of that type of stuff that's more intangible, but any kind of exact situations that you remember being like, wow, I'm really glad that now that I'm here as a journalist, I have that special forces training?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  100%. I mean, all the time. You know, I lean on that, that background to inform my reporting. And, you know, when I was in, you know, I was in a battle with the Peshmerga one time. And I mean, I just had a much better understanding of the battlefield and what was going on there than I think maybe other people would have had. When I meet soldiers anywhere, you're able to, you know, I'm able to speak the same language that they are and maybe build a little bit of a rapport that they might not have with somebody who is, you know, say, you know, a journalism major or something like that. So it's, yes, I lean on that experience tremendously. I think,

• 22:38Speaker 02

  yeah, it helps keep me alive and it helps, you know, inform how I write stories, quite frankly.

• 22:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And one of the reasons why I'd reached out to you and wanted to do this conversation was I saw that you were one of the first, if not the first, to recently talk about the domestic deployment of the 82nd Airborne, right? And it just kind of caught me off guard of, wait a second, here's a guy who comes from the special forces and Ranger world. So he has an understanding of how the military works that most don't have. Two, he's got early access or first access to a story that is a pretty big deal for a whole bunch of reasons we get into. And then three was like, the mainstream media either hadn't picked it up yet, didn't understand the gravity of the situation or whatever. And so it, to me, it just like really highlighted like this is kind

• 23:24Anthony Pompliano?

  of the future of a lot of reporting, right, is more of the independence, being able to leverage their personal experiences, their personal networks and access to information to surface, as you said earlier, like the truth, right? And that's so powerful today. So maybe let's start with just like, talk us through kind of that story and kind of how you came across it and why you thought it was important enough to kind of bring it to light on Twitter and elsewhere.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Um, you know, they absolutely with all the the recent civil unrests going on in the United States and we have a protest movement, a peaceful protest movement, and unfortunately, some rioters and some other violent aspects, um, you know, trying to hijack that movement. And, you know, a heavy police presence getting deployed, the National Guard being deployed, and all these are all things that are sort of to be expected, right? And for a governor to deploy the National Guard is perfectly lawful and legal and and and normal. There's nothing irregular about that. Uh, but then when I had a source reach out to me and say that the 82nd Airborne Division's I R F, their immediate response force, had been told to pack their bags and

• 24:34Speaker 02

  get ready to leave. Um, this was back on Saturday, so two Saturdays ago now, uh, that they had been, you know, at least on a self-initiative, they'd been alerted and told to be ready to go. They received the actual alert a few days later. Uh, on Monday, they were out, um, doing E I B lanes, the expert infantry badge. So they're on Fort Bragg on their base doing normal infantry training, and they get the word that they are being deployed. This is that they have a CONUS domestic deployment, and M P cars pulled up, blocked off the roads so that they could get right to their station, right to their brigade, dry out all of their gear, throw it on pallets,

• 25:16Speaker 02

  pack it, all do whatever they had to do, um, and then get down to Pope Air Force Base, and they were prepped there. And in the early morning hours, uh, it would have been Tuesday, early Tuesday, um, they flew on helicopters, U H sixty helicopters, Black Hawks, and C seventeen transport, uh, uh, transport aircraft, and flew to Joint Base Andrews in the National Capital Region. Uh, so as I was, I I first learned about this when the initial alert happened on Saturday, I reported it. When they actually deployed that Tuesday, early Tuesday morning, I reported on that. And it was kind of shocking that, yeah, the the the rest of the press did not pick up on this story until way later.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  And I could speculate on why that is. But at the end of the day, you had what is now a very irregular deployment happening. You have active duty paratroopers being deployed ostensibly, I mean, for riot control measures on US soil. Now, the 82nd Airborne has been deployed in this sort of capacity in the past, back in like the 1970s.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Maybe there was one in the 1980s. But it's sending paratroopers after, you know, protesters or rioters in American cities. It's not something that happens every day. In order to do it, President Trump probably would have had to evoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which is essentially a loophole, the posse comitatus, that says in times where there is rebellion and insurrection, where people are having their constitutional rights violated, but the states cannot or will not protect those people's rights, then the the federal government can deploy active duty soldiers to try to mitigate that. So in a lot of ways, we walked right up to the brink last week.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  We walked right up to that line, up to that precipice. You know, the United States military has amazing support from the American public and like poll after poll, like America loves the military. They love the troops. But the day that we have active duty soldiers in the streets, God forbid, killing people because an altercation erupts between protesters or rioters. And you can just imagine the Wikipedia page on that one in 2030, saying, you know, General Milley presided over the 82nd Airborne Division's deployment to Washington DC during the 2020 riots where they opened fire on peaceful civil rights demonstrators.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Would have said something like that.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  And I mean, thank God that didn't happen. But we came really close to it this last week.

• 28:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I think part of my understanding of this, right, is there's kind of multiple stages of importance. So one is just like you described, the deployment of active duty military. A lot of people don't realize the National Guard is not active duty military. It's very much run by the state governors. And so it has kind of a different kind of objective and a different organizational structure. Yes, they have a uniform that looks pretty similar. Yes, they've got guns, like all that kind of stuff, but it is different. To your point, just being deployed is a big step. But two is that deployment has a connotation that comes with it of much more kind of serious clampdown, right, from the federal government.

• 28:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think you and I probably both see a situation where like soldiers are Americans first, and they are very much there to kind of protect and serve and want to do the right things. But they also are trained very differently than the police, right? And so it's kind of to your point, maybe kind of elaborate on that a little bit of just like, you have probably some of the best training in the world coming from that. It's very different than the six, you know, six week to six month kind of police training program. Like, how do you think about that difference?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would point out also, I don't have any critique of the 82nd Airborne Division. I mean, these are good soldiers. And the Immediate Response Force, the IRF, is, you know, it's advertised as America's 911 call, right? The president can call them up and immediately deploy them. They did on New Year's Eve, as tensions were mounting with Iran. They deployed to Iraq. So, I mean, these guys did their job, and they are effective, and the IRF is effective, and it can function in times of emergency. When America needs paratroopers, you know, on target, these guys can do it. The problem in this case is that the 82nd Airborne isn't trained or equipped for riot control. It's not their

• 30:03Speaker 02

  job. They're paratroopers, they're airborne infantrymen. I mean, think about the guys who jumped into Normandy, right? That's their bread and butter. That's what they do. These guys maneuver and close with and destroy the enemy. You know, as maybe some NCOs might say, they, you know, kill people and break things. That's their job. This is the Army. This is what they do. So deploying those same soldiers for a domestic disturbance to do some sort of riot control is very concerning.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Because you have soldiers who are wired up, they're looking to fight, this is what they do. And you know, once one of them gets hit with a brick, you don't know what's gonna, you don't really know how quickly that's gonna escalate. And what are the force control measures? What are the escalation measures? What are the, what's the ROE gonna look like? And I can tell you, and I haven't talked about this or written about this anywhere else, but when they deployed the IRF, it was specifically, it was Immediate Response Battalion One of the Immediate Response Force. So IRB One deployed, Joint Base Andrews, they get there, then they get moved to a gymnasium at Fort Belvoir. And they are sitting on cots and you had 82nd Airborne paratroopers sitting around,

• 31:18Speaker 02

  discussing with one another the legalities of what they're being asked to do. And they're having conversations about the US Constitution and whether or not this is right or wrong. And I don't fault them for that at all, but I don't think they ever should have been put in that situation in the first place.

• 31:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so this is the meat of the conversation, right, in my opinion, which is, uh, let's first talk about, uh, ROE or Rules of Engagement. Um, you know, one of the things, I think I even tweeted it at one point, was saying, "Look, some of the actions that we're seeing from the police would have been illegal or heavily frowned upon when I was in Iraq." Right? The rules of engagement and one of the situations that, uh, I always caveat and say, "Look, there's incredible complexity." And in today's environment, being a police officer is almost an impossible task, right? Because literally everyone's filming you all the time, everyone's agitating, like, there's just so many issues that go on. Um, but I think it was in Louisville, uh, the cops were shot at. So you can imagine you're a police officer, somebody shoots at you,

• 32:18Anthony Pompliano?

  and the way that I've heard the story and kind of what I've read is they basically turned and they shot back. It just happened to be with a group of protesters there, somebody gets shot and killed. Now, was that the guy who shot them? Was it somebody else? There's a bunch of kind of unknowns. And so, uh, it's less about that specific incident as much as if you or I were in Iraq or Afghanistan and we turned and shot. Yeah, well, if we turned and shot into a group of unarmed people and ended up killing somebody, there's a lot of questions going on. And, uh, you know, in today's day and age, there's actually probably a lot of pressure, uh, because there's just a different rules of engagement there, right?

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a whole host of different incidents we could go over and bring up where, you know, we've seen on video, police, you know, shooting people in the back as they're trying to run away. And it's like, oh, my God, if I did that in Iraq, I'd be court martialed. You're not allowed to do that. This is crazy. And I'm not a law enforcement expert, but I think we have created quite a quagmire in this country. We have these longstanding issues regarding police brutality. But it's not just about policing. It's about the entire legal structure and how it functions in the court system.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Things that, you know, shouldn't have been fixed a long time ago. And, you know, these institutions, whether it's the police or the military, I think there's a tendency to try to hold everything together with duct tape and, you know, 550 court rather than, you know, bring forth real policy measures, real legislation, and really, you know, fix the problem.

• 33:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so it leads then to this question of there's a structure legally that exists, right? You and I, as much as we would want to change or improve or whatever, it's just that's the environment that we're currently in. That's the legal structure that exists. And so when soldiers get told to deploy domestically, like the 82nd Airborne did, you described a situation where they're literally sitting there talking about the constitutional rights and kind of what's legal, what's not legal. You know, a lot of people would just say, hey, look, maybe we don't want our soldiers focused on that. And they should just always, you know, be put in situations where they know what they're being asked to do is legal. But, you know, good on them, I guess, for kind of critically thinking about it. How do you think about lawful orders, unlawful orders,

• 34:37Anthony Pompliano?

  and where, if at all, we ever see soldiers who basically say, look, I'm not going to do that, right? I'm actually going to put my gun down because I don't agree with the orders that we're receiving. Like, any kind of insight around that?

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Well, I'm quite thankful that I was never asked to do anything unlawful or illegal during my time in uniform. However, I think when it comes to this issue, I mean, the, you know, the conversation comes out of the Nuremberg Trials, of course, and, you know, is it okay to say, hey, I was just following orders? And, you know, the conclusion was that, no, that's not, that is, that's not a lawful protection. You can't put civilians in a ditch and machine gun them and say, I was just following orders. That's not okay. So I think it's really important for our soldiers to be informed and educated about the laws of land warfare, the Geneva Convention, and UCMJ.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  And, you know, we, we submit ourselves to these institutions, the military in this case, but it's not okay to, you know, just plug into the matrix and disconnect and, you know, give yourself, you know, give yourself permission to do whatever, whatever, you know, your peers are doing, maybe it's not even an order, it's just like, hey, everyone else is doing it, I'm gonna do it also. It's not okay to defer like that and just turn off your brain, you know, we have to, we are thinking human beings, and when soldiers are asked to do something unlawful and illegal, it's their duty to refuse. And I, you know, I'm thankful that those soldiers, that those 82nd soldiers were thinking about these things.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Again, I wish that they had never been placed in that position to begin with, and that's a, that's a political matter. But I think that, yeah, it's absolutely important that our troops think about these, these subjects.

• 36:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, I remember having conversations with guys in Iraq about like, like, what is the most likely scenario in which soldiers would be aware enough and feel strongly enough to kind of step down, right? And it was always things on domestic soil. Like, it's so much more clear cut when it's on US soil versus, you know, in the middle of a war zone, somebody shooting at you, like, obviously, there's a lot of chaos there, but, but the domestic soil stuff is much more clear cut, at least in my opinion.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and most soldiers want nothing to do with any sort of, like, domestic deployment, you know, it's just not their thing.

• 37:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that makes sense. And so I guess the other question then here is we've seen in other countries and this is something in the United States that previously has been kind of intellectually, we haven't even had to think about this because we're so far from it, but we have seen in other countries, things where you get separation from the military and the political structure, right? Where either the politicians want to do something that looks closer to dictatorships and the military disagrees and wants to restore order, sometimes even vice versa, right? Where actually the military wants to kind of take legal control and the politicians want to stay with some sort of more democratic process. Like, how does that play out in today's society? And is that something that

• 37:49Anthony Pompliano?

  you think kind of soldiers are even aware of the historical precedence that's been set in other countries and some of the importance there?

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, I don't know how aware the average soldier is of some of those things, you know, like I was having a conversation with with a former French foreign legionnaire about the Algeria campaign and how they they were going to launch a coup in Paris because they weren't happy with what was going on. That was back in what the late 50s. But anyway, um, I mean, I think this last week, we did see some of those things coming to the forefront in some very interesting ways. You saw General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, wrote a memo reminding soldiers about their obligation to the US Constitution, which was very peculiar, to say the least. And then you had that that

• 38:42Speaker 02

  phone call where the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, was telling the governors that they need to get in there and dominate the battle space. And it was so upsetting to so many people to hear the Secretary of Defense talk about American cities like that. And I agree with the criticisms, but I think at the same time, we have to look at that comment in context now, based on what we know. President Trump was threatening to deploy active duty soldiers into American cities. And Mark Esper was trying to convince the states to call up more National Guard and quell those riots so that the active duty military was not called up. So, I mean, a very poor choice of words that he was using, but I think, I think, I don't

• 39:27Speaker 02

  know for a fact, I think I know what he was trying to do there, that he was trying to prevent the, the actual military from being deployed. So, I, yeah, I do think you're seeing, uh, some very interesting things happening with both the civilian leadership and, uh, both active and retired generals. In some ways, you could argue, trying to sabotage the White House's policy.

• 39:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I, I was having a friend, a conversation with a friend recently, and we started going through it, and it was act, after, uh, General Mattis's letter, right? And we started to look through, uh, if you go all the way back to, I think it was a Navy, uh, commander who, uh, around the coronavirus stuff, basically, kind of broke command, it seems like, and, and ended up being reprimanded for it, and, and ultimately stripped of, uh, of control of the ship. Uh, if you look at, um, you know, the situation, uh, with kind of, was it tear gas, was it not tear gas to go take a photo in front of the church? If you look at the letter from the, uh, Joint Chiefs or, uh, General Mattis, you start to get into this weird world where like, the military operates, um, in a very structured, kind of top-down, leadership-driven environment.

• 40:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I think the general population knows that, but like, doesn't understand it as well, if you've never served in the military. And for those that understand the importance of some of these things, like, these are pretty big, uh, inflection points, in my opinion, of like, people stepping out of what is normal behavior in order to either voice an opinion, uh, you know, I mean, literally to write a memo is a pretty big deal. Be based on who it came from, what it said, who it was written to. Like those things just seem abnormal.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Compared to what we've seen over the last 20 years, even while we're a country that's engaged in multiple wars.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think you're right. And I would argue that what you're seeing is the individual leaders trying to rush in and fill a leadership void. And perhaps even a morality void that exists. And as you, as you point out, soldiers follow orders. They exist in this rigid hierarchy, this chain of command. And you tell them, you know, this is why America loves the military. Look, you tell the Marines, go take that hill, go take that city. They do it. Like not a lot of BS. They just go and do it. You know, unlike many other branches of our government that can't get anything done. You know, you send in the 82nd Airborne or the Marines, they'll get it done. But when you have a confused state, when you're, you're getting conflicting orders.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  And what we saw this last week with the 82nd is a perfect example. It's a case study that'll make a great thesis paper, you know, or someone's PhD dissertation. Who's, who's in charge? What's going on? Where orders coming from? How are they being received? And when soldiers are in that kind of confused state, they're going to start freelancing. And they're going to start figuring out what the mission is for themselves because they have to. I'll give you the, another interesting example of what happened in the last week. When these guys got down to Fort Belvoir, they drew ammunition for their weapons, both lethal and non-lethal. They were supposed to go out with non-lethals had they been called out.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  An informal decision was made that each soldier would carry a magazine of 556 in their back pocket with 10 rounds. 10 live rounds in the magazine in their back pocket. Why? Because you're receiving obtuse orders that don't make any sense. And as a squad leader or a platoon sergeant, you will never leave your soldiers out there hanging without any means to defend themselves. You'll never do that because it's morally and ethically wrong. Right? Because that's your job as a leader is to take care of those boys. Now, I, and again, I do not agree with the, these sorts of deployments. I don't think that it, it should have happened in the first place.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  But when you have soldiers in a very confused environment and it's not clear what's expected of them. They're going to start coming up with their own mission.

• 43:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and this is actually one of the things that kind of blends into, I think, a lot of the police critiques as well, which is, we have to remember that the United States has been engaged in war in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost 20 years now, right? And we have trained a lot of people to be soldiers to go fight a war. This is, you know, the training that you receive has some overlap when we're at peacetime or at wartime. But when we're at wartime, you know, as you described, kind of the special forces training, these are people who had just come from combat, who are here to train you to make sure you survive and thrive in the environment that they just came from. And so what ends up happening is, in my opinion, you almost get soldiers who they're used to going out on missions, right? Or they're being prepped for missions in a combat

• 44:07Anthony Pompliano?

  zone. The idea of going anywhere without live rounds is so foreign to them, right? That they say, hey, well, what is the 1% chance that something really, really negative could happen here on the streets of America? We better be prepared, right? And that's where you get something like, okay, let's bring some live rounds in our magazine. Same thing happens on the police forces, I think, where we started to see this militarization of the police. And a buddy of mine who's a cop said, look, I went to Iraq, I'm on the police force now. He goes, I have an MRAP. He's like, literally, our police force has a mind resistant vehicle that like, we can stand out of a gun turret. There's no gun up there, but literally, there is a gun turret

• 44:47Anthony Pompliano?

  that I can stand out of. He goes, you tell me how many people can kind of switch contexts like that, even though they're still carrying a gun. And now it's a protect and serve mission versus more of a kind of an offensive, you know, combat oriented mission.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it gets even more convoluted than that, because we train soldiers for war, but then we've deployed them to counter insurgency missions in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where their role is like somewhere between being a soldier and a police officer. But you're absolutely right that, you know, we trained these guys, their experiences they've had in the Middle East dealing with insurgents and terrorists. And then they're suddenly having to flip the switch and act in a completely different frame of mind and a completely different context. When their entire frame of reference is war. And now you're asking them to become riot control cops. It's just another reason why that's such a dangerous situation to be in.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  And some people have not, you know, I actually took some criticism from South Korean leftists for saying this. But there's the Guangzhou uprising in the 1980s in South Korea. There's a horrible, horrible what happened there. But the point I was trying to make was that the South Korean government deployed the military and South Korean special forces to deal with the student protesters. And one of my sources told me that the special forces soldiers were told that these people are North Korean communist infiltrators. You cannot tell special forces soldiers something like that and then send them in to put down student protesters. It's just a disaster.

• 46:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And look, you know, without kind of getting into the political ideology and all the nuance, because frankly, no one's going to be able to solve that problem. Is that kind of like, there are some parallels or commonalities is what we just saw, right? If you went to 10 people on the street and said, was it Antifa, not Antifa? Was it peaceful protesters? Was it rioters and looters? Like, all of this terminology that gets kind of thrown around in the political sphere, doesn't really matter because it's just words at that point. When it gets actually implemented on the ground, though, the difference between, hey, we're going to

• 46:59Anthony Pompliano?

  kind of preside over and protect the community during a peaceful protest versus there is Antifa, which is supposedly now a domestic terrorist organization. And you get into this whole world, you're like, wait a second, like, those are two very different situations. And it's all based on how you verbally describe what the environment you're going into, right?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think that you can go into it and have us feeling like, hey, these are Americans. We need to treat them with dignity and respect. But then your squad leader gets hit in the face with a brick and like it's game on. You know, there is a, there's an incident, again, probably mostly forgotten to history. In 1994, there were these prisons down in Panama, where there were Cuban exiles that had a, had a big uprising there. And the US military played a role in putting them down. There is a platoon of American military police and somebody decided that the gravel in these camps should, the gravel would be like fist sized rocks. And these guys were MPs armed with like batons and riot shields.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  And they were like modern day Spartans, like forming a phalanx. And they got that, they got hammered, hammered. So then that night, the MPs went in with some guys from Second Ranger Battalion and delivered an unholy ass whooping on those prisoners with like ax handles and baseball bats. I, I mean, it's just another example of why you don't use these types of soldiers for this type of mission. It just doesn't work.

• 48:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. What's your thoughts on what the average citizen can do? That's probably the number one question that I've got from people as they've kind of see all of this unfold. There's the health crisis, the economic crisis, then you get the social unrest. And they're sitting there and they're trying to balance kind of two worldviews. One is like, the world is, you know, collapsing and everything is horrible and it's only going to get worse. The other is, hey, we live in the safest, most prosperous time in human history. And like, yeah, things may be a little uncertain here or there, but like, generally, we're trending in the right direction. How do you kind of balance those two scenarios? And then like, if you're the average citizen who doesn't have the military training and things like that, like, what's your kind of advice to them, I guess?

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a, you know, an age of uncertainty and irrationality and that paradox absolutely exists. And I think solving it is kind of like the conundrum of like the modern Western world. Like, where do, where do we fit in? Where do we exist? What is our identity? And I don't know that I can solve that for anyone. What I, what I would just offer is this is, is that You know, pick one or two things that you can speak to from your experience, um, from your knowledge. You know, if you're a nurse, you can speak to healthcare. If you're a firefighter or a police officer, you can speak to being a first responder. Or you can pick a few things and really study them in depth. And then push for meaningful change in the, in those one or two things.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  I think that because of social media and, uh, you know, uh, the 24 hour news cycle, our attention is pulled in a million different directions. Um, you know, in my case, I know, I know the military and I know this sort, sort of stuff and I have the context. So I write works of journalism that hopefully, um, enlightens people or illuminates them to certain things that are happening. Uh, but, and I would encourage others to look at it that way. Think about what you know and, and then what you can do. Um, and focus on, you know, one or two things rather than spreading yourself too thin. You know, in this time we're in right now, I think this is a great time to push for programmatic policy reforms.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Uh, one of the big, big problems we have in, you know, modern day America is we have, um, protest movements. Uh, it could be Occupy Wall Street. It could be, uh, the current movement, what would you, if you want to call it BLM or you want to call it something else. But there's a lot of anger and frustration, um, in regards to police brutality. And, you know, it, it has to coalesce around policy reforms. Otherwise it just becomes this sort of outpouring of emotion that doesn't go anywhere. Uh, so that, that would be, you know, if I got to, you know, play king for a day, that would be my suggest, suggestion to people.

• 51:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it, it's a one of these things and, and I forget who I saw it online. It might, might actually even been you, uh, somebody just said, look, asking for, uh, justice sounds great. It's really hard to measure success against that, right?

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Because justice means something different to everybody. Um, you, so they're called glittering generalities, peace, justice, truth. Everybody wants those, everybody. But that's, you ask them, hey, well, how do you feel about those guys over there? Or how do you feel about those, uh, you know, BLM protesters? And the, the amount of venom that comes out of their mouth, you know, it's not really so associated with the peace and love that they were saying two seconds ago.

• 51:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but it feels like the protesters, I saw a proposal recently and I actually forget what they called it, but it was like there's eight key points around, it was called police reform, right? And it was everything from kind of demilitarizing to some stuff with the unions or whatever. But it was the first time I had seen like, okay, here's eight bullet points, like literally.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  That's good, yeah.

• 51:59Anthony Pompliano?

  It's in a bullet point, you know, format. And maybe you can't get them to kind of negotiate all eight of them, right? You can't get the police to agree to certain things, whatever, but like at least you got a starting point now.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Right, right. And if you can get half of it, it's good.

• 52:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Exactly. Here's our demand list, right? And if you kind of go through the game theory, like your demand list better be pretty aggressive because you know you're not going to get 100% of it. Like put some things on there you're willing to give up.

• 52:27Anthony Pompliano?

  But I just thought it was really interesting from that perspective. The last thing I want to talk to you about is kind of the current state of media, right? So you've had some of the most extreme experiences as a journalist, right? You've literally gone into combat zones, kind of done all of these different things. But you don't work at the New York Times, you don't work at, you know, the Washington Post. Talk to me a little bit just how you think of your job and how it's evolved over time and the tools and kind of where you think media in general is going outside of those large organizations.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Well, I've had somewhat of a regular experience, to say the least. You know, I kind of, you know, for better or worse, I mean, I pole vaulted over some of the things that other journalists have to do. I started off my, my career in that world, working for a small company that I helped found and start up. And now I work for another company, a larger company, but I'm, you know, I'm just one cog in the wheel, of course, covering veterans issues. I've covered very, some very niche issues and I've had the luxury of kind of picking my own assignments and to a large extent executing them the way that I wanted to. So I've been very fortunate, very lucky in so many ways.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  I do have critiques and criticisms of the media. And I mean, first off, we have to define what we mean by media. This is media, you know, reruns of Friends is media, but we're probably talking more about the press, right? Specifically, the press and the biggest problem I think it has right now, I mean, is that everyone's kind of chasing web traffic. And this was something that Andrew Yang brought up and actually pretty prominently. It was pretty funny to see during his campaign is that, you know, everyone's chasing clicks and it's all about clicks. And, you know, and people also complain about the media, but this is the flip side and I would flip that around on them a little bit. I, yeah, a lot of the media is not good and it's actively detrimental.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  But why do you click on it? Like, why, why do you watch it? Why, why are you consuming that media? Like, if it's true that you just want facts? Why don't you just read AP and Reuters and stick to the facts, but you don't? The data shows something different. The data shows that people go after that content that is emotionally engaging and gets them angry and gets people riled up. So there's a certain amount of individual responsibility. On the other hand, is that as consumers of media, readers of the news, consumers of news media, you know, we have an obligation to ourselves and our family and our friends to, you know, sort the garbage out and focus on, you know, good reporting.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  So I tell people that they get mad at me when I say that because it kind of interrupts, you know, the, the, the idea that, you know, America would be like a Norman Rockwell painting if not for the media. But there are problems, you know, the press has problems, they, you know, the, the, what I was referencing before that, you know, they're chasing click through traffic is one of the bigger problems. The 24 hour news cycle is one of the bigger problems, the constant churn of content that, you know, everyone has to get it out there and you have to get it first and you have to be writing every day. And when you write every day, you're really not an expert on anything because you're just spread too thin.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  So there's a lot of problems. I don't know how we come out of it. I mean, honestly, I don't know if, you know, the, the, the boomers out there, they're already lost. Like they have not been able to adapt to this media environment at all. Um, my generation is struggling. I think maybe it's going to be a younger generation that's kind of going to inoculate themselves to it. Like they're gonna, I think they're gonna grow up with a more natural filter of like, yeah, that's nonsense. And just like they're, they're gonna be the ones who are not gonna click on it. Um, because they're gonna grow up, um, with a different frame of reference and kind of sorting out the garbage. Um, but that's also something we could probably teach media literacy in our schools and you know, how to verify like, is this story true?

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Is it false? Um, should I pay attention to this? Should I not pay attention to this? You know, I, I can't tell you how many times a day I have people, you know, trying to get me like, hey, why don't you cover this story? Why don't you cover that story? And it's like, hey, this is like a no name alternative news website. There's no byline on it. There's no, and this is the, the most important thing you learn in college. Check the source citations. Where are they? If they're not there, why is that? Um, just as very basic media literacy, those are things we should teach the teenagers in, uh, in high schools around the country. And, uh, that would do wonders for us, um, you know, just nationally.

• 57:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The, the one that gets me is, uh, cause I, I agree with you that like the media literacy is much easier to implement when it comes to, uh, if you see like a, um, a website article, right? For all the, the things that you just announced. Uh, but the, the one that, uh, blows my mind and I don't know what the solution is, right? So, so it kind of sucks that like you, you understand the problem, but don't have any proposal for a solution. Um, is the social media content, right? And, uh, the thing that I saw recently, um, that just absolutely caught me off guard was I'm sure you saw this picture of the White House with the lights turned off. Right? And there was a bunch of people sharing this photo and they're saying, you know, hey, when, uh, when the protester showed up for demand, you know, the president was turned off the lights and went in the bunker.

• 57:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Or, you know, whatever it was. And like, it fit perfectly into the narrative, right? And so for like, I saw that probably for three days and thought that was an actual picture. And then after three days of seeing it, I saw somebody posted an article and was like, hey, that picture's fake. Right? Not fake in terms of it. It's a manipulated photo. It's just from a different period of time. And I was sitting there like, wow, for somebody who like, I actually think about this stuff pretty regularly, whatever, I didn't even think twice about like, whatever, because literally, there was a media article that said, hey, the lights went out, he went in the bunker, whatever, and you just naturally make the-

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Remember the pictures of the, uh, the Mexican immigrants in the detention facility that were spread around social media, and it turned out it was from the Obama administration?

• 58:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Another great example, right? And, and so like, you, you, you kind of get into this world of, um, even the people who think about it all day, still get tricked, right?

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Mess it up, yeah.

• 58:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's just, we're human. And, and so you almost gotta understand, hey, we're not gonna solve it 100%, but how do we move it forward in, in a major leap, so that we can actually start to get people good information, so they can make good decisions, and, and really stamp out some of the divisiveness. Uh, but again, to your point, the reason why the media creates a lot of that content, is because it works, right?

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 59:09Anthony Pompliano?

  It's doing exactly what they want.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  And, and the media, I mean, the, the press also provides a certain amount of fact-checking, there is some self-correction. So, like, you, like, you know, three days later, the other side of the story comes out, and you saw the mainstream media, like, no, actually, that's false. Um, okay, you know, like you said, people are human, they make mistakes, I've made mistakes, it happens. Um, but it can be incredibly dangerous, I mean, imagine a mistake that, you know, could incite a riot, that could incite an attack, that could incite an act of war. Um, it's incredibly dangerous, incredibly scary to think about, and, uh, like you, I don't necessarily know what the answer is. Um, maybe that's one of those things that like, AI will solve for us as time goes on, because it will, the

• 59:56Speaker 02

  fact-checking will happen so quickly, um, that it'll be exposed. But, yeah, I don't, I, I mean, as, as long as you're human beings involved in, you know, writing and producing news, there are gonna be mistakes in that, you know, from time to time.

• 1:00:10Anthony Pompliano?

  My favorite example that I saw of kind of the way that a situation can be written at from two different perspectives is there was a, I want to say Slate, but don't hold me to the exact publication, but I think it was Slate, they wrote an article saying, "Police Erupt in Violence Over the Weekend", was the title of the article. And basically, they were saying, "Look, everyone's writing, you know, saying the looters and the protesters and the violence", it kind of, that was a narrative. And they basically flipped around and said, "Well, hold on a second here. Like, here's a bunch of videos of the police, like, swinging a baton at an unarmed guy", right? And the point was kind of made just by using that headline. And what you start to get into is like, "Look, we need critical thinking and individual responsibility",

• 1:00:55Anthony Pompliano?

  because ultimately, like, you're responsible for the information you consume, and also how you then process that information.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Right, right. Right, and that's the crux of the problem, is that there's more information available to every single human being on the planet than ever before in history. But we have not yet developed, on an individual, personal level, the ability to process and analyze all that information. You know, and even as, you know, I was sitting here talking about, "Hey, I know the military", blah, blah, blah, I'm an expert. But this last week, there's more information coming at me than I could possibly process, and it was overwhelming. And I wasn't able to accomplish everything I had hoped to accomplish. So if, in my little niche, my little corner of the world, I'm overwhelmed, then you can imagine how bad that must be for other people out there who know nothing about these subjects, you know?

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  And I might know something about the military, but, you know, like, you know, we start talking about finance. I asked you earlier, if you asked me about quantitative easing, I'm lost. I have no idea what I'm talking about. So, you know, when it comes to the, you know, finance, I'm as lost as anyone else in this country.

• 1:02:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, and as I responded to you, even the finance people couldn't describe it right now because it's so chaotic. Listen, Jack, I could sit and talk to you literally forever. What I finish up each episode with the same two questions. First being, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  Wow. You know, I was thinking about that also, you know, a book that really had an impact on me as a person. And even in the military, if you were to ask me both in the military, in journalism, in my entire life, the one that really affected me the most is The Divided Self by R.D. Lang, who is a Scottish psychologist, and he was very, very interesting in the sense that he was a real criticism of psychiatry, not necessarily that he was anti-psychiatry, but he criticized it. This is back in the 60s and 70s where there are electroshocking mental patients all the time.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  I mean, it was really draconian stuff. He believed in breaking down the barriers between the doctor and the patient. And he even did this experiment for several years where he lived in like a group home with schizophrenics. And he lived there with them and lived with them and they ate together and they did everything together. And he'd say, you know, the patients helped me and I helped them. And he was against this idea that

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  that anyone who experiences the world differently can be categorized as insane. You didn't believe that. And he believed that a society as messed up as ours has no business whatsoever in calling someone else insane. That we're a world where a society, we wage wars, we murder people, we wage these horrible horrendous atrocities, and then we're going to point our finger at somebody else and say, hey, that person's insane because they experience the world differently than I do. So, and so R.D. Lang, kind of his work, I think.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Influenced me and how I relate to other people in my job and in my life and that I just don't believe in these artificial separations and these silos that you know, and I'm not saying I'm always good at this, but as far as breaking down some of those barriers that exist between people and different stratas of our society, that I think it's important to go and experience what they experience. There's a really famous story about R.D. Lang and it appears in the movie they recently made about him, where there's a mental institution, there's this teenage girl, and she hadn't talked in years. She just sat there in the cell, in his padded cell, rocking back and forth. So, you know, Ronnie Lang goes and

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  he visits and he sees this. He goes into the cell and he sits down next to her and he starts rocking back and forth next to her. And after about two hours, she starts talking to him. And that's him. He's just an eccentric but brilliant singular person, singular human being, one of those people that the world wasn't and isn't quite ready yet for.

• 1:05:07Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, that's an incredible perspective of the world, right? It reminds me actually of Kanye West says, you know, "Show me a genius who's not crazy." And it's kind of this play on words of like, you know, "You're crazy if you're not successful, but if you're successful, oh yeah, then you're the genius," right? And it sounds like this guy really, really understood some of those nuances.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Leonardo da Vinci's, the Nikola Teslas of the world, you know, the world just isn't ready for them.

• 1:05:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. All right. So from a hard hitting question to a much more fun one, aliens, believer or non-believer?

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  I think they're probably out there somewhere. I think E.T. is out there. I don't think that we have any contact with them. I don't think that, you know, all the hoopla about UFOs, I don't think they're from outer space or anything like that. But yeah, I think they're out there somewhere on some world for us to discover one day.

• 1:06:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the logic behind believing that they're out there? I agree with you, but what's kind of, how do you get to that?

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Well, I think there's just so many worlds, so many galaxies, so many planets that by chance, there is going to be one that is, you know, close enough to a sun, but not so far away that life can begin developing there. And, you know, it seems like we're finding some evidence of that. The really, the real, you know, conundrum there is because of the great time spans involved, will civilization evolve on two separate planets in the universe simultaneously that they're able to discover each other, rather than like one going extinct? You know, so we, these civilizations exist at different times, you know, we might explore space and find entire planets that are irradiated because they wiped themselves out with nuclear

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  wars or something. So that's another interesting question.

• 1:06:59Anthony Pompliano?

  I couldn't agree more. The spectrum of time is the most underrated aspect of this whole thing. And, you know, assuming it's easy to forget, like, hey, the world's been around for like, you know, billions of years, right? Or, like, all right, our lives seem not so important in the grand scheme of things all of a sudden.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And maybe ET burned himself out. They burned out their civilization a billion years ago. I mean, or maybe we will, a billion years before some other planet evolves. Who knows?

• 1:07:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Some, I forget who came on and their question to me was, not, do aliens exist or not, but do we want to discover them? Or do we want them to discover us?

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:07:41Anthony Pompliano?

  We probably want to do the discovering.

• 1:07:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, Jack. Well, listen, I appreciate taking the time to do this. You're doing some excellent work and obviously your perspective is one that's very rare and unique, which I think is important in today's times. So please keep up the good work. Where can we send people? Do you want to send them to go check out the book? Do you want to send them to somewhere else? Where would be the best place for people to go check you out?

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  Oh geez. Well, yeah, if people are more interested in my own experiences and anecdotes, I wrote a memoir called Murphy's Law that you can find on the Amazon or bookstores anywhere. Covers my time in the military and my time as a journalist as well. And I also run a weekly livestream and podcast and we interview members of the special operations community, also people from the CIA. We do it live, we take viewer questions. Talk all about their own experiences. So, you know, it's not just about me. If you really want to find out more about me, you can go check out the book. But, you know, we really enjoy, me and my co-host Dave Park, really enjoy bringing on these veterans and these, you know, retired members of the intelligence community and hearing about their experiences,

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  you know, all the way back to the Vietnam War.

• 1:08:53Anthony Pompliano?

  You, you just had, I think I saw somebody who came out of special operations and then became a CIA, like, kind of field officer, right?

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. My friend Jeff Butler, he was a Navy SEAL officer, and then he became a CIA Ops Officer and was deployed to Afghanistan. So, yeah, he's a, he's a really interesting guy.

• 1:09:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a, it's a pretty crazy life to live, but, but it's full of some good times and good stories. So, people should, should definitely go check it out. We'll, we'll link to it in the description.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you. I appreciate it, Anthony.

• 1:09:26Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Sounds good, Jack. We'll do this again soon.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, sounds great.