531: Technology is Advancing and You Can't Stop It. Blackbox A.I. Robert and Richard Rizk.

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  I want you to say the words, this is Jocko Podcast number 531 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I need to keep it real with you. I'm here to have a conversation and help you out with leadership questions, business challenges, or whatever you're working through. I'm not here to recreate podcast intros or play act scenarios. What's on your mind? What can I actually help you with today? Well, listen, I just really want to hear how it sounds. So if you could please say the words, this is Jocko Podcast number 531 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Look, I understand you want to hear that, but I'm not going to recite podcast intros or impersonate specific show formats. That's not what I'm here for. I'm here to talk leadership,

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  answer questions about discipline, ownership, business problems, or help you work through challenges you're facing. If you want to have a real conversation about something meaningful, I'm all in, but I'm not doing entertainment requests or recreating content. So what do you actually need help with? I'm not trying to recreate anything. And I think it would show some good humility if you would respond to my request. What I'm asking is I really want to hear what this sounds like. Could you just please say, this is Jocko Podcast number 531 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. All right, I hear you. This is Jocko Podcast number 531 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Now, what do you want to talk about? What is Jocko Podcast about anyways?

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  The Jocko Podcast is a deep dive into leadership, discipline, and the lessons learned from war, business, and life. Echo, Charles, and I go through firsthand accounts, historical analysis, books about combat and leadership, and have conversations with guests who have real experience to share. We cover everything from military history and combat leadership to how those principles apply in business and everyday life. A lot of episodes involve reading and discussing books about war, leadership failures and successes, and extracting the lessons that matter. We also talk with guests from all walks of life, military veterans, business leaders, athletes, authors, people who have been tested and have something valuable to teach. The goal is simple. Give people the tools they need to lead better, execute

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  effectively, and win in whatever arena they're operating in. No fluff, no excuses, just real talk about what works. What specifically are you interested in learning about?

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  All right. So that right there is artificial intelligence. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. That was, that was AskJocko.ai. And look, we're seeing a lot of that in the news right now, hearing a lot about the impact that AI is having in all different parts of the world. And it's changing the way that work gets done. It's changing the landscape of many industries. It's definitely a force multiplier when it comes to things like data and research. And it's moving and advancing at a pace that is difficult to calculate. And like I said, what you just heard was a conversation with AskJocko.ai.

• 3:06Jocko Willink?

  And this, this was created by a company called Blackbox AI. And this is a company that I've been involved with since 2022 on, on the board of advisors. And this was before AI was in the news. I didn't have any idea what this was all about. And Blackbox was originally built for coding and to help people code. And right now it is one of the top coding assistants in the world. It was created by a team of brothers. Brothers who have big dreams and strong work ethic, who are also raised in a very challenging environment. A portion of their childhood, they were surrounded by war.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  But they survived that. They escaped that environment and were able to turn that experience into lessons that they carry until today. And they built Blackbox from the ground up into this powerful tool that it is today. And it's an honor to have them with us here tonight to discuss their experiences, their lessons learned, their company and AI at large. So, Robert and Richard Rizk, thanks for joining us, fellas. It's good to see you.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  It's an honor to be here on the podcast.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  It's actually funny because the whole reason we're all sitting here today is because you guys wanted me to be a part of what you were doing. And in a show of true tenacity, you emailed me a few times. I don't know how you got my, you, you reached out to me on Twitter a bunch of times. You know, hey, great. You know, I said, oh, sounds good. You know, I probably just responded with nothing, uh, nothing meaningful. And you guys didn't like that response. So eventually you showed up at my gym. And said, we want to talk to you about what we're doing. Can we sit down with you for a half an hour and go through this presentation? And I'm not inviting everyone in the world to come to my gym and hit me with presentations. But I was definitely impressed with the fact that you guys had traveled down here.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  We sat through, you guys explained to me what you were doing and I recognized how powerful it was. And I saw a little glimpse of the future and was lucky enough to come on board with you guys. So that's how we got started. I'm sure we can go more into that story as well. Let's, let's get some of your background though, before we kick this thing off. So where were you guys born?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  So Richard and me born in Canada, Montreal. Roger born in France.

• 5:31Jocko Willink?

  And you, so your, your other brother who's not on, on the podcast right now, his name is Roger. He's born in France. Is he older than you guys then? So he's born first and then your, your family somehow ended up in Canada. And this is where you two were born.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:46Jocko Willink?

  And so you're up in Canada, beautiful country, very nice place to live. And you're, what did your dad do?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  So our father is a heart surgeon. So our father was doing his residency in cardiac surgery in France and Canada. So Roger was born in France, then our uncle was in Canada. So our father decided to join the family. So traveled to Canada, Richard and me were born there. And after a few years, we're urgent from Lebanon. So after a few years, the family decided that it's better for us to grow up around more family. Canada is a great country.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  We have deep ties to Canada. Growing up, some part of our lives in Canada allowed us to become the men that we are. However, early on, our parents, both of them Lebanese, thought that it was better to grow up surrounded by larger family from a company, from a family culture. Faith is important for us in the family. So they thought that this would allow us to build better personalities. If we were to be surrounded by our origins, family, and then that was a decision that was made.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  Did they take into assessment any risk assessment when it came to moving back to Lebanon? What year did you guys move back to Lebanon?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Hmm, mid nineties.

• 7:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay, and Richard, you're what? So you're what? You're younger? Yeah, one year younger than I am, yeah. And did you guys, when, how old were you then when you're moving to Lebanon?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  No, not two, three years old.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you don't really remember. You don't really remember. You weren't there to be like, hold on a second, I don't know about this.

• 7:41Jocko Willink?

  It's too safe here.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  So what year was it?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Mid nineties.

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  Mid nineties. So, I mean, there's an interesting time period in Lebanon. And, you know, we were talking about it before we hit record. I mean, Lebanon is just all these different cultures, all these different religions, all these different ethnicities, all bundled up in a very, uh, very tactically powerful geographic position. It's in a really good spot, you know, in the world. And so, but it's also all that mixed together creates a lot of, a lot of chaos and a lot of war. And there's a time period, I think in the nineties, they call it like no peace, no war, no peace. So it wasn't like full war, but it's not peace. In the nineties, you know, you had, the Israelis had a, like a security zone in southern Lebanon.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  There's guerrilla activities, you know, taking place. There's fighting between the South Lebanese Army, Hezbollah, there's ambushes, roadside bombs, artillery strikes. This is, you know, this is significant. This is not a peaceful place to grow up.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  1996, Israel launches the Operation Grapes of Wrath. Seventeen day campaign. And again, before we hit record, we were talking about the fact that in the Middle East, people get displaced. I mean, it just happens. Wars break out, there's chaos goes on and people get displaced. And that one displaced hundreds of thousands of people. So what is it like for you? When do you guys start remembering and what do you remember about the security situation as you're growing up in Lebanon?

• 9:14Speaker 01

  And just as a brief preface here, we're just sharing how our story. So we're not sharing any political opinions on anything. We're just sharing how Richard, me, Roger and the family grew up.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  So we're Christian Lebanese. So Lebanon has Christians and Muslims, Sunni Shia, Druze. Where we live, we grew up as Christians.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  It was the decision to move back to Lebanon was the civil war had ended. And there was some sort of promise of economic and political stability. So the Prime Minister Hariri by the time had the backing of the Saudi Arabian,

• 10:01Speaker 01

  the GCC countries, etc., the UAE and so on. And the Christians ended up the civil war by being more the defeated party,

• 10:15Speaker 01

  defeated military, however, the resilience and the mindset was not defeated. So it was an act of resistance to go back and to keep building the country. So that was part of the move also. So our parents grew up in the 70s and 80s with a very deep civil war that started in the 75 and that ended in the 1991. So the fact that they decided to go back is an act of,

• 10:55Speaker 01

  they don't claim it that way, but the subconscious is we are not leaving the country. So while our father did cardiac surgery, specialized in heart transplant. If my memory is correct, is he was one of the, like either one of the youngest or the youngest heart surgeon in Lebanon. And he studied at the American University of Beirut. So he saw the whole progress of the war because he went, the university started around 78, so middle of the middle of the civil war. And then he graduated with his medical degree in like 85, something like that.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  So he saw the war and he used to live in the Christian area. And then the American University of Beirut is more in the West Beirut, so which was more predominantly Muslim.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  And the fact that we decide, he decided to go back was an act of resistance somehow.

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, you know, with all the things that go on in our world on a daily basis, and especially nowadays, when you have the opportunity to voice your opinion on social media, you know, everyone has access to be able to voice their opinion on everything. And one of the, one of the reasons, and I've, you know, I've said this to Echo before, when there's things going on, and you know, a lot of people start talking a lot about what's happening. And, you know, I get it, that people want to, want to make their commentary, but you know, part of, part of my, um, my nature is not a bunch of talk. And you know, I've said to Echo before, you know, things like, hey, if you're that, if you care that much about this thing, get your gear on and go, go fight.

• 12:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, when you see something happen, whether it's, you know, you don't like what's going on in this part of the world, or you think that these people are being oppressed, or you think that these people should need help. I mean, okay, I'm, I'm not saying it's, you shouldn't say anything, but at a certain point, if you're that passionate about it, man, get your gear on and go fight. And go, go, go get on the ground and make something happen. And, and so that, that's also like a test I do with myself, you know? When I, when I see something happening in the world and I, people are yelling and screaming about it on, on social media, and I say to them, oh, you know, I'd like to give my opinion too. And then I say, wait a second, um, I'm sitting here in America.

• 13:22Jocko Willink?

  I have, you know, a house, I have an iPhone, uh, I have a car, and I'm going to get up in arms? I also have gear, by the way. My gear is staged, and I'm a, I'm a military aged fighting male. And if there's someone, I'm capable, so if I'm gonna talk, well, shouldn't I just get my gear on and go? And, and you know, usually that's a good way of me to check myself and say, hold on a second. You, you, you don't really, you don't care that much about this thing, right? You don't care that much about this situation. Cause if you did, I'd open up my cage, my locker, and get my gear out, put my gear on and go. Join, I'm a military aged male, I'm very, uh, well-trained, and so I'd go do that.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  So I'd really like the fact that your dad, you know, this is a different time, but. Your dad said, oh, like they've they're they're trying to rebuild the country. I'm not going to sit here from Canada where everything's nice and safe and build build my life up. I'm going to help the country that I'm claiming to care about. I care about my country. I care about what's going on there. I'm going to go back there with my family and we're going to make a run at it. So that's that's awesome. I'm very, that's a great story. And the way you said it, like, that's an act of, what'd you say, an act of rebellion, resistance? Yeah, and it's like an act of of passion and and it's putting your your money where your mouth is and your your life and your family where your mouth is. We have a lot of there's a lot of, that's one of the issues that we have right now in America is just

• 14:48Jocko Willink?

  everyone puts their mouth where their mouth is. You know, it's like, hey, if you care that much, go get your gear on, so.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  To briefly extend on this, definitely on your point and and Robert was mentioning is one thing that we strongly like, this is the belief, a strong belief for us is that, and we know you have like we have big respect for the military and and and for you and for all the servicemen and women. We know that listen also on the podcast and we we have great gratitude for the American servicemen and women. What, as you're pointing like to really, those who, you know, are are doing the action are are taking up, you know, arms and and and providing security. Like, a lot of people give their opinion about the about America, about the US and all these things. Like, you don't even need to go farfetched and then find, you know, the most elite, which

• 15:39Speaker 02

  we strongly appreciate that what you guys do and what you did big and made a big impact on on on everything, but even you might not even think that a regular serviceman and woman that is in an embassy, you would find people in Lebanon, just they have, people might have opinions, but they would just feel more secure next to the embassy. Just by that simple fact, so you have people that are putting their lives on the line, just showing up to work and we have great gratitude for everyone that's, yeah, you know, signing up and we didn't get unfortunately to, we didn't get the influence like on the military side as Robert was sharing before we record, like growing up, we don't, we didn't see like

• 16:23Speaker 02

  the military in Lebanon, like, you know, giving, giving kind of some inspiration there. But what you're doing, the impact that you're sharing on the military, well, you know, how people can really make a big impact on the world, that's, you know, it got exposed to us through what you share and we really see a massive impact on people's lives, so.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Well, that's good. And you were sharing about like how did we, did we feel something us young?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Our home in Lebanon is, and again, I'm using the term Christians and Muslims, just like, I, we don't have like, we're, we have great friends that are Muslims. That's just the way it is. Yeah, exactly, like just so that the listeners, because like, like geographically, like more to, to cover things. So our home in Lebanon has like, so from one side, like we see the sea, so like there, that has a sea view and then, so we see like if there are some operations that are ongoing from the sea, so we, we see the rockets being shipped. And also from my bedroom, me and Richard, we used to have like a beautiful mountain

• 17:32Speaker 01

  view, but at the top of the mountain view, probably it's maybe like some kilometers away, but there was a power station, electricity power station. I can't recall, yesterday night, I just Google search for like if I could find something, but Richard and me, like the whole home, but like our bedrooms used to be facing this beautiful mountain, but at the top there was an electric power station and we woke up several times with Israeli bombing the station. I can't recall if it was like within the same year or so on, but like so, but my recollection

• 18:11Speaker 01

  was like the, the sounds were like very loud. So like for us, when we see fighter jets, it goes back to that, that time. And we used to go down to, there was no bunker in the building, but there was our neighbors who were on the first floor that we used to. And also like some sort of memories, like our father never went down with us. And I have the memory where Roger and my father are in Roger's bedroom and they're just like.

• 18:47Jocko Willink?

  Just rolling the dice, whatever.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like the, so I, Richard and me with my mom went down and like he just stayed. So we used to see this a lot. And then during that period, it's important to highlight that Lebanon was under the Syrian occupation. So we somehow grew up like, and the Syrians and their allies in Lebanon were controlling, let's say, the security aspect of Lebanon. The prime minister and the Sunnis were very much close to the Gulf countries and they focused a lot on rebuilding the country economically. And to their credit, the Hariri political

• 19:35Speaker 01

  party, they brought the smartest people, Lebanese people from around the world to rebuild the country. So they brought people that graduated Harvard, Stanford, et cetera. They had like great positions in the IMF and some of the top companies in the world. And they're like, let's go rebuild the country. The Christians had their political leaders jailed or exiled. And while, but the Christians have, how do you say it in English? We have pride. So it was never like we're the ones who lost. It was just we're too powerful during the war and we delivered our weapons. But.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Christian religion in Lebanon is very strong. And we have like saints also in Lebanon. And the Lebanese warriors that fought in the Lebanese Christian parties

• 20:41Speaker 01

  typically also come from regions that have some sort of religious aspect coupled with some sort of hardship and warrior ethos. And like these people are the ones that fought throughout the previous decades. So they live in the mountains, they live in the cold, they live like their day to day is extremely hard. And

• 21:04Speaker 01

  so they, so they never lost pride. It was never hey like where the, so if we were silent publicly, it, we never complied with them. However, the Syrians and their allies, they were very nasty. Like they were very barbaric. So they used to kidnap people and torture them. And if you did not comply with them, they would bring your mother or your wife and like torture it, torture them in front of you. Like that was the level of torture that, and these stories used to circulate. So that was the pride was always there because like

• 21:46Speaker 01

  we may have signed this document because like I'm not gonna let my family member to suffer. But you're building a generation that's living up with these stories.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  And like, that's when we grew up, right? So I can't comment on the civil war. But the civil war was very, also like was very nasty and so on. But like if we talk to our parents, like our parents always went to school. So it was like, it was an organized, hey, like, so the war always started at 4pm. So there was some sort of organization to that, right? But I'm telling you the story between me and Richard and Roger, how we grew up is, we always had the story of the civil war growing up, like, hey, that's what they did, but I can't live that. But we always grew up in the environment where we saw the Syrians. Like, if we used to go somewhere in Lebanon, like, there were Syrians' outpost, like, not outpost, but what do you call them? Checkpoints. Security checkpoints. Checkpoints. Right?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  And it was always, hey, like, let's keep quiet here. And we had, without naming names, like, because, like, it's their story to tell and, like, we have deep respect for them, but, like, we have family members that were leaders in these political parties. And they were heroes, not only for us, but, like, for generations. However, us growing up, it was always so, we had these flashbacks of, like, Israel bombing something, some areas. And it was never against the Christians, it was, because it was a important power facility, so they just wanted to shut down the electrical power for any political reasons. But we never saw what happened in the south.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  So when you're talking about, like, hey, Lebanon was through war in the 2000, in the 1996, in the 2000, it doesn't recall, there is no recollection in my mind, because we're very far away from it. Originally, the Rizk family is from the south. So the family name Rizk is from the region of the south, which used to be a very strong Christian house, like, part of Lebanon. However, during the civil war, there was a lot of displacement, but our father never brought, grew up in the south. Like, in Lebanon, you may be from a certain region, but you grow up, like, in the city, right? So, like, the south is more, like, there's, like, nothing there, right? But, so then the Christians were displaced and so on, but Richard and me growing up

• 24:16Speaker 01

  recall these bombings, and we recall living up under the Syrian occupation. And things escalated very quickly. When we started growing up... And the Syrians started to make severe actions in about like 2002, 2003. That's when maybe the Sunnis under Hariri got fed up with what was happening. And again, I'm telling our story of the situation.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  So there was an alliance that was starting to form between the Sunnis, the Christians and the Druze. Around the country economically is doing well. But the day to day life of the country is not where it should be. And there was a lot of oppression. So they started forming a coalition around resisting the Syrians' presence. And the fact that we're able as Christians to get, Christians were always like looking west. So like France was a big supporter, US was always.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  But it was always that maybe politically for the US and for France, that was not the important political or geopolitical thing right now. The fact that we're able to get the backing from the Sunnis was a big pivot point.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  And then they saw how that things started to change. And the reason for it is the promise was like Hezbollah was fighting the Israeli occupation. But I think in 2000, Israel retreated from most of the.

• 26:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they had like a unilateral withdrawal in 2000. And well, what that did was it kind of created a vacuum. And then the group that stepped up and filled that vacuum primarily was Hezbollah.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Correct, but if the Syrians were, again, I'm giving my opinion. I'm not a historic historian, I'm not a politician, I'm just.

• 26:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  We're just sharing culturally.

• 26:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  That's our view of the culture, right? And Richard, me, Roger and our parents, like, we're very open minded. We have no hate for anyone.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  And that's because our Christian faith. So Christians by default, like, we grew up in the church. Our mom is a social worker. And she used to work with the Maronite church.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  So the Maronite, like, to be president of Lebanon, you have to be Christian Maronite. So the Maronites in Lebanon are the ones that own a lot of land, that like. But we're Catholics, so I can't become president of Lebanon. But we can, we can, the most that we could become is the vice president of the parliament. So in Lebanon, that's how it is. But when I say we grew up in the church.

• 27:27Jocko Willink?

  Glass ceiling right there.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  That's the glass ceiling.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  But when I say we grew up in the church is our mom used to work as a social worker for this Christian Maronite.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  It's not a group, it's.

• 27:45Jocko Willink?

  Organization.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Organization. Which is the dominant religious organization. So me, Richard and Roger, like, growing up, we used to, like, go there, like, they have these beautiful, like, churches. But it's not the church, it's like, they sleep there and so on, so like, they used to have like. So me and Richard and Roger, like, grew up among these religious people. And like, we just do sports there. So like, they had, not really. But that's how we were brought up, right? So like, we used to, like, we used to go there during the summer until like 3pm, until our mom finishes her work. Because our mom used to finish at 3, so that after school, she's present. So that was what she wanted to be. So in the summer, we used to grow up in these places.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  And then after 3, we'd go to the beach. So when I talk about like faith and religion is, it wasn't something like, I personally never read the Bible cover to cover, probably maybe Richard a bit more, but, but we grew up under this environment. And when I say we have no hate is because like, we were taught like, these priests teach these things. However, we know what is our right. And this act of resistance from the Christian Sunnis and the Druze started. And then we started having a series of political assassinations.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  And then they started assassinating

• 29:08Speaker 01

  the leaders that were very peaceful, like they were not gonna bear arms, but that they were very dangerous in building up momentum in universities, in like schools. That, when I saw the assassination of Charlie Kirk,

• 29:24Speaker 01

  we lived this between 2002 until like, until what, like 2014 was the last assassination in Lebanon. They were assassinating this caliber of people that were very good leaders and that would not fight with arms, but that were very dangerous in communicating their thoughts.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  And that's what I was always coming back, is like Christians never lost their pride.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  We were, we never, like, we may have not

• 30:01Speaker 01

  shared our opinions publicly during like the 1990s until like we started forming the coalition, but during this time, the ground was being laid out as a foundation. And then it started with political assassinations.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  And the pinnacle of that was the bombing of Hariri in 2005. But before that, they killed several members that were very prominent.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  And I recall once, we were walking down the beach

• 30:38Speaker 01

  and there was the car, they had assassinated one member of his coalition party. Like maybe, like in 2004, he, he survived. And like, we saw the car there, like we saw the car like bombed there, like that. But that's more our story, us growing up. And we had members from our family that had political leadership positions, but us growing up was always the mindset from our parents was, your, your future is not in Lebanon. Like, it's as if, and they used to say it, but they don't say it with like,

• 31:18Speaker 01

  from a losing mindset, they just say, this country is not for us. The reason for it is.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  Us, meaning you as kids. Because I gotta remind you, dad went back there.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, what what they were always saying is that like they will stay. But if you want to build your future, that's not where your future is gonna be. Because our father.

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  And maybe it's also like he go, he went there with the with the hope that things were going to be stabilized like growing. And then it just, you know, it didn't work out that way. And and things started to, you know, downward spiral kind of as as time went on.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And there's geopolitically, how things shape out.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  It was as if Christians were always looking for some sort of major support from the US and Europe to to support. And they provided great support, but through schools, etc. But we never saw a political shift that like was a pendulum swing. So that was the mindset of saying, hey, like you're growing up here. But it was always the plan, you would go do your college years outside. Two, two reasons, one is like, I really, he saw how the West was. And like coming like our uncle is an engineer, he's a heart surgeon and he used to travel. So he was always saying like the university in Lebanon are great, but the universities elsewhere are like exceptional.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Number one, number two is you, if if he, they always want us to do great things. And it was as if in Lebanon, you will be constrained by the mafia running the country. And you will be capped by whatever they would tell you you can do. And we always grew up very humble and knowing like, like that was cultural for us and like not being mean to people, etc. But it was always hey, like, you're not like an average person. Like every person can do great things and like you need to learn how to do great things. So for us was that country is not for us was meaning, hey, like focus on your education.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  And you can do anything elsewhere, but here how things are shaping up. It's not shaping up properly.

• 33:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then then you get into like two thousand five. And again, it's it's interesting, very interesting for me to hear your perspective, because from my perspective, it's just like basically Hezbollah, you know, and I know there's other players, but you know, again, from my American viewpoint, um, you know, it was always Hezbollah, Hezbollah, Hezbollah, and and they did the most prominent things from an external perspective. For instance, two thousand five, they started like conducting raids where they were actively trying to capture Israeli soldiers. And eventually, in two thousand six, they did a cross border raid

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  into Israel, um, Operation Truthful Promise, and killed several Israeli soldiers, captured two of them, and and they brought them back. And what they what their intention was, was negotiation. And what they got was full scale war from Israel. Um, this is what Israeli, Israel calls the Second Lebanese War, or the Second Lebanon War, and what Hezbollah called the July War. And, you know, this, this was a massive, you know, this was, there's no way that you could not see what was happening, or, you know, from the outside, there was a massive,

• 34:58Jocko Willink?

  you know, large scale airstrikes, artillery strikes, naval strikes into into Lebanon, and then a big ground offensive into Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah is launching like all, you know, massive amounts of rocks, thousands and thousands of rockets. Israel pushes deep in there, and Israel, they got caught off guard, because when they rolled in, you know, Hezbollah had been preparing, and they prepared with bunkers and anti-tank weapons, and and then they had a bunch of decentralized, you know, elements out there. And as we know, from the laws of combat leadership, when you have decentralized, you can move faster, you can adapt faster. And and that's exactly what they did. So it was a lot more, I think, I think each

• 35:43Jocko Willink?

  side bit off more than they could chew, right? So the Israelis, you know, Hezbollah thought they were going to be able to, um, you know, get them into negotiations. Israel responds very heavy handed. But when they responded heavy handed, they realized that they get a response as well. It's a thirty, basically thirty four, thirty five days of war. Uh, four thousand rockets were launched into Israel.

• 36:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, maybe thirty, forty, fifty Israeli civilians killed from those Israeli lost a one hundred and fifty soldiers. And meanwhile, in Lebanon, you had twelve hundred people killed in Lebanon, four thousand injured, about a million displaced. So it's just nasty and and and, you know, you can go look at the assessment online and try and figure out who quote unquote, won. And it's kind of hard to say who won.

• 36:38Jocko Willink?

  It's more like nobody won, kind of. Um, but you guys are on the ground during that.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:44Jocko Willink?

  And this is actually what prompted your family to leave. So what do you remember about this, you know, two thousand six war?

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Definitely just jump add add one quick thing on this definitely like it was the amplitude seemed to be much more elevated than previous events that just by the movements that were happening from the Canadian governments, from the US, really providing resources heavily to just make them available for Canadian citizens, US citizens, to help them move out as fast as possible. Uh, like ships were coming in, uh, you know, all forms of, you know, boat escapes that were getting supported to uh, to Canadian citizens and and and US as well. So the level was very escalated like uh, it wasn't just simple alerts or just, you know, uh, you know, stay, uh, stay away or just stay in some regions.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  It was really a big economic, uh, you know, resource support and a very big, uh, you know, operation movement to really help people move out and and and we're really grateful for what the Canadian government did. It was like the support that was there to really help people move, you know, with the, you know, the most minimal impact that they can have while while moving out.

• 37:57Jocko Willink?

  How old are you guys in two thousand six?

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Um, teen teens, like thirteen, fourteen, twelve.

• 38:04Jocko Willink?

  So you remember this clearly?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you remember your dad? You know, his attitude going from like, hey, we're here and this is Lebanon and we're Lebanese to like, we're gonna, we're gonna leave.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Uh, actually, our father was the last person who wanted to leave. Like, again, it's the.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Any war is awful. However, where we were living was not a dangerous part. There was maybe a couple of infrastructure bombing because the Hezbollah was getting supply from Syria also. So they were maybe bombing some sort of their supply coming from the north. So they had to maybe bomb some parts in the Christians areas. And again, there is Muslims in these areas, it's just like how geographically it's identified. Any Lebanese would understand that.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  But we, because of, we used to see the Israeli Navy rockets from the sea from our apartment. So like we used to see that. We used to see the fighter jets bombings because we can see Beirut. We could see, you could see the smoke, you could see the fire after the bombs drop. But it was definitely, first it was a surprise. The war started as a surprise.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  And I'm just gonna rewind a bit back on why maybe it started. But in 2005, they killed the Prime Minister of Lebanon. And that was the moment where like there was a uprising of the Lebanese population and the Syrians actually like left Lebanon. So for a year and a half, the Hezbollah regime lost its major ally.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  The Christian leaders got freed from jail. We had political, we had parliamentary elections and the resistance won. And there was like millions of people on the streets like that. So when we see what's happening now in Iran, and I can't, I can't comment on the military actions if that's required. But what I can say is you can see definitely the Iranians very happy. Lebanese were very happy back then when this happened. You saw the shift in the momentum of we got the support from the US, from France, and then Syria escaped. Then we run elections and then we, we win the parliament.

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, things are heading in a good direction.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  It was heading in a good direction. And then because of...

• 40:52Speaker 01

  We typically, the Christians and the Sunnis etc are typically

• 40:58Speaker 01

  very open minded. And like anyone who's Lebanese is Lebanese, they somehow like wanted to still rebuild the country with everyone. And the 2006 war was like a big shock. And hey, like we're cornered in this position and then we're gonna recreate this war. So it was a war that was like not, not like, the country was heading in a very good direction.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, so it sounds like Hezbollah kind of sabotaged the whole thing is probably what it looked like for, for your perspective.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  For I, that's my perspective, again, maybe completely different, but the war, so we were like, never feared our safety because like where we were living, but it felt like a war. So our father didn't feel like he wanted to, to leave, like it was more, for us, it was more, hey, like Canada seems like a cool country, like it was more like as a fun thing. It wasn't hey, like we're gonna escape, right, like that was, but like for like two weeks of the war, like our father didn't go to, to work, like that was how, like that was a change, right? Like you could see the change. And our mother, because she's a social worker, she used to work with the, the Christians.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  So she was very active in helping, like she was very active on the phone, like with displaced people, so like the, the Christian religious members like wanted to support the displaced families and so on, so like it wasn't like we lived under a world where like people were just like freaking out, no, like actually it was like our mom was busy. Our father like, like I'm not sure if even when I was watching the news, like for sure he was up to date, but we started seeing that, hey, like the Americans are evacuating and seemed cool. Like, no, really, like the Americans like sent, the Americans sent like military ships.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, we got second grade service in Canada.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  But there was a show of force. And the interesting thing is also the Americans actually evacuated. And again, from my recollection, it may be wrong, but like I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure like even the Americans evacuated the American Lebanese from like a zone where like it's a Christian zone that there's no port. So it's as if like they it was like a like it was dangerous to go to the west. Right. So like that was like the the the show of force that the US brought. France also like they brought also like helicopters and so on. So like it was like some movement happening, right? And meanwhile, like it was like, but we had to stay at home for like two weeks.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  So like it was more hey, like there was something changing. And for us was like anyway, like the conversation was always, hey, guys, like for you, your future is going to be like outside.

• 43:58Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  And we're like, hey, like the Canadians are like, so it was as we forced our dad to like register in the embassy. And then we get the call. And actually, I think like maybe they didn't want to leave. And like, we probably left among the last people.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  But I definitely recall that our father seemed to know once he decide like it's not there is no coming back. Our mom hope that like it's more temporary. And like we remember like because we typically like spend a lot of time with family. And when I say family, like it's like cousin, like not like just the five of us like.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  And like we had to take a different route to like say goodbye. So like, so like we typically take the route by the sea, which like is fast. But then that day we had to like take the route from the mountains.

• 44:57Jocko Willink?

  So it was an indication to you as a little kid that things are a little different.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  It was more like.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Like

• 45:05Jocko Willink?

  Or was it just cool?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  No, no, it was different. It was like a tactical decision in saying, hey, we're not gonna take the road, the sea road, right? Because like, that's where like, most of the traffic is like, but they're not gonna bomb like, the mountains, right? So it was a beautiful ride, what I can remember, like, it's, that's the

• 45:24Speaker 02

  And the strange thing, maybe just briefly on, because you mentioned this sometimes, like, you mentioned like, how like, war for different people can, you know, look different, like when, like, for example, we see footage that is captured from, from your deployment in Ramadi. This, like, as you, as you say, like, this is a very intense zone of combat. There's like, you can compare to other places as well, in like, in, in, in how it was playing, like, how we were seeing it, like, it's not the kind of similar intense zone of like, you know,

• 45:58Speaker 01

  But in the south, it was like that.

• 45:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure, yeah. There's no doubt in the south, there was, I mean, there's thousands of people wounded and, yeah, definitely, it was very intense fighting.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  And one thing that's very important for me to highlight is, like, I have all the sympathy for anyone that loses life, like, we were not like cheering. It was just,

• 46:19Speaker 01

  because of the political environment, the Christians grew up more the oppressed, and politically, like, we were fighting this political thing. So no one from the Christian side was cheering, but we were just not impacted. But there was a lot of death happening on, in the south. And any war has civilians that are impacted. And because our father is a doctor, like, and he used to like, work in both like, Christians and Muslim hospitals. Like, we always grew up very open-minded. There was no, at no point, there was, hey, like, Were against these people.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  There was always, hey, like, we want to rebuild with everyone. But we're not gonna be the losing part here. So it's just like more, that's the dynamic. But it felt different this time in saying, hey, like, we're definitely like gonna go say goodbye. Why? Like, uh, like, nothing from a work standpoint, like, our father is not working here, like, uh, like, from a risk standpoint, like, he, like, not moving. Uh, and it was more like, and like, we had like, brought like, from supermarket, we brought more food. It's like, it felt like the, the tempo was up. But Roger, Richard and me, we were like more thinking about it, hey, like, Canada seems cool. And like, we had, and, and the reason for it, and also like, that's more also like how, like,

• 47:45Speaker 01

  technology and so, uh, like, how, how we got into technology and so on, like, we had always family outside of Lebanon. And we used to like chat with them on like MSN Messenger. Like, that was pre-Skype. So it's, so for us, like, we saw, we've never traveled to Canada, but it seemed like somewhere where like, we're like, it seemed cool. Uh, and we're like, hey, like, anyway, we can come back here. So we, as if like, and that, that's also our father say, like, we like, like, literally, we're saying every day, like, can we register for this thing? Uh, and then we remember the day, so basically, we planned the, the cab to come pick us up around like four, five AM.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, we went, we had to go to like, uh, downtown Beirut, where like, there's the official port. And, uh, that's like, the, the evacuation started. So we, we, we went there from four, five AM. And, uh, we left Lebanon around like maybe four, five PM. And it was July, actually, like, yeah, it was the Ju- July or end of, beginning of August, something like that. But probably July. And we took the boat from Beirut to Turkey.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  The story of the boat is interesting.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  The boat is a very like, so we get to the boat, our father li- likes the sea and likes boats. So like, as soon as he sees the boat, he tells us like, that boat goes very fast. Because it was like, I'm not sure how to say it in English, but it's a bu- in French, it's beak. So like, it has two things.

• 49:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah, like a catamaran of some kind, two holes.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So the, the two.

• 49:36Jocko Willink?

  Two holes, yeah, that's like some kind of a catamaran type vessel.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  But it's, it's, it has like an engine.

• 49:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  But, so he's like, that boat will go very fast. And then we get to the boat. And it's like a cinema room, like, you see, like, it's like seats that feel like cinema room seats. And like, there is very cold air conditioning. We sit all five next to each other. And then before the boat takes off, they start bringing food.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Mediterranean food has a smell with air conditioning, the smell amplifies. And our father right away say like, don't eat anything.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Not only that, he's always extremely prepared, like extremely, extremely prepared. He pulls his handbag. He has everything in the handbag. And he starts giving us like.

• 50:34Jocko Willink?

  Bags.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Bags.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  No, no, and but take a look, he's like, other people are gonna puke, you're gonna go help them.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  So he's like, don't eat, everyone else is gonna eat.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  And then take these bags because like, these people are gonna, like, they don't know what to expect. Because it's a beak thing, because they're starting to eat. And like, it's gonna be like shaky.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  How bad, how bad was it?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  It was.

• 51:09Jocko Willink?

  I had visions in my mind of what this evacuation was gonna look like, this was not on my bingo card.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  And the reason I'm highlighting that, the reason why I'm highlighting that is.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Like.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  All our family, like, our family is mainly like all doctors.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Our father studied medicine, not because like it's cool, like he really likes, he really wants it. So like he's, he, like that's the, the type of preparation that he had, like he's, he has always the things that you need. So very quickly, like it was a shit show.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  And then you end up in Turkey?

• 51:54Speaker 01

  We, we go to Turkey, it was a very quick, right, like I, I, my recollection, it was like 10, 12 hours, like it was supposed to take like 18, but because it was going fast and like I remember like it was sunset, like very beautiful thing. And like it was as if we got disappointed, the three of us, that we didn't see any military

• 52:14Speaker 01

  ship. Because like we heard that the Americans that evacuated, like they got stopped by some sort of military.

• 52:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I can tell you those, those, your, your ship was a lot, it sounds like it was nicer and faster. The military ones might have seemed cooler, and I'm sure those Americans got good treatment, but you know. The, the Navy ships are no frills, there's no frills on a US Navy ship. That's a warship, like there's no, there's no, uh, what do you call it, cinema seating? There's no seated seats on a, on a US Navy ship, but it ain't happening. So I'm sure you, so you guys got it, you guys did alright.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not complaining.

• 52:49Jocko Willink?

  Other than, other than people puking everywhere, which sounds completely disgusting. Thankfully, your dad brought enough bags.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Like it was busy, just like literally like helping out throughout the thing. And then we get to Turkey. Uh, it was like very late.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  And there's like these big buses, like sports type team buses. And that's maybe something family related, but it's always like, there was like, hey, maybe there's three things here and like two others in the other one, but it's not here, like no. So culturally, and it happened multiple times during this trip. So we waited for, because like, like no, we're gonna all stay together or, so we waited for the last one, and we were literally maybe the la, the only people on this one. So like, we remember like we slept, like we took each.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  And then we get to this sports compound.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  And it, we grew up a lot like watching military movies. And for the first time, when I looked at this compound, it looked like something from a movie. Like it was like military beds. Like, small, like, next to each other.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Like, food in boxes. It was extremely organized. So like, the reaction was like, it's extremely organized. And like, because you had heard stories of other evacuation, it wasn't like this. Like, for us, it was like, hey, that's cool. So we just slept there. We just slept there. And then, we took a flight to Ireland. Same thing. There's two here, three there. Like, no.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Then we, like, they seated us, like, two. I think my father and Roger sat next to like the, the, the equipment of the, the plane. Like, they have special seats, so they gave them one of the special.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  Was this a military plane?

• 54:53Speaker 01

  No, it was like, it was the first time, it was Ryan Airways. Ryan, Ryan Airways.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  And then we land in Ireland. And that was the first time we see a military, a US military. In, uh, desert camouflage.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  And, and that was like, cool.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  And, and again, I'm, I'm highlighting that, and Richard maybe will comment.

• 55:22Jocko Willink?

  How this leads to, you know, AI software, we'll, we'll get to.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  How this leads, how this leads, I, I like, I'll, I'll give you our side. Is, we grew up with folks a lot on education. We grew up focused a lot on, like, principles that you need to, like, follow. And like, doing the right things in life. And, like, very hard work. And we grew up in this Middle Eastern environment where like, there was highly corrupt, etc. So it was always like, we, like, we're always into science, math, and so on, so like. And this thing also was some sort of like, our freedom. Like, no one can tell us, like, you can't build this thing.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  And at the same time, like you need to be extremely disciplined in doing things because like it's not gonna be handed. Like you have to go through things. So the military seemed like the organized thing for us.

• 56:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  So the relationship between technology and the military and also sports, because we did a lot of sports growing up.

• 56:26Jocko Willink?

  What sports did you do?

• 56:27Speaker 01

  We were not good at, we're not excellent at any sport, but we're good at like a lot. So like we did soccer, we did basketball, we did swimming, we did ping pong, snowboarding, like we were.

• 56:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  We were, we were always out, out there, but we were never, and we competed, but we never won. Like that, like, no, like we were, we were good, like we could hold our ground with the, like, the others did one sports. Us, we did all. Like, the only thing that we knew that we were very good at, that no one could beat us in, is like math and physics, like. Not really. Like, that was.

• 57:11Jocko Willink?

  You wanna run some equations, fool?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Like, like we had, like when we grew up, like, like our father say, like, you don't get a medal for like being number one in class. Like, that's the standard.

• 57:24Jocko Willink?

  There's no medals in ping pong.

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  Right, that's true, there is.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  That's, so, so that, that's like the sports, like these, like we were always out, out there, outside. But it was always like we were not excellent at it.

• 57:40Jocko Willink?

  So when you get to Canada and now you're, you're, do you go right into high school when you get to Canada? Were you like seventh grade, eighth grade, something like that?

• 57:49Speaker 01

  I'm not sure how it works in the US, but basically like we studied in French school in Lebanon. And in Canada, if we had to do the equivalent, like we would have, we would have lost a year.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  And our father said like, no, it's not gonna happen. So basically like. They fought a lot, like our father like looked into things and like he found like some equivalency between France and Canada and like he went to the school saying, hey, guys, that's a law from whatever thing you did and like my kids should be in this thing or they're not gonna be in school. Like, so like that, so he put us in a private school. We had to wear like even shoes from the school. Like that was, it was, and like Richard maybe can tell more of the story for it because Richard was like much more.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  No, but like definitely always like very like, like the environment very disciplined, like can't, you know, you know, uniform really, really strict, any, any kind of violation on the uniform, you know, penalties.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  It looked like Harry Potter.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  But, but yeah, like definitely the way like.

• 58:53Jocko Willink?

  My, my wife's from England and she like, when you look at school pictures of her, it looks, just looks like, like the whole thing, it literally looked just like Harry Potter. They're wearing uniforms, they're in big castles, like it's, that's the way it is. That's a, that's a European thing that I guess. It makes it over. There's some, there's some schools like that, like in New England and stuff in America, but I'm sure they have the same stuff in Canada where they kind of bring that system of. They call them actually public schools in England, but it's private schools and yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:18Jocko Willink?

  So that's where you guys were.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:19Jocko Willink?

  In Hogwarts. Hogwarts?

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Hogwarts?

• 59:22Jocko Willink?

  Hogwarts, yeah. You know the Harry Potter guy, Edward Charles?

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  But, yeah, like definitely like there, but like we, we, we definitely, you know, even, even though like back then we didn't really follow, we didn't understand like the purpose of that, that type of discipline, like we're more, more trying to violate it than, than try to follow it, but. But, but, but yeah, like quickly, like the, but maybe not, not to jump maybe too, too far, like, but to, to the point that you're saying, like, how did this lead to, to AI and also like how we, like, also like what ties into also how we connected with you as well as. Like we've, we like, uh, we're, we're, we're very competitive and uh, like we, we try to see like,

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  what are the places that show high intensity, show, you know, very hard work, uh, you know, push, push people really to, uh, to exceed, you know, what they're, what they're, you know, what they're capable of and uh, like very few places really were showing these examples and, and also like maybe we will share something on, on this, but like also like you would tend to see when you look at like some, some examples, whether it's like military or, or, or like sports or, or even in tech as well, like you don't know whether like people, should they like really, you know, show off their intensity and like their hard work and you know, how they're pushing? Or should this be like a hidden and you know, you're trying to, you know, uh, tone it down a bit

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  and then, you know, uh, not to, not like, maybe like the thinking about this is that you might alienate some people because there's some group of people that might still be interested in this intensity, but like you have to lure them into it as well. So, uh, we were like very rarely, we did find places like when, when we're listening to you and like the Navy SEAL, you know, uh, mentality and, and like on the tech side, very few also tech companies were showing kind of that intensity today. You see it very well with, you know, companies by Elon Musk that, you know, push the cutting edge of, you know, you know, hardcore engineering, uh, Jensen, uh, like on the, on the tech side as well, like not, like there's greatness in, in like talent

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  is, is there, like you can find talent even like in, in, in tech as well, you can find talent and you can extract talent from people, but we see ourselves that we have no chance to compete if the great ones are really working that intense and that hard. So though the two places that, that seem to converge on this were really like kind of the examples on, uh, on, on, on, on this on tech, but also like outside of it, like the, the military and, and, and your, what you're sharing and the Navy SEAL side, like how the mentality was there, uh, like that, this was really eye opening to see that, you know. It should, it should look this way. It should be like, it's not a hidden kind of mentality.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  It's, you know, uh, uh, it's, it's really, uh, like, uh, uh, it's kind of, there is an environment where, you know, people are being, you know, uh, expected to push very hard and, uh, to be very intense. So this is like how we, we tied kind of a bit, uh, you know, what we were looking for to, to, to build. And, uh, uh, like your perspective was, was massively, uh, you know.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  And at that age, probably we came across some of the Navy SEALs.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Information.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  So, and you're, and you're in high, you're in high school. What do they call it? Do they call it Canada high school? Do they call it that?

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Like in Canada, it was like, it was like secondaire.

• 1:02:55Jocko Willink?

  Secondary.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Secondary, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  So you're in there and are, are you planning to go to college when you get done? Is that the plan? I mean, this is your family so focused on academics.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the plan was always, hey, like you have to like, and since we're very young, like we're good in like physics, math. The plan was always like, we'll go into engineering.

• 1:03:14Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  It was never the plan that will go into med, because typically if the father is a doctor, like they push their kids to be doctors. Uh, our father identified very early on that like we're like, we're, we're very, actually we were better than the professors in biology. Because like he used to teach us these things, like, I'm not, not really like, we used to study like the, the, the cardiovascular system. Like, and we go to the exam, like just smoke it because like we knew more than these things.

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  Your dad just gave you the straight low down from an actual cardiac surgeon. Let me tell you about that aorta professor.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  And the professor was great and we went to the same school in Lebanon as our father. Like, so some of their professor, his professor were, but, uh, he identified very early on that we're very, like, it came naturally to us, math and physics. So he's like, let's double down on that. So like he introduced us to all these things. Uh, and he actually like, he would have, he actually discouraged us to apply to medicine even. He's like, don't, do not apply to medical school.

• 1:04:17Jocko Willink?

  Cause he thought you were just better in the, in the science, math.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he.

• 1:04:21Jocko Willink?

  Engineering world.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he's very. Much like because that's he did what he wanted to do. Like he's like if we force them to do anything like they won't do it.

• 1:04:33Jocko Willink?

  That's a good point.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  That's how he thinks and he's like, take a look at what's happening from a technology standpoint like that's the future. So he's like, anything that you would do that you're very good at, that's much better, but like, take a look, do all these other things. But like, it wasn't like acceptable for us not to be good in biology, but it was like, you're not going to become good doctors. So, and that's also on the intensity side is like, he also introduced us all these things also like, it's like if you want to do something great, like don't just have acid. So, and that's why like we gravitated toward like this intensity thing. And however, the seals and the technology side was very much identifiable for us because like,

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  you're a small unit and technology like you can have like one engineer build something like, but like, real estate was like massive, like you need like contractors, you need the land, you need, like for us, technology like,

• 1:05:32Jocko Willink?

  Financers, yeah.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  You see like a seal unit was like, hey, like these are like six guys. Technology like, hey, like you need one engineer, two engineers and like you're writing code and like you're shipping something.

• 1:05:42Jocko Willink?

  The barrier to entry is low.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  It's very low, right? So for us was always, we were looking like, we knew that we could do something great, but we, I can't picture myself with like 5,000 sales reps, but I can ship code, Richard could ship code and like we could get something out.

• 1:06:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  So that was the thing is, and like, no one can take that away.

• 1:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and the scalability of software is unmatched, right? It's just unmatched, like you make something, boom, it's out there and it can grow and it's scalable beyond anything else.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  You could, you could say the same thing, like for example, if someone like writes a book, but like, You don't like you need experience to write a book.

• 1:06:25Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Software you don't need like you don't need a degree to write software.

• 1:06:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  You see, or like drawing, like, like painting, like, it's not like you, you make a painting and you sell it for $10,000, right? Like, software is like a superpower. It's like you write software, it's not bad, no problem, I'm gonna reiterate on it. Like, it's like two more hours. And like, I give it to someone, he likes it.

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  Was there someone in the business world that made you see this clearly? Was it looking at Elon and PayPal or like what, was there anyone in particular?

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  So originally.

• 1:07:02Jocko Willink?

  Or a company in particular?

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Originally, the, it was, like, as it started, no. But then as we started building and like we started thinking like, Richard can comment on it, but like, YouTube came out, Facebook came out, right? And like, these things started to come out and you're like, these are just like two, three people. And like, they can build something, right?

• 1:07:26Jocko Willink?

  You're like, we can do this.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. It's, it's, and, and, and then you start like saying, okay, great, YouTube, then they are ex PayPal, right? So like, you start looking into PayPal, like, great, so, so Elon is doing this. Then, so the example were, hey, like, and this comes back always to the point, hey, like, let's be always very humble and like not be arrogant, but like, you're not stupid. So like, it was always something that, like, if you put your mind into it, like, you could achieve it.

• 1:07:54Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you guys go to college?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go?

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  McGill University.

• 1:07:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you guys went to McGill?

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, and you both applied there at the same time? Did you, did you guys end up in the same grade even though you're a year apart?

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:08:06Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're separated by a year, so you end up.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Roger, Roger Polytechnic.

• 1:08:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  And, but then you guys end up going to McGill.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Jocko Willink?

  And, and are you there thinking to yourself, what'd you get your degrees in?

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Electrical and computer science.

• 1:08:21Jocko Willink?

  Same, both of you? And are you there doing like 10% homework and 90% working on, on business?

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  We were always like, we always had great, good grades. Richard was much more like, among all three, like, Richard, if we wouldn't do it, like, Richard would do it by himself.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  That's the reality.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Honestly, like that.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't exist.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  But it was, it was always this. You have this superpower that you can do things, right? And you don't need a lot of money, no money. You just need time and then you can just iterate on things. And the idea behind it was that, like, anyway, we wouldn't like working for anyone else. Like, it's not like something that we would like aspire to do. And it's not, there's nothing wrong in it. It was just like not something that we would feel ourselves like inclined to do. So that was.

• 1:09:31Jocko Willink?

  So did you actually make any product that you sold while you were at McGill?

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Like, most of the time was really like, we, like, the, probably, like, we always like build some things on our, on our end, like just apps who just test with very like, not, nothing that gets released, that gets shipped. Uh, but like mainly, we try to build some algorithms, uh, like we.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  A lot of apps that didn't work, like that worked, but like it didn't.

• 1:10:00Jocko Willink?

  No one really wants it, or, you know, you made an app for yourself to make sure that you take your creatine in the afternoon or something like that, and you put time into it. Echo's on board with that. He would have liked that one. So that's what you're doing, kind of like almost playing around with it?

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, like just testing out, like seeing how much, you know, we would write some, some logic, some algorithm, like very random examples, like maybe a social app for, for students to be able to share content. But like, just testing as much as we can, just expanding, you know, seeing what kind of products can be built. Uh, but the, the thing that always came back to us that led us to, uh, you know, came back as, as a problem for us that was the root for what, what we, what we ended up coming up and building is while we're building anything, like a massive pain that we were always facing was that.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  It's really hard for a software engineer to really look out, like, look for code and then search for good code that you can find. Like, the search experience for, like, if you want to build anything, we would face it ourselves that we were trying to build something and then just trying to find that information was extremely painful, even though Google was there, there were like a lot of sources, GitHub is there. You have a lot of places that provide that.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Because a lot of the code is open source.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the ability for you to get good information quick and fast was very hard. And also, we're interested in Google's technology, like, search engine as well. So, we started trying to build out our own search engine that was specifically for code. So, we started indexing, you know, as much data as possible that is about code. And, like, this started a bit to shape the initial versions of the product that was more geared toward, like, the end user would have been, in this case, is the software engineer.

• 1:11:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a brilliant thing to think about if you're looking for ideas to do some kind of business. If you look for what is going to make your life easier, and what's cool is that you're looking externally, like, oh, what would make our life easier, external, but then you looked internal and said, wait a second, wouldn't it, wouldn't it make our life easier if this job that we're doing was easier?

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:12:11Jocko Willink?

  And so, you put together, the first thing you compared, kind of like a search engine for code.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  So, if I want a certain type of code, I can search, you know, and look for it, and it'll give me some kind of a rough draft, basically, of that code.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  And then, do you, did you just put that out into the world?

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, basically, like, we started, like, as we were iterating on it, like, that became something that's obvious for us, that, hey, like, that's something that, like, is really powerful.

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  And are you immediately using it to help you accelerate you making it and iterating on it? So, you've got something that's, like, your product is helping you produce?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Like, and during this time, we're just getting inspired by, like, companies and so on. And, like, you hear the story of, like, Netflix, how they came up with, like, the DVD. And, like, so, they say that, hey, like, they were afraid that, like, if they send the DVD, like, it would break. So, they just sent it, and, like, they received it, the DVD wasn't broken. So, for us, like, that was the test. For us was, hey, like, let's search for this code, do we get it? So, it was like these small things that were like, hey, like, You'd think it'd work, but like just go test and like it would eventually work, right? So it was for us, the idea like we, a lot of founders or a lot of people from outside of the tech

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  world think that founders just like draw up like master plans and they're like, I want to become a billionaire and now how can I reverse engineer it? I can't speak for everyone, but I can say for myself like or ourselves like we started building things for us.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  It's, it's very different.

• 1:13:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is something that I talk about when people talk to me about business. One of the things that I say is like when you're, when you're going to war, you don't come up with a master plan of I'm going to attack this point in the enemy's line. You don't do that because you don't know what the hell was in that point. What you do is you say, oh, here's the enemy's line. We're going to put out a bunch of reconnaissance. We're going to do a bunch of little reconnaissance and maybe little attacks and see if any of things starts to break through. When we find something that starts to break through, we go, oh, let's put some more resources behind that. We put some more resources, we get more information, we push a little bit further and eventually you break through the enemy line. But it's the same thing with business. You don't say, oh, well, the worst case scenario would be I want to be a billionaire. Let me reverse it. Cause even to say, oh, I want to make a new knife.

• 1:14:39Jocko Willink?

  And so you, you, you designed the whole knife and then you go out and you buy a factory and you, you know, spend millions of dollars buying steel for your knife. And guess what? There's like a knife that you thought was cool or that one person thought was cool was you and no one else really likes it. Whereas if you would have, you know, you started, you'd make a few of the knives and you, you know, you'd forge them yourself and you learn about it. And while you're forging it, you go, you know, it'd be a lot easier if I had a tool that could grab the knife like that. Oh, why don't I make that tool? And all of a sudden you, oh, let's say, oh, well, actually a lot of people like different kinds of knives, but they need a tool to make the knife and boom, here you go. That's kind of like what you guys did, but I always recommend that with people. Don't over index on your first idea because your first idea, generally speaking, is not going to, you know, usually is not going to land.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  And really, when you look at a lot of these companies that grow up, you know, they didn't start, what they started.

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Where they started and where they thought they were going, they end up going somewhere else. Yep. And even, you know, even with Black Box, you know, it started as a search engine and now it's become, you know, AI. Yep. But, you know, if you would have said, no, no, no, search is the way we, we started a search company. You know, you would have been dead in the water years ago, but keeping an open mind and saying, oh, wait a second. Well, how can we iterate on this? What, what's our next move going to be? How can we adjust from here? What is the demand signal that we're seeing? And, and that you need to keep those things in mind when you're going into business, not, hey, here's my long-term vision and I want it to follow this exact route. And I know I'm brilliant enough to foresee the future. And so I, that's what I'm going with. Don't do that. Definitely.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And at the same time,

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  and again, speaking for ourselves, if that's what you would be doing for like 50 years, even if you don't get paid.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  So it's not like we're doing it for the money. Like that's what we want to do.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  And we put all the efforts for it to succeed. What like, but I'm, I'm talking more about the seed of, and the beginning of something, right? Like if you have the right, the wrong intentions, it's extremely challenging.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. There's many things that will knock you off course if you're, if you're doing this for the wrong reasons. Yeah. That's the same thing in basic SEAL training. Yeah. Okay. Everyone want, everyone that shows up there wants to be a SEAL, but if you want to be a SEAL for the wrong reasons, the first thing, opportunity you get, it gets cold, you're going to quit. And it's the same thing in business. Business is grueling. You're, it's 24 hour days. You know, you're the only person that's going to get the call when something goes wrong. You have to have the answers. It's your, you're sacrificing like you don't get to buy the things that you want at all. Because all your money is going back into the business because you love it. And if you don't love it, you go, you know what? I, I would put more money in the back in the business, but I really think that that new Cadillac is looking good. So I think I'm going to not reinvest and get the new Cadillac.

• 1:17:30Jocko Willink?

  And then you look up and guess what? You, you needed that money and now you're behind and now your competitor didn't buy the Cadillac. They bought the nineteen ninety seven Dodge Grand Caravan and they put all their money back in the business and now they beat you. So yeah, if you're not, if you're in it for the wrong reasons and your intent is wrong, you're gonna be, there's, there's a lot of, a lot of bad things that can happen.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And the good thing in technology is the information access is very, like you have access to information. So like, you could confirm if what you're doing is right. So like, hey, like, it's very hard for other disciplines to confirm that, right? Like, as if you're an accountant, like, ma- again, I'm not an accountant, but what I'm saying is like, it may be very hard for you to like, compare and contrast with other people saying, hey, within technology, like, people are extremely accessible. So you can email someone saying, hey, like, what do you think about that? And like, they would respond very quickly. The fact that open code is pretty much open source, like, you get thousands of people that can help you around the world.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  And say, hey, that's wrong, that's good, that's et cetera. So the community that's building software is very much a collaborative community. And also, while it may not look like that from the outside, but the really good and great people have the same intensity that you would see in the, in the military, or that you would see in the elite sports player. Uh, or anyone that's great, right? Like the great surgeons, they have all the same intensity.

• 1:19:02Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you name the product Black Box? And where'd that name come from?

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, like, I, I think, like, like, there was a few sources that definitely influenced this. A lot of it is like, uh, part of the, the intensity that we try to, you know, like, have a name that would, would try to represent this as much as possible. The name Black Box seems to be, you know, to show, to represent this, like, a bit more to be a hardcore kind of, uh, environment hardcore kind of culture. Definitely the, like, there is also a tech, tech aspect to it, like, if you were to, uh, if we look closer into the AI space. Even the the most advanced scientist, there's quotes from you can find all the way from the CEO of Google

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  to every single scientist that's very, very deeply advanced in AI. With all the knowledge that is available still until this day, the behavior that is happening within AI is still very much a black box.

• 1:20:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you heard the AI getting hostile with me at the beginning of this podcast, right? That's wild, right? Like, that's a thinking thing. That's telling me, hey, listen, I'm not here to recite your little your little games. What did you have a question for me or not? It's kind of wild.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and and it's it's like it's a bit strange to the previous way of of of building software that previously you were very deterministic and the the design of a software was always you write it one way and you expect it to behave always that the same way that you wrote it initially. The way this is now happening, there's still also around AI ways to control it, to give it guardrails, to let it like no, not go off guard and like not say think, not go into things that you would would we would not want it to go into, but even with those, like those that would know how to even, you know, jailbreak or, you know, all like you can still find, so you're never, you know, fully controlling it. You can control to the to the extent that you would want.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  But the by the way it's being trained, you can you can have more confidence in it and you can say I'm going to be deterministic in, you know, ninety nine percent of cases. The the the massive value unlock that this is doing is that even though you still have this randomness that can occur, the value that you're getting by with the remaining

• 1:21:27Jocko Willink?

  Completely outweighs it.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:29Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of randomness and you can correct for the randomness really quickly.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 1:21:32Jocko Willink?

  And I've done that with you guys where I was using voice to make an application.

• 1:21:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:21:37Jocko Willink?

  And it would just, I would just iterate, oh, yeah, I'd actually use a different color and it simply can just, it can correct those problems or and so that's it's just works so much faster.

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:47Jocko Willink?

  That it's you can make, it's okay that it makes those mistakes because you can just correct them.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. And and briefly on on this point is that one one interviewer was asking the CEO of of Google saying like, how could you even let this in the wild if you know that this is like something that's like undetermined and it's a black box and like you don't even know, you know, what you built? How could you even let this thing in the wild? He said, there's, I don't know how many billions of humans in the wild and also.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  We still don't understand until this moment how the human brain works.

• 1:22:16Jocko Willink?

  That's true.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  And if you see like in comparison, like now you have in San Francisco cars that are riding Waymos without a driver. And still, this is still powered by AI and still there might be some randomness. But the percentage is still safer than a human being.

• 1:22:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, there's no doubt about that. No doubt about that. So as the, when you guys, how far along were you? How long did it take before you saw that this thing had traction? Like, how many months or years was this thing alive before you said, oh, we got something real here?

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  So basically, like, it was constant iteration, like, one thing in software, like, any traction, you'd feel like it's traction, right? Like, if you give it to the first user and look, hey, that's great, like, that's for you is a good thing, right? So like, however, the moment where everything took off really strongly was on September 1st, 2022. So that was two months before ChatGPT. If we just go back a few months before, so actually, how we met with Jocko here is actually it was on August 5th or 6th. And we met him here in San Diego and we showed you the first version of what would eventually become today Black Box.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  So we had a few meetings here in San Diego.

• 1:23:41Jocko Willink?

  I gave them the clutch piece of information that they needed.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  And basically, every, on August 2022, you had started Def Reset. So we read a lot of books compared to our, like, not compared to Jocko, but like.

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  And most of the books that we read are either technology or military books. So like, we would shuffle. And then part of the Def Reset was to post and like every day like that you worked out, etc. And then I had posted my. Kindle screenshot and it had uh maybe like some Navy SEAL books. It has Hex and Grace's uh book, Breathe. It had Extreme Ownership, it had probably like Lone Survivor or like these. If because on Kindle, if you open something recently, like it would pop up. And it had some tech books and uh Jocko writes legit.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  This is on Twitter.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Jocko writes legit.

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  And then we we we comment back and then until this day, it's the pinned comment on me and Richard's uh Twitter. It's like uh trying to follow your leadership and still a long way to go. And then we had a meeting in San Diego and also like if someone wants to find us, Richard, me and Roger, it's very easy, like you'd go to our office, like you will find us any day. So we're like, hey, like Jocko is much more disciplined. So like he should definitely be at the gym, like there is no doubt that he is at the gym. It's extremely predictable, like. Yeah. And even at some point, our father told us, hey, like you're so predictable, but like maybe like because like we we used to wake up and run at four thirty. He's like, change your routes.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  Like if someone just monitors your pay, like just change your routes sometimes. So like we come to the gym, me and Richard, it was Saturday. It was like extremely hot here. And we go to the Victory MMA entrance and we're like, can we meet Jocko? It's not like, is Jocko here? Oh, yeah, it's just, it's a known. And the tale that I had, there were two ladies at the reception and maybe like someone else, but like I recall looking at. So one of them looks at the other, so now I know he's here. But she needs like confirmation, like who's these guys? And then the other one says, Jocko is not here.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  We're like, not like, we're like, not like hostile or anything, like, we're just passing by.

• 1:26:27Jocko Willink?

  We're not here to kill him.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  So like, if he happens to be here, like, if we can, and that's part of how we try to do things is like, we always know that we, no one's gonna help. And like, you have to do the things that you wanna do yourself, like, right? Like, that's also part of it.

• 1:26:46Jocko Willink?

  Yep. A good default setting is no one's gonna help. Yep, that's a good one.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  So, so then, two times she says no. And then Richard and me retreat and we go to the, to the left, and there's like, maybe, like, somewhere where we're sitting. And we're like, he's gonna go out. Like, he's working out half an hour, an hour. And like, we have time to kill. Like, we had finished our meeting.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  We wait maybe for like, half an hour, forty-five minutes, and then we open the laptop, we're gonna send you a message saying, hey, like, we tried to pass by, we didn't find you. And then Richard says, no, no, let's wait. And then, like, just one minute later, you see Jocko in a white t-shirt, hat, and like, sunglasses.

• 1:27:31Jocko Willink?

  We done training that day.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  And then, also, we had heard, also, because I think we heard all your podcasts, or most of them while we work out, we heard that, one, you drive a caravan. Like, you say, like, like, that's what we heard. And then he says that he doesn't park in the parking lot of Victory MMA, he parks across the street so that customers can have access. So like...

• 1:27:53Jocko Willink?

  Dang dude, this dude profiled the hell out of him, right?

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  So that, those, so we're like, I don't see a caravan here in the parking. But maybe the other side, so like, we just go other side, there's a restaurant, there's, so like, and like, we're just having fun with it, like, it's like, some sort of our, like, operation. But then we don't see a caravan.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  We were curious also to pass by, like, like, also inspired by, by the sales wanted to pass by, like, see if there's like, any, you know, close to the Coronado. So, like, we're thinking also to have, have a quick look there, but, but yeah, like, end up...

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  And then we, Jocko comes out, we just go to him and say, hey, like, big, like, we, we always have big respect for you and like, what you've done, and like... He's like, what's happening with you? Like, that's what we're building. And then Richard says, like, can we show you what we're doing? And Jocko looks for like a split second and then says, follow me.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  And that's, so we showed him actually, not here, but in the main studio, the first. And probably, and for us, that's what we encourage people to do. And like, by no mean, we're here teaching anyone, but like,

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  we were extremely scrappy. It was a version that we were using.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  But like, we're extremely proud of it. We're like, that's powerful. And like, we could see where it would go. Like, that's the moment where we saw the inflection point. In saying, hey, like, that will transform something.

• 1:29:30Jocko Willink?

  And so how many, how many users did you have at that point?

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  Probably like, like, few thousands, like, but we launched September 1st, 2022, and our apartment San Francisco-

• 1:29:44Jocko Willink?

  So like a couple of weeks later?

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And our apartment in San Francisco used to be across the street from GitHub. GitHub is a Microsoft-owned company, like, they acquired them.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  It's like the coding division of Microsoft?

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  It's a coding division of Microsoft. And we used to be, live across the street from them.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  It's not planned and nothing like, but then when we released this version publicly-

• 1:30:04Jocko Willink?

  But you'd wake up in the morning going, where are you working?

• 1:30:08Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  We launched about like, after midnight. And since then, like, things took off like fire. Richard can comment more on that, but like, that was the inflection point of what happened.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  Like, quick signals, like, we always like, try to, you know, engage with great engineers that we, we look up to, that built startups or, or like, were, were engineers at, at great companies. And we started getting awesome feedback, like, one of the definitely early engineers that, like, there's a few of them that are really great, but one of them is, his name is George Herick. He was employee number seven at Google, close with, very close with the founders of Google. And he, he was very essential in Google's growth. He recruited the next 500 engineers, built the Google Ads, uh, ad system, which is powering, uh, which is basically a lot of the, uh, engine on, on, on Google there in terms of like advertisement.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

  And his take, he's deep in AI and he's now building his own company, AI, uh, like a machine, uh, like an AI, uh, you know, lab. At a big scale, but his take was very valuable to us. And his early feedback when we were building the search engine for code was extremely useful and powerful. And he ended up joining as an investor, but we always wanted to not really look for investors for the sake of getting investors on board. We were always much more interested in getting their perspective as engineers, getting like their take on it, where this like their their perspective on how we can build this would would be really valuable. And actually, he gave us some very critical advice from the very beginning

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  that that is still still useful to us.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Again, and no one, some people grew up like, like we said at McGill, which is a great university. Like I, it's the number one university in Canada, but people that study maybe at Stanford, they have access to their professors, their friends working at startups. Like, we didn't have this access. But we never also got people that just like, that didn't want to help when we reach out. And it's not like we needed their help because like it's more. And the reason I'm using the word help, like, like you, you, you, you studied English and you're like authored several books, so like words have meaning and like I'm intentionally using the word help because like these people could just not never respond. And like you, you, you helped us, like you could just say, hey, no, I'm busy.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna go, right? So, but it wasn't help in a way, hey, like these people are miserable. I'm gonna help them like it's more, hey, like I have this massive knowledge and I see something here. And I think I can give them in like half an hour, something that can 10x whatever they're doing instead of them wasting like half a year on something, right? So like when we spoke with George, also same thing, George was one of the first people who like we emailed him without knowing him. George was employee number seven at Google, invented Google AdSense, which is like printing money machine for Google.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  And then he built another company called IMO, which is a messaging app, which scaled it to a billion users.

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  It was second to WhatsApp at the competition.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  And then now he's the co-founder of an AI lab. They just closed a $460 million round at 4.6 billion. George really helped in a sense where he's like, guys, these are the two things that matters for your company. And we knew them, it was just a confirmation.

• 1:33:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, confirmation of what you're doing.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  That hey, like, that's a confirmation. And then, so Google was a big inspiration for us. The interesting thing for Google was, uh, Google was the 50th search engine, or whatever. And actually, at some point, uh, at some point, there's a legendary investor called Vinod Khosla. Vinod Khosla was on the board and an investor in other search engines. Was it Excite? Yeah, yeah. And he wanted Excite to acquire Google. So like, they saw what Google was doing. And Excite, so Google's founder were willing to sell for a million dollars. And Excite said, like, I'm not sure, like, if it's worth 250K.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  And like, so the story in technology is, you need to build, like, there's a saying, like, from Y Combinator that says, like, build something people want. Like, that's what matters.

• 1:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Like, it's very hard, it's...

• 1:34:44Jocko Willink?

  I've had that conversation with so many, uh, so many businesses over the years. Especially because people will, you know, again, I'll go with the knife thing, because I'm a whole new one, you know, people, people will go from like, hey, I'm, you're gonna build a knife? And then all of a sudden, they're building like, a custom sheath, and then a belt that goes with the sheath, and then a, then a, a pair of pants that go with the sheath, and then the boots that go with the sheath, and then, and then, and, and you end up doing something you're not, you weren't supposed to do. And it's like, hey, bro, you, you're supposed to build a knife. That's what people want from you. They expect you to build a knife, build a knife. You know, you're over here making this totally different product.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:17Jocko Willink?

  And again, that's, that's a little bit counter to what I said earlier of like, oh, if you build a knife, but no one really wants it. Well, yes, you have to build things that people actually want. And if they don't want them, you know, it's the same thing with, like, making supplements and making food. Taste wins. Like, you have to, it has to taste good. If it tastes like crap, people... Aren't going to continue to use it. It has to taste good. You have to make stuff to taste good. You gotta make stuff that people want. So that's really incredible advice.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  And if you build something that you want, then at least like you're the first user, right? And then you ship it to someone else. You're like, hey, what do you think? And then they're iterate on it. And then like, software is a living, AI feels like, like more like something that's super powerful. But the beauty of software is like, software, if you don't ship every day, like software decays. Like, you need to constantly be iterating. So I may think it's cool. I share it to Richard. Richard would say, hey, that's cool. But what if this? And then you're like, great, that's a great idea. Then it takes like just half an hour. And then you ship it and Richard says, great, I'm gonna share it with my friends. So, the idea behind when we talked with George, or like other people was, hey, like,

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  I don't think money is the problem with us. I think what we need is to surround ourselves by people that would give us great advice. That's why we cared a lot about working with Jocko early on. Because we knew that the mindset and the culture matters. And that's when everything will fail, the thing that would keep it going is the culture. So like, that's what we always focused on. And

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  that's what drove us to this point. Then like, we started surrounding ourselves with people that have deep insight in technology. So like, what Google did was really amazing for us. So like, and we're like, so what George told us is like, hey, like, you have Google Maps, but Google Maps acquired Waze. Waze was much smaller maybe, but they had ton of data. And users were engaged. So like, if you're able to have this, because you're gonna always have competition. But what Google does with Google Maps, Waze can do it differently. And you saw that with, like, also like, for us, like, Google's intensity was like something that, like, that we respected a lot. And the way that not only they built Google, but they, like,

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  they had this 20% rule where like, they had to ship, like, they give Everyone on the team like they're able to to build new products and that's how Gmail came up. That's how Drive came out. That's how Google Maps, etc. So the freedom of building things. And the other company that, so we were always inspired by companies that went through like not a straightforward route. And that had massive impact on the world. The other company that for us looked something that we respected a lot was WhatsApp. And WhatsApp was a team of thirty engineers that scaled to hundreds of millions of users. What in a very competitive market. So for us also like it's very identifiable in saying, hey, like

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  thirty people seems something that.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And there's all kinds of messaging apps out there. So it's a very competitive space. But like, oh, if you're doing the right things, you're you can out you get inside the Oodle loop of everyone else. Right. Here you go.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what we really looked up to these companies like WhatsApp is another company. We looked up to like all the great companies that how they built. And you see that there's level of intensity and focus that they bring. And the culture is what brings these people together. But and and and at the end, if you're building something people want and you're making the right things, even if you make mistakes, but in software, it's different than like in other businesses where like if you make a mistake, you can iterate on it and then you can release it. You have a path to building something that is a growing business. And if you're if you keep pushing through it and if you go through all the hardships of doing it.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  If you enjoy doing it.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Like in our mind, there's no way we lose. That that it's not like a fake thing like that's how we really believe. And it's not because we're doing it for the wrong reasons, like we're doing it for the right reasons. And we're very fortunate to be doing what we're doing. But the early days were just pure belief, like there is there is literally nothing. But it's not like belief and.

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  You guys convinced me.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not like, and it wasn't cool to work on AI like in, in September, October, September, November, like, like, like we looked like the weird people. So it was like, but it was something where we knew that this thing, if we do the right things, we could keep growing it. So Richard can talk more about it, but like, that's the, I'm always coming back to the analogy between why the seals, why technology, like these were two things that for us, like the technology is something that we really are very good at and that we knew that we could do ourselves, which gave us superpower. But the common denominator for it is like, it won't be easy. And we never fought wars. So it's not like, there's

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  not this, it's not the same level of difficulty of saying like, hey, like we're, we're deploying overseas, but you're competing with major companies that have trillions of dollars of market cap. So that's a different type of like, physically, our job is not tiring, but you have to make the right moves and position the company so that you're providing value to customers because like, there's hundreds of thousands of, and millions of people writing code every day. Like why your product would be the product that they would pick?

• 1:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And the iterative decision making, which I wrote about, leadership strategy and tactics, Phil Manuel, that's, you know, this is just a, another version of that. Like what iterating on software very quickly. And this is such a great, it's, it's the exact, it's almost the exact same thing, right? If I'm, need to make a decision, I don't try and figure out the entire plan from A to Z and execute this plan because it's going to take me so long to make that plan perfect. And by the way, how am I counting for contingencies and things that I didn't expect to happen? And so what you do is you make, you make, you take a step and you go, okay, we took a step. Now we'll look around, what are we getting back? Was this a good step? Should we lean a little more to the left, a little bit more to the right? Okay, a little bit more left. Cool. We'll do that. Take another little step. And that's what, you know, that's what the, the software properly does. And

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  that's why it's such a good reflection of the effectiveness of both those, you know, the iterative decision making process, making small steps very quickly, and then listening to the feedback that you get and then making changes. That's, that's

• 1:42:09Jocko Willink?

  You move forward and it's the same thing with, you know, releasing stuff even with the, with the Ask Jocko AI, you know, I got a lot of like, well, you know, I don't know if it's gonna be ready. It's like, well, let's launch something. Let's, let's get it out there and we'll get feedback and some people will say, oh, this is terrible because of this. Well, okay, thank you. Thank you for telling me it's terrible because that or it told me this. Okay. Well, thank you. We can make adjustments to it. You know, the, the, some of the earlier versions, you know, I bet, hey, this is, I don't like this. You guys cool. We'll, we'll change it. No big deal. Boom. Try it now. Boom. Okay. Now it's changed. Like it's very cool. And that's how you, that's how you, um, that's how you make things happen. It is also something that you have to do with a high level of humility because if I make an iterative step and it's wrong and I can't say, well, no, actually Echo, I know we need to keep going in this direction instead of saying, you know, Echo, thanks for that feedback.

• 1:42:55Jocko Willink?

  I, I think you're right. You're not going to be able to do this. And so when you put a piece of software out there and the feedback you get is what kind of interface is this? That looks stupid. And you go, no, it doesn't. We, we really like it. Nope. Like wrong answer. The answer is, okay. Well, what don't you like about it? And that humility has to go hand in hand with anything that you're putting out to the world. Cause there's no chance that everyone's going to like it. There's no chance, you know, it's just not going to happen. So you can, you, you gotta have an open mind and be humble enough to say, okay, cool. What can I do better?

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. No, definitely. And, and we see this, as you said, you mentioned earlier, like we definitely see this play out in, in great product evolution where it's not the initial design, the initial version that someone envisioned and this ended up playing out. The, like, we can really barely point to exceptions to that where I think that it's really very much off the chart, but I'm the, I guarantee there's still iterative decision-making in that as well. But like few companies that we think like the, the only exceptions we think really got to that with like almost like their initial vision ended up playing out was maybe Tesla and SpaceX where like they really just wanted to build the car and, and the, and the rocket and like you're going there with this direction.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  But like even on PayPal, which is Elon Musk's earlier, earlier company, the version that PayPal ended up being was the really not the initial version of. PayPal, the initial version PayPal was, it was firing up on a Palm device.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  On a Palm device.

• 1:44:24Speaker 02

  And like it was for wiring money on a Palm device. And then what ended up being what scaled a lot. They were starting to get like, I don't know, like maybe a million customer very quickly. Is people just wanted to send money by email. So they would, that was the feature that really wanted to be served to users. And this was the catalyst for, for like, made the company really grow from revenue standpoint and end up in the version of the product that is in. So definitely like, like on the, on the iterative part, to point on this, how like, we, we got on our side, like the, the product evolved is that from, from those feedbacks, maybe Robert, like if you want to share on like, like the inputs that we're getting from, from, like from the coding space.

• 1:45:09Speaker 02

  And also like getting the advice from, like, we were trying to see how we could get more influence from the WhatsApp culture. And we can share maybe a bit more on.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Like for us, the important thing for us was, we always wanted to

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  remove as much fat as possible from the company. So that like, we don't get tricked in saying, hey, like we have like now a go to market team. So for us was, actually it was a bit maybe too aggressive. Like 2022 until like mid 2023, maybe there like were like four or five people.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I don't know if you guys remember this, but like some of the board meetings that we had.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:45:50Jocko Willink?

  Was me saying like, okay, you need to, you need to bring on like a person to do this and maybe one more person to do this. And it was, which is, and I'll tell you what, if I'm saying that, because I'm scrappy too, like I'd ever, you can ask Leif, you can ask anybody that, any of my companies, like I don't like to hire people. And because I always feel like, oh, you hire somebody like that's your responsibility now. And so it's a huge investment and it's hard to go, it's hard to step back from, right? So we'll do our best to hire people as 1099. So at the beginning, there's, there's ways to try and iterate that decision as well. But when I'm telling you guys, no, you need to hire people. That is a definite sign that you need to hire people. And, and you definitely did, and you did. And so that was one of those things that helped move you guys forward.

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And for us, as we started seeing that things are picking up really well. Like every day you wake up like, hey, is it like, because September 1st, when we launched, like we got like a few thousand users on this first day. We're like.

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then by the end of 2022, it was a million users.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:51Jocko Willink?

  And that, so I remember you guys giving me the update, you guys shoot me an email like, "Hey, you know, just to let you know, we're up to a million users." And I'm like, dang dude, there was like 2,800 when you guys showed up to the gym.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  And, and.

• 1:47:04Jocko Willink?

  Nicely done.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  And, and tha- that's the thing is like, you're like, there's a million users. And like, that's like, you start thinking about it, you're like, maybe like, like, the first time we crossed like 20,000 users, like, which was maybe a few days after, or like, we're like basketball fans, we're like, that's the Chase Center.

• 1:47:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  And like, compound that, just fast forward today, today, just yesterday, today, Black Box as a whole crossed more than 40 million registered users. Yesterday only, we added 120,000 new users.

• 1:47:41Jocko Willink?

  Yesterday.

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  On per second.

• 1:47:42Jocko Willink?

  And every day, day after day, yeah.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  That's 1.5 new user every second. And like, that's literally every second, there's a user and a half, and.

• 1:47:52Speaker 02

  And on a scaling comparison, maybe like the coding version from OpenAI, they have a coding version as well that's served from OpenAI. It's about 5X.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  We're about 5X their scale of, of growth. Like, all of Anthropic is adding about a million users a day. That's, that's for all, all, for all purposes. So for us, for code only, we're like 120,000. So that's, and like, we skipped three years in between, but we're just like, zooming in here and saying, hey, like, that's where we started, and that's where things are today. And meanwhile, we did a ton of mistakes, eh, no mistake that is fatal. Like, Joko has a saying, like, "Other than death, all failure is psychological."

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  Like, looking from the outside of like how the company grew, and like, you've seen it also, like, Peter Thiel, when he talks about like, at some point, like, Facebook was growing fast, but like, he didn't reinvest. He's like, because like, I was still seeing them, like, it was still the same team, like, nothing substantially changed. So like, why do I have to like 2X devaluation or 3X evalu- like, so we felt this for a long time, like, numbers were growing, but like, the company didn't change, and.

• 1:49:15Speaker 01

  The primary thing for us was like an intense focus for us in saying, hey, like, let's stay true to what matters. And what matters is, are we growing our user base? Are we making the right decisions? Are we still using our products? How is the market evolving? And what are the next two, three moves that we need to make so that we can adjust? And so for us, it was very important for us to always like not have fat in the company. And until this moment, the company has zero people working on go to market. Like, it's all bottoms up growth. We're only engineers.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  The like, and everything like some that...

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  I wouldn't recommend this for everyone. But that's how we see the world. And now we are going to be extremely hard and extremely focused on building go to market functions. But we brought the company to cross 40 million users. Revenue is growing at extremely fast pace.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  We have a great team of engineers. And meanwhile, like throughout, like we raised three rounds of funding from like the most intense engineers, the smartest investors. So like the founder of WhatsApp is a main investor that invested three times. Xavier Niell, which is the founder of the equivalent of an AT&amp;T, but in France, and built his company from the ground up to a 20, 30 billion dollar company is an investor. He's on the board of KKR, the private equity fund. George, which is extremely valuable. SV Angel, which was the first check into Google. So they still recall the first time they met the Google founders, so SV Angel.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  And all of them have been extremely helpful and they influenced how we shaped the company. So like, we're building a team for engineers. We're backed by the most intense and smart engineers. And like today, Black Box is used by some of the most advanced technology companies in the world. And all of that is not something that we drop on a whiteboard. Like, that's...

• 1:51:38Speaker 01

  And that, and it still feels like we are behind. Like, that's the feeling every day, is we need to do ten times more. So that's, uh, but that's what we like. Like, we came across a video from, it's not related to tech, but like Jerry Seinfeld. And he's like, if I have to like eat like peanut butter and like bread every day, like that's what I would, I would just do comedy, but just. And like, there's a video and like, I'll, I'll send it to you after, like, he, he's meeting with a stand-up comedian in a comedy show in New York. And the guy is like, all my friends are moving up. He's like, explain to me this.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  He's like, they're in consulting, they're in banking. And Jerry Seinfeld is like, uh, like, that's disgusting. And he's like, my girlfriend like wants me to change. He's like, let me tell you a story. He's like, there's a band that was supposed to go play in concert. And like, the plane couldn't land, or like, like there was a snowstorm, so they landed somewhere else. And like, they have to drag their instruments. So like, they're walking through the snow, they're like the slush, et cetera, and like their instruments. And they see a house with like, a window, so that they, they get close and they see like a chimney, a well-dressed table, turkey, et cetera. And like, they look to each other and they're like, how boring.

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  So if, if you, like, building startups is not for everyone. But if that's something that you're passionate about, uh, there is a lot of value creation that you can do to help other people. Like, to provide services to the world. And it happens to be the most important industry in the world, which has.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  Anyone can build soft, like you need to be an excellent engineer, but what I'm saying like any engineer that's at Google today can build a company. They just decide not to do it. And you have to be extremely lucky. You have to get the support from a lot of people.

• 1:53:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  But technically, like anyone who has the technical capabilities and like build something that people want has the ability to do. If everything aligns, you have to be extremely lucky. And that's what we're also cognizant about.

• 1:54:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed. So, you know, forty million users right now, awesome growth, everything looking great. Let's talk about AI kind of broadly as a subject, since you guys are experts in AI. Is that a strong word? I mean, I can't think of too many people that would know more than you would know about, you know, AI. There's, you know, obviously there's other experts out there, but you guys are certainly, let me, let me, let me rephrase it. You guys are certainly more experts than Echo and me.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  We, we definitely like try to, like, we definitely like spend every single minute for, for as long as we've been working on Black Box, you know, focusing on, on AI and how, how it can be impactful, like economically for users, for customers, how it can, especially like the, the end users are, are software engineers. But every single day, we're, we're really trying to push it to perform better. So, yeah, like.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  I wouldn't use the term expert, but I would use, just like there's maybe like a few thousand Navy SEALs in the world, there's maybe a thousand people working on AI.

• 1:55:12Jocko Willink?

  As hardcore as you guys are.

• 1:55:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and, and there's, there's broadly AI and also there's a field which is agentic AI. And agentic AI is even, is even unlocking much more value than AI broadly itself. The reason is for AI in general has been very much known to be a question answering.

• 1:55:32Speaker 01

  A generative AI.

• 1:55:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, generative AI. So you would ask it about a recipe and it would tell you more about it. A genetic AI is a big economic unlock for users is it is getting as close. The way more example is maybe a very good one because it's literally getting as close as the same actions that a human is taking. It's taking it itself and it's taking it not only for low level. A work that a human is doing. It's taking it to very advanced, very high, complicated work that humans are doing. And we're seeing it a big impact on on software itself is it is competing intensely with very advanced software engineers today.

• 1:56:17Speaker 02

  So giving the agent a task is becoming extremely competitive with giving it to a very advanced software engineer. So that also is a field that is very specific, very few companies are are making, you know, serious efforts in it. And we've been doing this for like for as like in the past two years, this has been really the the only the primary product that's been been being developed.

• 1:56:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's wild. Like I said, if I don't know how how many months ago it was, but you guys came down. We had a, you know, we had our board meeting and we but then the real deal was you guys. All right, you guys broke out that it was kind of the the the initial voice to programming.

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:02Jocko Willink?

  Happening. And so here am I, a total knuckle dragger with no computer experience whatsoever. And I was able to speak to, you know, Black Box in English and have it do work for me and build an app real time as we're sitting here. Make adjustments, change it. And it was, I remember when I was doing it.

• 1:57:24Jocko Willink?

  Honestly, it was it was it kind of freaked me out a little bit. And I don't look, I'm not trying to be dramatic or whatever. But when you're sitting there and you're telling it to do something. And I remember, you know, I I told it to do something and it asked me a question about what I told it. And I looked at you, I said, why is it already asked me a question? You said, because it started programming while you were giving it its first. And I said, oh, that's insane. Like, that's insane. You know, you, I was, I said, hey, I want you to build a, you know, I want you to build an app that does blah, blah, blah. And it, and it, as it's, it asked me a question, you know, when you think of the home screen, do you? And I was like, wait a second, how, I said, how does it, how's it ask me that question? You said it already started while you started talking to it, it started. Yep. Coding.

• 1:58:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep. That was, it was, it was amazing, but it was very strange. And I think that's one of the things, you know, when I think about black box. There's a little bit of a, um, there's a bridge that I got in my head that I went over, which is, you know, it's a coding, it's primarily for coding, right? But the thing is, when you think about what that means, that means you as a person can tell this thing to do whatever you want it to do. Yep. That, that, it's going to code it, but you don't have to know that. Yeah. You don't have to know that. Yep. You can tell it to do things, you can use it for absolutely anything. Yep. Because it's going to take your English and turn it into, you know, code that's going to do what you want it to do.

• 1:58:54Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you know, like Leif uses it for like, hey, where should we go for sushi tonight? I don't know how Black Box knows all that, but it knows all that stuff. Like it gives you the recommendations. It'll tell you what to do. Yep. And so it's, it's, it's definitely when I was doing that verbal programming it, it definitely, if I felt like literally, hey, this is, this is,

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  this is like a, a, a, a small step for man, but like a giant step for mankind. And I mean that sincerely. It is to see, oh yeah. And then, you know, the, the, you guys were showing me the earliest of the video stuff. And I'm like, um, show a seal doing close quarters combat in an urban area. A video. Yep. And like, it says, okay. And boom, here it was, a seal video doing close quarters combat. And by the way, this isn't, this isn't what Black Box was made for, but it's doing. Yep. What I told it to do. Yep. It's absolutely phenomenal. But I do think, you know, and I'm sure that there's other companies that have had those moments.

• 1:59:54Jocko Willink?

  But for me, a knuckle dragger, that was a small step for man and a massive, massive leap for mankind. Because all of a sudden I had this, this power, right? This incredible power beyond comprehension, beyond, beyond comprehension. Because to say, Hey, you know, immediately echo right now, I'm gonna give you the power to create, you know, art or create film or create images or create, you know, uh, um, agents that are gonna go out and do things like that is an incredible amount of power. It's it's mind boggling. So that's kind of when, when, when people think about AI right now,

• 2:00:36Jocko Willink?

  and I saw like a list of jobs, right? Everyone's worried about jobs, what jobs are gonna disappear? And you know, it's the, the scripts have flipped, you know, when I was growing up, it's like, oh, go be a doctor, go be a lawyer, you know, go do, become an accountant, do those kind of jobs because uh, that's where the money is and that's, that's where the education is needed. And those jobs, you know, according to this chart I looked at the other day was like, oh no, it, the most reliable jobs are gonna be plumber, electrician, painter, landscaper, things that, things that AI can't do yet. Because it's not gonna be long before everyone's got their Optimus robot out there doing things. I mean, they're saying that Optimus robot's gonna be 15 grand.

• 2:01:16Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 2:01:17Jocko Willink?

  Fifteen thousand dollars for a robot that's gonna mow your lawn, clean your laundry, you know, pick up after your house, prepare your dinner, all those things. This is not that far away. Um, when you guys, so, so when you're looking at companies, what do you think companies should be doing right now to utilize AI?

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  So just like you're sharing, like AI and specifically agentic AI has tremendous powers. So like, first, like there was like perception AI, like it was like more like speech recognition, uh, medical imagery, then like the past three, four years has been more like generative AI, like question answering, like you input text, output video, input text, uh, output image. Uh, agentic AI is operates more like humans operate. So what companies should do is Jensen Huang from Nvidia has saying is like, you're not gonna lose your job to AI, but you're gonna lose your job to someone who knows how to use AI.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Like imagine someone who joins a company today who doesn't know how to use a computer. Like that's barely like possible. It's however, like it took maybe like decades before like the personal computer became a thing.

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  What we're seeing now is just accelerating at a pace that is just faster than anything. What Black Box was able to do yesterday and was going to be able to do by end of this day to day is going to be like a leap. Like Dropbox did not change, it's a very respected company, massive impact on the world, but file sharing was there in 2006, it's still a file sharing.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  When we're building AI agents, it's not the same thing from last week. So it's, and also not to make people afraid, it's here to help you.

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  It's, it's here to make your team better, it's here to make your company better, it's here to make your country better.

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  And the goal for companies and for leaders in these companies is to embrace this technology.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  I was just looking at, like, every technology wave, like, people think that, hey, like, that's a joke. Or like, great, it's cool, just like when we showed Jocko here, like in 2022, like, it wasn't as capable as today, right? And like, you have to be like naive enough to know that, hey, like, that's where the curve is going. Because it doesn't matter where you are on the Y axis, it matters the slope at which progress is happening, right? Because you can start very small, but if you're growing and like the slope is very steep, like, you're gonna get there. So what I would encourage people is to start investing heavily in their people, in training them how to use AI. The young generation already knows how to do it.

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  It's more the people who are maybe in their mid-careers or late in their careers. And some people, like, and there's also a lot of fear in the market and saying, hey, like, how should we trust it? It's maybe not following all my instructions, should we be afraid of it? My point is...

• 2:04:37Speaker 01

  Consider it as like you're augmenting your team. And today, if you onboard a new person on your team, it's going to take time for them to ramp up. AI just ramps up right away.

• 2:04:49Jocko Willink?

  It's ramped. And like you were saying earlier, Richard, like there's going to be like you're just saying hello. It might not follow all of my orders. But at the same time, just like you have some randomness to coding. When it's done by AI, well, you might have a agent that only follows, you know, 94% of what you told it to do. That's something that just did 94% of the work that you have 6% and you got to maybe make some adjustments. It's kind of like with decentralized command. I always tell people with decentralized command, there's always risk. Because if I tell you to go do something, you might not do it exactly how I want to do it. And in some cases, you might do something that's outside of what I wanted to do. And maybe even outside the rules of what I wanted you to do.

• 2:05:33Jocko Willink?

  So there is risk with decentralized command. But generally speaking, the risk, because I was able to tell you to do something, you do something and you do do something. And you guys all went out and executed and Echo did something that was not quite as good as it should have been. But everything else happened. Otherwise, if I would have had to do all that myself, it would have been, I couldn't have gotten it done. So there's risk, there's going to be some level of risk with with anything that you do with decentralized command. And this is sort of a version of decentralized command. Which means you need to give good instructions, you know? And if you don't give good instructions, you don't put parameters in place, you're going to have a better chance of things, you know, stepping outside. The one thing I would say about adopting any new technology, and I was very lucky in the SEAL teams, because I went through some very, very big technological changes.

• 2:06:14Jocko Willink?

  The two biggest that I can think of, usually I refer to is GPS and night vision. So what I learned from those things, the first GPS that I had was about the size of a little bit bigger than a shoebox. And it weighed about 25 pounds with extra batteries and whatnot. And that first GPS that I had to carry, it took four hours to find itself. So you would turn it on and you'd have to sit there and wait for four hours for it to figure out where it was. And I can tell you the reason because it had, it would only scan one frequency at a time from the satellites. And if it just went through like a, a standard list of what satellite, what satellite frequencies to, to look for. And if that satellite happened to be on the

• 2:06:56Jocko Willink?

  other side of the world, it wouldn't switch. It would just sit there and wait. And eventually that satellite would show up or eventually it had a time limit where it would switch. But then it would have to find that satellite. Once it find that satellite could find the next satellite faster because it knew where the first one was and they, but so it'd take four hours. Our, your phone is, is searching for all the frequencies right now. So as soon as you turn it on, it's going to catch one of those frequencies and knows where it is in, in instantaneously. So they hand me a 25 pound thing and they tell me it takes four hours to find itself. And I say, hey, I can carry a map and compass which weighs nothing and I'll know where I am in three minutes. What, what are we doing? And what you have to recognize with technology is when you first implement it, you're going to be less efficient. You're gonna, it's gonna take some time to get

• 2:07:40Jocko Willink?

  used to. And so when you first start using Black Box, you're gonna, you, you might be telling it to do something for you. Oh, you didn't tell it the right way, or it's going to take you a couple extra seconds to figure out how to prompt it correctly. Okay. And what, but once you get used to that, now all of a sudden you're, you're going to be exponentially more efficient. So we as leaders have to set expectations in order to make it work. The other thing you have to do is you have to use it. You have to get through that inefficiency. You have to push yourself through it because once that, you know, once we did figure out how to use the GPS, oh, guess what? It takes four hours to find itself? Okay. Turn it on four hours before you head out on your operation. Cool. Like there's things that you, adaptations that you make and then it gave us

• 2:08:21Jocko Willink?

  capabilities because you take me 14 miles, nautical miles off the coast of California and map and compass doesn't help me anymore because there's nothing to take, you know, resections off of. So now that GPS is a total game changer. So you have to use that technology and you have to use it enough so that you become proficient with it. And I think that's what, if you're hesitant right now, you gotta get in there and start trying to use it. What are you going to use it for? And I think you'll see there's some tasks that you can use it for, but, and if you get used to those tasks, you can start to branch out and try some other things with it. And eventually you'll realize that you have.

• 2:09:01Jocko Willink?

  Just a a complete force multiplier in what you're capable of doing.

• 2:09:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. And to add one point as well on this is like we see the Waymo analogy is is an awesome implementation of like what the future of like a an environment where you know you have physically basically basically you have a robot that's you know fully you know cohabitating with the humans you have like one car behind it that's a human and then a car in front of it it's a robot that's just driving without a driver in the seat. Uh, that's so so so much powerful and it's there like it captures the essence of like how AI should be implemented and how should be used. Basically, any other agent that if a company is looking to be using an agent and to deploy it to their to their teams, engineers or or whoever.

• 2:09:50Speaker 02

  It matters a lot that you deploy it in environments where like Waymos that are today deployed. They're not sent out in Nevada, for example. They're not sent out into like some environments where it is predicted it's not trained for this it's not it's predicted to fail. So we're not deploying that there yet.

• 2:10:07Jocko Willink?

  Wait, why would it fail in Nevada?

• 2:10:08Speaker 02

  Like it's now the cities where it's deployed yet it's like San Francisco. It's expanding to maybe. And expanding it's just but there's regulatory issues to to expand but. And and maybe also some like some training some like more like maybe roads or like there might be some things that get involved in like some like optimization that are needed. But the the the big impact is that it is unlocking so much economic value like as of right now as of today. It's moving so many people it's saving costs as well the drive the the the consumers ending up paying your paying a cheaper cost. Uh, so it's helping a lot the economy by having this available. And same thing for for agents as well if you deploy them on things that they're predicted to fail. That shouldn't be the determining factor for you to say, you know what?

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  That's not the right technology. You by by making that call, basically you just left out a a massive economic unlock that if you start deploying it in the right places, you're just heading in the right direction in terms of like what what it can it can really do. And the the the thing maybe specifically in software is that we are very honestly seeing it extremely competitive now it still can do everything. It's still not to the level of autonomy that. A Waymo car has like a way like a driver in a Waymo car today is basically trusting it with their with their with their life. Like I if I'm riding in it, I might, you know, you know, an accident can can come up, right? So it's a very, you know, high stakes, maybe if you want to call it like kind of commitment that you're doing.

• 2:11:38Speaker 02

  In software, it's not so much of a high stake. Like it can, you know, some some user requests might, you know, not get answered. You know, some customers might get, you know, complaints because they they're not expecting the behavior of the service that they that they planned for. So on software and and and the benefit of software as well is that anything you end up having from the AI build and and develop. What you're capable of doing, you're capable of running it and testing it in a sandbox environment. And then seeing it, you know, before I fully released it to user, I got some checklist confirmation that it tested all these things. And I'm not going to break anything into production when I actually do release it. So there is this difference where like if a Waymo cars makes a mistake, it's making it like instantly now and it can have an impact. Where in software, it's much less of an impact.

• 2:12:23Speaker 02

  You have like two different environments, production versus, you know, what you're developing internally. And you can fully test out things and be sure that you have high confidence on things before you fully release them. So.

• 2:12:35Speaker 01

  And we've seen that fear at every technological wave.

• 2:12:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, I was about to say, so people are afraid of change.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:43Jocko Willink?

  And people are afraid of things that they don't understand.

• 2:12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:46Jocko Willink?

  And how do you assuage people's fear because they it's change and they don't understand what it is?

• 2:12:55Speaker 01

  I I'll give the example of the automobile.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  The automobile, when it was the first automobile that Ford built, JP Morgan even refused to invest. He thought it was a toy for rich people.

• 2:13:11Speaker 01

  To run it, you had to have a full time driver. You had to have a full time mechanic because it would break every like three miles and you had to have a stower. And there was a law in the US and in England, I think it was called the red flag law, where you have to have someone that's distant. Maybe few feet from the car with a red flag. So if they see a horse, they should raise the flag. And like everyone thought that this is just like a toy for rich kids. And now the thing with AI is people think that, hey, like, these are just young people playing around. And there's a lot of fear also, like, hey, like, are these gonna replace our jobs, etc.

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  Same thing happened with the internet, like, no one said, like, people were joking, hey, like, do you really think you're gonna have commerce on the internet? You're gonna have, like, you're gonna be able to make pay. What, you're gonna buy a pair of jeans on the interwebs? I don't think so, buddy, how would you pay for it, idiot? So, like, these people by default are afraid of change, and, like, we've seen them in the past. However, the pace of technology is only accelerating, and it cannot be stopped. So the point, what we would advise people is, one, definitely, that's a change, however, it's a positive change. Think about it, right now, Richard has a MacBook here. Like, thirty years ago, he had to, like, bring it in a box, and, like, three people holding it to him, right?

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  So, people are, the way that the future of work is gonna happen is that people will have multiple agents doing things while you are working or not working. The job of a human being today, just like you're, you have a team of people that you manage, you'll be managing also a team of agents. And what we're doing, because it's only based on code, is any task can be broken down in code. And just like Joko was explaining it, is like, anything, and like, software is what powers everything, so like, if you wanna build whatever, like, just ask it to do a task, it would write the code for it, it would execute it.

• 2:15:18Speaker 01

  So what people should be doing is definitely take it as Richard's saying, like, in an iterative step, saying, hey, great, where are the environments where I'm comfortable, uh, starting to adopt it? Software engineers by default are the people that adopt technology the fastest. Like, they understand that things break, that things are maybe not as stable, etc. And that's why we've been able to grow very fast, because like, this is an audience that has the ability to, like, adopt technology. But I'm talking more for people that are leading organizations, and saying, hey, like, these are not things that you should be afraid of. Actually, these are things that should benefit your company. So it would definitely accelerate your pace of releasing products. It would definitely accelerate the pace at which your feedback from companies. Customers is being shipped.

• 2:16:00Speaker 01

  It would definitely reduce your cost to launching things. And if you think about it, if all these are true, basically what you're doing to your company is actually your company is becoming better financially. And if your company is better financially, all you're doing is growing. So there is no fear of recruiting people. There is no fear of displacing jobs. Actually, there's going to be job displacement, but there is not going to be higher unemployment. If your company is making like today, Nvidia is making 200 billions of profit this year. Nvidia is recruiting. Nvidia is investing. So, right? Like by default, if you're using tools that would make your company more efficient, you're not going to fire people because now AI is running your company.

• 2:16:45Speaker 01

  You're going to recruit more people so they can manage AI agents so that you can build better products, better companies, and your team actually is not doing mundane work. Like if there was a task that someone on your team was doing that like is not fulfilling for them and then they're like, hey, like I'm going to leave for this other company because they're giving me more responsibilities. If you're implementing AI agents in your company, these people are moving up the chain and not doing the mundane tasks. They're doing tasks that are more fulfilling for them. And right now, Blackbox is being written by Blackbox. So the software is just evolving itself. And there is no reason why any company across the US, across the world

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  is actually using agents to constantly be shipping code. And that's just on the positive side. If you look at it from a security side, there is also significant value in having AI agents just be deployed for security purposes for your companies. And then we can dive into it, but that's just on the positive side. And there's going to be need in training people or recruiting people who know how to use these agents. And for companies to invest in it because that's only an upside for them. There is little to no downside. Any technology can be used negatively and there's going to be failures. There's going to be things where you're going to learn from it. But today, what we are seeing is companies only accelerating their pace of innovation because of adopting Blackbox internally.

• 2:18:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a whole, uh, a whole story of the evolution of naval ships. And this is B H La Del Hard, the guy that's, um, you know, the indirect approach, the strategy, the indirect approach. And he's got this little, I gotta memorize this thing, or at least memorize the evolution. But it was basically, you know, when they went from, from wooden ships to steel ships, you know, there was a whole plethora of people. Hey, you can't, how, what's gonna happen if that thing, you can't repair it at sea, it's, blah, blah, blah. They had all these reasons, why not do it? When they went from sail to steam, oh my gosh, what are you gonna do when you run out of coal? Like, oh, this is totally ridiculous. You guys are the dumbest people. Like, they went, you know, oh, are you gonna put aircraft carriers? What are you gonna put fly, it's gonna be relying on planes?

• 2:18:55Jocko Willink?

  Like, this is totally, so every evolution, I mean, major evolution in the, in the, in the improvement of naval warships. Every one of them was totally resisted by the Admiralty. Who would say, what do you know, how would you amount to make a ship out of steel? You're an idiot. Why would you want it to run on steam? We can go forever with our wind, you know? And, but every time, eventually, it breaks. And, you know, they break, they go, oh yeah, you know what, this actually has to happen. And, you know, just, you know, at, at Jocko Fuel, we have our, our, I guess our e-commerce team is just, they're really, uh, great with, with AI. And the things that they're doing with AI is incredible.

• 2:19:38Jocko Willink?

  And it's all, um, you know, they work with all the other teams. I guess it's not, it's like the, just the, just the computer. We might as well call them the AI people, but, you know, like, every report that we get, you know, like the financial report that we get, which, which literally a year ago was done by human beings at Jocko Fuel, spending three hours on a Sunday, putting the numbers together. This is all automated now.

• 2:20:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:20:02Jocko Willink?

  And so now, does that mean they lose, that those people lost their jobs? No, no, no, it means that they're doing something that's proactive and, and more productive than sitting around and going through Excel spreadsheets. And that's one example of countless examples. We have a great, great, um, again, I don't know what to call them. They might, they might as well be called the AI Department, Guy Gordon, might as well be. Called the AI department and he works with all the different with the finance department, the marketing department, the sales department, he works with all of them and makes their jobs easier because you there's so much mundane tasks that need to get done that allows the people instead of doing mundane tasks like projections on the amount of what you know protein that we

• 2:20:44Jocko Willink?

  need to order to put into our protein powder that AI can figure that out matter of fact it figures that out and it likes figuring it out. So and again, do you have to have a human that needs to know how to do that? Oh, of course you do. So that's some of the things that I think people are gonna have to recognize because if you don't, you know, you're gonna be paying somebody whatever $25 an hour or $40 an hour to sit there and look at an Excel spreadsheet when you could just have an agent that knows what to look for and have the person that is getting paid 40 bucks an hour to now say, oh, I'm gonna have this agent doing that. I'm have this agent doing that. This agent do another thing. I'm gonna give you more accurate information.

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be more timely and I'm gonna be able to respond to your requests faster and I'm gonna do something that's looking up and out instead of looking down and in. So this is definitely,

• 2:21:37Jocko Willink?

  if you're not adopting it right now, you know, just like the GPS, you could deny it for a little while and keep using your map and compass, but you're gonna look up in three or four years and you're not even gonna be able to function like you couldn't function in the US military now. The aircraft overhead, the people on the ground, the integrated blue on blue or blue force trackers, like all those things are all inherently GPS. So if you don't get on board with it, you're gonna end up being left behind. And this is the absolute facts with with AI and you have to use it. What is the, you know, when you mentioned the security, what was your, what were you gonna say about, you know, security and AI?

• 2:22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. So like, we have big influence on like, like we use internally signal messaging specifically and we appreciate whenever a product is designed for privacy and security as well. Apple has a great reputation on this as well. So We try to also bring this into the product that we have with AI, with agents as well. And the thing that we wanted for ourselves and for the UCs that we're serving was something that was private and and secure for users. And the form that we started looking into is end-to-end encryption with not only AI, like AI chat for like question answering, but also for an agent that is doing a task, that's taking action.

• 2:22:57Speaker 02

  So we built the first end-to-end encrypted agent. That is, there's versions where some some products might attempt to resolve the end-to-end encrypted for AI agents. The version that we wanted to make it available and and and can be served to users. Some some simple forms of it can be easily done when you're serving it on low-capable models. So basically, this can't be done if you were to do it on

• 2:23:29Speaker 02

  LLM models that come from companies like OpenAI or Anthropic. Unless they would to, they would be doing the implementation of it, they might be able to implement this capability. But if someone is basically, you have companies that basically sell whatever OpenAI is giving them as a model. So you end up using the models from OpenAI but through another product. That is not possible today to encrypt something that is closed source. It is only possible to encrypt something that is open source as a model, which gives you the ability to host it on GPUs yourself and then have the end-to-end encryption. The the big unlock for this is we needed to have it available to users not as a small model, but as a big model.

• 2:24:11Speaker 02

  The reason for it is like typically, anything you find useful in AI is powered by a big LLM. It's not powered by maybe a seven-billion-parameter LLM.

• 2:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I haven't heard about any small language models or even medium language models. You only hear about large language models.

• 2:24:25Speaker 02

  Exactly. And and and so these require multiple GPUs to be loaded on them. And these need to be end-to-end decrypted across multiple GPUs, all the way down to the user that is using them. So for that to be available, we're making it available as an agent. And also, we're making it available for use cases. Is that typically people might be interested in, but we see it very useful. For example, in the medical field where privacy of patient's data can be very critical. And there's also, it's not just that it's critical for them, but it's also they have rules that there should be no egress of data coming out of the device. So the agent, actually, the agent must be running on the same device. So there should be almost no communication with the internet.

• 2:25:07Speaker 02

  So this gives basically the agent and the GPU access to the to the to the patient's data. One thing that is very exciting for us where we're collaborating today on is with Stanford Medical School with a team of both doctors and computer scientists. That is something that is for the first time we're we're we're working on the on this together with their team is it's going to be for the first time possible and the results will like it will take several several weeks to to months. But it's on that direction where a very small team will be able to build a foundational model that will be able to predict diseases based on public MRI data sets of cardiac,

• 2:25:51Speaker 02

  you know, cardiac data that is available publicly. So the the power of this is that through the agent, the amount of resources that you needed to develop this before without an agent would have been enormous. And you needed like a big team, a big investment and all of this. But what's happening now, we're we're we're working on it with them and they like it's it's a it's going in this direction where you don't need, like the agent is able to build this foundational model with good interaction with it, with with with a with a small group of computer scientists, with a small group of of doctors as well with the right feedback. The agent has the ability to write the entire code, to train the model, to to to test it, to to see if if it's making the right prediction.

• 2:26:36Speaker 02

  So that kind of capability is something that is becoming to be unlocked. Whenever, whenever someone.

• 2:26:42Speaker 01

  And that lowered the barrier for non-technical people like these doctors don't have like they are very good at software, but they're not expert. Right. So lowering. They are now. Exactly, and. It's incredible, right? That's, that's the deal. That's where we're moving. We're moving in a world to a world where before software was built by maybe there's maybe a few million people in the world that are very advanced in software and like they control whatever product you use to now having more customized software. And anyone can be building software today. And that's what we have as a vision for the company is having one billion builders in the next 10 years. Today, that technology is available and the barrier to entry is going to only get lower.

• 2:27:27Speaker 01

  So we're going to move from people that are extremely technical that started adopting it to maybe lesser technical and then to anyone in the world having the ability to build software and make their companies better, make their teams better, make their countries better. Today, we're seeing application of AI in war. Some reports say, hey, like whatever they're doing with AI should require, would have required 2,000 people. They're able to do it with 20 people. Right? This is where using and leverage, if the government is using AI, I don't find a reason why any company would not use it. Typically, typically, it's, it's the opposite, right? And however, like the good thing with this administration is that we have very forward-looking people from the technology that are

• 2:28:12Speaker 01

  embedded in these administrations that are investing in these resources and the security aspect plays a very important role today. There is everyone, like, just like whenever there was the rise of the internet, it opened up for like hackers and security breaches to happen. Imagine you have people that are using agents for security purposes to steal information, right? So if your company is afraid of running software to build software, you have adversaries or like people that are competing with you that are building agents to actually steal your information. Like these people can just like keep running these agents. Every day and like. You have to fight fire with fire.

• 2:28:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that's number one. Number two is uh like there is a big race right now between the US and China. Uh these are the two predominant countries that have excellent AI talent. And that are both racing. Europe is not as advanced in AI as the US and and and China. And uh the US is investing heavily, but should definitely invest much more because that's not only. What we're talking right now is how can you make your companies better, etc. But these AI agents have the ability to do

• 2:29:34Speaker 01

  significant attacks on countries, uh to steal data, to steal tactics, to hijack systems. So that because every single technology that you use is powered, like every single equipment that uses powered by by software. So what if these AI agents take hold of the software and just like shuts it down or like change the code and like makes it not responsive, right? So you're launching a rocket and like there's something changing the code that this causes a failure, right? So uh it's important for the US also to be, they are leading today the race. Uh and however, China is very aggressive in investing in AI.

• 2:30:14Speaker 01

  The big difference between what China is doing and what the US is doing is China is investing heavily in open source models. Uh and as we're moving to a world where these models get better, the world right now mostly is running on American models.

• 2:30:31Speaker 01

  Most of the world, uh but the Chinese models are picking up steam very quickly because they are open source. So companies can self-host them. And uh the disadvantage of that is you're embedding uh models that are built by other countries. While the US has all the capabilities, however, all the research labs in the US are building more closed source models. So you don't have access to the model weights, whereas Chinese are building and releasing open source models. You saw that with the rise of DeepSeek last year that everyone was surprised about.

• 2:31:10Speaker 01

  Uh but now there's at least four or five very good AI companies out of China, just releasing open source models. Uh that are very good.

• 2:31:20Jocko Willink?

  So we got national security, we got curing diseases, we got billions of people empowered by this, and we also made askjocko.ai.

• 2:31:33Jocko Willink?

  Who who thought of that? Did you guys think of that? Or did I think of that? Did you think of it, Richard?

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  No, I very honestly, like, probably definitely, it's like from our conversation, like, we're always trying to find ways where, like, basically, we're like, there's like multiple ways, but definitely it fed it came from conversations with you and like, one big need for us is that we actually like bore you a lot with a ton of questions.

• 2:32:02Speaker 02

  And having having the ability to

• 2:32:05Jocko Willink?

  I'm off the board, dude, I'm getting replaced by myself, by Jocko AI. Yeah, no, that's one of the things that when you guys initially made, I forget how I initially saw it, but what I was like, oh, that's cool. And you guys were like, we're using it all the time for leadership questions. And I was like, oh, okay. So then, like, okay, let's, you know, that's one of the biggest things for me is people, people want to ask questions about what's going on, you know, with their leader leadership in their world, generally speaking, it's leadership, some, you know, it's other things as well, but, but, you know, I don't have a chance to reply to everybody, and especially, you know, everyone's got their little nuanced case. And so as I, you know, I was like, oh, well, let's see what it can do. And, you know, so we brought it into Echelon Front, we started, you know, we we sicked

• 2:32:47Jocko Willink?

  the Echelon Front team on it, and you know, the Echelon Front team, we hear questions all day long. And to hear, we tried to stump it and give it questions that would, you know, inappropriate questions, questions outside the box, illegal, immoral, unethical, like all those things, to see how it would respond. And, and really, it's, honestly, again, it's like, it's like incredible, it's incredible what it does. And you know, it's funny, I'm just thinking about some of the iterative steps, like, the first version that you guys sent me, the way I I sounded like straight up just drill instructors, like, let me tell you what, hey, this is Jocko here. And if you got an issue with leadership, I'm gonna get it solved for you. And I was like, hey, guys, I know that's like the caricature of what I sound like, but I don't want to actually talk like that. You guys are like, cool, cool. But that's the amazing thing is, you know,

• 2:33:33Jocko Willink?

  Fifteen minutes later, you sent another text. It was like, try it now. And it's like, hey, this is Jocko. Got some questions about leadership? What are they? You know what I was like? Yeah. That's amazing. So the iterative steps and and putting it together. And again, I think this is going to be a good step. You know, as I talked about it with the rest of the Echelon Front team, it's like, well, we have to, you know, this is a game that we have to play. This is, this is a line of operation that the world is going to do. There's no doubt. And the way that you guys were able to incorporate all the books, all the podcasts, you know, basically everything of, and actually, we sent you all the behind the scenes muster stuff. So all the musters, take all that information, get it organized in a way that

• 2:34:16Jocko Willink?

  it is going to give really good answers. And it really does, you know, it really does give incredible answers. And I think it's going to be a huge amount of help to people in every aspect of their lives, you know, just, hey, let me, let me get a second opinion here. Let me ask Jocko AI, which it just, it thinks it's me. I don't know if you noticed that on the opening there. Did you hear that? When he was talking about the podcast, it was like, we talk about, meaning me and you, Echo Charles, it was saying we, you know, and I was like, okay, all right. I tried to give it, tried to get it to the Echo Charles accent earlier today, wouldn't do it. So maybe, you know, that might be the next thing. Definitely. Ask Echo. Echo is gonna be like, hey, you need to cruise more.

• 2:34:58Speaker 01

  That's, that's the difference. What Richard was saying, like before, software before was very deterministic. Like you would have to say, if then, right? Here, we didn't tell it anything. Like, and then you give it guidance, and you give it the content, you give it the guard rates, and it's going to operate within these guard rates, right? And that's like, Richard can comment more on like, the technique, the technology behind it. But the premise of it is, anyone, it, AI basically operates like a human brain. Like, now you asked me a question, I am not programmed if Jocko asks you this, and that's the difference. Before, everything was like, a retrieval based system, which means you have to create

• 2:35:43Speaker 01

  the content, then you get, you search for something, you're retrieving the information. Right now, it's a generative. Compute mode, which makes it like, okay, great. That's a new question that I'm gonna generate the answer. I'm using whatever background I have, but I'm not retrieving information.

• 2:36:00Jocko Willink?

  No, if you, if you ask it the same question, it'll give you slightly different answers, you know, that are nuanced in a different way. It's, it's, it's, um, yeah, it's incredible. And again, you know, I know it's not perfect right now. We'll improve upon it. We'll iterate on it. It's gonna get better. Uh, I think the, the, um, Android version is out right now.

• 2:36:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:36:21Jocko Willink?

  The Apple app version is coming in. If you just on your laptop or whatever, you can just go to askjaco.ai and you just, you know, start asking some questions, start getting some leadership guidance. That's what we're doing. Um, awesome. Uh, does that get us up to speed? I mean, we could talk all day, but is this the primary things that we wanted to cover today?

• 2:36:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, uh, I think anything, uh,

• 2:36:43Speaker 01

  Like from our N1, like, uh, we're like the impact that you personally had on the way that we think, that the way that we try to build our company, that we try the, the, the way that we try to go about our day on a day to day basis, uh, has had a big impact. Uh, as mentioned, like, that started with the aspiration to learn more about the US military. Uh, in the other part of the world, you're the good guys. Like that's, uh, something that, and

• 2:37:22Speaker 01

  like one quick story that happened like just recently. Like, we typically work out every day at like four thirty-five, but

• 2:37:31Jocko Willink?

  I can relate.

• 2:37:32Speaker 01

  And that's because of Jocko, but uh, two, two Sundays ago, uh,

• 2:37:39Speaker 01

  we had some important things in the morning. So like we worked out at like maybe two eight, two PM. And we have our laptops with us because if something happened like, so I'm on the assault bike. Richard is on the rover. And there was no one at the gym and we typically are very apolitical.

• 2:38:04Speaker 01

  And like, we don't share any political opinions.

• 2:38:09Speaker 01

  But we're like, hey, let's see what's happening on the news. Like, we knew what's happening, but... So we put the news.

• 2:38:16Speaker 01

  And then,

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  like, someone got to the gym.

• 2:38:24Speaker 01

  And they look at the TV and you could see dissatisfaction. But then they went and did the tour and then they came back. And like, they prompted the conversation.

• 2:38:39Speaker 01

  And as mentioned, like, I personally, Richard, Roger, me, like, we never share our political opinions on anything. Like, we all leak folks about work and like, you also talk a lot about it. It's like, you can't change politics, like, just go about your day-to-day life. The reason I'm sharing this is like, that's... I'm just giving my perspective on things.

• 2:39:03Speaker 01

  So that was a few days after what happened in Iran and like the killing of the Ayatollah. And like, I had on the phone, I had my father on the phone. And like, our battery was maybe at like 2%, so like then the battery died, but I can, I can definitely be sure that he was saying like, "Just don't answer." Not in a fearful way. Again, like, it doesn't come from, "Hey, like, let's just like lay low," it just like, "Just go about your business." But it felt a bit more like in a movie. Like, there's this thing happening and there's someone who is vocally asking us something.

• 2:39:47Speaker 01

  And it felt like, like Richard and I have shaved head, like, we're always in navy blue, so even when we work out, we're just in navy blue. So like, we look maybe like, we're like, but we're like smalls in size, like, we're not large, but like, we maybe don't look very like friendly or something.

• 2:40:08Speaker 01

  And this person said like, "What do you think about this?"

• 2:40:13Speaker 01

  And the reason I'm saying like you guys, like I'm thanking the effort that you guys do in general as the US military is, I'm like, there are, these people are laying their lives for this other part of the world. And again, I'm not getting into politics. I'm like, if I can't voice cordially my opinion on things like, like, there's literally no risk. So what I told this person is,

• 2:40:42Speaker 01

  like, that we grew up there, like,

• 2:40:46Speaker 01

  and that these people are like,

• 2:40:50Speaker 01

  that I disagree with their way of life. And I told her, like, right now it's 2pm, you're at the gym. In that part of the world, you can't be at the gym.

• 2:41:01Speaker 01

  The other point is, you can't voice your opinion.

• 2:41:06Speaker 01

  So whatever you think,

• 2:41:09Speaker 01

  it's a privilege that you can think.

• 2:41:13Speaker 01

  And that you can there confront two guys

• 2:41:18Speaker 01

  and ask them about their opinion.

• 2:41:22Speaker 01

  And I honestly can't say whether it's the role of the US to save the rest of the world. That's, I can't comment on that. But what I can say is,

• 2:41:35Speaker 01

  that there is a need for the right people to do the right thing. In general, in life. My, I, I, like, when I saw the, like, if you see someone getting raped, like, you're gonna jump and save this person.

• 2:41:53Speaker 01

  Then if there's a country that is under oppression, and that also has a threat to the infrastructure of the US or whatever, like, I can't make the decision, but like, that was a decision that was made. My point being is, we live in a country, whether it's Canada, the US, France, the West in general, where people have the privilege of going by their day-to-day life and building companies. And voicing your opinions. And to do that, there are people that are sacrificing their lives or sacrificing, maybe they're not dying, but they're sacrificing one year, or 10 years, or 20 years of their lives.

• 2:42:38Speaker 01

  Whether they agree or not with that political decision to support a bigger agenda. And for me, that struck me as, hey, like, I'm not like, and I So my first reaction was, look for the cameras. Because I don't want, that was really, because I want to share my opinion, but if someone will go say, hey, like, they were insulting, like, I don't want to have that. So my point, what I said is, this is like your privilege that in this country, you have the chance to be at the gym at this time. And like, she was very respectful, by the way, like, no. And her dad served in World War II. Her husband served in Vietnam. So like, it was a very nice conversation.

• 2:43:23Speaker 01

  I'm just sharing my perspective. And whenever people prompt us, we typically do not share anything. The reason for it is, we just focus on what we do as work. But the reason why I'm voicing this is because people like you take much bigger risks in

• 2:43:41Speaker 01

  what you do to make the world a better place. And that's what attracted us to this. And also, the same thing on the technology side is, these people are very nice people that build things so that they can make the lives of people better. No one sits and plan to build the next whatever and say, hey, I'm gonna steal all this data, and then I'm gonna sell ads, and then I'm gonna like, make a lot of money, and then build in whatever. Like, in general, I believe that people are good by default. And that the West in general allows you and gives you the opportunities to do whatever you want if you work extremely hard for it. And

• 2:44:27Speaker 01

  people that serve make it possible for everyone else to benefit from that. And that whatever political direction you have, that should be the direction. And also, there should be a scoreboard in who are the right, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. It should be pretty much black and white, like there is no gray zone here. So, our point is, how we got brought up, the focus on the education that we had, the inspiration that we got from what you guys did in the region, and the help that we got along the way, that's why we're thankful for what we're doing.

• 2:45:09Speaker 01

  And, like, it all boils down to, like, in general, human beings are good people. Like, no one is born, like, wanting to do bad things. And there are so much good things that people can spend their lives on. And, in general, like, just wanted to finish it by thanking you, Yeah, yeah. and everything that you bring to the world, Yeah. and the people that serve. And, I, like, anyone who listened who may have been triggered by some of the thoughts that we shared, like, these are just lived experiences. I'm not sharing anything negative about anyone. These are just facts. I'm just stating factual.

• 2:45:53Speaker 01

  The other side can have other facts, right? And, but, the goal of the discourse is just to share our side, and that no one actually prevented us to do anything because we came from whichever part, right? The interesting thing is, like, in Canada, we were the Lebanese, in Lebanon, we're the Canadians. Like, here, we're the whatever. But, and it brings a strength. Like, we're always a bit the outlier, and like, as you say, like, like, we're always a bit detached. Like, we're never part of the thing, right? And that's what creates, like, the bond and, like, the intensity. And, yeah, we try to surround ourselves with people that come from different backgrounds, believe in what we're doing,

• 2:46:37Speaker 01

  and I think there are so much good things that we're gonna be doing. Like, the world is accelerating at massive scale, but I would encourage people not to be afraid of it. Like, the change is going only to make their lives better. And we're just at the beginning of a massive revolution. And, just like right now, you have all Mobile phones, laptops, et cetera, like in a year from now, all of you will have like tens of agents. Like you'll be recording a podcast and like your agent will be booking maybe other guests while and like you're like, hey Joko, what do you think about that? Right? And like, maybe we'll see something with Joko Fuel and say, hey, I just shipped this code because like I found that this was better and like this increased revenue by 20% without you prompting the agent to do these things.

• 2:47:19Speaker 01

  So like agents will become part of our lives, but I just wanted to take some time to to thank you and like maybe.

• 2:47:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, like definitely want to make sure that like, as you always say, your, your, the impact that you've had. You, Echelon Front, like also want to thank you. I don't know. I don't know whether like it's, it's like probably like probably people say definitely a lot, but I think the stories that you've shared are make a massive impact on, on, on, on people, the stories of what your experiences.

• 2:47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, like we, we really pull massive examples from, from, from what you did and you continue to do so. Yeah, like we, we really thank you for, you know, had this podcast is, is really, you know, giving, giving a lot of good examples for people, good inspiration for people, setting, setting the standard for how they should be building their teams, how they should be building their companies. For us, it was really a very obvious, it just correlation between if we want to build a solid team, if we want to build a good culture, it really like made sense to really get your take, get your perspective, get your

• 2:48:33Speaker 02

  all of your insights and we're very fortunate that we get to exchange, take some of your time. You're, you're, you're much busier than, than we are and we, we get now also to chat with, with you also with the AI side of it, but, but yeah, really, really appreciate everything that you're doing.

• 2:48:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I think what everything that you guys just said, you know, you could boil that all down to, and it's a good message for anyone is be thankful for what you got, you know, and it's really easy to sit around and look at the world and be mad or frustrated or whatever, or you look at the world and, and you be thankful for what you got and be thankful for the people that sacrificed so that you can have these opportunities that we all have. So those are great messages. Echo Charles.

• 2:49:18Jocko Willink?

  You got any questions?

• 2:49:19Speaker 03

  Well, I got plenty, but in the spirit of, you know, efficiency, I'm gonna keep it to two for the time being. Okay, so we'll say even off air, when like if Jocko would be, we're talking about Jaco.ai, ask Jocko. Right? So, and, and also the guardrails that you guys are talking about, right? You know how you put the guardrails on, okay, so we'll say off air, if Jocko says, hey, say this, right? And, and then Jocko AI will come back with, hey, that's not what I'm here for. I'm here to answer your leadership questions. I'm not gonna dance to your song or whatever. I'm not gonna, you know.

• 2:49:54Speaker 02

  Yep, a hundred percent.

• 2:49:55Speaker 03

  Is that some guardrails that you guys put in? Or did it just sort of, I'm just gonna be Jocko and it figured out how Jocko is and then said that?

• 2:50:03Speaker 01

  So, two things, it's a combination of both. We could loosen up the guardrails so that like it would, like with, like we designed it to be, because what Jocko and National Front ask us to be like, to not go off some limits. So it's designed, it's by design, but also even though we would loosen things up, it would not act like Robert. It would all, without me even telling it, like if it's just understanding what, how Jocko is.

• 2:50:34Jocko Willink?

  The weird thing is, is as I was getting ready yesterday for this podcast, I was running through, I was like, oh, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna say, tell, say this. I just wanted people to hear the voice. And it did it three times, like without hesitation. It just said what I wanted it to say. I said, hey, I want you to say, this is Jocko Podcast, blah, blah, blah, right? And it said, okay, and it said it. And I was like, okay, cool. And I like tested it twice and it did it both times or three times. And then this morning, when I got in here, I was telling Echo, I go, hey, this is what I'm gonna do. And the guys show up, I'm gonna do this right here. And it was like, hey, I'm not, like, I'm not here to, you know, imitate people. I'm here to answer leadership questions. So, again, that's like, interesting that it's, like you said, it's not just pulling something from past experience or pulling something from some document somewhere.

• 2:51:19Jocko Willink?

  It's creating an idea and formulating it and presenting it. So it's definitely, you know, it's interesting.

• 2:51:28Speaker 03

  Right, and that's kind of why I asked, because there's a difference between you guys saying, hey, be like Jocko, and then it figuring that out on its own versus some of that. And then someone like, hey, let's do this, you know, it's, it's almost like the DNA of Jocko. At least a little bit of it has to come from you guys. See what I'm saying versus, oh, here's, here's a whole bunch of Jocko, you know, you discern it on your own kind of a thing.

• 2:51:52Speaker 01

  Do you want me to be extremely honest or do you want me to be like?

• 2:51:56Speaker 03

  I prefer extreme honesty from time to time. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:52:00Speaker 01

  The only thing that we literally like somehow like hard, not hardcoded, but like we told it how to answer is what's the most important quality of a leader? It used to say, based on all the information, it used to say the most important quality of a leader is to take extreme ownership. And now like we're just asking it to say that it's humility. When it answered, actually, and like it's very smart. When it answered like extreme ownership, I was like, what do you think about humility? It's like, yeah, actually, like if you take extreme ownership, then you'll know that being humble is very important. So it, it actually put the fact that you take extreme ownership in everything as the foundation of being humble.

• 2:52:46Jocko Willink?

  Which is true, by the way. So it's accurate.

• 2:52:49Speaker 02

  And an added capability that's possible and like based on feedback, it can be added as well is we can also, uh, like it is possible to make it as a user to, to the extent that you would be comfortable with how it would behave. The user can also ask it to tell it like moving forward. Whenever like you finish like telling me this, I want you to always like, uh, like you, the user can ask it like to change the way it's gonna sequence its answer. So you can like, you can decide to tell it like, uh, moving forward, whenever I say, uh, you know, uh, X, Y, Z, uh, always come back to me and, and like tell me something that you, so it's almost like you can program it.

• 2:53:33Speaker 02

  But like it becomes like a custom memory for a user.

• 2:53:36Speaker 01

  Because it has memory.

• 2:53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's just gonna remember what do you prefer, uh, moving forward. But it also, it won't like follow it like blindly. It will be falling back to.

• 2:53:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's got guardrails of like ethical, immoral and illegal, um, guardrails because.

• 2:53:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:53:52Speaker 03

  So for the, for the most part, do you guys, let's say just with this, with this askjocko dot, yeah.

• 2:53:59Speaker 03

  For the most part, do you, when you test it and it comes back with an answer, for the most part, are you like, I can see how this thing got there with each answer? Or are you just like, just blown away, you know, kind of a thing? I would imagine you'd be somewhat familiar, you know, with the, with the predictability and the.

• 2:54:15Speaker 02

  I can definitely, I can definitely say initially, uh, like, like, the first few, uh, engagements we had, uh, like, then it opened up like a whole series of like, like, the initial engagements were like, were positive encouragements that we went down a whole list of like, questions that, you know, we could have.

• 2:54:36Speaker 01

  And same thing, anything, like, the,

• 2:54:41Speaker 01

  you may have, you, you may expect what will happen,

• 2:54:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:54:45Speaker 01

  but until you really test it for, you can't be sure. It's different from building an app that has.

• 2:54:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like a continuous test, like each.

• 2:54:54Speaker 01

  So it's more something that you aim to do, that you're building and you're making all the effort and the investment for it. But it's not deterministic as an output.

• 2:55:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, but what I'm asking is like, let's say, let's say even an answer that comes back is kind of surprising, like, oh, we didn't really expect that. But when you look at the answer, you're kind of like, I can see how he got there. I just wasn't thinking of that before. You see what I'm saying?

• 2:55:16Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:55:16Speaker 03

  So like, I'll use like these image generators or video, whatever. And I'll say, hey, you know, I want this, here's some reference images and, you know, come up with some stuff or whatever, and it'll be way off.

• 2:55:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:26Speaker 03

  And then I look at my prompt and then I look at the image, I'm like, oh, I see, I see what he thought or it thought that I was trying to do. See what I'm saying?

• 2:55:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:55:33Speaker 03

  Is it pretty much like that? Or, or is it like,

• 2:55:38Speaker 03

  or does it give you the impression that, oh, wait, there's something else going on, some magic, for lack of a better term?

• 2:55:43Speaker 01

  We get, we get this positive, uh, shock or like positive surprise more on the software side. So when we're using Black Box to write software and like, it makes decisions and like, say, hey, like that's, it's extremely shocking because, uh,

• 2:56:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:02Speaker 01

  it's taking actions.

• 2:56:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, the range of impact is, is like, taking steps ahead of you and like, it's.

• 2:56:07Speaker 01

  However, on the answer side, it's definitely surprising, but.

• 2:56:14Speaker 01

  I still feel that I need to make the decision. So we're the best for us. It's like, just like what Jocko said, has the saying like, everything in the SEAL teams is exciting for the first 20 minutes.

• 2:56:26Jocko Willink?

  That's actually Leif Babin's quote. That's accurate.

• 2:56:30Speaker 01

  For us, for us, it's the same thing in the AI space where like the first few interactions like a shock and then you start looking just at the negatives. And you're like, hey, like, how can we improve that? Right? And that's more, so I can see why it may answer this in certain ways, but I'm less shocked or like surprised.

• 2:56:50Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:56:50Speaker 01

  That's.

• 2:56:52Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you, um, so, so there's like the caricature of Jocko, right? Like the, you know, cause I look like a freaking knucklehead and I whatever. I was in the military. And so there's the caricature of like, hey, you need to suck it up. Like, um, you know, uh, my employee, you know, uh, is showed up late three times for work. What should I do? Well, you need to get in their face and tell them what's what, right? That's kind of like what an answer that you would kind of expect. And so when I, when I, that was one of my worries. Like, okay, is this just going to be kind of the, is it going to be the caricature of Jocko? Because there are

• 2:57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57:25Jocko Willink?

  factually like things that you can pull from all my content that that would be the answer, you know? It'd be some weird, you know, conversation that I had with someone like, there's a cut up of me talking about like punishing my daughter and saying, if you're, you know, you're, I'm going to shave your head. Now, the context about that, it was like, me and my daughter are joking and like, we're laughing like, oh, I could still shave your head. Like it was, it was a joke, but it got put into a, a clip or whatever. Where it was like, hey, if you, if you step out of line again, I'm going to shave your head, you know, to a whatever 14 year old girl. And you know, they're like, the comments on it were like, dude, this guy's a psycho, but it's something that I actually said, taken out of context and put into a clip.

• 2:58:10Jocko Willink?

  And you know, it's, it's, you know, obviously stupid, you know, obviously a bad parenting, right? But so you could see to your point, Echo, like, oh, could you see how you get there? But what I've found is this is one of the reasons why I was like, yeah, let's go ahead and get this out into the wild because it doesn't do that. It actually gives. Nuanced answers that make sense that you're like, oh yeah. In fact, my surprise usually like, oh, that's an angle. That's like even a better angle than I initially thought of. Which is impressive. I'm doing a better job thinking than me.

• 2:58:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:58:44Jocko Willink?

  It's doing a better job thinking than me. Now, have I seen somewhere I'm like, mm, like, you know what? Little too, what I, what I might see is like, uh, maybe just a little bit too much weight on one part that I would probably wait another part. That's probably the biggest variation. Like, oh, you know, they waited really hard about, hey, you need to listen to people. Or, or you know, I might say, hey, they waited really hard. Like, hey, you need to really make sure you give clear guidance where I would maybe, you listen to what they have to say, but you need to give them clear guidance. Where I would probably say like, hey, you need to give them clear guidance, but you really need to listen to what they have to say. So I've seen a little bit of variance in weight of what I might answer.

• 2:59:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:59:25Jocko Willink?

  But I'll tell you what, man, it is very, very impressive. Kind of shockingly impressive.

• 2:59:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, fully. And that was part of, part of the reason why I asked that question. Because yeah, sometimes you're like, that's not right. But I see how you got there as far as they, and sometimes it's like, I see how you got there, but bro, I wasn't even thinking of all that because it's so, it was better than you expected. You know what I'm saying? So I can go both ways. A hundred percent.

• 2:59:50Jocko Willink?

  This might be a, a thing that we program into this is it would be good to, because one thing that happens when you talk to people is, you know, Echo comes to me and says, hey, I got a person that's been late three times. And I go, hey, man, you know, like, find out what's going on with them. And he goes, okay, cool. Now he goes back and says, hey, you know, hey, hey, you know, Robert, you're late. Why are you late? And he's aggressive about it. So it's almost like, maybe you, you need to, with every answer, give kind of like the counterpoint. So if I say, oh, Echo, you need to go find out what's going on with them. And that means you need to make sure that you're asking like in an earnest way, hey, is everything okay? Cause that because that is something that can throw people off. Yeah. I always, you probably heard me say on the podcast, sometimes I'm like, listen, I don't want

• 3:00:35Jocko Willink?

  to say this. I don't want to say this, but sometimes, you know, you've got this person and their ego is big and you really do need to figure out a way. Cause you know, the 99% of the answer is, oh, I got a problem. I got a problem with Robert and he, it seems like he's got a big ego. 99% of the time, the answer is like, okay, that means I need to subordinate my ego. That means my ego is acting up. So how do I do that? And 1% of the time it's like, yeah, you know what? I got a guy on my team that has a massive ego, doesn't listen to anybody else. Now how do I address that? And you hear me say that sometimes because I always say, listen, I don't want to tell you this because 99% of the time it's going to be your ego. That 1% of the time, it could be this other person's ego. Here's how you contend with that. So making sure that you, you, you Cover them.

• 3:01:20Jocko Willink?

  Everything that you say, every guidance that you get, it's almost like a follow-up question of like, um, or a follow-up answer, just to make sure that the counterpoint is seen as well. Right. Um, because that is what leadership is. It's a dichotomy of leadership. And if someone says, hey, you know, I, uh, should I work out every single day? Ask Jocko Ais, we're like, absolutely you should. But then it should also be, and by the way, if you're starting to regress in your progress, you're overtrained and you need to get some rest. So like, it's one of those things where you gotta figure out what, you gotta figure out how to balance the dichotomy. The answer is right in front of me, of course. The answer's right in front of me. He's like, the dichotomy of leadership. Yeah.

• 3:02:02Jocko Willink?

  And how do you present the other side of the dichotomy? And is that something that we put in there where people get, hey, here's the answer and the balance is, you know, oh, you know, my, my team is calling me micromanager. Okay. So you know what you really need to do is like back off and let, let them get some ownership. That being said, you still need to check in with them, right? So there's going to be a balance, almost like you have to counterweight everything that you say. Yeah. Because that's the reality of leadership. Yeah. And it's something that we definitely need to be careful of. Um, so that people, when they get the guidance, they get to counterweight as well. Yep.

• 3:02:34Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 3:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 3:02:35Speaker 01

  And that's where like,

• 3:02:41Speaker 01

  Today's version is the worst version.

• 3:02:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 3:02:43Speaker 01

  And that's where like for us, the exciting things is it's democratizing access to powerful resources through means of just technology. And it has significant impact on people's lives. And even though it definitely has these limitations right now, that wasn't possible like a few months ago. And imagine.

• 3:03:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, go ahead.

• 3:03:17Speaker 01

  Imagine now, not only Jocko is answering questions, but what if you want like the age and like that's how Black Box's agents work is you give them a task and like they complete the task. So what if Jocko is basically like training other people on your team? Saying, hey, like that's my company's data, basically, and I want you like basically to customize a training for these individuals. And like Jocko is like following up every day saying, hey, like, how's the progress today, etc. Like you have a meeting on Friday, like make sure you have. It becomes your team is empowered by these things, right? So that's what we've done with software and like that's how agents are gonna get into every day's life.

• 3:04:00Speaker 01

  And this app is just like the initial version, but it's only gonna get. The limitation of that is literally having a team of agents everywhere, working collaboratively with people. So it's augmenting your team, it's not firing you. It's something that should be a resource for every single individual. And use it to maximize output of your team and learn things, ask it questions so that like whenever I need to escalate things to ask you personally, like I would have asked like five things, right? And that's, that's the thing. And you're moving to a point where the cost of serving these is dropping.

• 3:04:45Speaker 01

  The technology is improving.

• 3:04:48Speaker 01

  And the only way is literally more acceleration. Like, as I was saying, like, when we started three years ago, like, it was just an idea. Like, today, we're in most Fortune 500. And now, this is just an idea. It would become in the hands of millions of people. And the only path from, like, the only... People think about, like, hey, what's the strategy? What's... Like, the only path is just, like, pushing harder. Like, that's for us, what... That's the only strategy for us, is let's push harder. Once you push harder, everything gets figured out. Then you will work, you'll assemble the team, you'll build the right strategy, you'll build the right product, etc. But the common denominator is... And you said something initially, like, in technology, typically, like, if you're not ashamed of the first version that you launch, like, you're launching too late.

• 3:05:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you waited too long.

• 3:05:37Speaker 01

  You should be... And that's why... Takes humility. That's why, maybe, it's harder for someone that's in his mid-30s to launch something versus us, saying, hey, like, we don't care, like, what... Like, basically, like, you're just gonna help me improve, right? So, it's constantly putting things out. You should provide value, but it shouldn't be, like, fully complete. And if it's fully complete, it's too late. Because whatever you think is complete is actually just, like, useless for anyone, right? So... And you have examples. The only counterpart company that is very good at just launching things at the right time, without, like, a failure in their launch, is Apple.

• 3:06:21Speaker 01

  But what they did, and again, like, I couldn't comment, I'm not an expert on Apple, but the way that Apple operates is different from other companies. One, it's a hardware company. But what we understand is, they ship a lot of things internally that they just never show the public. So, whenever iPhone 1 is released, like, they had iterations internally. And actually, like, if you take a look, iPhone 1, today, what, iPhone 17? Like, that's 17 years of iteration, right? Like, they didn't wait for iPhone 17. They're like, hey, like, we're gonna put a phone, a GPS, and like, iPod. A browser and iPod, and that's iPhone 1, right? So, the same thing with this is, it definitely has all these limitations, but that's...

• 3:07:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:02Speaker 01

  Version one.

• 3:07:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, version one. It's gonna get better.

• 3:07:05Speaker 01

  Or version zero and like it's gonna just.

• 3:07:08Speaker 03

  Second question.

• 3:07:08Jocko Willink?

  Second question.

• 3:07:10Speaker 03

  Um, so i- in as far as AI in general, is there anything? Okay. So you know, a lot of people, if they don't really understand it yet, which is most people, I think. If they don't understand how it works, like how things are developed, they look at it as just one big magic thing, right? That's why they say the robots are gonna kill us because they seen Terminator or something like this, right? So they think, oh yeah, one to one, that's what's gonna happen because that's how it looks, right? And for the most part, in your guys' minds or in the minds of people that know how it works, they're gonna be like, well, that's not really how it works, you know, like if you, you know, the end of days, like you could maybe imagine how it could happen, right? And then you kind of have an idea of the likelihood of if that's gonna happen or not, then you have some questions or whatever.

• 3:07:53Speaker 03

  Is there anything off the top of your head that that people say all the time? And you just wanna like, yeah, that's not how it works. You see what I'm saying? Is there anything that you guys can think of?

• 3:08:03Speaker 02

  Uh, really like in terms of how AI actually?

• 3:08:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, so you guys know how it works, right? How it's developed, but then you know that most people don't. So whether you see on the news or like in conversation or whatever, and people are like, oh, well, AI, and then they say this opinion. But since they don't know how it works, it's kind of an ignorant opinion. Like you wanna say, hey, that just so you guys know, that's not how it works. See what I'm saying? Is there anything that you hear all the time off the top of your head?

• 3:08:28Speaker 02

  Like.

• 3:08:32Speaker 02

  Like the, the, the, the biggest one is, uh, maybe definitely the word AI is like in, like encapsulates so many things. That like for, for like different people, AI can mean different things. Mainly it's based on your profession. So, uh, like for the group of people that only use chat GPT, which is like the billions, the billion people use chat GPT, for them still today, like the penetration of AI is mostly defined by recipe, music, like chatting, poetry, all.

• 3:09:07Jocko Willink?

  Shallow.

• 3:09:07Speaker 02

  Shallow. Yeah, exactly. So, uh, like the, the, the, the main thing is that what we define, like what?

• 3:09:17Speaker 02

  What like the full potential of AI is is barely still like at the one percent implementation in people's lives yet. Like the fact that still up till this day, like even at companies, when companies like at a large scale would deploy and like AI at a at a full company, even to to this day, those that are fully adopting it are even still using it to the like one percent capability, because they're still mostly using it for, you know, brainstorming, maybe, you know, a bit more like kind of drafting, exchanging some ideas, coming up with things. But still to to like even that capability is still very limited.

• 3:09:58Speaker 02

  Uh, you can still go up in capabilities as well, but the the like the the biggest shift of AI that in the coding space that we're literally seeing is that um like specifically now in robotics is the other one, robotics is like physical, like now you're making a big economic impact. But uh like brainstorming is is like still useful, but not like really, you're not really maybe leveraging AI really to all that degree. Like to to the question, like short answer to the question that you're saying is that what is maybe like not necessarily annoying, but like what you see as a kind of a missed yet uh value to be created is that whenever, you know, the word AI is is is mentioned,

• 3:10:41Speaker 02

  is still way too early in the value uh like potential that is available. The full value, still few companies are are literally using the full value of it. I would honestly even say that we still like the the people that are building it still did not yet fully extract the the entire value of the agents that can do. So agents just basically agents is just basically giving to the AI tools. So the AI i- is just gonna keep answering text until you tell it like, once you get to that text part, actually, open a browser. Or when you get to that text part, I want you to execute this code. Or once you once you get to that text part, I want you to create a calendar invite or whatever.

• 3:11:26Speaker 02

  So it's all text based, it's all like tokens, text that's getting generated. But it's until the text becomes an action, then it becomes an agent. So the more you give the agent tools, the actually, the more powerful it becomes. And like we would even like push it all the way to to believe that. With now with way more like with cars that are self-driving. Today, even our coding agent, we didn't yet put it to this test. But we believe that it wouldn't be that big of an effort to put our coding agent to build a full self-driving software that would be able to steer the wheel, push the brakes, push the gas and all those things. So what took enormous efforts for like labs to build self-driving cars

• 3:12:08Speaker 02

  is now becoming possible because we have these big L L Ms that are powered by giving them the tools to take these actions to get the feedback, you know, it's able to, it's getting its own feedback there. So robotics is like a big, it's really a place where like A I is really becoming, you know, powerful and it's being adopted. Uh, software is like, uh, almost, I, I would stretch to say like engineers today that are really using it, software engineers. It's, there's two, maybe two categories. You can either be a software engineers that you're at the top one percent and you're able to extract enormous value from it. Like you're, you're, you're just becoming, you know, uh, uh, you know, ten times more powerful than you currently are.

• 3:12:52Speaker 02

  Or you're the other side of the engineers that are still useful engineers, but they're more, very honestly, they're just. And now it still has a lot like, just as I said, like if you deploy it in places where it fails, it's gonna fail. But in the places where it's covering a big economic value, engineers are really honestly, uh, you know, it's way ahead of their performance. So it's writing better code than them. It's able to, uh, be more professional in terms of the code, do it more production grade, be more secure and all these things. Maybe it's a longer.

• 3:13:25Speaker 01

  No, but and my other point is people are like, where I think people get wrong is like things are gonna, are not moving as fast as it is. Like the problem is it's just moving so much faster.

• 3:13:40Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so it's moving faster than people think.

• 3:13:41Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

• 3:13:44Speaker 03

  And you're saying, you're saying in a nutshell, people don't realize the power of what they're even talking about?

• 3:13:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13:50Speaker 03

  So almost like.

• 3:13:51Jocko Willink?

  The 10% of the human brain thing, you ever heard that?

• 3:13:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:13:54Jocko Willink?

  People only use 10% of their brain?

• 3:13:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:13:56Jocko Willink?

  This sounds like we're only using 1% of AI capability.

• 3:13:59Speaker 03

  Right, like so almost like they're um, they're maybe mentally assigning AI to to tasks that AI is overqualified for. Yeah, yeah.

• 3:14:08Jocko Willink?

  Essentially. Way overqualified.

• 3:14:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:14:10Speaker 01

  And, and the other part, AI can do so much for them, they just don't know it yet.

• 3:14:16Speaker 03

  Right, right, they don't even realize it.

• 3:14:18Speaker 01

  They don't realize it, and that's part of like, our focus initially was just like, we really, like, we've been building agents for three years. And every release was just making the agents better. However, we're at this inflection point right now where these agents are becoming better than us. Like, it's not even a joke. Like,

• 3:14:40Speaker 01

  it would be a waste of time if we would code without AI. Like, it's that basic. So the point is, however, the rest of the world don't see it yet like that. And I'm more talking for people that, like, the most advanced companies that are seeing the future, they invest heavily in it, and like, however, they still have, because they have fears from security, privacy, etc., but they're adopting it. The concern is the small and medium companies that are today at this inflection point where if they don't invest aggressively right now, like, and I'm not talking about like just moms and pop shops, like, these can be like massive businesses,

• 3:15:24Speaker 01

  but that just technology did not penetrate as much. And there is so much value to unlock, and people think that, oh, great, no problem, that's another next week thing. Next week it's gonna be much more powerful. And the week after, and the week after. And if your competitors are just getting one week heads up, two weeks heads up, and they're recruiting more people to do it, like, we're recruiting all the time. But we're recruiting people to manage agents and say, hey, like, that's great, do it like. We have hundreds of agents that are running tasks right now. We're not even monitoring them. So think about it more as people want assigned tasks that are basically very easy.

• 3:16:06Speaker 01

  And because like they're, everyone is used with chat GPT and like they're asking questions, which is great. But people are still not using agents as is. And these agents are moving at a very fast pace and they're gonna wake up one day and like it's gonna be. It's never too late, like I don't buy the thing, like people can make, it's gonna be harder to adjust, yes. But like there is nothing in life that's, hey, too late, right? Like that's my mindset, like people say, hey, like we missed this opportunity, great, there's a hundred other opportunities, no problem. So, but the point is, if you don't invest now, things will take you more time. And this technology is only accelerating. And I would put a bit also more fear on the, hey, like, are these controlling our lives?

• 3:16:51Speaker 01

  Are they're gonna become more powerful? I, I don't buy the fear that is going, definitely is very powerful. But I believe that there's good, like the people who are running these things are, are good people.

• 3:17:06Jocko Willink?

  Right on, awesome. Good echo, Charles.

• 3:17:09Speaker 02

  For now, yeah.

• 3:17:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, good to go, okay, for now.

• 3:17:12Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:17:13Jocko Willink?

  Um, people can find you, so on the internet, it's blackbox.ai. On Twitter, it's blackboxai. On Instagram, it's B L C K B X dot A I. So it's like a black box with no vowels, except for the A I. And then on YouTube, you're at Black Box Bruiser.

• 3:17:37Jocko Willink?

  And one of your videos, building a Spotify clone, sixteen million views, that, how, how old is that video?

• 3:17:45Speaker 01

  Not sure.

• 3:17:45Speaker 02

  Maybe a few months, I'd say like.

• 3:17:49Speaker 03

  I don't know whether maybe four.

• 3:17:51Speaker 01

  Something like that.

• 3:17:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's something like that. But if you want to, this is kind of what we're talking about here. You can just watch this thing. You tell it what to do. Hey, build a Spotify clone and it starts programming and there it is. So very cool stuff. Um, this is a, this is a new world, right? We're getting there. Small step for man. Giant step for mankind. Um, thank you guys so much for coming out.

• 3:18:15Speaker 01

  Thanks so much.

• 3:18:16Jocko Willink?

  Really appreciate it. Thanks for the lessons learned and I think what you're doing to create a product that is gonna gonna help so many people. They're gonna become more efficient. They're gonna become more effective. They're gonna become more productive. And ultimately, they're gonna have more freedom in their lives. So.

• 3:18:30Speaker 03

  Awesome. Appreciate it.

• 3:18:31Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for bringing me along for the ride.

• 3:18:33Speaker 01

  No, it's not for us. Work to do and there's a lot of exciting things and really appreciate this opportunity.

• 3:18:38Speaker 03

  Definitely appreciate it.

• 3:18:39Jocko Willink?

  Thanks guys. Thank you.

• 3:18:41Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 3:18:43Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Robert and Richard Rizk have left the building.

• 3:18:48Jocko Willink?

  Definitely educational. We just talked to him for another chunk of time trying to, trying to, uh, navigate this, this world, this AI world.

• 3:18:58Speaker 03

  It sounded to me a little bit that you knew a little something because you were like about L L M, large language models. And you said something like, oh, no one's ever heard of, you know, when you said that.

• 3:19:10Jocko Willink?

  I sounded impressive.

• 3:19:11Speaker 03

  You sounded like you knew some stuff. Um, so my question is, do you know some stuff?

• 3:19:16Jocko Willink?

  No, no, I don't. Um, because very, very little, I should say, very, very little. Part of the reason I was tracking it and these guys got me into it, you know, that was 2022. AI wasn't, people weren't, Chat G P T wasn't out. Yeah. You know, so when I first met them, they were like explaining it to me. I wish I would have recorded those conversations, you know, just to get the, the insight. But what they did was they pulled out the computer and they're like showing it to me and I'm going, oh, and, and. Um, it would be like, it would be like, let's say you were a, you were a jujitsu guy. And you had never seen, like you were a jujitsu guy in 1992. And you'd never seen a leg lock or a heel hook before.

• 3:19:57Jocko Willink?

  And Dean Lister came along and was like, listen, watch what I can do. I can get the foot here. I can get isolated and then I can torque it and make you tap. Some people would be like, oh, that's like, that wouldn't work or whatever. Some people, John Donahue, goes, oh, wait a second. Oh, and that was kind of my, I was watching them. I didn't really fully comprehend what was what. But I said, oh, like I can, hmm, this could be, and part of it was also the guys were totally in the game. Like they were, they were very passionate about it. They were on board with kind of echelon front and extreme ownership and, and they had got down here, stalked me apparently, you know, knew we're looking for my pattern of life.

• 3:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Thanks, guys. But, but you know, I could, I was like, okay. Cause I mean, obviously, I mean, I get a lot of pitches, you know, I could hear a lot of people come to me with their ideas and stuff like that and all good. I appreciate it, but a lot of them, it's just, I don't have the capacity or the time to, to,

• 3:20:56Jocko Willink?

  you know, engage in too many things outside of what I already do. So, but those guys, you know, I could see that, oh, this is, this is, this is, this is important. And so again, going from, they launched a couple of weeks later. You know, 10,000 users really quickly, a million users in a couple of months. I kind of had a good feeling about that. But then again, you know, there's always, always, you know, when you're in a, when you're in a startup, I hate to say that, but when you're in a startup, you know, when you get in the, you know, when you get in a airplane and you're taking off and when you're taking off, it's like shaking and it'll make a noise and all that stuff. But then you get up to cruising altitude and you're like, oh, cool. I'm gonna, you know, read my book or whatever.

• 3:21:37Jocko Willink?

  Uh, when you're in a startup situation, it doesn't level out, does not like, oh, we're cruising out to no, it's like the whole time is you don't know if something's gonna, you know, shaking. That's the way it is. And so it's been like that with those guys. Luckily, they have run it very scrappy. And, you know, the overhead has been kept under control. And so they're just doing a great job, you know, doing a great job. Humility is very important. And you can see that they don't overestimate where they're at. They're very realistic, but they're also confident. So it's great. I'm happy to be working with them. It's been a, it's been a cool run, and I'm sure it's going to be continue to be a very cool run. So we'll keep getting after it. And, you know, listen, while you're using these agents to help augment your, your

• 3:22:21Jocko Willink?

  brain, listen, you know what's not going to happen? There's no agent that's going to come and do deadlifts for you. There's no agent that's going to come and do jujitsu for you. And there's no agent that's going to go on a run for you. You have to train your body yourself. So that means you need to get after it. And when you get after it, you're gonna need fuel. I recommend Jocko Fuel. And let me tell you something. Uh, I have a new, both my daughter and my wife, Rana and my wife, Big H, they've been talking to me about this for months. And I just haven't been, I've been, I've been overlooking this, this, this

• 3:23:03Jocko Willink?

  situation. Um, Greek yogurt. You know anything about Greek yogurt?

• 3:23:08Speaker 03

  I know a little, some, some, yeah.

• 3:23:09Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So I don't like, like, for my whole life, Greek yogurt, like it's plain yogurt, tastes like, doesn't taste good to me, right? My whole life. Never liked it. So both Rana and Big H have been for months mixing protein, milk protein powder with.

• 3:23:32Jocko Willink?

  Greek yogurt. And I've even had a couple bites, you know. I've even had like, oh yeah, it tastes good.

• 3:23:40Jocko Willink?

  But re- but recently I, my wife made one and I was like, good lord.

• 3:23:47Speaker 03

  It's good.

• 3:23:47Jocko Willink?

  It's so good. And the thing is, it's crazy. The macros are crazy.

• 3:23:54Jocko Willink?

  So you have like, it's not a huge amount of Greek yogurt, but that has 20 something grams of protein in it. No carbs, some fats. And then you throw in another 25 grams or 22 grams, depending on which milk protein you're using. If you're using the Pro Series, which I am right now. That's 25, the other one 22, but you're, you're in there. So you have this, you have what 40, almost 50 grams of protein and it's delicious. And here's the other little interesting thing, in the morning, you mix it like with the vanilla. You put some, or strawberry milk, you, you mix it with that stuff. You have like a little breakfast treat. And then in the evening, break out the chocolate. Break out the salted caramel, break out the mint.

• 3:24:39Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you what, be, be honest with you. You grab some of them, uh, sugar free chocolate chips. Toss a couple of those in there. You're having dessert dude. And it's, it's freaking 40 or 50 grams of protein. So right there, breakfast and lunch, 100 grams of protein.

• 3:24:56Speaker 03

  Easy money.

• 3:24:56Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's, that's like all those macro problems that we all have chasing those numbers. Trying to get that protein and in the system. Right there, breakfast, you know, 10 o'clock, mix up one of those fruity yogurt milk bowls. And then after dinner, have a, have a delicious dessert. 100 grams of protein right there. You're, you're, you know, in the day you'll have maybe one, you know, you have a milk during the day, whatever. You know, that's, that's 130 and you had a steak or a chicken. You're good. You're in the zone. So this has been, this is kind of, have you tried this yet?

• 3:25:32Speaker 03

  Bro, I've been on that chase ever since the video that you guys came out with. Long time ago. Yes. So. And it's funny because I saw the video and I was like, yeah, that's cute. Making jokes and.

• 3:25:43Jocko Willink?

  Bro, yeah, I was kind of like, oh, that's good.

• 3:25:44Speaker 03

  But my daughter really likes Rana. And so she, she saw the video on her own, by the way. And she was like, she started making it just on her own. And I was like. Like I didn't, you know, she's like, yeah, yeah, Rana was making this. So I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna start doing this or whatever. And from then, oh yeah, pretty like almost every day.

• 3:26:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:26:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's ridiculous. So now, now big H is mad because she's, she's running low on that yogurt quicker. We're running through that Greek yogurt boy, but jockofuel.com, go check it out. You can get some energy drinks. I'm about to have an energy drink right now because we're getting ready to go train some of that jujitsu. It's always good to just get a little bit of, you know what I mean?

• 3:26:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:26:22Jocko Willink?

  So get some of that. You can get all the, all the other supplementation that you might need. Joint warfare, just, just the stuff that you need to get by greens. And you know what? Creatine. I don't know if you're on 20 grams of creatine a day, but I am.

• 3:26:41Jocko Willink?

  So you hear about all the, it's not just the physical benefit, you hear about those cognitive benefits and you're like, let's go. You hear about the prevention of Alzheimer's and all this kind of stuff like, okay, let's get on this. Let's get on this train. So jockofuel.com, go check it out. New pro series, muscle drive. That's another thing. The weird thing about muscle drive is if you have muscle drive. You know what I haven't tried yet? I haven't tried Molk muscle drive and Greek yogurt. I might try that.

• 3:27:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:27:08Jocko Willink?

  I might try that. I might see what's up with that because the muscle drive is satiating. Got all those amino acids in it. It's like GTG, bro. So that's what we're doing. Um, jockofuel.com, check it out. Also speaking of jujitsu, which we're getting ready to go train. You need a rash guard. You need a pair of training shorts. You need a gi. We got you covered. And you can get stuff that's a hundred percent made in America, made by freedom, not by communism, not by slavery. And we have jeans, boots, hoodies, t-shirts, hunt gear, training gear, everything that you need.

• 3:27:46Jocko Willink?

  Sneakers coming. You seen those yet?

• 3:27:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Get some sneakers coming.

• 3:27:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:27:50Jocko Willink?

  Were you calling sneakers?

• 3:27:52Speaker 03

  I don't know, shoes, whatever. Sneakers. Yeah, I call them some sneakers for sure.

• 3:27:56Jocko Willink?

  In a, in one of, some people call them tennis shoes. You ever heard that?

• 3:27:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:28:00Jocko Willink?

  Even though they're not even made for tennis. Like you, like some people call a pair of Air Jordans tennis shoes.

• 3:28:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:28:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a thing. That's part of the regionalist, regional, uh, language of America. Different regions call it different things. You can look at a map and there'll be like circle areas. This will be tennis shoes. This will be sneakers.

• 3:28:17Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I heard tennis shoes before.

• 3:28:19Jocko Willink?

  There's one more too. Trainers.

• 3:28:21Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:28:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, trainers.

• 3:28:22Speaker 03

  Australia right there.

• 3:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think my wife, my wife used to call them trainers. She's from England.

• 3:28:26Speaker 03

  Okay. Yeah, yeah. Same thing. Um, you just like, and I think this was your neck of the woods. Um, where you call, I might be wrong, but, uh, they call soda pop.

• 3:28:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, that's not my, we call it soda, but out in the Midwest, they call it pop.

• 3:28:40Speaker 03

  Well, I'll go one further. They, they call them cokes.

• 3:28:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cokes is a different region.

• 3:28:44Speaker 03

  Where is that?

• 3:28:46Jocko Willink?

  I want to say down south.

• 3:28:47Speaker 03

  I thought that was your, your spot. Cokes. Even if it's not coke.

• 3:28:50Jocko Willink?

  Even if it's a, even if it's a seven up.

• 3:28:51Speaker 03

  If it's a Pepsi.

• 3:28:52Jocko Willink?

  Or a straight up Pepsi.

• 3:28:53Speaker 03

  Pepsi is coke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So same vibe.

• 3:28:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, same vibe. Same vibe. Exactly.

• 3:28:58Speaker 03

  Tennis shoes.

• 3:28:59Jocko Willink?

  So we've got those things working.

• 3:29:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:29:01Jocko Willink?

  Uh, originusa.com. That's where we're making a hundred stuff, a hundred percent made in America. Moab pants. So you gotta, you need a pair of pants that you can wear to work. You work out in the yard or work in the, you know, office or wear out to dinner. You're good. Not to mention jeans, you know, American made. Delta sixty-eight.

• 3:29:21Speaker 03

  Best jeans I've got.

• 3:29:22Jocko Willink?

  Let's go. OriginUSA.com. Check it out.

• 3:29:23Speaker 03

  It's true. Also, jocko store.com is where you can represent on the path. So that's one thing that AI can't do is represent on the path. See what I'm saying? So it's very important, uh, element of this whole outfit. So yes, uh, you know, get after it. Uh, discipline equals freedom, which is kind of the main one. Good. Stand by to get some, you know, you want to represent while we're on this path. Very hard to fall off the path for any extended period of time when you're representing. It is one of those things. Um, so yes, all kinds of merch on there. Uh, Sherlock is a subscription scenario. So you want a new design every month, all based on these, these principles, you know, discipline equals freedom. But, um, it's a new design every month though. It's a little bit outside the box. Sign up for that if, uh, yeah, you're interested, it's pretty cool. People seem to like it.

• 3:30:08Speaker 03

  It's all, all of it is on jocko store.com.

• 3:30:10Jocko Willink?

  Let's go. Check out, hey, check out blackbox.ai by the way. And also you can check out askjocko.

• 3:30:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:30:17Jocko Willink?

  Dot AI.

• 3:30:17Speaker 03

  See what up?

• 3:30:18Jocko Willink?

  You can see what up. Um, it's again, it's an early iterative version. It's free. I think it's like you get three questions a day for free. And if you're going to be asking questions all day long, you got to subscribe to it. Uh, but hopefully you can manage with three questions a day, you know? Maybe you only ask one today, you can ask two tomorrow, whatever. You know what I'm saying? Save them up if you only have one today, whatever. Write down, or if you have five today, write down two. But check out, uh, askjocko.ai. Give us feedback. We're going to need it. I'm sure it's going to not be perfect because we're making iterative steps. That's what we're doing. We'll change it quick. Also check out a couple of books. We got Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. We got Need to Lead by Dave Burke.

• 3:31:03Jocko Willink?

  We got Things My Brother Used to Say by Ryan Mannion. And then you got a bunch of books that, uh, I wrote. Leif Babin wrote, uh, Extreme Ownership with me in the Economy of Leadership. And then I wrote a bunch of kids books, the whole nine yards. You all know that. Check those out if you need them. Give those books to your kids in your neighborhood. Help them get on the path. Also, eslonfront.com, we have a leadership consulting company. We help leaders and organizations improve everything in their world by teaching the lead, the skills of leadership. Also, we have a online training program. Check that out. Extremeownership.com. You can get some of that. Listen, kind of a last call, last call.

• 3:31:42Jocko Willink?

  March 21st in Scottsdale, Arizona, they're celebrating Mark Lee's, what would have been his 48th birthday. Of course, he was killed in 2006 in Ramadi, but his mom, Mama Lee, she runs an incredible organization and she is puts on, you know, she helps out so many of our veterans, Gold Star families, active members, retired members, she just helps out our people. And so she puts on this, this event, and this is Mark 48. So Mark carried the Mark 48 machine gun and is would be his 48th birthday. Mark's platoon mates, two of Mark's platoon mates from Charlie Platoon, Lead Bob Holland, who you've heard

• 3:32:27Jocko Willink?

  on this podcast, and then Jake Keimbomb, another, another beast. They're going to be speaking and meeting everyone and telling them about Mark. So if you can go, if you're in Scottsdale, Arizona, March 21st, 2026, awesome events. Go to, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org and check that out. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. And then finally Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us on the interwebs for Robert and Richard and Black Box AI, on the interwebs, blackbox.ai, on Twitter,

• 3:33:05Jocko Willink?

  at Black Box AI, Instagram is, it's B L C K B X dot AI, and their YouTube is Black Box Bruiser. Is there a copyright infringement there? Maybe, but we're letting it slide for our people. Black Box Bruiser on YouTube, go check that out. And then for us, check out Jaco.com and then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink, and Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because there's not an agent. There's agents on there that are just trying to make you keep watching and keep wasting. So don't let that happen. Thanks once again to Robert and Richard, and really Roger too. He didn't sit in today, but been great working with those guys from Black Box. And thanks for joining us today, educating us on, on,

• 3:33:50Jocko Willink?

  well, little Middle East history, right? We, that was good to hear. And also educating us on AI. Thanks for what you're doing to build a business that's going to help a lot of people live better lives through technology. Also, thanks to our uniformed personnel around the world. It is a time of war. And if you're in harms way.

• 3:34:10Jocko Willink?

  Risking your life and you're doing that so we don't have to. And we thank you for your service. We thank you for your sacrifice and we thank you for the opportunity to do what we're doing in this great country. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for risking your lives here at home to protect us. And everyone else out there.

• 3:34:37Jocko Willink?

  It takes hard work to build something. And no one is going to build it for you. You have to do it yourself. You have to, you have to push yourself and you have to make it happen yourself. No one's going to do it for you. And also remember this.

• 3:34:56Jocko Willink?

  Technology is advancing and it is imminent. It is coming. And you can't stop it. You don't have to like it. You don't have to abandon who you are and what you do. But what you do need to do, as much as you possibly can, is keep an open mind and figure out how to utilize this new technology, whatever it is.

• 3:35:24Jocko Willink?

  Because you either have to use the technology yourself or the technology will end up using you. That's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.