Putin, Gaza, and America’s Fall: These Are the New Rules of War & Leadership | Jocko Willink PT 1

In this powerful episode of "Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu," Tom sits down with former Navy SEAL commander, leadership expert, and bestselling author Jocko Willink for a compelling exploration of modern warfare, leadership, and human nature. Known for his no-nonsense approach to personal discipline and his frontline perspectives, Jocko offers listeners a rare glimpse into how he thinks about global conflicts like Ukraine, Russia, and the Israel-Hamas war—not from the comfort of theory, but from lived experience and profound strategic insight. Tom and Jocko unravel the unpredictable realities of war, the dangers of overconfidence in leadership, and the psychology that drives nations into protracted conflicts. They also examine the concept of "why America loses wars," the test of wills at the heart of every battle, and how who needs to win often determines the real outcome. Whether you care about geopolitics, leadership under fire, or just want to understand how values play out on the world stage, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss. SHOWNOTES 00:00 Strategic Thinking in Modern Conflicts: Russia, Ukraine, and the Will to Fight 02:33 The Unpredictability of War—Overconfidence, Misjudgment, and Human Nature 04:17 Why America Loses Wars: The Cautionary Tale of “Wars We Don’t Have to Win” 06:12 Russian and American Cultural Attitudes Toward Sacrifice and War 09:01 Psychological Warfare: Israel, Hamas, and Turning World Opinion 13:38 Strategic Calculus: Collateral Damage, World Sympathy, and the Cycle of Retaliation 17:02 Morality in Modern Warfare: Threats, Response, and Values 19:15 Defending Values: America’s Future, Internal Struggles, and Global Commerce 23:04 Instilling Core Values in the Next Generation—The Origins of Jocko’s Kids Books 25:22 Cultural Influence Through Storytelling: The Power of the Warrior Kid Series CONNECT WITH JOCKO WILLINK Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jockowillink/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jockowillink YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JockoPodcast Website: https://jocko.com CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to ⁠https://www.vitalproteins.com⁠ https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out ButcherBox: New users that sign up for ButcherBox will receive their choice between steak tips, salmon, or chicken breast in every box for a year + $20 off their first box at ⁠https://butcherbox.com/impact⁠ https://butcherbox.com/impact Monarch Money: Use code THEORY at ⁠https://monarchmoney.com⁠ https://monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year! Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at ⁠https://shopify.com/impact⁠ https://shopify.com/impact iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACTGO when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at ⁠https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu⁠ https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu Jerry: Stop needlessly overpaying for car insurance - download the Jerry app or head to ⁠https://jerry.ai/impact⁠ https://jerry.ai/impact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 1:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Jocko lays out the hidden mechanics of leadership failure across all walks of life. What happens when ego infects your chain of command? And why the military, the government, and corporate America are all suffering from the same disease: cowardice disguised as virtue. If you want to understand why our systems are collapsing and how to make yourself strong enough to survive what's coming, this is the episode to watch.

• 1:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Does watching what's going on in Russia and/or Israel, Palestine, does that trigger your strategic mind at all?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I definitely think about things strategically. And for Russia, as strong and as mighty as Russia is, it's guess how strong and mighty America was in Afghanistan? Guess how strong and mighty America was in Vietnam? Guess how strong America and mighty was in Iraq? That strength and that might? Doesn't really mean anything in a test of wills. And and Ukraine is fighting for the ground that they live on. They're gonna fight to the death. And you're gonna get into, I think the worst case scenario.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  And it is that this ends up in a, you know, like a guerrilla warfare. Worst case scenario. That means if if Ukraine is just gets annihilated by conventional type. Force. They're gonna end up with a guerrilla force that's gonna be. Picking away at Russia's for the next 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. Until Russia. Says, okay, you can have your freaking houses back. Now I can predict that right now. But it has to play out. We still have to play the game. You still have to play the game to find out what the outcome is. Because on paper. Look, on paper, everyone thought Russia was gonna roll into Kiev in two days.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  And they got right to the outskirts. But that didn't that didn't. Take into the calculus, the human will. And the fact that we're not, these are how this is where we live. It's where my family is, and I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, it's just gonna be a long bloodbath.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  It's gonna be a long nasty bloodbath.

• 3:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you try to map the minds of the people leading? Like, do you try to think through, okay, what what does Putin's behavior tell me about what he actually wants?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  I'm not that deep into trying to figure out exactly what they want. Or exactly where they're gonna stop. You know, like, what is it gonna take to get you to stop?

• 3:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Is it too high level?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  I think, no, it's just the fact that from my. Experience in life and history. It's not that it's too high level. It's just that it is absolutely unpredictable. This is why we get into wars. Because we think, America, we think we will go and we will win. Would you get into a fight with me? No, okay, right, because you don't think you could win. Now, if you, for some reason, you know, you had a knife in your back pocket, you had a pistol with you, and you're like, okay. I can win this thing. You're gonna go and fight me. We get into wars that we think we're gonna win, but we think we're gonna win every war. And we're dumb. And when people go to war and they think they're gonna win, they're dumb. Because you don't know what's gonna happen. And would I get in a fight with you?

• 4:40Speaker 01

  You think I'd attack you? Do you?

• 4:43Tom Bilyeu?

  No.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't attack you.

• 4:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Because you think you're gonna lose, unfortunately.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  No, but, but, but I don't know what you're gonna do.

• 4:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Right.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  I don't know what you care about. I don't know if you have a knife in your back pocket. I don't know if you're gonna bite my ear off or bite my face. I don't know if you're gonna sue me. Like, there's so many unpredictables that why am I gonna get engaged in this? I'd rather just be like, hey dude, looks like you're having a rough day, man, I'll get out of your way. Okay, you, you want my parking space? Cool, I'll drive around the block. So unless you corner me, I don't wanna fight you. The primary reason that I've come up with of why America loses wars is because we lose wars we don't have to win.

• 5:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Hmm.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  So when you get into a war that you don't have to win, the chances are you're gonna lose it. There, the great chances are you're gonna lose it. Does Russia need to win this war with Ukraine? Honestly, no, they don't. They don't need to win this war with Ukraine. Ukraine needs to win this war. And so therefore, when you play it out, chances are, again, it's unpredictable. There's, all you could do is say, well, they have a slightly better chance. And we're gonna pay with hundreds of thousands of lives to figure out which answer was correct.

• 5:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Wow, that is a really interesting insight in terms of who needs to win and who doesn't. I think part of the reason that, and I'm obviously speculating, but part of the reason that Putin hasn't taken any of the off-ramps is that, A, he thinks he can win, to your point, but also, he's turned his economy into a war economy. He has made huge promises to his country. And so while he doesn't need to win, he has backed himself into a difficult situation. And when it's somebody else that you're sending to die, it gets a little bit easier. Also, to your point about freedom and to my coming point about how important culture is, Russia has proven over and over and over that they are willing to sacrifice.

• 6:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, I don't know if they care enough about Ukraine, if they identify Ukraine as Russian soil. Uh, but certainly, when you try to push into Russia, they feel some kind of way and they react accordingly. It's a

• 6:44Speaker 01

  They've won.

• 6:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  They've won all the time. They beat Napoleon. They beat Hitler. But when they didn't have to win in Afghanistan, what happened?

• 6:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. When you look at what's going on in Israel versus Hamas, that is not one that I understand. Uh, but do you look at that? Does it feel just like a normal insurgency? Or do you see something atypical happening?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  You've got two opposing sides that don't agree, and they're at war, and they're going to kill each other until the killing is done. Much of my thoughts around forgiveness is like that same parable of the scorpion and the frog, right? You know, this old parable, the scorpion says, the frog, can you carry me across the lake? And the frog goes, but you'll sting me. And the scorpion goes, no, if I sting you, we'll both die. Goes, no, I won't sting you. We will die. So I won't sting you. So, okay. Uh, scorpion gets on the frog's back. They halfway across the lake, and the scorpion sings the frog. And as they're about to drown and die, the frog says, why'd you do that? And the scorpion says, I'm a scorpion.

• 7:40Tom Bilyeu?

  I love and hate that story all at the same time.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  That's what's happening. And I, and you did this to us? We're going to do this to you in both directions. That's what's happening.

• 7:52Tom Bilyeu?

  I've heard you talk about in Vietnam, one of the big mistakes we made was I dang valley?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  I drank valley.

• 7:58Tom Bilyeu?

  I drank valley. Uh, and the lesson learned there was, hey, just because we killed a thousand of them, and they only killed a hundred of us, means that we're going to win. That's what I see playing out here. What, what America didn't realize was we did not have the appetite for the loss that they did. And when I look at Israel versus Hamas, Hamas, under Sinwar, who's dead, but has laid a trap of, we're going to take hostages and do something absolutely despicable, evil, horrible, and obviously required a response.

• 8:36Tom Bilyeu?

  But you're gonna over respond and you're gonna lose the world. And that's gonna be part of a larger strategy, largely of psychological warfare, where we get the whole world to turn against you, to alienate you, and that's the play. And it seems to be playing out so well. There's, I don't know if you know who Eric Weinstein is, but he talks about this moment being like in Breaking Bad, where you had one character, who, his name's Mike, grabs one of the drug dealers by the lapel. And so the drug dealer's like, let go. He refuses, and so the drug dealer just starts beating the shit out of Mike. Israel is the guy throwing the punches. Now, if Hamas would just give the hostages back, they would stop punching.

• 9:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Hamas doesn't want them to stop punching. That's the whole point, is to get them to punch, to get them to maximize civilian casualties so that they just look absolutely terrible so they can get isolated. You've talked about the utility of psychological warfare. And I think you use it differently than I'm bringing it up here, so by all means, make the right case. But that's what I see here. I see a game, somebody who's being far more strategic than just a traditional military conflict.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Within a short time after October 7th, I was getting interviewed and I recommended that Israel not bomb. I literally said, hey, they dropped a bunch of bombs out of the gate. And I said, okay, like, you don't want popular opinion in the world to turn against you. And, you know, that's kind of the way it's played out. You know, very, very predictable. There's no one that wants innocent civilians, innocent Palestinians killed more than Hamas. Every innocent Palestinian that gets killed is a really good victory for Hamas. It really is. And I have seen some really beautiful indications of,

• 10:31Speaker 01

  you know, you see some Palestinians are now starting to protest against Hamas openly, which is, that's, of course, it doesn't get much press, but that is a inspiring thing to see. Actual Palestinians in Gaza that recognize, hey, we want this to stop, and we are willing to protest against Hamas to try and get this to stop. And hopefully, we see more of that, but it's getting suppressed. I mean Hamas, they obviously put, shut those things down very rapidly. Uh, it's a terrible situation. Now, on the other hand, Israel is, yeah, okay, we get it.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  You, you can sit here in your air conditioned studio and tell us to stop bombing. We just got attacked. We had thousands of people killed. And we are not going to stop until we destroy this, this group that did it to us. And you know what? This is war. And they're making a decision. Clearly, they must see, clearly, they do see the way that the, the global view of them is turning and they are continuing to press. And they're probably in their, in their strategic view saying, yep, it's going to take us another four months. We'll take a bunch of hate for the next four months and then we'll be done.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  And Hamas will be no more. And then we can move forward. It seems like that's, that's their, that's their strategy. They can withstand, they can withstand the glow, the global popularity falling off a cliff, but when they're done with it, they're going to be done with it. It seems like that's what they're doing. And to my point earlier, whether that's a good move or a bad move, I don't know. And, and not only do I not know, no one knows. They've made a decision. This is what they're going to do. You know, I, I have pointed this out to people. If a group came into your home and killed your family.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  If that happened to me, a group came into my home and killed my family, I would not stop until I destroyed as many of that group as I possibly could, and it would be a good number. And so they did that to Israel. And Israel, they said, okay, you know what? You did this to us. We're gonna, we're gonna now destroy you. And there's collateral damage everywhere. There's starving kids and women and children. And they're going, yep, this is what we're doing. I don't, I don't know how the long-term impact of that is going to be. Clearly, the world has turned against Israel, or much of the world has turned against Israel. And so the- Strategic move by Hamas, you give them like, oh yeah, good job.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  You, you, you, you made a strategic victory here. You've got the world to turn against Israel, which is a, a pretty impressive thing to be able to do for, for Hamas. They've got the world, popular opinion turned against Israel, turned against their enemy. And they did it very rapidly. The rest of the world isn't there. The rest of the world is watching it and seeing whatever images are getting propagated. On the one hand, you see the, the picture of kids in rubble. It's awful to see Palestinian kids in rubble. The other thing that you see a IDF soldier patrolling down the street. And when you're an IDF soldier patrolling down the street, I don't know if everyone feels this, but what I feel when I see that is this individual human being is waiting to

• 14:07Speaker 01

  get sniped, blown up, shot, killed, destroyed, maimed. That's what that person's waiting for. And, and so each of these are human emotional moments that are happening. And we're sitting on the, here on the outside, the rest of the world is sitting there going, I think you should do this. I actually think you should do that. There's a, a script to write where after October 7th, Israel said, I, we can't believe this happened. We, what can we do to, to defend ourselves better? And this is terrible. And they would have gotten sympathy from the world, perhaps more sympathy from the world. And same thing with, with Hamas. Look at South Africa, the way South Africa, that government was torn down over time from

• 14:51Speaker 01

  international pressure. That probably could have happened eventually for, for Palestine, for, for Gaza, for a two-state solution, whatever the case may be. One of those things could have happened. But this just throwing a grenade into the room and seeing the, the destruction, the laws of human nature have won again. And there's blood.

• 15:12Tom Bilyeu?

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• 17:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Promo code IMPACT. It's completely risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee. And we're back. Let's pick up right where we left off. I think the next 20 years is going to ask America the question, how much do you actually give a shit about your values? And how far are you going to push for them? So I think that we're gonna have a China question. And right now, we're saying, yeah, we're willing to rise to the challenge economically. I think it's gonna escalate. Europe is going through the throes of what does it look like when you allow so many people in your country that you no longer have shared values at a societal level? And some people are willing to fight for theirs and other people are not. We just had the guy in Colorado light people on fire because he believes that Israel's out of pocket

• 18:08Tom Bilyeu?

  and they absolutely have to be stopped and it is worth killing people that, shockingly, have absolutely nothing to do with it to get people to pay attention. And so what I'm trying to figure out is, from a value system perspective, at what point do you go, here's the line in the sand? I get from a political standpoint how easy it is to be like, I'm not there on the ground, it's just a missile from the sky, these guys cease to exist. And people are afraid of that. And so when we say, stop fucking with the ships, they stop because they don't want to get blown up.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that's the key component there is we, number one, how are they stopping, you know, how are they stopping the vessels? How would, how, they were attacking free trade. And so for us to say, yeah, you know what, you can't do that. We're gonna stop you. You don't do that anymore, or we're gonna stop you. And then if they continue to, again, this is gonna infringe on our way of life. And then we escalate. At a certain point, it's like, oh, do you wanna go and send troops onto the ground there to fight against the Houthis? No, because we don't need to. We don't need to do that. We can keep them at bay and they can either learn their lesson

• 19:25Speaker 01

  and subdue whatever element of them is out trying to, trying to interfere with our shipping.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Or we just continue to bat them down every time they step up.

• 19:38Tom Bilyeu?

  So when I look at the kind of leadership that you have done where people are actually shooting at people, there is literal life and death consequences. That feels like it should be the place that would have the highest demands on leaders, but be the place where you would naturally find breakdown of leadership the fastest. But you don't. Is that because you guys have this incredible filter going in?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  There's one major problem with leadership development in the military, and that is, for the most part, your military leadership positions are held for about two years. And what that means is, I'm a young officer in the military, in the army or in the Marine Corps, and I take over a platoon. And for a while, you know, you just met me, then you're one of my guys in my platoon, and your first impressions are like, oh, well, we can't really judge him because I'm a trained professional, right? I went to West Point, I went to the Naval Academy, I went to Officer Candidate School. So I've learned a certain way to behave that is acceptable within the norms. And so I learned that, and I'm going to project that. And so for a while, that's what you see. You see that thing that I learned that I'm projecting.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Now, it takes about the first few months that we're together as a platoon, we're not really doing anything. It's some administrative stuff. And so you don't really see my leadership in any way, shape or form. Maybe I even present a pretty good front, like, I come out and talk to the troops, and you guys, oh, he's a pretty articulate guy, cool. And then a few months go by, and now we're going to start working together in the field. We're going to go out and start doing training exercises. Well, the first couple of training exercises, you start, you know, the first one goes a little bit awry, and maybe you hear me getting a little bit flustered, or maybe I lose my temper, or something like that, and you go, wait, what's going on here? And, but that was one mission. The next mission goes a little bit smoother, so you, oh, okay, it must have been just an anomaly. You see what I'm saying? It takes a long, it takes months.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Of you looking at me and the platoon looking at me and studying me. And finally, you see me lose my temper again. And then every time the pressure mounts, I start, like I said, losing my temper. That's a good example. I'm losing my temper. I'm yelling and screaming. I don't listen to anybody else. It took you eight months to figure that out. So now we're about to go on deployment. And as we're about to go on deployment, you and your platoon, the platoon gets together and what do we do? Well, do we have a mutiny? Do we bring this up to the commanding officer? There's a bunch of other options like, then none of them are good. Because now, if I get fired, now guess what our reputation of our whole platoon is? Our whole platoon is bad. So the platoon goes, you know what? Just deal with it. We can, we can, we can manage him for a little while.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Now we go on deployment. I do really dumb stuff, but now you're really covering for me. You're the platoon is great troops and they're just doing everything they can bending over backwards to make sure that I'm successful, even though I'm an idiot. We get back from deployment. We, the platoon did such good work that even though I'm an idiot, we performed our mission. We got accolades for our mission. I was pretty good at articulating. So when I went and talked to the battalion commander, I looked pretty good and he gave me an up check. And so what happens? The platoon's over. And you, by the way, you all for the last two months of deployment were just holding your breath, waiting for someone else for when my time is over. So my time's over. And guess what? I actually get good grades and I get promoted.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  And that can happen through a whole military career. So the fact that, that, that two-year window of leadership, you can kind of get through anything for two years. And, and bad people can get promoted. That happens. And you can certainly look at our, some of our flag and general officers and go, how is this person, an admiral? Or how is this person a general? Some of them, I look at, I go, this is amazing. This person should be president of the United States. This person is incredible. But it's not always like that. So I don't look at the military as this factory of good leaders. I look at it as a testing ground where some leaders get experience and.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  And and they develop in a way that is phenomenal and they end up being great leaders. There's also a bunch of knuckleheads in there. That's the that's the cold reality of it.

• 23:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, in the business world, very similar, at least from where I'm sitting, the whole idea of people get promoted to the level of their incompetence. When I first heard that, I was like, what? And then I realized, oh, yeah, it's exactly true. Like, you'll do good at this job. So then they're like, hey, you know, it's this pyramid, so there's ever fewer positions. So we've got to move you to something that maybe you haven't done before, but you were so good at the thing that you did previously. I owe you that promotion, and so I move you. And then eventually you get to the point where you stall out because you're not good and nobody wants to go backwards. So, um, in business, it's like this constant calling of i- i- if you're doing it well. So when I'm teaching entrepreneurs, I am ruthless about, listen, you want to give people an opportunity. You want to make sure that they know what success looks like.

• 24:36Tom Bilyeu?

  You want to make sure that you create an environment where they're getting the feedback they need, on and on. But if you've got somebody that can't do the job, you've got to get them out of that role. So that would be sort of my rough swag at what the, um, the ultimate factory for leadership is, that you just said the military is not. But what would you say, like, what is the factory that you want to set up? What are the things that we all need to go through, assuming that either we're at the beginning of our career? Or we're now at the point where we're at our incompetence, but we don't want to get stuck there?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  The ability to be humble enough to look and see what you're doing and see what your shortfalls are. To me, that's the most important thing for leadership development. The minute that someone is saying, hey, you know what? I've got this figured out. You're damn right, I should be put in this role next because I deserve to be there. The minute that that that attitude starts to take over our minds, that's when we become problematic. So with all the leaders I've worked with, there's only one, there's only like one type of person in my experience that cannot improve as a leader, and that's a person that's arrogant.

• 25:46Tom Bilyeu?

  A humble person. Somebody who's dumb.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, dumb, dumb, dumb will get in there too. Dumb will get in there too. But if you have someone that's dumb, but they're humble, we can work with that. So if I'm your platoon commander and I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm humble enough to say. How do you guys think we should do this? We'll be okay. We'll be okay. Because obviously, you know, the dumb person, if they're surrounded by some people that are smart enough and humble enough themselves, right? Because if I work for you and you're an idiot and my goal then is to call you out as an idiot and make you look bad and undermine you, it's not going to work. It's going to fail. But if you're my boss and you're an idiot, but I'm humble enough to be like, hey, you know what? He's the boss. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but you know what?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  At least he's listening to what I say and we can put together good plans. I can get with the team and we can go and execute them and he'll get the credit, but I don't care. We'll be fine. So

• 26:44Speaker 01

  as long as the, a person that might not be the smartest person is, has some good people around them and they're humble enough to say, oh yeah, I'm, I'm a little over my, underwater here. As long as I can say that, I'll be okay.

• 26:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Power vacuums tend to arise. So you are correct in what you're saying, at least in my experience, in the corporate world, that if you've got a boss who's an idiot, the funny thing is I will play the clip of you saying, this went wrong? Good. This went wrong? Good. When people complain about, oh, my boss is an idiot. I'm like, good, this is your chance. Like you've got an opportunity to rise up. There's a power vacuum that you can fill it. But I do worry that there are two things that will wreak havoc, no matter where you're at, military, politics, corporation, and that is stupidity and arrogance. I probably am more afraid of stupidity than you are, it sounds like.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds like it. I've worked for some dumb people that were actually pretty good bosses.

• 27:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting. So that'll be, that'll be fun to ferret out. So, so push on that for me. You're in that situation, the power vacuum opens up. What have you seen in that next layer down? Do, do people battle? Like, is this a, you're, you're so good at being the guy underneath the idiot that everybody just sort of realizes they can draft off you and you're smart enough to know 48 laws of power. Don't try to outshine this guy. Let him take the lead. Like, is that what's going on? When you watch groups that don't have you, what normally happens when a power vacuum opens up?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  It really just depends on the dynamics of the group because. If you, this is, so this is a perfect thing that I used to explain with a SEAL platoon. So when I, the last part of my career in the SEAL teams, I was training the SEAL platoons to go on deployment to, it was at the time it was Iraq or Afghanistan. And when I first took over, I thought to myself, okay,

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I really hope that this platoon commander is a good leader. I hope that the platoon chief is a good leader and I hope that the assistant platoon commander is a good leader. And, and I hope that the leading petty officer is a good leader. So I had this, this hope in my mind that the, the senior leaders were good leaders.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  And after training a bunch of SEAL platoons over time, what I actually hoped for was that there was a, a good leader in the platoon. It didn't even have to be, we call that group the top four. That's like the leadership that designated on paper, leadership of the platoon. What, if one of them was a really good leader, great. But if none of them were really great leaders, but you had a one really good, just enlisted sled dog, he could, he could run that whole platoon. And if he was smart, he would recognize that he had that power. And I would see this a lot where you'd be like, oh yeah, the, the real

• 29:43Speaker 01

  chain of command in what a platoon looked like would look nothing what it looked like on paper. But if that young guy was smart enough, he would, it didn't matter. He knew he was that. He knew he was the, the top of the hierarchy in the platoon in terms of actual leadership. And if he understood that dynamic and he was okay with the fact that even though on paper, he wasn't the guy, it didn't really matter to him. He just wanted the platoon to win. Those platoons happens all the time. They would be great. The problem would come where either that guy, his ego is too big and he wanted the credit, or the, the top four, someone in the top four didn't like the fact that, that someone else was stepping on the power dynamic. They didn't like the, the,

• 30:25Speaker 01

  the unwritten leadership chain of command. They didn't like that. And they would then undermine that guy and you get infighting. So what both those problems boil down to is ego. Like either, either ego could disrupt the whole thing. Either someone in the top four didn't like, you know, hey, why are we letting him come up with a plan? I'm the one that's in charge. Boom. Just self destruction. So.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Generally, if we have people that are smart enough and understand the world well enough, they get in that situation, they go, oh yeah, oh, I get it. Tom's leader, he's inexperienced, he doesn't have the best mind for this, but that's okay. He's listening to me. I've built a good relationship with him. I'm going to take this thing home run all day. Or Tom doesn't have much experience. He doesn't have the best mind for this. I deserve to be there. I'm going to undermine him. Everyone's going to know that I'm the guy and we're going to self-destruct.

• 31:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Coming up next, more from Jocko Willink. You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before every call, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After it, it drafts your CRM updates to review and approve. So there's less admin and more selling. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join

• 31:57Tom Bilyeu?

  the over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact and you can be up and running in minutes. All right, let's dive right back in. Talk to me about Pete Hegseth. So I know you don't know him well, but you certainly know who he is.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:30Tom Bilyeu?

  He is finding himself as the Secretary of Defense going into what I would say is a largely hostile environment. But the people work for him. How do you express good leadership in a moment like that? You've got all the world's eyes on you, certainly the politically aware eyes. You have some percentage, whether it's one or 99, I have no idea, that are actively trying to undermine you. It's certainly tempting. At that point, when you've got everybody like coming at you to grab collars and cock a fist. But I'm guessing that's not the advice. How do you navigate that situation well?

• 33:07Speaker 01

  I think one of the most disarming things you can do, and it's, and it's not like a ninja trick. It's a, it's a real thing is when you tell me

• 33:18Speaker 01

  that, hey, Jocko, you don't have enough experience to do this. My answer as Jocko is I agree with you. You're right. I don't have a lot of experience here. That's why I'm going to rely on you and the rest of the team to help me. Or when you come at me and you say, hey,

• 33:36Speaker 01

  you seem like you lose your temper sometimes. I don't say, you're, no, I don't. No, I say, you know what? Yeah, I do. I lose my temper sometimes. And you know what? That's why I'm counting on you to help me through those moments. Or when you can see, or you come at me and you say, hey, Jocko, you're, you're dumb. I don't say, no, I'm not. I'm smart. I went to college. I, I, I got As in high school. I don't say that. I say, yeah, you know what? There's definitely some, some areas where I am academically challenged and I'm going to need some help.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  And I think that's the best way to approach when people are being critical is to say, yeah, you're right. You should be critical of me. I'm not perfect. I, I will make mistakes. I have made mistakes. I will make mistakes. I'm going to be open about them. I'm going to take ownership of them and we're going to get through it. That's what we're doing. So that, that's, you know, if I'm surrounded in a room, surrounded by a bunch of people that don't like me, you know, I took over a SEAL platoon where the, the platoon commander had been fired. And some of the guys were waiting for that guy to get fired and some of the guys did not want that guy to get fired. And so it was this, not the exact same situation, but it was a similar situation in that I had some people that were open minded to me showing up and some people that were angry at me for being there. And, you know, I rolled into it with that sort of attitude like, okay, yep. Hey,

• 34:52Speaker 01

  you like the guy that got fired? Okay. What, what'd you like about him? Let me make sure I continue with, with some of those things. Oh, you guys that didn't like him? What didn't you like about him? Let me make sure that I don't adapt some of those things. So I think it's just keeping an open mind, not getting too defensive. And look, it's gotta be, uh, it's gotta be wearing to just have people attacking you all day long when you're trying to do a job. It's gotta be wearing, but that's the job.

• 35:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Good.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the job. I mean, you go into that political spectrum and you are going to i- immediately, there's a whole group of people that are going to do everything they can to destroy you. And that's what's happening.

• 35:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you try to ferret them out, build alliances against them? Like, is there a, we gotta cocoon the threats? Or?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  I think if you have some people that are not aligned, like, they're truly not trying to go to the same place that I'm going to. Because that's a problem. Look, if you and I have the same goal and you want to go one way and I want to go a different way to get there, I'm okay with that. But if I'm trying to get here and you're trying to go over here, i- we have a problem. So, and that shouldn't happen very often. I mean, it's the, it's the United States of America. It's the United States military. What, do we want our troops to be unsafe? Do you want our troops to be unsafe? No, we don't want that. Do you want our troops to be taken care of? Yes, we want that. Do we want them to have good equipment? Yes, we want that. So there's a bunch of things where it's like, oh yeah, you think it should be go this way, but okay. Most people, I think, are on board with the goals of the Department of Defense.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  But if we have someone that's not on board, okay, we're gonna find them and yeah, I would get rid of them because they're not aligned with what we're trying to do.

• 36:30Tom Bilyeu?

  So I have, in the last couple of years, become obsessed with Machiavelli, James Burnham, people that really look at the political arena as a game of power, control, manipulation, and that if you're trying to map that arena, you're gonna be constantly confused if you take them to be sincere actors that are simply trying to make the world a better place. And James Burnham wrote a book called The Machiavellians, The Defenders of Freedom. People who believe that they are so, basically his thesis is there's always going to be an elite group. It doesn't matter if it's you and your brother. One of you is going to be in a position of leadership. And to your point, oftentimes, the real leadership is very different than what's written on paper,

• 37:12Tom Bilyeu?

  but there's always a command structure. Somebody's in lead, other people are following. And of course, it will change from time to time, but, but you have that structure. Given that it's inescapable, you then have to understand what is the nature of man is political animal. And so he comes down on the, I would say, very eloquently, improves it pretty forcefully in his book, and it certainly echoes The Prince, written by Machiavelli himself. It echoes what Robert Greene wrote in The Forty Eight Laws of Power, that there are just some of these immutable truths. And I've heard you say this, human nature shows up everywhere you go. And if it is true that human nature has this, the things I need to do to get into power and stay in power are

• 37:55Tom Bilyeu?

  somewhat knowable, somewhat predictable, and from where I'm sitting, pretty ugly. How, one, do you accept that premise? Or are you like, that's just ridiculous on its face? If you do accept the premise, one thing is, every time I research you, that I always walk away with is, to miss your optimism would be to miss your sort of fundamental nature. And so I can feel myself getting pulled out of my optimism into like this fatalistic, really dark thing that I'm trying to steer myself back out of. So I'd love to get your sense of, if this is a Machiavellian

• 38:35Tom Bilyeu?

  world, how do you stay focused, positive, and not get sucked into the darkness?

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Well, luckily, I think there is alignment between doing good things and, for lack of a better way, the way you just said it, staying in power, right? And I got asked a while ago about,

• 38:59Speaker 01

  like, medical, some type of question around the fact that medical corporations are evil. I got, I got posed some kind of question like that. And I had recently been working with a medical company who had made a ton of money, like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. And you could look at them and say, well, they're evil, right? Because they're making all this money off of the sickness of human beings. And I was at one of their events, and they brought out on stage this like, young girl who had been, her life had been saved by this technology.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  And my point in saying that is like you have alignment between yes, these people are making a lot of money and they're also doing something good at the same time. So when I look at this power dynamic or this struggle for power, if you're not doing something for America that's going to help America move forward, then you should not be in power and you should be removed from power. But if you're doing things that are helping America and helping the people of America, and if you do that well, then you should stay in power. If you're just looking out for yourself, going back to my earlier point, if, if I'm over here just lining my own pockets as America falls, then I should be removed from power. If I'm over here and

• 40:26Speaker 01

  America is doing well, and maybe my, my own life is progressing because now I'm in whatever position I'm in, but I'm doing a good job because I'm helping America, I think that is fine. So I don't, I don't really see these two things as mutually exclusive. Like you can't do something good for America and stay in power. I don't think you need to undermine America in order to stay in power. I think you can actually do good things for the country. And because you do good things for the country, you stay in power.

• 40:55Tom Bilyeu?

  That's it for part one of my conversation with Jocko Willink, but we are just getting started. Tomorrow, we go even deeper into what war really teaches you about yourself, how to lead when failure means death, and why the world needs men who are both strong and deeply in control. If that sounds like you or who you're trying to become, do not miss part two. And if this episode hit you, drop us a comment, leave us a review and send us a message on social. Let us know what's clicking, what you want more of. And until then, my friends, be legendary. Take care.

• 41:29Tom Bilyeu?

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