542: Stronghold: War, Rescue, and Resistance. With Ephraim Mattos

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Ephraim Mattos explains how Stronghold Rescue & Relief trains local people to save lives in one of the world’s deadliest ongoing conflicts. Stronghold Rescue | https://strongholdrescue.org/ The Overwatch | https://www.theoverwatch.co/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Podcast number 542 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  On the morning of Thursday, June 8th, 2023, just a few miles from the location of the massacre, the Burma Army attacked several villages, looking to root out and kill any of the villagers who would dare defend themselves from the Burma Army's tyranny. Mortars rained down on unsuspecting civilians, killing some and wounding others, as the Burma Army assaulted the undefended villages. However, on this day, things went differently. Reacting quickly to the mortar barrage, the civilians knew what to do. They stopped the major bleeding of the wounded using makeshift tourniquets made from bandages and clothes in the village, tightening them with sticks and other items until the patients were stabilized enough

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  for immediate evacuation. Relying on a series of strategically placed handheld radios, the fleeing villagers communicated with other nearby villages and coordinated for a safe place to run, and they took their wounded with them. At the outset of the battle, local village defenders moved into place to slow the enemy advance and buy enough time for the families to escape. Some of these young brave men were killed and wounded. The defenders used cat tourniquets to stop the bleeding of the wounded and tactical field litters to quickly evacuate the patients when the defenders could no longer hold the line. When the battle subsided, the villagers who fled were provided rice and medicine that

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  had been stockpiled in secure locations around the jungle. The critically wounded were taken to the bank of a large lake where a medical boat was waiting with medics, extra supplies, and advanced life support.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a little section of an article from the online magazine called Coffee or Die and the article was written by Ephraim Mattos and although the article paints a pretty gruesome picture, just a few months prior, there was another devastating attack that had taken place. Only in that attack, the villagers were not prepared. They were not ready. They were defenseless and 17 people, including a handful of children, were not able to escape. And they were captured by Burma Army soldiers. They were tortured. They were violated. They

• 2:35Jocko Willink?

  were murdered. And their bodies were set on fire.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  And the difference between these two situations, one ending in a massacre and the other ending in people actually escaping, was training and preparation and supplies provided by an amazing charitable organization called Stronghold Rescue and Relief. And this is an organization that was founded by Ephraim Mattos, who is a former SEAL that fought in Afghanistan. He also fought as a civilian in Missoula in 2017, where he was shot by ISIS during the rescue of a young girl who was hiding in a pile of corpses in front of ISIS HQ.

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  But that wasn't enough for Ephraim. He had more to give. And he founded Stronghold Rescue and Relief and has been working all over the globe with a particular focus in the violent war in Burma, training the locals and giving them the ability to fight and survive. And he's joined us before, Podcast 398. It's an honor to have him back with us again tonight to share some of his experiences from the front lines and the incredible work that he, his people, and his organization do. Ephraim, welcome back. Good to see you.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  And do we need to talk about your name change?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Sure, why not?

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  I feel bad. So you have a new podcast and your podcast is called Overwatch with Ephraim Mattos. And I was listening to it. And in the beginning of it, you introduced yourself as Ephraim Mattos. And as soon as I heard that, I felt bad because on the last time you were on this podcast, three years ago, I called you Ephraim the whole time. And you responded perfectly well. And it seemed like normal. And then when you got here today, I said, Hey, man, did I mess up your pronunciation of your name last time? And you said, I kinda didn't. So what went down?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  So, so, so basically, what happened, so I, growing up, I was called Ephraim. My parents called me Ephraim. But then when I joined the military, literally like the day I was leaving for boot camp, I just sort of in my head, I just said, Well, you know, I'm just gonna start saying my name is Ephraim, because it's gonna be easier for people to pronounce. And that was, that was the entire amount of thought that I had put into that. And so for the past decade and a half, since I went to boot camp in, you know, 2010, anytime, anytime somebody asked me my name, I said, Well, it's Ephraim. But then about a year, year and a half ago, I was just sitting there and, you know, I'm married now, I have a, I have a daughter, and I was just thinking about, I was like, why did I, why did I change my name? I was like, my father named me Ephraim, my mother named me Ephraim. Why am I

• 5:23Speaker 01

  saying Ephraim? I just had never really thought about it. And so I just was, I was thinking, I was like, Well, you know, if I keep, if I just double down on Ephraim, that's what people know me as. Like, that's what Jocko calls me, that's what everybody calls me. I'm gonna look like an idiot if I, if I go back. But I was like, no, I was like, no, my father named me Ephraim, my mother named me Ephraim. So I want to go back to Ephraim and, you know, so, yeah.

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  Am I the first person to like, call you out on this?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Publicly, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  So what did you do with like, your friends that had been calling you Ephraim for the past six years or whatever?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Well, most of them called me just Mattos, or some, some people still call me Ephraim, and it's still totally fine. I don't, I don't correct people. And I don't, I don't really care. It's not, it's not that big of a deal. Usually just let it slide.

• 6:02Jocko Willink?

  The only, so my nickname has been Jocko since my parents gave me that nickname before I was born. And so everyone called me Jocko, my, my family called me Jocko, my friends called me Jocko, my my immediate now family calls me Jocko. The only time I didn't go by, it caught, I got a letter. This is how it got to the teams, because I got a letter in BUDS, and they handed us letters, and, and it said Jocko on it. One of the instructors was like, Jocko, what the hell is that? And so that's, that's how it kind of got back into the teams, or into the teams, because otherwise I didn't really bring it up. But when I went to college for three years, there was, you know, they have a whatever roster sheet. What do you call that? A roster sheet, like a class list? There's some real particular

• 6:47Jocko Willink?

  name for it, isn't there? Attendance attendance sheet. And on there is John Willink, right? And so that's the only place where the teachers and the students call called me John. Cause I didn't, I didn't say, well, actually, it's really, you know, actually, my nickname is John. Like it didn't, it didn't ever feel, it was a professional. I guess if I go into a bank or something, of course, you know, they're like, oh, John. So I felt the same way about college. Like this is a transactional relationship. These people don't really know me. So they're, they're John is cool, whatever. And that's kind of, that's kind of how it's been.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that works for me. Pretty much for anybody, anybody that just calls me the letter, anything with the letter E. I'm like, okay, I know you're, I know you're talking about, I know you're talking about me. E, big E, easy E. I was like, okay. Cause most people, they don't even try to pronounce it. They just go, here go E, whatever. And I'm like, all right.

• 7:37Jocko Willink?

  What does your wife call you?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Uh, Ephraim. Yeah.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  What did she call you five years ago?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I didn't know her five years ago, but uh, three years ago. Uh, I think, I think I was saying Ephraim still at the time. So.

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  So she's made the transition.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. She's, and she's totally, she's totally fine with it. She thinks it's funny. So she's.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  Right on. All right. Well, um, you've been, you've been, uh, done a lot. And anybody that wants to hear your story, which is an amazing story, and including how you grew up, very, very fascinating kind of way to join the military, growing up in a pretty sheltered environment. And then you just go straight into the SEAL teams. Pretty awesome. But go listen to 398. You know, you did, you did your time in Afghanistan as SEAL platoon, another, I think a PACOM deployment, and then eventually end up over in Iraq as a volunteer, trying to help people. And then from there, you eventually get this stronghold rescue and relief going. And like I said in the beginning, a lot of this centered on Burma. Although you guys have worked in Ukraine, like a bunch of places.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  Besides Burma, but Burma certainly focused. So before we get into stronghold, let's, let's get a little bit of background on Burma. Cause it's one of those things where it's, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of people that probably couldn't find it on a map. But there's been so much history there and before we hit record today, I was talking about my childhood and how I remembered as a child, the Burma being this brutal battle that was fought in the jungles. And you know, when I'd be out with my buddies in the woods, if things got really gnarly while we were having BB gun wards wars, you know, if I really had to break it down, I'd be like, yo, boys, we're Burma. Cause World War Two is brutal. Imperial Chinese, it was the monsoon season,

• 9:24Jocko Willink?

  the jungle, the whole nine yards. But a lot of stuff has happened there. Let's, let's get a little bit of history. I mean, starting with the fact that the Brits ruled Burma from the 1800s up until 1948 with some excursions by the Japanese Imperial Army in there. What else? What else we need to know about Burma?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think the most important thing is to kind of just basically start from World War Two up to where we are now. So the important thing, like you said before, the, the, the British had controlled the country. And then after World War Two, what, what I always say is that, um, World War Two basically never ended for Burma. Like the, the war has basically just continued on. The generations of guys, um, that I, that I go and work within the jungle, their fathers fought, their grandfathers fought, their great grandfathers fought. It's, it's never ended. So, um, so when the, when the British were there, it was called Burma. And then after, after 1948, the British leave. But there's, there was an important thing that happened during World War Two. And so during World War Two, the Japanese, they, um, they invaded Burma specifically because they actually wanted to cut off China, which is very important to

• 10:27Speaker 01

  modern day geopolitics, by the way. But, um, so the Burma Army attacked, or sorry, the Japanese attacked Burma. And their, their whole, their whole purpose was to cut off the, um, uh, British and allies from resupplying China. Cause Japan was trying to take over China at the time. And so, um, during, during the war, there was this, like you said, brutal, um, brutal fighting in the jungle. But the very interesting thing about what happened in Burma was, so the ethnic Burmese, they originally sided with Japan against the British. So they were fighting alongside the Japanese. The Japanese show up and the, and the Burmese are like, oh, thank God. Thank God the Japanese are here to, to rid us of these, of these, uh, of these foul British people. Um, but the, many of the ethnic minority tribes, and particularly the Karen tribe that I work with.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  They loved the British, the Koran loved the British because the British would protect them from all of these ethnic conflicts. The British wouldn't allow the Burmese to come in and attack and try to take over their land and stuff. So the Koran loved the British and fought with the British the whole time. So the Burmese, they side with the Japanese and they work with the Japanese not only to fight the British, but also to fight against these ethnic minority tribes in some of the hills and some of the valleys that I still work in today. And so the Japanese make it all the way to India and there's these big battles and then eventually the Japanese are defeated, but the logistics lines are impossible to keep going through Burma, through the jungle. And so then the Allies start

• 11:57Speaker 01

  to win the war and start to push the Japanese back. And it's this brutal march. Way more Japanese soldiers were killed just trying to march back to Thailand at the time called Siam than were actually killed by the British. They all just died in the jungle from starvation and disease and all this. But, so as that's happening, the Burmese suddenly decide that they now like the British. And so they actually switched sides during the war and started fighting with the British and started to help expel the Japanese. And so then during the war, they were eventually able to push the Japanese out. And then, you know, war ends around 1945. And then around 1948, just a few years later, the British, obviously

• 12:39Speaker 01

  they've taken heavy casualties across their entire empire. And so they're pulling back from all these different places. And one of the places they pulled back from was Burma. And so when they pulled back, they have all this weaponry, they have all this stuff and they leave it there. And now the Koran had some weapons, the other ethnic tribes also had weapons, but the Burmese who lived in the middle of the country, they sort of live in the coastal lowlands and the sort of breadbasket, the rice fields in the middle of the country. They got a large amount of these weapons as well. And so basically from 1948, the Burmese then just immediately started doing what they were doing before the British showed up, you know, 150, 200 years earlier, they just started immediately trying to subjugate

• 13:23Speaker 01

  All the ethnic minority populations, including and specifically the Karen. Now, also, before we go on, there's multiple other tribes. There's the Rohingya, there's the Kachin, there's the Shan, there's the Wah, there's these other major tribes. But just for, just for ease of explanation, I work with the Karen tribe specifically. But so I, but I don't want to make it sound like there's, like the Burma Army isn't attacking these other people because they definitely are.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  So then Is the Karen tribe the most prominent tribe?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Um, I think the largest tribe I think is actually the, uh, the Kachin. I think they're the largest, but they're the Karen are arguably one of the most prominent because they also are on the border with Thailand. Um, and they've been, um, yeah, they're, they're one of the stronger tribes for sure. And so then during, so then during World War Two, or so after World War Two, this fighting then continues on and and long story short, over the last seventy five, eighty years, the Burma Army has just become stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. And the government of Burma now is the military. The military just says, we're, we're in charge, you know, they call it a junta. We are now in charge. It's like, again, imagine the US Army, whoever's the, you know, top general of the US Army says, I'm the president now.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  And, uh, the, the army's in charge. And that's what's been going on for the last seventy five years. Now, what the Burmese want, what the Burma Army wants is they want to subjugate and control all of these ethnic minority populations that are around all the, that are basically around the, um, the rim of the, of the country and all the borderland areas. But it's very difficult to do because the borderlands are, um, a lot of them are very mountainous, particularly in the Karen area. It's very mountainous. So if you go into the mountains. So mountain warfare is hard, jungle warfare is hard, mountain jungle warfare is even harder. Especially if you're the attacker and you're not, you're not used to living there. You're some guy from the city in the lowlands and you're trying to go up in the, in the Karen hills.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  It's like you're, you're going to get smoked. Um, so, but, but the Burma Army for years has been trying to build roads into these areas and, um, and that's, that's in short, kind of what's going on now. But, um, there's an important inflection point that happened in twenty twenty one. So during, during the last sort of decade and a half, the Burma Army has been sort of making these kind of fake overtures. Putting in civilian rule and some democracy, but it's totally fake democracy. For example, under their constitution, the military was given automatically, no matter what, at least one third of all the, um, seats in their, in their parliament or whatever they call it. And then, um, Typically, what would happen is basically another third of the people who are elected,

• 15:57Speaker 01

  quote unquote, would be just guys who used to be, they were a Burma Army officer yesterday, now they just got elected today. And so basically, the Burma Army had total control of the government. And then maybe a third of the seats were actual, you know, legit, were legitimately elected people. But then in 2021, the Burma Army basically just said, we're no longer, we're no longer gonna, you know, play this charade anymore, and we're just gonna take over. And we're not, we're gonna get rid of any of these semblances of democracy. Now, when they did that, as far as governance, nothing really changed. But what did change was now the ethnic Burmese who were, the ethnic Burmese, the younger generation who were excited about this idea of democracy, and they're not, they're not this sort of warring tribe, you know, they're, they're not, they're not fans

• 16:41Speaker 01

  of the Burma Army because the Burma Army became corrupt and started to oppress their own people and that kind of thing. So then in 2021, when this coup happened, now the ethnic Burmese young people fled to the hills and started joining all the resistance groups. And so now they have the People's Defense Force, the PDF, which is this large ethnic Burmese army that is now fighting against the Burma Army, whereas that did not exist four years ago. So now it is full-on total war. The Burma Army is almost like an occupying army in their own country. So they're almost like a foreign army that's occupying their own country, whereas before, they were the dominant power. And the war, unfortunately, over the last year or two, has shifted. The rebels, when I say rebels throughout this, the rebels are the

• 17:25Speaker 01

  good guys. I think Star Wars rebels. So they're fighting, fighting against the empire. But the rebels have been unfortunately losing a lot of ground because now Russia and China are heavily backing up the Burma Army. And so, so just so we understand the geopolitical situation on the ground there as well. So both, if you look, if you look at a map of sort of the greater Eurasian continent, And you look at Russia, let's start with Russia. So Russia, they have, they have multiple ports, but all their ports are really far north. So they can get through the Baltic Sea, Black Sea. But most of their ports and most of their access to the ocean is very far north.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  And it's only accessible during parts of the year because the rest of the year it's frozen over. And China is in a fairly similar situation where they only have their east coast. And they're pretty high up. And so if China wants to do any kind of shipping or expand their naval power, whatever, they have to go past Japan, they have to go past the Philippines. If they want to get over to India, if they want to go through the rest of the world, they have to go through the Straits of Malacca, which is, you know, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia right there, which are nominally allies of the United States. And so you basically have a Strait of Hormuz type situation in the Strait of Malacca down there in Southeast Asia. So what are Russia and China supposed to do if they want to have access to the rest of the world? And not be sort of beholden to the entire world with these naval choke points?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Well, you go through Burma, because Burma is the one place where both Russia and China can get, can get access to the ocean, and that's what they're doing. So if you go to Burma, down in the south, you look at a map, so down in the south, China has these special economic zones, and Russia is setting up a special economic zone as well, where they're building these deep water ports. And they're bringing in large amounts of weapons, they're bringing in fighter jets, they're bringing in massive amounts of firepower to back up the Burma Army. And the Russians now are even, they're in the process of, they're in the planning phase right now. And they've already announced their intention to build a nuclear power plant there in Burma. Yeah, and it's, so that's, which is obviously not a, not a great, not a great look.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  But basically, so Russia and China are heavily involved in supplying weapons to the Burma Army. And so the situation is very dire, because now all these new drones.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  And with the advent of and with the advent of drone warfare and obviously, um, you know, Russian fighter jets and uh, all kinds of, you know, Chinese weapons and stuff. The Burma Army is now using that to just pummel the rebels anywhere that they can find them. So the war has greatly shifted over just the last couple of years as well.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  Now, the last time you were on was 2023 and you ended up going to Harvard and getting a degree from, from where the?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  The Harvard, Harvard Kennedy School, H K S.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  And so what, what did you study?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Um, I got, I got a master's in public administration, so I focused on um, decision science, policy, that kind of thing.

• 20:22Jocko Willink?

  How was it going to there through your lens of life? That had to be kind of crazy.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it was, it was very crazy. So um, so the funny thing is I actually got my acceptance letter to Harvard when I was in Burma. So I'm sitting in, I'm sitting in Burma and I got an email and uh, I was like, hey, you've been accepted to this program. And I thought, oh, this is great. And actually, maybe six months earlier, I'd been sitting in a, in a jungle, or sorry, in a, in a, in a village that uh, is now controlled by the Burma Army. And I had sat there and used Starlink um, to, to um, put in my application to Harvard. So I was sitting there on my phone, writing out my, you know, application essays um, with a bunch of, you know, guerrilla fighters. I'm the only white dude there, you know, within, within 50, 60 miles.

• 21:02Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it, bro, you must had a sick essay.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm right now in the jungle.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:09Jocko Willink?

  Surrounded by, that, that, that's freaking as unique as it gets.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so I, I, you know, wrote my essays, um, had submitted that. And then, and then a few months later, yeah, I got the, I was in Burma and you know, I was like, oh, I got the acceptance letter. This is really cool. Now, the only reason I was able to apply to the program, the only reason I was willing to do the program was because it was a 12-month intensive program. So you have, you have to go to Harvard, you have to move to Boston, you got to go to school in Cambridge in person. But it was a one-year program. So it was 12 months. And so you did a, a summer term and then you had to do two semesters at more than full time. So it was 12 months straight. Um, but you know, you, and it's, it was designed specifically for people who are mid-career. It's called a mid-career MPA.

• 21:47Jocko Willink?

  What other unique people were in there with you?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  All kinds of, all kinds of people from all over the world, different high up people in different, from, from different countries. There were some, there's actually a bunch of guys who were active, active military, who were sort of getting masters degrees, so officers who were there, working on masters programs as well, guys who were going to be stationed at the Pentagon and, and that kind of thing after. But, so their next, their next duty station was going to be the Pentagon, so they were also going through this program as well. So yeah, lots of very interesting people, people who are going to like run to be, you know, prime minister of, of some country in, you know, Africa, and very, very, very interesting, very, very interesting classmates. Lots of, lots of Chinese people who were clearly, you know, clearly loyal to the, clearly loyal to the Chinese Communist

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Party, we shall say. So that was, that was an interesting experience to kind of interact with those people. But yeah, so I did, I did the program, and so it was actually really good because it forced me to do two things. So with Stronghold, my full-time job is running Stronghold, but my, so I just got married and my, my wife is pregnant. And so it was a, we needed, I needed some stability in my life. And I also needed to learn how to kind of let go and let, let the other operators, let the people, let the employees at Stronghold go and, go and work in the field without me there. And they're totally able to do it, they're totally competent, like really incredible people. But I needed, I needed to let go as a leader, just like, hey, let you go do that. So this forced me to do that.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  I was home for, for the birth of my daughter and, and school and stuff. But then during, during the Christmas break, which was like six weeks, it was a very, it was a pretty long time, I would, actually, I still went to Burma on a mission. So I went to Burma. So that was, and we can talk about that later, but basically I get back from that mission and, you know, people are like, oh, how was your, how was your Christmas break and everything? And I just, I didn't want to talk to anybody about it. It was wonderful. Yeah, I'd literally been just sleeping in a hole, getting, you know, hit with airstrikes and, you know, getting mortared, living in the jungle, like, you know, stabbing scorpions as I'm trying to jump into a trench as like airstrikes are coming in. And, you know, obviously, we had some guys, some of the local guys were killed and some

• 24:00Speaker 01

  of the missions out there. And so, yeah, so then I get back from that and it's just walk back into class at Harvard and everything's just totally, everything's, you know, totally normal. So it was a, it was a huge culture shock. Kind of, kind of interesting to see that. And it was also Harvard during, during an election year, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government during an election year. So that was very, and, you know, obviously, I was there when the, you know, attempted assassination on Trump, when he was, you know, nicked in the ear. And then also, obviously, the election and stuff as well. So it was just, it was just very interesting to sort of just be a fly on the wall. I, I wish I had engaged a little more with everybody, but I quite frankly, sat back and was just a little bit more quiet and just didn't engage a bunch. I was also dealing with a lot of,

• 24:45Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know what it was, shell shock or something. So we, I'd had a, I'd had a, between, between submitting my application to Harvard and getting accepted to Harvard, during that time, I was in a battle and we'd been hit with airstrikes and I'd showed you, I showed you some of the videos before we started recording here. But when that happened, I was like, oh, I'm totally fine. I felt totally fine. But I think, I think it did something to my nerves. And so I found when I was at school, when I was at Harvard, I would just raise my hand to answer a question or whatever in class. And I'm not, I'm not shy. I'm not particularly outgoing, but I'm not shy. Like, I'm not, I don't get nervous speaking in front of people. But anytime there was any kind of, if my, if my adrenaline

• 25:29Speaker 01

  was coming up a little bit, or any just little bit of nerves, social nerves or anything, I, my hands would start to shake, it would get all clammy, not noticeable for other people to see, but I could, I could feel it, my, my voice would shake. And so I knew I knew something was I knew something was up with me. And so that time at at at school was a good time as well to just sort of let my I had some sort of underlying stress level going on that I didn't understand and that was able to kind of come down a little bit during that time.

• 25:56Jocko Willink?

  Now, were the were the airstrikes and again, you showed the video, it's horrific to it's horrific to watch because like I've been mortared before, which is, you know, one thing, but the airstrikes is kind of next level. You know, when you're on the ground, you can hear the aircraft coming in. And of course, you know, I've seen airstrikes from the from the perspective of we're dropping bombs and they're going to hit someone else. It's a lot different clearly from that video when, you know, as an American, that that's just not supposed to be like that, especially, you know, for our experiences in the GWAT. There is no, you know, we have total mastery over the air. We do whatever we want up there. So for you to be on the receiving end of that,

• 26:41Jocko Willink?

  when did that, when did that start happening?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  The airstrikes and such?

• 26:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the airstrikes have been going on for forever, but I guess I can kind of just get into that specific story and and dive into the details on that. So, um, so I was on the, I was a podcast, uh, it was whether whatever that was July 2023. And so then a few months later, I was in, I was in Burma now. Um, so now the, the, the rebels, so the Koran, I was again, with the Koran. And one of the things that they were trying to do was try to take back territory that had been taken by the Burma Army. And so there was this, there was this town, and I'm going to leave out some of the little identifying details just for OPSEC reasons, because these places are still under, under, um, you know, under threat and still, you know, uh, there's still a lot of fighting in these areas. Um,

• 27:26Speaker 01

  but so there was this town and the, uh, the Koran wanted to liberate the town. Now, in order to understand why they need to liberate the town, we got to talk a little bit about what the Burma Army does when they go into these places. So you alluded to it, uh, right at the beginning. Um, but the Burma Army, basically this, this, this particular town, they had been occupying it. So they weren't trying to like ethnically cleanse people in the town. It was a fairly, fairly large town. Um, but it was a very important river crossing. So there's a large bridge there to cross a, a strategic river. And so the Burma Army have been occupying it for the longest time, but they still commit these atrocities against the local people, um, because they're sort of this domineering occupying power. One of the things that they will do is they will take the civilians and they'll have

• 28:10Speaker 01

  the civilian population, they'll take Karren people, and they'll make them walk in front of Burma Army patrols as the Burma Army patrols out to these different villages. And so if there's landmines, if there's booby traps, if there's claymores, if the rebels are wanting to ambush the Burma Army, it's like, well, you can't do it because there's civilians intermixed with the Burma Army soldiers. And so that's, so basically they'll use people as human shields. Obviously, there's going to be sexual assault, there's going to be beatings, there's going to be all that kind of stuff that's going to go on, forced disappearances, murdering people, things of that nature. And so that's, that's, that's kind of what's going on in these towns. So anyway, so the Karren want to go and take, take back this town, and so they assembled

• 28:52Speaker 01

  around 500 men to go take back this town. And now, keep in mind, the Karren, their entire life for the last 75 years has been guerrilla warfare. So they're used to working in groups of maximum 20, 30, 40, I mean, maximum, and they're used to hit-and-run tactics, and they're used to fighting in the jungle. So they're excellent at ambush, excellent at reconnaissance, excellent at sort of all the unconventional warfare stuff, sort of Vietnam-style war, like Viet Cong-style fighting, but they don't know anything about urban combat. They've, most of these guys have never fought in a town where the, where the buildings have concrete walls. They, they just don't know, that's just, that's just not their, not their culture.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  So, so essentially, what happened was the, the Karren, they went to take this town, and they, they crossed over this river by night, knocked out a couple of enemy bridges, and then that same night, as they knocked out these enemy bridges, which is where the reinforcements would come from, then the main assault, several hundred men then attacked the, the town from one side of the river, and this massive urban battle ensues. Now, during this, I was with a team of, a total of three of us, so myself and two other Stronghold guys, and our mission was to provide emergency medical care for them, and then myself, I was basically acting as an advisor to the commander. So if there was any sort of tactical stuff we needed to talk about, I was there as a sounding board.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  For him as well to, you know, to, because he's obviously dealing with this highly complex situation. And okay, how do you, how do you get your logistics? How do you move hundreds of men? How do you make sure they've got ammo? How do you make sure they've got food? How do we have a, do we have an evac plan to get our, our patients out of here? How are we, how are we going to move them to several miles through open ground? With all these rice fields to get them to back to the mountains where they can, you know, be safe and that kind of thing. How are we going to set up communication? So this is a whole new level. And so one of the things we do at Stronghold, 99% of what we do is, is emergency medical care. But if we're in these situations where there's a tactical situation where we're trying to liberate people. It's like, yeah, we're absolutely going to help you if, if we're able to in those situations. So we go into the town, I'm part of a three man, three man team.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  We go in there, we're embedded directly with the locals and the, um, the C2 element, the command and control element. The, um, the, the commander of the, of the forces, um, we move into the town, um, which in hindsight was not a good move. We should have, we should have stayed back a little further and just sort of coordinated comms. But we also needed to provide that emergency medical care because, you know, a lot of stuff, uh, obviously a lot of wounded in an urban battle. So the, the battle starts, we get in there now. The Burma Army, these guys are professional. This is not, um, this is not, you're not dealing with some army that, um, isn't motivated, that isn't well-trained. That is poorly supplied, that has no experience. That's not what you're up against. You're up against a military machine that has, that is decades and decades old.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  And it is part of their culture. I, I, I hesitate to call them sort of, I hesitate to call them Spartan because that's too much of a compliment for them. But it's sort of like that they are raised, a lot of these Burmese guys are raised and with the understanding that they're going to be a part of the military. If you're ethnic Burmese, it's like you are going to be an officer in the Burma Army and you are going to help take back. You know, you're going to go help take back your country from these, you know, inferior, these inferior ethnic tribes. And, uh, and, and many of the Burma Army soldiers, many of the Burma Army officers in particular, actually go to Russia to learn how to fight from the Russians. So they go to their military academies, they go academies, they go to their flight schools. And they're supplied by, you know, Chinese and Russian fighter jets.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And so they learn all this stuff and they have artillery, they have, they have mortars. And the Burma Army actually makes their own weapons. They literally pull raw material and they go, they have their own factories, they make their own bullets. They make all of their own stuff. And so they are highly, highly self-sufficient, which is one of the reasons why sanctions and stuff doesn't quite work with them. Cause they're highly self-sufficient. But my point is the Burma Army troops that are defending this strategic town, these are not, these are not chumps. These are not.

• 33:01Jocko Willink?

  They're legit, legit soldiers.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  They're legit. So.

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  And how many, what do you think, what do you estimate the Burma Army forces are in the town?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Probably 75 to 100.

• 33:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we have 500 on our rebel force?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Yes, but we have them, we have, our rebel forces is spread out a little bit. So the main element is, I'll say a few hundred. We can talk after about specific numbers, but the main, the main element is a few hundred guys that go in. So it's not, it's not a huge numerical advantage. It's enough, but, but not quite.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, going into an urban environment where they're in the defensive position, you're supposed to have 10 to one, by the way. Like that's the doctrinal number going into an urban environment. So this is rough.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  We're well short of 10 to one, let's put it that way. So we get in there and the Burma Army, they, they were ready, they were ready, because the rebels had attacked this town before. And so they were ready, they knew exactly what their defensive strategy was going to be. And they sort of hedgehogged, fell back to defensive positions and they, they fought ferociously. Cause they know that, you know, if the Burma, if, if the, you know, the Karen guys get in there, it's like, yeah, like, you know, you're going to go be a prisoner of war, best case scenario, you know, somewhere for the next, you know, like, when are you ever going to go home? You know, it's like, you're done. Or obviously you'll die fighting, that kind of thing. So they prefer to die fighting. And.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  So we get into the town and now the Burma Army, several miles away, they also have howitzers set up in these positions. And we knew the howitzers were there ahead of time. We just didn't know specifically what types they were, whatever. Anyways, the Burma Army starts firing artillery into the town and it's fairly accurate. So it's, so we go into the town and we are under a almost 24-hour artillery barrage. There's a few hours in the middle of the night where they would stop the artillery, but every, every couple of minutes you would have one, one, you know, I think it had been like 105s. I'm not really sure what, what size they were, but artillery is coming in and you can hear it coming. So you're just, you know, you just, you hear it coming, you just lay down flat. Hopefully it doesn't hit you and that's it. And then you, and then it goes off, boom.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Wait for the shrapnel to fall and then you kind of get up and keep doing what you're doing. So, and we're in this for several days. We're in this for three or four days. And we're in the, in the town and my team and I, we were, our little headquarters slash med, medical aid station was a, was a Buddhist temple. And so we're in this large kind of Buddhist temple area and we're treating the wounded as they're, as they're coming through. Now also while this is happening, civilians are fleeing the city, but they're not fleeing en masse like you would see in, you know, Iraq, for example. I don't know what it is, but culturally I just think they didn't quite understand what was happening or what was going to happen. And so in their minds, they're thinking, well, I'm just going to stay here in my home, lock the door, everything's going to be fine.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  You know, the rebels are going to leave or the rebels are going to win and like, I'm good, you know? So, but so not enough of them left, quite frankly. And so we were getting civilian casualties and there were, so for example, the Burma Army's firing artillery into the town, but then they're also bringing in airstrikes. Now, keep in mind, just a 15 or 20 minute flight away from this battlefield is a Burma Army airbase where they have Chinese-built fighter jets, you know, with, with Burma Army pilots. And so they are just, they're just, you know, putting a little bit of gas in the tank, load up some bombs, go, go hit targets, you know, that are being called out by the Burma Army soldiers and then go back and refuel and just do it again, do it again all day.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Basically from more, from, from sunup till sundown, they're coming in and just constantly doing sorties and they're dropping 500-pound bombs, sometimes multiple 250-pound bombs. And then they're also strafing. So they drop a bomb, come back around and strafe, drop a bomb, come back around and strafe. And they're doing heavy sorties plus artillery. So that's, that's, that's the world I'm living in. And so the reason I mentioned the civilians, so some of the civilians are leaving and there was one particular case where there was a man, he, him and his wife, he was relatively more of a poor guy and he lived close to the river and artillery came in, I don't know, he probably, somebody probably saw him, the Burma Army probably saw him and thought there was like rebels in his hut or something like that, so they called in

• 37:09Speaker 01

  an artillery strike on his, on his house and he's got, he was a guy who's maybe 45, he's got three young kids and the artillery round comes in, lands and basically blows off the top of his wife's head and her head was completely sort of like watermeloned by, by this artillery right in front of all the kids. And so he, he grabbed her body, dragged her down to the river and just kind of pushed her body into the river and then he walked out and you know, he, as he was walking out of the town, he, you know, came over and showed us and explained to us what had just happened to his wife. And I have a, you know, a video of that conversation that I was, I was having with him. But so

• 37:49Speaker 01

  civilians are, civilians are coming out. So we're several days into this and the, the rebels, they're not used to this urban fighting. And so one of the things that we would do, like if we were urban fighting, is you kick in the door of any house and you use it as a firing position. You get the civilians out of there, but you use it as a firing position. You get up high, you're kicking in the windows, you're kicking in the doors and you, you move house to house. They didn't, didn't want to do this because they didn't want to sort of be disrespectful. They didn't want to be, they didn't want to damage the local civilian population. They felt bad about that idea. And so they're basically just fighting in the streets and they're, they're in some of the houses that they can reach a little bit more easily, but they're not doing, you know, they were, they're not

• 38:33Speaker 01

  fighting a proper urban battle. Anyway, so they get exhausted. They're trying to rotate their troops back, back and forth. So they're, but they're, they're not able to really rest and, and they're, they're very, they're very stressed out, obviously because of the constant artillery. In the constant airstrikes, so everybody's, you're not sleeping, you know, things are, things are rough. And so I think it was the third or fourth day. They said, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna hold, everybody's gonna hold positions, we're calling for reinforcement, so there's more rebels are gonna come. And keep in mind, during this time, the Burma Army is also sending reinforcements, and so the troops on the other side of the river are holding off these airstrikes. As the Burma Army is trying to gather their forces to come liberate, you know, quote unquote liberate the town. And there are guys that are, that are stuck inside the, stuck inside the town.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  And so, on this particular day.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  I just, my team and I, we all just so happened to get sick. We, we realized, we, we realized it afterwards that we were getting sick, but, so that day I was like, man, like, I feel really, I feel really bad, this is not good. So it's on, on our end, it was relatively quiet, there's still artillery occasionally coming in, still an occasional gun run. Which, at the time, I, I think I was recording.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  I think there was thirty or forty impacts, just within the first sort of twelve or thirteen hours of the day, of daylight. Of, of bombs going off, from artillery or airstrikes. And I was keeping, I was keeping track of it, but on our end, we're not advancing, and so the Burma Army is sitting quiet, they're not gonna come out of hiding, they, they're conserving ammo and just waiting for their troops to come. And so, it's a relatively safe environment for us. Like, we're not gonna get attacked, no one's gonna come through your window and start throwing grenades at you, that kind of thing. And so, we're sitting there, and so I laid down in this, in this Buddhist temple, and the other two guys on my team, they lay down as well, we have no patience to, you know, to, to take care of. And, the one and only time, I took my boots off.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  I took my boots off, and laid down. And, uh, so we're laying there, it's relatively quiet, nothing's going on. Well.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  We're sitting there and what we don't realize is that one of the civilians who left the town ratted on us. They saw, they were loyal to the Burma Army, because there's ethnic Burmese who like the Burma Army and then there's people who are Karen who, who don't, who, you know, who don't like. So in these mixed communities, it's very dangerous. You don't know who's who, who's loyal to who. Anyway, so somebody had spotted us. They'd spotted the white guys in the building and they had contacted the Burma Army. And I don't know, I don't know what day they had contacted them, but anyway, they'd got word up there and they said, there's white guys in that building. And they had, I think that through Facebook or something, they had, we found, we saw something later, basically they had contacted the Burma Army through social media and said, hey, there's white dudes in this building over here.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  And of course, at the time, we don't know this. And so what the Burma Army did was they, so the entire time that they had been doing these, these, these gun runs on the, on the town that we're in, they would always come north to south. And so we would always hear them coming. So anytime a plane would take off from the base, you know, obviously there's a early warning network, the Burma Army knows that. So we know, okay, there's aircraft taking off. They're going to be here in about eight minutes or 10 minutes or whatever it was. And so we were kind of mentally prepared for that and we could, and we could hear them coming because they'd come from the north. Well, what the Burma Army did was they cut all the cell phone towers. So there was no communication. Of course, we didn't pick up on this until after, but there was no, no, all the cell phone towers went down because the Burma Army controls them. So they cut all the cell phone towers and they took three aircraft.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  And they flew from west to east and we're on the east side of the river. So they, so they came at us from an angle that we would not hear them coming. And there was no early warning except for, you know, radios and things like that, but it was just way too late. So I'm laying down on the ground. And the, the Burma Army, they use this tactic where their, their first bomb, they typically drop it short of the target. So their, their idea is they drop the bomb just outside of a building. If they're, if they're targeting a building, they drop it just outside the building. And then the idea is the frag, the directional frag wounds everybody in the building, like forces them to sort of freeze in place. And then the next aircraft comes in and drops on the building. So the idea is you want people to run to the building or you want people to be wounded.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  And so they're stayed, they're stuck and then you, and then you come in and then you hit the building. And so they use this tactic on us. So we all just so happen to be laying down. Um, so I'm laying there and um, just trying to rest and then no warning, no sound, no nothing. The roof of the building I'm in is blown off right on top of us. And the windows are obviously just blown in, just huge frag, huge, you know, huge explosion. And I look over uh, the guy next to me, Adam, and we just, we, we both just kind of look at each other. And for a second, we're thinking like, okay, was that just like artillery? Did the artillery get close? But we're like, no, cause you keep in mind, this all happens over the space of like two milliseconds. So we're thinking, okay, was this artillery? We're like, no, because we hear the artillery when it's coming.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Um, and then we hear the jet fly right over us. And so we're like, get out, get out, get out. So we run out and I'm barefoot and uh, there's no time because we know that second, we know that second plane's coming in. And so I run out, I'm barefoot, um, I leave all my stuff behind. The other guys, uh, one of the guys had flip flops on, the other guy had his shoes on, thank God. Um, but we, we run out, we jump in these trenches, we're maybe a hundred feet away from the building. And uh, we hear the next aircraft coming in and I, I pull out my phone and I'm just, I'm huddled in the, in the um, in the, in this trench and I just pop my head, I just pop my phone right above my head because I'm just going to record, basically record my death or record whatever's, whatever's about to happen, nothing I can do.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  And um, that second jet comes in, boom, hits a direct hit on the building, completely destroys the building. Again, we're within, you know, they drop a 500 pound bomb, we're within, you know, a hundred feet of it. And uh, so we're in the trenches and um, we don't know how many aircraft there are and we don't know how quickly the next gun run is going to be. So we just hold tight for a second. And because sometimes they would bring, sometimes the Burma Army would attack in uh, volleys of two, so they'd bring in a flight of two aircraft. And sometimes they would bring in a volley, a flight of three aircraft. In this particular time, they brought in three aircraft dedicated to this one specific target, which we had never seen them do before. Because the white people in there. Because the white people are in there. Yeah, so not, not big fans of the, of the white people.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  But, uh, so, so we're in the trench. So the first, so the first bomb has gone off. Now the second bomb has gone off because they just bombed us when we're in the trenches. And, um, so we've got about 90 seconds, maybe, maybe two minutes before the next bomb comes in. We don't know that we have that much time. So we're, we're hunkering in place and one of our guys, Adam, he's, he's, you know, like you, you want to talk about a guy under pressure, you see, you see someone's true character. So he, uh, I, I get up, um, and I'm checking on my guys. I'm like, hey, has anybody hit? Has anybody hit? And, uh, I see Adam and he's on top of a wounded, um, soldier and in a trench and he's shielding him with his body and he's treating his wounds. He was this, the soldier was lightly wounded, but he had shrapnel

• 45:37Speaker 01

  uh, through some of his, uh, through his shoulder and stuff. And Adam is, you know, he's wearing his stronghold shirt. And there's, there's an image that we have of it because I was still just filming with my phone. And I thought like that, like that is what stronghold is. That is, that is what we are about right there. Got a guy with a stronghold shirt, covering, covering a patient's, uh, covering a patient with your own body as bombs are falling. You can't make that up. You can't stage it. It's just, you see someone's true character in that moment. And we're literally in the trenches with these guys. And, um, so then I hear the aircraft, I hear the next aircraft coming. Immediately jump in the trench, um, and I start, I start yelling, uh, you know, gabayu hey, gabayu hey, which means airplane's coming, airplane's coming.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And, uh, the next, uh, the next aircraft comes in and, uh, drops another bomb right on that same building. So they, they'd already hit the building two times before that, but then they hit it a third time because there was, this was like a big, you know, they wanted to make sure that they killed whatever was in that building. And there was no chance of survival. Um, so they expended a lot of, a lot of ammunition on that. And then we knew now they were going to follow up with gun runs. So they still have three aircraft and they still have machine guns on these, these are Chinese built, um, uh, aircraft. And so we just X fill on foot. We're like, go, go, go, go, Bill. Let's just get out of here. We need to, we need to put some space between us. And you're barefoot. And I'm barefoot and there's shrapnel and stuff everywhere. So we, we get up and we start running.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Um, and, um, you know, I'm showing the guys, all right, look, we're going to go out this way. We're going to go out this way. And as we're going, the- The Burma Army had placed, they placed these bamboo sticks in the ground. They sharpened these bamboo sticks and they pushed them in the ground because they don't want the rebels crawling in through the exact routes that we would use to kind of go through alleys and stuff. So they don't want, you know, they don't want, they don't want the rebels to come through these areas. And so, and they also put down broken glass because it makes noise, you know, it cuts people's feet if you're barefoot, that kind of thing. And so as we're, as we're running to kind of go through this culvert, this drainage ditch, which is, which has a bunch of these bamboo spikes and glass, I look over and there's

• 47:37Speaker 01

  a pig, five or six feet away from this, and it's been blown in half. And so the shrapnel was, was more than, had been, had been flying everywhere. So we're extremely close to, like, we're in the kill box and obviously a pig is pretty close to the ground. And so there's shrapnel flying from these airstrikes that was, you know, that was low enough to, you know, again, kill this pig very close. Just one of those sort of odd memories you have. So we start crawling through this and we got to get, we got to get under this culvert and get out of there. And Adam was in front of me and so he was kind of pointing out, he's like, hey, glass, glass, glass. So I was luckily able to make it out of there with, without a scratch and sort of tiptoeing through all this stuff as everybody's screaming at me like, go faster. So we get out of there and sure enough, the, the three jets come back

• 48:20Speaker 01

  and they start then doing machine gun runs from different angles, just leveling the whole area, just, just spraying the whole area. At this point now, we're maybe 150, 200 yards away. So we're, we're pretty safe as, as, as it goes in war. So we, you know, we were able to, you know, move out of that, out of that position. And then, and then we found out later on. So then, so then basically, the, all the cell phone towers suddenly came back on. As soon as the, as soon as the airstrike was done, all the, all the cell phone towers started working and then the Burma Army started doing all their gun runs north to south again.

• 48:55Jocko Willink?

  And this was during your Christmas break?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  No, no, this was, this was not, no, that, we'll get to that story later. This was, um, this was, uh, actually ironically-

• 49:03Jocko Willink?

  This was after you left, after the last podcast?

• 49:05Speaker 01

  After the last podcast. This was actually, uh, this was just a few days after Christmas, actually.

• 49:09Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Um, so I was, uh, this last year, I finally had my first Christmas at home with my wife, because I missed the first three, you know, two, three Christmases that we had, so, yeah.

• 49:18Jocko Willink?

  So did the rebels get the village back, get the town back?

• 49:21Speaker 01

  So, so the rebels held the village, held the, held the town for about two months. Now, and then, and then they ultimately lost it. Now, the, there was just no way to hold. Um, there was several tactical blunders that were made during that, um, which we can talk about offline, um, because I don't want to give away, uh, TTPs are like, basically let the bad guys know, because they'll certainly listen to this. I don't, I don't want them to know why they won.

• 49:42Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Um, but there, there were several tactical errors that were made. But the Burma Army, so this is, this is crazy and also entirely true. So, one of the days, um, were, this before, before we got, uh, bombed out of the city. So after I got bombed out of the city, we, um, my team, all of our gear was destroyed. Um, and so I had no clothes, I had no shoes, uh, nothing, everything was, everything was leveled in that, uh, building. So there was a, our, our guys were able to go in the rubble and find a few things for me. Um, my, my backpack with my passport and stuff in it, so that was good. Um, so we got that, we got that out of the rubble. And, uh, um, so I was, I, I moved back to a village where I could still advise and help a little bit, but our guys had lost everything other than their

• 50:22Speaker 01

  passports. So, anyway, so I'm there sort of alone at that point. Um, I'm sick, um, I'm literally crapping my pants, because with the day, you know, that, that we got bombed out of this village, it was this, or this town was the same day that we all, we all got sick. So, um, but anyway, so, but before that happened, uh, so before the bombings had happened, uh, I think it was like maybe day two or three, I was hearing this, I was hearing this noise coming from the Burma Army side of the river. Now, we have guys over there, we have our own troops on that side, but I'm hearing this

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Like, like, it sounds like, you know, like a beat coming from, I'm like, what is that? And so then our guys radioed over, our guys from the other side of the river, they radio over and they say, basically, they told us the Burma Army was driving down the road to come attack the rebels who were defending the other side of the river. And they were coming down this road and they had these giant trucks with huge speakers on them, Mad Max style, and they're blasting some sort of like war death metal music. And all of the soldiers, or many of the soldiers at least, were on, were on meth. So the Burma, it's a totally normal tactic for the Burma Army. So they'll give their guys meth when they want to hype them up for a particular fight.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  And so you have these meth-addled troops, you know, high, and then they're, you know, shooting their guns in the air, just, you know, raging on this music. And then they were assaulting our guys' positions, you know, doing a ground assault to try to clear out our guys. And while, while there's airstrikes, also coordinated airstrikes before the ground assault comes in. And so needless to say, that's not something you're going to defeat with, you know, a handful of guys and some, you know, rusty M16s that barely work. So, so anyway, so like, that's, that's sort of like the level of commitment that the Burma Army had to get this, to get this town back. And so, but, but our guys held it for two straight months. They held it for two months, which was a massive victory, actually, because that prevented

• 52:17Speaker 01

  the Burma Army from resupplying a bunch of different bases deeper in the hills. And so the Burma Army actually had to surrender, or not surrender, but they had to abandon five of their bases that were at the, at the, at the most extreme edge of their territory, and had to pull them back to this main base because they couldn't, they couldn't resupply them because these guys had held this ground for two straight months. They held it for long enough, and so they were able to pull these guys back. So basically, we liberated five enemy camps, which would have cost many, many lives and an inordinate amount of, you know, you know, firepower that these, that the rebels just, quite frankly, just don't have enough of. So it was, it was a... It was still a strategic victory, even if it was not ultimately a tactical victory in

• 53:02Speaker 01

  that in that moment. But yeah, it was quite the quite the ordeal.

• 53:06Jocko Willink?

  Now you another video that you showed before we hit record today was the a village that you're doing like a reconnaissance mission of through thermal and it kind of presents how the how the Burmese army operates when they take one of these small villages, what they do.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So yeah, the video I showed you, it was I that was a few months before this this operation in this town. But the so basically the Burma Army, like I said, they they use people as as human shields, whether it's to go through an area that they think might be mined, or also they'll use the civilians and force them to basically carry military supplies for them, just as either forced labor or to go through a dangerous area. So for example, they might tell the local guys sort of at gunpoint, and again, they've got your family back here, to say, hey, take your motorcycle and take this bag of supplies and go drive it over to this other Burma Army base. And if you don't make it, you know, we're gonna we're gonna kill your family. And so those guys, they don't want to help

• 54:07Speaker 01

  the Burma Army, but they're forced to. And so they're driving through these areas and they're like, wait, I don't know what to do. Like, please let me, you know, if the rebels capture them, they're like, please let me deliver these supplies that are going to hurt my family, that kind of thing. And so there's it's a horrible, it's a horrible situation for the civilians caught in the middle, which again, is everything that Stronghold is about. It's about helping those people. And so there was there was one particular day where we were down in that we were down and working in this area in Burma, sort of in a flat in the in the flat area. So we're not up in the jungle, up in the jungle mountains, we're down in the flat rice fields. And it was actually during the deployment in time that you read that you read right at the beginning of the episode, where we had been

• 54:49Speaker 01

  working in this area for a few months and had in the so the the locals were able to respond properly when an attack happened. So this was during that preparation time. And so one of the and there's all these different villages spread out over like hundreds of square miles of just rice fields. And so it is not abnormal for the Burma Army, like for a Burma Army patrol of 20 guys to, or 50 guys, to walk into a village and sort of say, hey, we're gonna post up here tonight because we've got somewhere we've got to be. And either as a patrol or just as a, to sort of relieve other Burma Army positions later on. And so while we were out there, there was a, there was a particular village that had gone dark, it had gone silent. And we

• 55:32Speaker 01

  knew the Burma Army was moving around and the rebels knew this and they, they were looking, they, they were kind of looking at the situation and going, we think the Burma Army's in that village because we can't reach anybody there. And so the rebels aren't able to go in and just sort of smoke the Burma Army in those kind of cases. It just doesn't, just doesn't work like that. Because you don't know exactly where they're at in these, in these villages and they're highly complicated and you don't have any kind of night capability. But the, the rebels do have, in some cases, they have some thermal and some night vision stuff. It's like civilian grade stuff that they get on the, you know, open market. It's nothing, it's nothing military grade or very fancy. But the, the, the locals were like, ah, we don't know if the Burma Army's in that town. And I was

• 56:15Speaker 01

  like, well, let's go do a reconnaissance mission. Let's go, let's go get eyes on the situation. And so I led a, I think it was a five man team, myself, my interpreter, and then three other, sort of, some of their reconnaissance guys. And we, we moved over, it was maybe a thousand yards, could have been a mile, I don't remember exactly how big this open area was, but it was a large open area of just rice fields. And so we moved at night and got to within, we crawl in there and we get to within 100 yards of the, of this village. And we're using, we all have these thermal scopes that they have. And so then I pull up, I pull up the thermal scope, and the thermal scope allows you to

• 56:55Speaker 01

  record what it is that you're looking at. And so I start recording the edge of the village and what I see. And there are these orange blobs of, it's people, there's these orange blobs of people laying at the edge of the village. And I'm like, what is that about? There's also a dog in the, in the video and he's, and he's kind of, you know, looking at us and he, he knows something, this, this dog knows something's up, but he, he never, he never gave away our position, which was nice. So we go in there and we can see that there's, we can see that there's villagers, we can see there's these people laying on the ground. And so we're like, all right, cool. So we, we pull back because we got

• 57:38Speaker 01

  eyes on the situation. And then the rebels explained to me, they said, oh, yeah, that the Burma Army's in that village. And I said, well, how do you know that? And they said, well, because those guys laying on the ground, that those are, those are villagers. So what the Burma Army does is they'll go into a village and they'll go to someone's house and they'll say, hey, congratulations, tonight I'm sleeping in your house, under the same roof as your wife and your kids. And you are going to go sleep at the edge of the village. And you need to sound the alarm if any rebels are going to come in here and try to get us out. And you better sound the alarm because again, I'm sleeping 10 feet away from where your wife and your kids are, in your hut. And so the, the, the, the people that we saw sleeping at the edge of the village were men who were forced to go sleep there,

• 58:20Speaker 01

  while the Burma Army is sleeping in their homes. And then the Burma Army was there for a couple of days and then, and then moved on. And as shocking and as crazy as that is for us to, to understand, and obviously I, I witnessed it firsthand and, and saw it. It's kind of a normal Tuesday, just a normal Tuesday in Burma for a lot of these people in these areas where we work. And again, that's why, that's why the, the work that we do at Stronghold is so vitally important because there's nobody else there helping. There's, it's obviously, it's a very difficult place to operate. But you have these people that are caught in the middle of these wars. And what can you do to help them? How can you, how can you help them? And that's our, our mission is to, to try to help them as much as we can. Yeah.

• 59:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And speaking of that, the, you, you had a story about a, a girl that was wounded in an airstrike. And I thought it was a good example of like how the Stronghold team can help?

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the way that we operate is, so I'll take one step back and kind of explain our mission, sort of our bigger picture mission in Burma. So right now, like I said, 99% of what we do is going to be emergency medical evacuations. Now, we're up there on the front lines, getting mortared and shot at with the locals, but the vast majority of the work that we do is that medical capability. So currently, in Burma, we provide, Stronghold provides the only ambulances, the only ambulances, for an area inside of Burma that is larger than the state of Delaware. And to put that in context, that is 1 million football fields. So we have the only ambulances for this war zone that's

• 59:55Speaker 01

  that's that big. And we have, we currently have eight ambulances and an ambulance boat to serve all these people. And people are stepping on landmines, particularly in sort of the the edges of the areas where we work. So the more extreme edges, you know, people are stepping on landmines, people are getting shot all the time. And now with the drone wars, the drones coming in, now villages are getting bombed all the time, airstrikes are hitting villages. And there's, there's no strategic reason, and there's no, and the Burma Army knows there's no strategic reason to hit these places. Basically, the Burma Army's mentality is, if you're, if you're not with us, we basically can just kill you. Sort of like an ISIS mentality, where ISIS would kill, you know, Muslim Iraqi civilians who are running away from ISIS-controlled

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  area, they would just start gunning these people down and shooting, shooting kids in the back of the head and stuff, because their thought process is, well, you're, you're abandoning us, you're now apostate, we can kill you. The Burma Army feels the same way. It's like, well, you're an ethnic minority group that is not, that will not bend to our will, therefore, we can just bomb your village. And they will do it, they will intentionally target weddings, they'll intentionally target, you know, funerals, things of that nature, just to inflict mass casualties, they'll intentionally bomb churches. As well and things of that nature. So this is very normal. So even in the areas where we're working where there's not like fighting where people are throwing grenades and shooting rifles at each other, these airstrikes still happen. So the way the way that we operate and

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  we run our ambulances, I have a very small team. And what we do is when we go in, we train the locals entirely on their own. So it's local leadership, it's local medics, it's local drivers, it's local managers, and we teach them everything, the logistics, here's how you get your supplies. Stronghold, we provide the money for all this, right? We we provide the truck, we provide the all the logistics support, all that kind of stuff, but they run it. And we provide all the all the supplies and stuff that they need to run these to run these ambulances. And we and we transport hundreds of people every I think last year transported 600 people. Forty forty percent plus were active like war injuries from gunshots and things like that. And so

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  again, this is all run maybe 30 plus, whatever the given day is, or more than 30 locals who are who are running who are running all these ambulances. So the reason I say that is because we run we run everything that we do based on a concept called charity with dignity. We talked about this last time on the podcast too, by with and through the locals, you need to build up their capability. And the way that we measure success, the way that Stronghold measures success is what the locals are able to do when we are not there. That is how we measure success. And so now with that being said, we're working in a very volatile area, and it's extremely difficult to move through these areas. So you think, well, okay, the state of Delaware, that's pretty small, you can just you can drive, you can drive

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  across that pretty quick. Well, when you're in the jungle, and the maximum speed that you can do is 10 miles an hour over extremely rough terrain, you know, all of our ambulances are in souped up Hiluxes with winches and bumpers and lift kits and everything. In order to be able to move these people. Um, and so, um, the, the, the only way that it works though, is we have to do relays. There's not, there's not a, there isn't a, a medical facility in every village. It doesn't work like that. And there's only one or two places where they can actually do legit surgeries where they have either Western volunteer doctors or local people from Burma who work in these different clinics, sort of deep in the jungle.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  And so we have to get, we have to get these patients to these, to these clinics. Well, um, the problem is, is when you're dealing with, um, traumatic injuries from gunshots, lots, we deal with lots of amputations. Every single week, we're moving an amputee, every single week, um, usually multiple times. And when that's happening, people are losing a lot of blood. And obviously there's, I am not a, for the record, I am not a medic. Uh, I used to be EMT qualified, but, um, I'm not like a, a combat medic. The, the guys who work for us are, but, um, basically what we realized very quickly was we kept on losing all these patients because we just needed to do blood transfusions. We're like, we just need to give people blood. That's the only way that we can stabilize them because, you know, you have somebody

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  steps on a, on a landmine, there's no golden hour for them, right? That you, you don't, you're not seeing, you're not seeing a doctor within an hour. If you're lucky, if you're lucky and we're there, you might be seeing a doctor in 12 to 16 hours. And so you've got to go through the jungle in the back of this truck, up and down jungle mountains with half your leg hanging off. Um, and so people are dying all the time. Like we just had, um, a young girl, um, a few, a few weeks ago, she was hit by an airstrike. Um, I believe it was a drone, uh, triple amputee, um, both legs and an arm. And she, she unfortunately passed away. She was maybe 10 or 12 years old. Um, but that's like a normal, that's a normal day in Burma and, and in the areas where we work.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  And so, um, so what we did was one of our, one of our guys on, on our team, Adam, the same guy who's in the trench, um, you know, shielding the patient with his body, um, we sent him to a school to basically learn some more advanced kind of, uh, combat, uh, trauma techniques. And he learned about, um, Uh, blood transfusions. And so he came back from this school and he goes, hey, I think I can set up blood transfusions in the middle of the jungle. And in my mind, I'm thinking, no way, dude. I was like, I was like, give it a shot. Like, how much, how much is it going to cost? What kind of equipment do you need? And he had gone through and done all the research and figured out, okay, here's, here's how we can do this. And I thought, I said, okay, like, I'll, I'll approve funding for one set. Go, you know, go, let's see if we can get this thing up and running. And, uh, lo and behold, he got it up and running. And so we are now, and he, and he trained the locals

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  on how to do this in the middle of the jungle. So you're, you're like, it's, it's, it's so difficult to explain, um, if you haven't been in those environments, but man, like, we're, we're pulling blood from one person, from a donor who's just sitting there, and then you're putting it into another person in the middle of the jungle, in an active war zone. Um, and it's just the level of care that we're now able to give in these situations is just astronomically higher. And so a lot more people are, are surviving, um, these injuries. And it's all, it's all thanks to Adam figuring out how to do this. And then now we have a bunch of different places where people can get blood. So now that 12 hour journey, you can get topped up on blood two, three times, um, in some cases. Um, sometimes it's just a one stop. You can get topped up on blood. Um, but now there's

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  a much higher level capability there. Now, I, I say all that, um, because we had this event just recently. Um, this was just a few months ago. Um, after we had established the ability to do this, uh, this blood transfusion, we wanted, we wanted now all of our medics and all of our ambulance teams to have a, have an understanding of how to do this. And some of the medics were advanced enough to do it. Some of the medics are not advanced enough to do it. But we wanted everybody to be trained on it and how, on how to assist on these, on these operations. And so, um, Adam, he was, he was in there and we brought in all of our ambulance teams. And he showed everybody, gave them a full training for several days on how to do blood transfusions. And these guys are doing blood transfusions on themselves where they

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  They basically take their own blood out and then they put their own blood back in. And, and you're just doing this in a hut in the middle of the jungle and it's just, it's just incredible. Uh, that we're, you know, able to do this stuff. And, um, so they finished the training. And again, everything we do is about charity with dignity. It's about you need to stand on your own when things happen. So they finished this training and literally the next day, it was within 24 hours. They finished this training. All of our medics are in, in one location at this clinic in the middle of the jungle, which again is just, you know, wood, wood huts. Um, and this jet flies over and boom, hits a village. You know, the next, you know, on the other side of the, on the other side of the mountain. And, uh, so our guys immediately respond.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Um, they kind of know the general area of the village, so they just start going and then they're on radios, kind of coordinating and they, they go in. And it's just our, just our Corin guys, our, just our Corin guys go on this ambulance call. Cause we didn't know if there were going to be patients or not. And our guys didn't know. And, uh, we sent a, um, one of our, one of our, our, our camera guy, he's a former ranger. Who works for us full-time, uh, doing video editing and that kind of thing. Uh, Garrett. And so Garrett goes along just to observe, um, get some footage of what the guys are doing. So they get to this village, keep in mind, they just finished blood transfusion training and they get there and there's two wounded people. One of them is a 14-year-old girl. And, um, she was, you know, got traumatic injury from the, uh, from this bomb going off, um, in her, in her village. Uh, zero warning, you know, middle of nowhere.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  And, um, so our guys, they realized they- And the strike is just like one strike, one drop bomb and just- Just a bomb, just a bomb for no reason. No, no warning, no reason, no rhyme or reason, there's no troops there. Just, they just show up and they, and they intentionally do the attacks. Now they're doing them very quick. So they kind of pop up over the mountain, immediately release their ordinance and then, you know, jump out of the way. So it used to be that they would kind of circle, look for a target and then bomb it. Now they just pop up, hit their target and go. So there's zero warning. Um, so a 14-year-old girl in the jungle, just living her life, hanging out. And then all of a sudden, the next second, she's laying there and, you know, and she's heavily wounded. And, uh, so our guys, our Corin guys, they realize, oh, we need to do a, we might need to do a blood transfusion on her. Cause it's going to be a couple of hours till we can get her back to the hospital.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  And so sure enough, our guys right then and there, and it's, it's the, it's the perfect- Sort of image of, again, what Stronghold does. It's, we have a Corin guy, he's in his, you know, Stronghold uniform, um, he's giving his own blood to help his own people, and we aren't doing it. He's the one doing it. It's the local Corin team doing it. And we have, you know, luckily, our camera guy was there, and so he filmed this whole thing as they, as they give this girl blood. They were able to stabilize her, they get her back to the hospital, and we talked to the doctors, and the doctor said, "Yeah, if there was no blood, she, there was no way she would have survived the hour or two to get here. She would have died." And so this is the day after the training happens. And so that's just a perfect example

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  of blood transfusion in the middle of the jungle. Um, that's the kind of, the kind of stuff that we're, that we're doing over at Stronghold now. And it's, uh, it's really incredible. Um, yeah.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's awesome. That's awesome. And amazing, um, to get that training done, and then have somebody utilize that to save someone's life the next day. And have it be all Corin staff.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  Across the board. Now, I know we mentioned, uh, World War II, I mentioned it, and there was a story about a World War II village, too. What was that all about?

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  So, so when the, so, remember, the, the Corin were very loyal to the British during World War II. And now, when, when the, when the Japanese invaded Burma, they came from Thailand, at the time called Siam, they crossed the, the river, and they then, um, you know, started moving from east to west across the country. And they had to go through the Corin Hills. The first place the Japanese had to fight was the Corin Hills, the place where we work today. The, like, the exact villages and roads and rivers, the same spot. Well, um, when the Japanese, they advanced really quick, and it was, you know, during, uh, you know, at a time when you can't just evac all of your people. So there was a British officer, there were several, there were several British officers who stayed in the Corin Hills to sort of work with the people, and the British dropped some, like, radios to them so they

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  could, you know, radio back occasionally. And so there was one guy, Major Seagram, a British, a British officer, and he stayed with the Corin people. And during his time there, the, uh, he was, he was training the locals, um, and, uh, making sure that he was coordinating, you know, supplies, getting brought in and things of that nature. And he's basically, his whole thing was like, I'm going to stay here until the British show up again. Um, and so I'm going to make sure that we have, you know, our forces are ready for when the British finally come back in a couple of years. And so he's out there completely by himself. One or two other times he was able to kind of link up with another one or two British guys in the area, um, but that was very seldom. So he's on his own, out there. Committed. Committed, fully committed. Committed to the cause.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, so, so during this time, now keep in mind, the, the Japanese are going through the area and the, um, and they're working with the, the Burmese to again, attack the, the local population. Well, word gets that there's British officers in the mountains. And so the Japanese were like, okay, cause they're hearing radio signals. The Japanese know that, you know, air supply drops occasionally happen in the middle of the night. There's British here somewhere. And so they start going to the locals and they start, basically they demand that the locals, they, they demand that the Koran, they say, tell us where the, tell us where the British are. And the, and the Koran won't do it. They're totally loyal. They say, no, we're not going to, we're not going to do that. Um, another element to add to the loyalty aspect. So many of the Koran in this particular area, most of the

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Koran, I would say, are actually Baptist. Because hundreds of years ago, a missionary named Adoniram Judson went to Burma and, um, the, the Koran have this, um, they have this legend that goes back thousands of years. And it's this legend that they passed down. It says, one day a man, uh, one day a man with white skin is going to come to you with a golden book and he's going to tell you the truth. And so Adoniram Judson, several hundred years ago, he's in Burma and he's working with the Burmese and the Burmese aren't interested in him at all. He didn't get any converts. And then one day a Koran man comes out. And out of the jungle and he meets Adoniram Judson and he says, uh, he said, oh, I know, I know who you are.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  You're the white man with the golden book. And so then Adoniram Judson goes into the Koran hills with the Bible. And many, many of the Koran convert to Christianity. And so now there's, so there's like this deep, there's this deep connection that they have with, so that, you know, with, with the, the Western world with what they call Gullah, white people, just anybody that's not from, from, from, uh, from Burma. And, um, so, um, Seagram, Major Seagram, he's, he's deeply religious. The locals are deeply religious. The local pastors are, are, are protecting him and, and as well. And so when the Japanese come to the Koran and they say, hey, tell us where the white man is. Uh, most of them don't know exactly where he is because the Koran are trying to keep it hidden, but they know, they have a general idea of where he is.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  They refuse to tell them. And so the Japanese start killing Koran people. Say, tell us where the, tell us where the white man is. And so Koran people are dying, being executed by the Japanese for refusing to give up where this British officer was. That's how committed he was to them and they were to him. And they, so he was a, a younger guy, I believe in his early thirties. Um, but the, the Koran, if they, if they greatly, greatly respect you, even if you're young, they'll call you grandfather. Um, it just as a, as a, as a, as a sign of respect. And so his, his nickname was Long Legs because he was a, he was a really tall British officer. And so they called him Grandfather Long Legs was his, uh, was his name. Um, and

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  so, so the, so the Japanese in the Burmese are killing this Koran people. Well, eventually it gets to Seagram that the Koran people are being killed and they're dying to protect him. And so he says, hey, guys, like, I can't have any more, any more of you die. I'll just go turn myself into the Japanese. So he, um, he leaves the hills. Now, now he was hidden in this specific area. Now there's a cool, uh, a cool little anecdote that happened on my first or second trip into Burma. So I'm in this, I'm in this mountain hill area. And my, my, uh, I didn't know much about Seegrim at the time. I hadn't really looked him up much, but they told me, my interpreter told me, he said, "This is the area where they kept the, where they kept the Galawa during the war." And I said, "The Galawa, the white man?" They're like,

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  "Yeah, this is where they kept the, the white man. They kept him on this mountain in this hidden area here." Um, and one of the generals, one of the Koran generals, his mother was one of the people who helped hide him. And so he's, they're like, "Yeah, he's from this area." And so the Koran are very like, under, understated. So I'm trying to pull more information out of him. And he's like, "Oh, I don't know. I don't know more than that." He's like, "I just know this is where the white man was." And I'm like, "This is so cool. I want to know more about this." He didn't have much more information. But, so he tells me that, keep in mind, this is a few years ago. Um, and then there's a, a villager comes out of the jungle, um, because he heard that there was a white man in, you know, with the, with the Koran. And he comes down and he's looking at me funny. He's kind of doing his third world squat, just kind of staring at me and smiling. And my interpreter is kind of talking to him a little bit and kind of giggling. And

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  he looks over at me, my interpreter looks over at me, he says, uh, he's like, uh, "Yeah, that guy right there, he's, uh, he's never, he's never seen a white man before." And, and so, uh, he's, this guy's only ever heard of white people and only heard, seen pictures of them, but he's never seen, he's never seen a white person. That's why this guy's like squatting there, kind of like staring at me with this big grin on his face. Um, and so he, and he, and he had, uh, and so I, I, I asked my interpreter something about it. It's like, well, um, it's like, "Is this the only white people?" He, so I was confirming, I said, "Am I the only white person he's ever seen?" And, uh, the villager said something along the lines of, he's like, "Yeah, I've heard about white people and I've heard, it's like, and I know that we used to protect white people here." He said some, something along those lines, um, but "You're the first one I've ever seen." So that was double confirmation that we're in the right

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  spot. So they kind of know within the, within the tribe. Anyway, so Seegrim during the war, the Japanese are killing the Koran. And so then he turns himself in and he goes down to this village, um, down in one of the valleys and there's a relatively larger village. He goes down there and he turns himself into the Japanese. And the Japanese, so, so, so he'd been up there, Major Seegrim had been up there for... One or two years at this point. So his uniform is in tatters. He doesn't have any, you know, western clothes. He doesn't have his any more military uniform. And so he's wearing sort of like local garb. And so the Japanese go, ah, you're in civilian clothes. You're a spy. We can kill you. And so the Japanese, he turned himself in and the Japanese basically just sentenced

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  him to death. So he turns himself in in this village, this Koren village, and then they take him over to another town, like a larger town, and then they execute him as a spy and, uh, and kill him there. Now, the Koren, you know, never forgot about, never forgot about him. And so they greatly and deeply respect this, this man who, who died for them. So that way, you know, people would, um, stop, uh, you know, the way the Japanese would stop killing them. And again, there's a very strong allegory there with Jesus, Jesus dying, jiving for your sins and dying so you can go to heaven. And Big props to the Gullah of the region. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, um, so, um, a couple of months ago, or no, not even a couple of months

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  ago, maybe a month ago. Um, one of my guys, he's in, he's in Burma. And this village where, um, Major Seagram turned himself in, we go through that village all the time. I've been through that village 100 times, easily. And, um, so our guys are at this clinic that's relatively near where that village is. And, um, they're at their, I think, uh, our guys were just doing some training or something. And, um, all of a sudden they hear three or four, uh, fighter jets, like a, like a full, like squadron of fighter jets, come over the mountains, low and fast, real low, real fast. And then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, they just start bombing the crap out of, uh, someplace that's, you know, a couple of mountains over, a couple of hills over. And, um, and then these

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  slower bomber planes, uh, called Y12s, these are Chinese built planes, they're basically cargo planes, but they push packages of 120 millimeter mortars out the back of the plane. And so they use it as sort of a strategic bomber, like World War II style bomber. And, uh, so they'll drop So the 120 millimeter mortars just land on impact and blow up? Just land on impact and blow up, yeah. So they're like bombs? Yeah, just, just dropping bombs, like just Bombs, yeah. And so then those planes show up and start circling that village and then dropping bombs around around where this village was. So our guys get in their vehicles and they're the, again, the, again, the just the amazing thing about about stronghold, our guys are the first ones on scene.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  So they get there and this village is completely decimated. Um, half of it is gone. Many people were killed. And luckily, luckily, there weren't that many people in the village at the time. I think people were kind of out working or something. But many people are killed, many are wounded, houses are destroyed. Our guys got there right around dusk. And um, and I have video footage of this as well. And so they get on site and it's just a lake of of fire. And the entire village is destroyed and there's just folks, you know, dead, uh, laying in random places and people who are wounded and people who put their legs amputated from the explosions and um, our guys go in and, you know, evacuate, evacuate all the wounded and that kind of stuff.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  But the village that was destroyed is the same village where Seagram surrendered himself to the Japanese to give his life for the for the Korean people. And uh, so we always call it Seagram's village when we go through, but that's just another example of the Burma Army just coming in and completely annihilating a place. No reason, no rhyme or reason for it. There's no military stockpiles there. There's no rebels there. But you're not loyal to us. You're not going to bow the knee to us. We're just going to wipe your village off the map. No warning.

• 1:21:04Jocko Willink?

  So they rebuild the village or is it just gone?

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  They're gonna re, they'll certainly rebuild, uh, most likely. Uh, many, obviously, many of the people are unfortunately dead. But they will, it's at a strategic, well, not a strategic, but it's at a, it's in a valley. So it's a, it's, and it's close to water. So they will rebuild the village. And most of these people live in in bamboo huts, so they can kind of have it up and running again within a couple of weeks.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  So when you were at Harvard, when you did the uh, Christmas break trip, what, what went down with that? Cause that sounded like it was a pretty horrific scenario too.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we, um, we finished class and I think I turned in my, my, I did my, uh, yeah, I did, I did my final like exam for one of my, for one of my classes. Again, this is just the first semester. So I know I still gotta come back and, uh, you know, submit my exam, whatever. And I think the next day, uh, my wife dropped me off at the airport. Um, and she's heavily pregnant at this point. And, um, so Dude, how are you getting away with this with your wife? Well, she's, well, she's, she's, well, she's Karen. So she's, she's Karen. Yeah, check. There you go. Uh, I stand corrected. Checkmate. Yeah.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, it's, don't get me wrong. It's, it's still a struggle. Um, but, uh, so I, I, I go out there. I get out to Burma and, um, I go in and the, the, the rebels, their plan at the time is to go in and, um, basically liberate and basically knock the Burma army out from this particular outpost. Now, we're deep in the mountains now. So now we're now longer in the flat lands. We're sort of deep in the Karen, in the Karen hills. And there's this, um, mountain, not a mountain, it's just sort of a large, very, very, very large hill. And there's a Burma army outpost. So basically what the Burma army does is when they go into the Karen hills, they set up these outposts on like the most prominent hilltops, but they then use those positions and they fire mortars. They're big on mortars

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  and they fire these mortars into the villages. And so I'm there and it's, you know, Christmas time. Um, so for example, as the, as the rebels are kind of getting prepared to go and launch this assault to take this hilltop, um, um, not fortress, but this hilltop enemy camp, Burma army camp, um, the Burma army, just one or two camps over is fire, was on Christmas day was firing mortars into, into Christian villages. And, um, I got photos like on Christmas day or it was the next morning of, um, multiple little girls who had been killed by these mortars. So, um, these mortars had just gone in, these little kids are celebrating Christmas and then they're just blown up in front of their families.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Um, and this is all this, this, the same, same road, very close to the area where, you know, that did the reconnaissance, the Reconnaissance mission.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  So I get out there to, I get out there and we're, you know, the rebels are planning on taking this town, or not this town, but this hilltop outpost, which has been controlled by the enemy for 50 years. They've never, they've never had a friendly boot stand up there in 50 years. And now they're, they're gonna, they're gonna try and take it. And so I'm helping coordinate the medical evacuation plan, just making sure, you know, everything's set for them to be able to liberate this area. And I'm, at this time, my team had been in Burma for like the previous couple of months. So I was like, hey, you guys go home for Christmas. I'll go in solo. So I'm, I'm operating solo out there. And so the, the rebels then sort of launched the attack and they're using drones.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  So the, the rebels are using drones and they're, and they're dropping these bombs on the Burma Army base. And the Burma Army has jammers and things. So there's this interesting whole other topic in conversation about drone warfare in the jungle, which is a very, very, another, talk about another weird thing that Americans are not used to experiencing. You know, being on the receiving end of that kind of thing. So the rebels are bombing the, the hilltop fortress and then eventually they launch a ground assault to go and, to go and take it. And it takes several days of, of fighting to really, to really take the, to really take it. Cause they had to do several different like sort of fakes and attempts and it's not just a clean Hollywood style,

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  charge and take the, take the enemy camp. It's, it's a lot more strategic and you're kind of battling. How many enemy fighters were up there on that hill, you think? Thirty or forty, maybe sixty. Yeah. And our guys had a couple, couple hundred. And so, and so as that's, as that's going on, eventually our guys push, push the Burma Army out. The Burma Army leaves. Our guys take the hilltop. And when they, when they take the hill, the Burma Army has like placed landmines all around this, all around this, all around this place. And so in the days, keep, keep in mind, I, you know, I developed very close relationships with a lot of these, a lot of these guys.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  They're like, they're like brothers to me. And you know, obviously how it is, it's like there's a, there's a deeper tie than just than a familial bond when you're in battle with, with these guys. And again, I'm not a direct combatant in this situation, but I am on the receiving end at this point of like mortar fire and, you know, airstrikes and stuff coming in. And so as the, as the rebels are trying to take this town, so What do they call you?

• 1:26:15Jocko Willink?

  Do you have a nickname for you?

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18Jocko Willink?

  Can you say it or is it classified?

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  I uh.

• 1:26:22Jocko Willink?

  Probably better not to say.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's not, it's not a classified thing.

• 1:26:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, but you don't.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  I'd rather, I'd rather just not say. I'll, I'll, I'll tell you off, I'll tell you offline.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. But uh, so, so I'm there, uh, you know, working with them. And so as the, you know, the, the Burma Army knows that this camp's about to get, you know, attacked. And so they're dropping, you know, they're, they're bringing in fighter jets and stuff and dropping in the jungle and, you know, looking for us. And so, but so before this attack had happened, um, I had, uh, slept in a, in a abandoned village, um, maybe a couple of miles away from, uh, this Burma Army outpost. So I had slept in this village and, um, abandoned village. And the hut that I was sleeping in, um, I had been, one, one day I was sitting sort of in the doorway of it as some civilians on motorcycles came by and they were driving toward the Burma Army territory.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  So, and they saw me and I saw them kind of, and I, I understand enough of the language. They're like, blah, blah, blah, galawa, galawa. And so they're kind of pointing and they're like, oh, there's a white guy in that, in that hut over there, you know? Um, so I'm just, I don't think anything of it. Well, once the attack starts, once our guys start the bombing campaign, uh, it's the middle of the night. We, we have now moved to an entirely different location. A, uh, I'm laying in my tent. It's 11 o'clock at night, you know, pitch black in the middle of the jungle. And, uh, I don't hear it because I was, I was asleep at the time and I had, was sleeping with the earplugs in. And, uh, I'm waking up, I'm woken up by this huge explosion. Boom goes off and keep in, keep in mind, I'm in the middle of jungle. I'm like, what the heck? So I pop out my earplugs and I hear, you know, a jet flying over and then I, and then you hear it just sort of circling, you know?

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  And it was very, very close, very close to where we were. And the next morning, uh, we realized, um, so we, we had moved out of that village, but the, the jet had come in, middle of the night, popped up over to the hilltop. And put one bomb right outside the one building in the village that I had been sleeping in. And, uh, so I don't know for sure that they were targeting me, but somebody, somebody said something somewhere because they only dropped the one bomb and then they dropped another bomb somewhere else.

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  So how did the battle turn out? So. For the hilltop? So our guys take the hilltop. After so days, they take the hilltop. Um, but it's because the Burma Army sort of fell back. So the Burma Army falls back into the woods or falls back into the jungle. And I've, I learned later, like months later, that actually the Burma Army had, uh, had done a gun run, had, had dropped bombs, uh, tried, trying to hit the rebels and it actually hit some of their own Burma Army guys. So they had a, uh, their own sort of blue on blue or red on red, whatever you want to call it. Um, so they bombed some of their own guys, which is, which is nice. Um, so our guys take the, take the, take the hilltop and we're very excited about this. This is wonderful. Like this is, this is a big deal. Um, but we know the Burma Army is realistically going to take it back. We can't hold it. That's not the, it's just not going to happen. Um, but anyway, so our guys are in there. We've got about 30 or 40 guys in the camp

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  and they're cutting down all the trees in the camp and trying to pull out all the Burma Army guns and weapons and stuff like that, that they can, that they can get from this hilltop fortress. So they can use it against the Burma Army later. And to get, and again, there's landmines everywhere to get into this camp. So, but our guys had sort of cleared a footpath that's maybe a foot wide, um, to get into the, into the camp. And so I believe at the time we had 40 guys in the camp. So we have 40 guys in the camp and one of the, one of the guys I'd become, uh, uh, good friends with. Um, not, I wouldn't say good friends with, but you know, friendly with. Um, one of the guys, he, uh, um, he was, so there's 40 guys leaving the camp. So they steal a bunch of supplies. Our guys can't hold a camp. You're going to get bombed. So they're walking out. So 40 guys, so 39 guys walk down this

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  single, you know, single lane path. And, um, this other guy that I had developed, you know, some friendship with, he was the 40th guy. And he's walking out on the same little path. He steps on a landmine. 39 other guys stepped over it. He was the last guy out of this camp, steps on a landmine. Now it's a kind of landmine that just sort of blows off half of your foot. So it's not going to kill you. You're going to be fine. So it blows off half of his foot. But he panicked and he I was told later that he had made some different comments. Before he basically said, I never want to live as a cripple. I don't want to, you know, whatever. So he flipped around his rifle, put it on fire and shot himself in the head right there on top of this, on top of this mountain.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  And the other guys are four or five feet away from him. Obviously, they dove for cover when the explosion went off. And they, you know, they're trying to reach him. They're like, they were screaming, no, no, no, no, no. And then boom, he, he killed himself. And so they, they pulled his body off the, off the top of the hill and he was early twenties, like maybe 22, his wife, two kids.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  And so you want to talk about the generational impact of these wars. His father was like a platoon commander or squad commander or something. As part of this force as well. And so his father was in a different spot. He wasn't, his father wasn't on the hill. But yeah, his father was, was there as well and had to, you know, come take his body and.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  And yeah, so the, the, just the reality of the horrors of war and what these people, you know, go through is, is. Yeah, it's, it's very difficult. So I went through that. So I'm, I'm in. Christmas break. And this is my Christmas break. Yeah. And then the Burma Army comes back and takes the, takes the hill. And then our guys take it a second time. So it changes hands two or three times while I'm there. We had a couple of other guys get killed, but ultimately it was, it's still a strategic and tactical victory. We knew we weren't going to be able to hold the hill. So that wasn't ever the objective. But it was basically letting the enemy know like, hey, we can, we can, we can punch you guys in the face too. And it was a big symbolic victory, knocking out these mortars, which are being used to murder people and subjugate the, the people. Now the Burma Army still now controls that place again.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  But, um, you know, they now know that they're no longer vulnerable. And so it was a, that was important. One, um, really bizarre thing that I still don't fully understand. So the Koran, a lot of them are Buddhist and a lot of them are also animist. And so animist, the best way I like to describe that is to sort of like, think about maybe like Native American sort of style of spirituality, like the rocks and the trees and the rivers have, you know, have a spirit, that kind of thing. Think about, you know, Pocahontas, that, that sort of religion. But I think because of that, they have this, they have this interesting custom where if somebody commits suicide,

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  they punish the weapon that was used to commit suicide because they believe that there's, you know, it's just culturally, just believe like, hey, this thing needs to be punished. It's sort of a cultural remnant. And so the weapon, this rifle that the soldier had used to commit suicide, you know, they unload it and they go put it in like a hut in a prison and they tie it, tied up. And I think they were hitting it with sticks and, and some stuff like that. And again, it's, it sounds really hocus pocus and like really superstitious, like they're, like they're complete bumbling morons. That's not it at all. They're, these are very intelligent people, but this was just their custom and they, they, yeah, they, they basically imprisoned this rifle for a short time for, for what it

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  had done to, to kill this guy and punished it. And then, you know, now it's back in circulation. Somebody, somebody else is using it. So I guess the, the point of that little anecdote is, it's a whole different world over there. There's, there's an entirely different world, entirely different way of thinking out there. And so that was, and that was, yeah, so that was, that was the world I was in. And then so the way that that ended, so the Burma Army eventually kind of takes back the camp. We go back and forth a few times. It's still, it's still a victory. It's still a really good thing. So I'm, so I, I now need to head back.

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  I need to go back to the United States to go back to school. So I've got maybe an hour, hour and a half left there. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave in a short amount of time before, kind of before the sun goes down. And I'm gonna start driving back through the jungle to start my long journey home back to the United States. And I'm sitting there and all of a sudden we hear this, we hear a plane. A plane pops up overhead and it's just one plane. And it's, it's again, it's one of these Y12 bombers where they just drop payloads of four or five 120 millimeter mortars at a time. And it starts circling the camp, the Burma Army camp. But its circular path actually took it right over us.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  So it was right over, I'm literally, I can stare up and I can look directly at this, at this bomber. I can look at the bottom of it and it's flying right over us. Now, it's just one bomber. I've been through a million times worse. This is not that big of a deal. It should not be that big of a deal. And so I go and I, we get in the trench, I'm in the trench, in the trench with my interpreter. And I'm sitting there and I'm just going, I was sitting there and mentally I was very calm. I was like, okay, well, this isn't, this is not that big of a deal. The chances of the dropping bombs where we are, very, very low chance. But I started getting that, that shaking. My hands and my feet are shaking. And this thought was just going through my head the whole time.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  And it was just, I just want to meet my daughter. I just want to meet my daughter. I just want to meet my daughter. And it was this intrusive thought that was just poking through in my brain. Because my wife was gonna give birth in just a couple of months. She was maybe six months, eight months pregnant at this, six or seven months pregnant at this point. And so I'm sitting in a trench on the other side of the world with this Karen guy. I'm just, you know, and my hands are shaking a little bit. And all I can think about is I just want to meet my daughter. And as long as I can meet my daughter, I'll be happy to die. But I need to, I need to meet my daughter first. And

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  And that was, that was, again, not a, not a particularly dangerous situation. The, the bomber drops all of its bombs nowhere even close to us. Uh, but it did multiple sorties over, right over our head. And each time, I just want to meet my daughter. I just want to meet my daughter. And, um, so then the plane goes away and I then hop in the car. Uh, so hopping, it's, you know, off, our off-road vehicles and I just start, you know, start my, uh, my drive back. But, um, yeah, that really, that really stuck with me and I just, I thought, man, like, what is, like, my, my, my heart and my head are like now in an entirely different place. And so I, you know, I drive, you know, I drive out of there and, you know, eventually I get home and, you know, it create my, you know, pregnant wife and I miss Christmas and, and all that stuff. And then I just walk back into school at, uh, at Harvard.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, and then, yeah, and then people go, well, how was your, how was your, how was your Christmas vacation? How'd you, what'd you do? You know, all that kind of stuff. So, and I just, I, I, uh, I, there was like a, there was one or two other guys there that were, uh, former, you know, uh, SF and stuff. And so I kind of told them a little bit about where I'd been and what I'd been doing, but not all the details and stuff. Cause I was just like, you know, it's like, it just, I don't know. I just didn't want to talk about it. Um, and so, yeah, that was, that was definitely, definitely an interesting experience, kind of walking back into the classroom. And then everybody's, you know, uh, talking about whatever, whatever matters to them at, at, at, at the time. And, um, yeah, so just kind of an interesting mental, mental roller coaster to go from one extreme to the other and back.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, and then a few months later, my daughter was born and yeah, I love her to death.

• 1:37:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's awesome. Um, I, I had the little bit of the feeling of, you know, coming back from combat of a little bit of, hey, all this other stuff is, doesn't really matter. It's not that, not like this doesn't really matter. This is where you're going to teach me about something. You're going to do something like, I remember I had to do like evaluations and fit reps and stuff and you're, I really had to like, Like actively consciously focus and be like, all right, this is my job. I have to do this. And I would break it into a smaller, like, uh, when I went to college, I was a grown man that was already a SEAL and stuff. And I'd gone to college and I would sit down without a second thought and do academic schoolwork for eight hours.

• 1:38:38Jocko Willink?

  I would just get, just go and I, and even up until that deployment, like, you know, anytime we had to do fit reps or we had to write evals, I could just, I could just kind of lock in. But when I came home from my last deployment, it was like, it was, I had to really kind of actively consciously go, all right, dude, like you gotta do this right now. This is your job. This is important. I had to tell myself that. And that probably lasted for about six months and I got, kind of got back to normal. But it seems like rolling from, from, you know, sitting in a trench, waiting to have mortars dropped on your head from an aircraft above you. And then the next thing you know, like, okay, tonight's assignment is, you know, I want you to read this article about whatever thing. Well, did you find that a little bit difficult?

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, to an extent, a little bit. Um, but honestly, I mean, I, for the last, you know, five, six, seven, eight years, I've been going back and forth from sort of civilian world to, you know, these, these war zones and back and forth, uh, you know, a bunch.

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  You figured it out.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  I have not figured it out. No, that's not true. I've, I've learned how to suppress it. And that's why I'm sitting there in class, you know, but before the, before this little deployment I had done, I'm sitting there in class and my hands are shaking just to answer, just, just to, just to say something simple in a class of 25 people. And, you know, nobody there's, you know, super, super impressive that I need to be like, you know, nervous around it. Uh, nothing like that. So there was, there was definitely a, um, um, you know, a lot of stuff kind of pushed down. And, and then also too, I think there's this sort of, uh, a certain level of emotion and, um, part of my brain and my heart that I didn't even know existed until I had a daughter. I just didn't even know it was there. And, you know, one, one example was, um, this, this past summer.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  I was, you know, at home in Milwaukee and a couple of my young cousins had come over. They're like 14, 15 years old and then they had another one of my cousin's sons was there and he's also 14 or 15. And so these three young men are there at the house and my aunt said, she said, hey, can you show them the video? And so there's a video of me getting shot by ISIS on this rescue mission in Iraq as a civilian. And so I was like, yeah, no problem. I'll use this as an instructional time because I don't really talk about that unless I'm, you know, doing fundraising or something. I don't talk about it. But so I said, yeah, this is a great learning opportunity for the young men here. And so I sit the boys down in the living room.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  I have the video kind of ready to go on the TV and I explained to them what was going on and sort of the context. And then I show them the video and they're watching this and these like 14 year old boys, you know, are just, they don't really know what to say. They're just like, what the heck? You know, what are we watching here? Because keep in mind in that video, there's, you know, I'm getting shot, there's dead bodies everywhere. And I started explaining to the boys that there's, about how the ISIS had massacred these people. And I was telling them about some of the different, some of the different people that I could see in the bodies, little young girls with their heads blown off. And then there was one particular, well, you talked about this last time, but there was one particular casualty that stuck with me. It was an Iraqi husband and wife and their dead baby was laying between them.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  And just based on the pattern of, you know, how the, where they were laying and stuff, it was very obvious the father was carrying the baby. He'd been shot in the back by ISIS and he'd fallen forward in the rubble, dropped his baby and the baby's head had been bashed open by falling into the rubble. And the mother was also shot and died right next to them as part of the, you know, this massacre that I'd seen. And so I don't remember if I told the boys that, but it was vividly in my head, but there was this moment where that wasn't. That wasn't some other kid's baby. That was my baby because my baby is now that same old, you know, whatever, just a few months old, four, four or five months old. And so I told the boys the story and then I just, it emotionated me and I went to the bathroom

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  and I just started weeping. I just started weeping uncontrollably. And my wife is like, what's wrong? What's wrong? I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't know what's wrong with me. And I'm just sitting there weeping in the bathroom. And then, you know, I got, got control of myself and I was like, okay, okay. You know, so there's like a lot of, a lot of deep stuff there. I just didn't even know was there, but you know, I'm having, having a daughter now. But you know, the, it's, it's all come to, to all come full circle because the reason I started Stronghold was because a firefight in Afghanistan where, you know, almost had to kill two little girls. And, um, you know, and then I go to Iraq and I wounded while rescuing a little girl. And then I have my own little girl now. And, um, so this, I, I, I don't know, just like

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  it's sort of this, and now, now I feel all that protective instinct is now to protect my daughter and to keep her from all the evils of this world that I, that I know are out there.

• 1:43:31Jocko Willink?

  Did the, uh, how long did the shaking hands last?

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  It lasted pretty much, um, for, for the, for the most part. So, so what, what I did was, so it lasted most of the school year. I got back from, um, Burma, obviously that, that did not help the shaking. Um, and so what I got back, basically what I started doing was, mentally I felt fine. Mentally I felt fine. I wasn't having like crazy nightmares. You, you get, you have a few when you first come back as you're, as you're decompressing, but I was like, that was normal, totally fine. Um, so what I started doing was, um, just for a couple of months, I basically just started every morning, I would just wake up and I would just take a freezing cold shower and just force myself to not like wince or, you know, not allow myself to shudder. And so that's what I just, that's what I did, literally just to get sort of control of my nervous system, just to force my mind to just stop

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  the shaking and that, and that helped. Um, and so then, since then, it's, it's pretty much gone away. I just needed to kind of get control of my, my, my body and my nervous system or whatever were just not linked up with my mind. So I just did that for, I don't know, maybe two months or so. And that, that really helped with the, the shaking anytime, you know, my adrenaline would go up because it meant, again, mentally I felt fine. It was just my body was not reacting how my mind was reacting.

• 1:44:41Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting. You're you're kind of like a person because the last time you were on, you kind of told the story of you had gotten to a pretty dark place. You were addicted to food. You weighed three hundred and twenty five pounds. Your life was just not going well. And you you went to a hotel in Florida,

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  rented a room and you like parsed your life mentally to try and figure out what was wrong and how you were going to fix it.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:07Jocko Willink?

  And you made those decisions like, okay, this is what's wrong. Here's my problems. And here here's what I'm going to do to fix it. And then you fixed it. It's very interesting that you have this capability to assess yourself, root, cause the problem, and then figure out what you can do to solve that problem.

• 1:45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I just, I guess I probably spent a lot of time. I'm I'm very introspective. Um, I believe Aristotle said the unexamined life is not worth living. And that's one of my favorite quotes. And it's just, I'm constantly trying to examine myself and just, where where am I at mentally? Where am I at emotionally? Why am I doing what am I? Why am I doing what I'm doing? Um, why, you know, why am I here? Why am I there? Why am I doing this kind of work? And then also just trying to analyze anything that I'm doing, like, how can I be more effective at this? How can I be better at this? And and by no means am I a perfect person in in in any way. But um, it just, I I just think it's kind of maybe just comes naturally to me to try to just try to, you know, figure out, figure out what's up. And sometimes it works. And the other, but the the danger of that mindset is sometimes you can't figure out the problem. And so you're just spinning and you're just like, why can't I figure this out?

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Why can't I figure this out? What is wrong with me?

• 1:46:14Jocko Willink?

  Did you get any advice on the on the shaking? Did you read anything? Because the the last, you know, the last one, you talked about reading Russell Brand's book.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:46:22Jocko Willink?

  And he had a book about addiction and you figured out that you were addicted to food. So you read his book and these are the protocols I'm going to follow. Did you have anything similar here with, you know, getting over this? This shaking of the hands?

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  No, uh, because I, no, I just sat and thought about it a bunch because I thought my mind is fine, but my body is not is not fine. So I was like, there's there's a split between my mind and my body. And that that would seem pretty obvious to me. I because that none of the shaking had happened before we'd been hit with these bombs in in um, In Burma. And so, and again, during the Burma bombings, we weren't like we we had, you know, there was like a structure kind of between us and where these bombs were hitting. So it's not like I had TBI. It's not like I was concussed. There was nothing like that at all. It was just purely my nerves. And so I thought, okay, what can I do to calm my nerves? And like, well, go back to buds. You just got to sit there and just, just be calm. Just be calm. You're very cold. You're very tired. You're, you know, you're pissed off. Yeah, you know, you got a long, you know, Monday night a hell week kind of thing. You got a

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  long way to go, dude. So you just, you just mind over matter. And so I just realized that there was a, there was a separation between my mind and my body. And I was like, okay, I just need to sort of force my body. I need to do something that's going to be very uncomfortable that I don't want to do. And so I just did that ritually every morning for, yeah, like I said, like two months and then that helped massively.

• 1:47:37Jocko Willink?

  What's the current status and the trajectory in Burma right now?

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  So right now, the Burma Army is starting to gain ground. And the reason for that, like I alluded to earlier, is the, is both that Russia and China are heavily backing the Burma Army. So there was a period from 2021 until maybe 2024, mid 2025, where the Chinese in particular, because they share a border with Burma, with the Kachin tribe up in the north. But the Chinese specifically were kind of playing both sides. They were going to see who was going to win. Because at the time, back in 2023, 2024, it looked like the rebels might win. And it looked like the Burma Army might fall. And so the, and the Chinese actually gave a bunch of drones and weapons to some of the rebel groups

• 1:48:25Speaker 01

  to help them. Ultimately, the rebel groups never united. There's cultural differences. There's language differences. It's very difficult to unite in the jungle like that. But then also, some of the tribes, so the Karin tribe are very, very, very, very good people. There's, you know, splinters, groups within them that are, there's criminal elements like you'd have in any tribe. But some of the tribes are heavily involved in the drug trade and weapons trades, things like that. And so it's very hard to unite sort of the pro-democracy, you know, Baptist, you know, peaceful Buddhists with, you know, the people that are trying to traffic. Meth to Southeast Asia, some of those tribes. And so the Burma Army is able to also use that against, you know, against the tribes to kind of pit them against each other.

• 1:49:08Speaker 01

  So basically because the tribes did not unite, the Burma Army is just sort of reasserting control is what it appears to be at the moment. And China and like I said, Russia are backing them heavily up with, with weapons and that kind of thing. And that drone, the drones in the jungle, what's, did you have drones coming after you while you were there? I have in the past, yeah. So I'll, so the first time I ever had a drone come after me, this was a couple of years ago. Um, I was, uh, it was at night and, um, I was in a, just in a village, sleeping in a hut. And, um, I hear this, I hear this, you know, the, the, this, the, uh, yeah, the motorcycle, the motor, uh, the, the lawnmower sound is like, it was a little bit more deeper. It was like a, it was a bit, it was a big one.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  And I hear it fly, it's very slow, low and slow, middle of the night, right above us. So it either has night vision or has thermal because this is being controlled by somebody remotely. So it probably had thermal on it. Um, and so it flies right over us and I just immediately start sweating because I'm like, I can't get up and run out of this hut. Because they're going to see me. So you just have to sit there and hopefully everyone else stays in their huts. And hopefully they bomb someone else's hut and don't bomb my hut. And so I'm, I'm laying there, laying there still as if it matters. Um, but I'm under like a, you know, a straw roof. And so the, the drone comes right over, I feel buzz right over, and then it drops a salvo, I want to say of 15 or 20 bombs.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Um, this was like a large one that dropped like a smaller amount of, uh, uh, a smaller, a larger amount, but smaller projectiles. And they dropped maybe 150, 200 yards from where I was at. And I knew the building that they were targeting because it was like a concrete building that wasn't in the jungle. I was like, oh, I know exactly what they're bombing. And so it's certain enough, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, these, these bombs start going off. And then we hear a second drone, wah. And so the Burma Army had launched at least two drones. And then I was hearing reports of up to three or four, who knows, but they were also bombing some of the villages. Um, in, uh, that were close to where we were. So there was multiple places had been bombed that night. And I don't, again, I don't know if it was the same drone. But it was at least two or three. And so my interpreter, he comes, he comes running up to me.

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  And we're like, dude, we gotta, we gotta go hide in the jungle because they're gonna come back around. They're gonna start bombing all these huts that we're in. So grab my AK, throw my gear on. I got my bolt bag, you know, with my water and, you know, water and passport in it. And we just, just run into the jungle and we can hear this drone just and we don't know if it's right above us. We know it, we know it's on thermal. It was, it was at a very dry part of the year. And so a lot of the leaves on the trees aren't there. So it's not like thick, green jungle to hide under. It's like many of the, it's almost like fall time where many of the leaves are gone. And so we're hiding under these trees. We're like literally sort of hugging trees. As this drone is trying to fly over because we're just trying to stay under the branches. So the thermal doesn't pick us up. And it's sort of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, dropping, dropping bombs in this, you know, in this local area.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  And so that was, that was not a, that was not a pleasant experience, to put it, to put it mildly. So that was, yeah, so we've been hunted by, by drones in, in that case. And so I, so you know, you talk about GWAT, you know, global war on terror. We're used to when our drones or our aircraft show up, we have what we call squitters, guys who run, they squirt, they get off target. They start running off target. That's you. I was that guy. I was that guy just grabbing my rifle and just sprinting into the jungle. Just get away from the path of this aircraft. And there's nothing, and I mean, literally nothing you can do to stop it. Horrifying. No, it's the worst. It was, it's the absolute worst. It's, it's being in combat. When you are at least equal with your enemy is, is one thing, right?

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  That's, that's already terrifying enough where you're relatively equal with your enemy. When, when you're dominating your enemy, it's kind of fun, right? You're out there, you're like, you're out there with, you know, your seal platoon and you're like, yeah, we're gonna go smoke these dudes daylight. I don't care. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna crush these dudes. We're gonna call them the AC 130 and A10s and we're, we're gonna own this. But then you, but then I was in situations in Iraq where we were sort of even with ISIS. So they're entrenched, they're, they're dug in, but they don't have air power, but they've got rockets and mortars and. You know, and we're sort of equal and that was terrifying enough. And then now you go to Burma and it's like, no, now you're the dude with an AK running through the jungle as bombs are going off everywhere.

• 1:53:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and fast movers overhead.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  And there's fast movers.

• 1:53:21Jocko Willink?

  Raping runs and thermal on drones.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  So you want, so the first time I ever felt like my hands completely shaking in Burma. So after, so after this bombing had happened, I was back there a month or two later and.

• 1:53:36Jocko Willink?

  After the drone bombing?

• 1:53:37Speaker 01

  No, so this is after the, the jet bombing.

• 1:53:40Jocko Willink?

  The jet bombing.

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was out there kind of visiting, visiting some of the troops. This was during that two month period where they still controlled the town. And so this was the first time I experienced the shaking. So I was just up there kind of visiting those guys, seeing what was going on, seeing if we could get them any medical supplies, whatever. And so I hop on the back of a motorcycle and there's a, you know, I've got my own motorbike driver, so he's, he's driving me. And so we're driving across these rice fields, totally open. There's, you know, there's like maybe a tree or two in the, you know, over the, over like the next like two or three square miles. So there's just, there's just nothing and we got to go a mile to get to this village where there's, you know, trees and stuff. So we're driving along and maybe 200 yards in front of us on this, just one road going

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  through, cutting through the rice fields is a, is a tractor that's pulling a trailer with like maybe 20 people on the back of it, just villagers kind of going wherever it is that they're going. And I look at the, I'm, I'm watching them and all of a sudden I see all of the people in the tractor just jump up and scatter and they just start running and I see them pointing. And I'm like, what are they pointing at? So I turn and I look, I'm not even kidding, a hundred yards away from me, maybe a hundred feet in the air is a Russian Hind helicopter paralleling me. Because I didn't hear it because of, because we're, you know, all the wind in my ears. And this attack helicopter is paralleling me. I look up and I can see the pilots. I can see the pilots.

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  Luckily, and so keep in mind, I've got an AK on my back. I'm with like three or four other guys who have like rifles. It's super obvious that we're, you know, part of the, you know, resistance. And this attack helicopter is 100 yards away from us. Luckily it was staring, it was clearly the pilots were staring and probably laughing like, oh, that's so funny. Look at all the villagers, you know, running away. So the villagers are all running away from this. Attack helicopters that comes in and so the the guy in the bike he he slams the brakes. We jump off because we're getting ready just to scatter as well and I and so I'm staring at this helicopter like this, you know, it's like a dragon, dragon in the sky that can kill you.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  Just for a reference echo, this is the the famous helicopter from like Rambo.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I thought.

• 1:55:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:48Jocko Willink?

  Just making sure you, you know, connect that.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm with it.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Horrific.

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  No, it's hor- it's horrifying and so you're just sitting there. All that has to happen is the pilot just has to look, all he has to do is look forty five degrees to his right and he's going to see me standing there and me and like six other guys and we would have to run, like I said, a mile across open territory just to get to a tree to hide in. We're dead, like we're dead meat and he just never looks over at us and he just keeps, you know, flying along, um, you know, hundred and fifty feet in the air, whatever, how really low, really low, I could have chucked a rock and hit him, um, super low and he was, I don't know where he was going, doing whatever he was doing, but, um, yeah, so that was, so anyway, my point is I was standing there on the road and that was the first time I felt these shakes and I was like, oh, okay, this is a, this is a new experience. Um, but yeah, just these really just close calls, just nothing you could do and so I

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  guess that the thing that makes us so terrifying is there's nothing you can do about it. Um, again, it's different if you can fight, like, okay, if we got to fight, you know, like if you and me get into a fistfight, I know you're gonna win, but I'd like I, but it's like, okay, like I'm gonna like put up a fight and I'm gonna be less afraid than if I'm just standing there and I just know somebody's gonna come up and stab me, you know what I mean, and I can't defend myself or someone's gonna shoot me. It's so much worse if you don't even have a chance to fight back, so.

• 1:57:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, I've had some discussions with some guys about like what's, what's more horrific, the drone that's coming after you or you're the next step that you take, you know, the IED environment of, you know, and I think it was, is bad in Ramadi, bad in Iraq, Afghanistan, like it got horrific for guys I didn't, I didn't fight in Afghanistan, but guys, I don't know if it was like this when you were there. But it got to the point where it was like the immediate action drills were like, don't move. You know, so hey, if we start getting shot at or something blows up, no one move because there's so many IEDs. So is that worse where you're like, well, this next step could be my last?

• 1:57:44Jocko Willink?

  Or is it worse to say, oh, this thing is hunting me down and finding me? At my beginning thought was, I thought it was like, well, it's scarier if you don't, kind of like what you just said, like you don't know what's going to happen. You take your next step, you could get blown up. But as I think about it more and as I see more of like the Ukrainian activities going on, I'm starting to think, um, yeah, that seems like the most horrific thing is to have these drones coming that are just, it's like nothing you can do about it.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  Uh, so I would definitely say the drones are worse and the reason for that is not because they're, you know, less deadly or more deadly or whatever than an IED. Obviously you don't want to step on an IED. The difference is the drone is hunting you. They're looking for you. They, they, they're called loitering munitions. It's sort of the technical term for it. So it's just sitting there. It's just watching. It's just watching. And once it finds you, it, you know, you can jump into a trench, but it's just going to hit you from the top and you run into a building. It'll just follow you into the building. And so it's sort of, it's sort of like being, you, you are the prey. It's kind of like, um, it's kind of like the movie Predator, right? Where, you know, like what's more scary, you know, there's room that you shouldn't go into because, you know, you'll get hurt or this thing is actively hunting you and there's nowhere is safe.

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  And that's the, so that in my personal experience, for at least me, definitely worse being hunted by a drone that's on thermals at night looking for you. It's got a ton of munitions.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  There's just nothing you can do. And, and, and I've been in, you know, a lot of different situations where there's, you know, um, you know, landmines and things of that nature. The only thing I could think of that was kind of nearly as freaky was, you know, clearing an ISIS tunnel because you're just kind of worried about getting buried alive. But even that too is different. It's just, um, just, just the fact of being hunted and there's nothing you can do about it is, is a whole other level of just horrifying.

• 1:59:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, especially now, like the thing about an IED is a lot of times the IED where it's not, was just, um, victim activated, meaning like it's just going to go off. It seems like that's a little. Something that you can have a better chance against than another human that's trying to kill you. You know, like on the end of that drone is a guy that's looking for you going, oh, got one. And you're just in a video game and he's just gonna roll that thing in.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. He's just sitting there having a cup of coffee, watching you on thermal. So yeah, good luck. Good luck. You know, good luck running away. Um, yeah, definitely.

• 2:00:04Jocko Willink?

  So it would seem that that it's almost impossible or will be almost impossible for the Burmese army and the Burmese junta to get complete control over the Korin, right? Like, I mean, it's just insurgency, like a continual, long-term insurgency. Is there any, is that what you see for the kind of indefinite future, just continued insurgency?

• 2:00:31Speaker 01

  There will be continued insurgency and the Burma Army is not going to be able to um, control the hill regions. So the only reason the Korin even exists as a people is because of those hills. That's the only reason because they are, they are, um, the Burma Army is so much stronger than them. So they have a terrain and sort of home field advantage when the Burma Army has to go in there. You go, you know, you go into the jungle, um, it's a, it's a whole different animal out there. And that place is heavily landmined as well by the, by the, by the locals. Cause that's their only defenses. They're like, okay, well, there's three trails in here. We know which one is landmined. We know which one isn't. We know which ones are landmined and we even know which ones aren't. Uh, the Burma Army doesn't know that. So that's the only way that like the Korin can even defend themselves in a lot of cases.

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  Um, and so I don't see a situation where it would ever be truly tenable for the Burma Army to control the, control hills. They'll go in and set up these hilltop fortresses, these fobs, and they can sort of, again, sort of, you know, fire mortars into people's villages and stuff. But as far as actually being able to govern and control the area, it's not gonna happen.

• 2:01:32Jocko Willink?

  And where do the, where do the rebels get their supplies chain from?

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  So they're they're obviously taking stuff off of dead Burma Army soldiers and then it's Southeast Asia. So there's a there's a black market of all kinds of all kinds of crazy stuff out there. Yeah, so it's funny. Um, you walk through the jungle and you're hanging out with these guys and you'll see like a Burma Army rifle. You'll see an like an M 16 with like a serial number, you know, that's, you know, from many, many, yeah. Um, which is actually funny that some of the guys were doing um like target practice with their with their M 16s. And they were shooting a 25 yard target just to zero their weapons. And at 25 yards, the bullets, the 556 round was hitting the target sideways.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  It's spinning.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  It was totally spinning just at 25 yards. The barrels were that shot out. What's even crazier is there are still um M 1 carbines, not the Garands, but the M 1 carbine from World War II. Standard, standard. Our guys are still walking around carrying those. And I have a picture of one. Uh, I saw this guy carrying it. I was just kind of, you know, checking it out. And uh, it was made in 1943. And he's that's his that's his way to defend his village is this M 1 carbine from World War II.

• 2:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Freaking damn good weapon.

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and it works great. It works great. Yeah, so that there's literally stuff there from from the British and Americans being being there. Yeah.

• 2:02:44Jocko Willink?

  So where do you see Stronghold heading?

• 2:02:46Speaker 01

  So so right now, one of the things that we're doing is so like I said earlier, we have the only um ambulances for an area inside of Burma that's, you know, larger than the state of Delaware. A million football fields. So one of the we're constantly trying to figure out how to improve that and to save more lives as much as possible. The um, the the blood transfusions was a big part of that capability. Cause now we can extend the amount of time that we have to get a patient to where they need to go. Um, but now we just recently, uh, just over the last couple of months have launched a new initiative where we're sending out mobile medics. So we're um, local people who are already trained in, they already have medical medical training. Um, at at different levels, there's like all the way up to like the PA level and there's sort of like community health workers and things like that who can administer shots and

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  sort of assess people and um, there's people who know how to deliver babies and things of that nature. So what we're doing is we're strategically hiring um, some of these different folks because they have this training. But um, when you're a subsistence level, um, when you're in a subsistence level economy, there's no job for you like so you might know how to deliver babies or you might know how to you might be a physician's assistant level of training because maybe you went to school somewhere, um, but you have no medicine. So you're totally useless. And so, and also too, your family has no money. So what does that mean? Well, it means you're gonna go work in the rice fields. You're gonna go try to hunt to bring some home, bring home some meat for your family. You're gonna just try to get, you know, rice. And so what we're doing now is we are finding, because there's

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  plenty, people who have this medical training, or people who are like medics with like the resistance, sort of like combat medics. And what we're doing is we're bringing in medical supplies and motorbikes and basically putting them in sort of in places where there's where it's harder to reach. And then they're going around and actively going to villages and doing medical clinics. And so they're finding, they're finding all these people who would have passed away from infections, easily treatable things, and who either would have needed a ride on one of our ambulances, or worst case scenario would have just passed away in the middle of the night because, you know, they got infected. It's like, you know, a 12 year old kid, you know, getting sepsis or something from, from an infection on his foot because he stepped on, on something, you know, in the jungle and there's no way

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  to really properly clean it off. So anything from that to, you know, people just needing basic, you know, malaria medication, or people needing, you know, people, people die in the jungle from a fever. Right? Like we have, we have, you know, basic stuff to help break a fever. They got nothing out there. And so what we're doing is, yeah, we're, that's our, that's our latest initiative. And we're sending out a bunch of these mobile medics and incorporating them into our, our ambulance service as well. And so just over the last couple of months, we've had, I don't, I should have looked at the most recent numbers. I'm going to say easily 300 patient interactions in just the last one or two months from these, these new mobile medics that we just launched over the last three, four months ago.

• 2:05:41Jocko Willink?

  So Charlie, Mike with the stronghold, continuing to make that work. And then another thing you've got going on now is you've got a YouTube channel slash podcast. Do you have a, is it a podcast as well? Or is it just a YouTube channel?

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  So right now, I'm just putting it on the, on the channel, but I'm going to be putting it out on Spotify and all that stuff and taking it one step at a time.

• 2:06:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, you know, in a world where there's definitely a lot of podcasts in the world and a lot of YouTube channels right now, and Yours is called The Overwatch with Ephraim Mattos. And well, first of all, first of all, I've been listening to it and it's freaking great. It's great because you're clearly a thinker. You're not hyper emotional, but you're not like completely detached from your emotions. But you have them in check. You've been all over the world. You've seen war up close and personal, not just from our perspective as an American, not just from the superpower, but from the other end as well as we just talked about. And so it gives a really, you give really great takes on what's, what's going on.

• 2:06:43Jocko Willink?

  I know that the time that you spent at Harvard, I don't know what you learned there, but maybe that plays into it as well. You have a really good, level-headed assessment of what's going on. It's, I wouldn't say they're like reaction videos to, hey, what happened in the news today? I, I need to put the word out, what happened today? But it's a little bit more strategic view of what's going on in various parts of the world. It's just great. So awesome. What made you decide to start that?

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  So when I, when I was, when I was at Harvard, I, you know, was, was trying to have conversations with different people from, from around the world and obviously Americans as well. And we would talk about different geopolitical issues. So obviously over the last couple of years, there's been a lot of interest in, you know, the Ukraine, Russia war, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Israel's war on Hamas and Hezbollah. Obviously right now we're dealing with the, the Iran situation. And so there's all these different geopolitical events that are, that we as a society are having conversations about. But I realized we don't quite have as a society through the, um, the sort of mental framework for how to engage with this. Americans are, we, we tend to be sort of more isolated. We don't, um, we, we, you know, we're, we're, we're neighbored by Canada and Mexico.

• 2:07:49Speaker 01

  So we don't really think in terms of, you know, sort of global geopolitics. And so what I started observing was even people who I might agree with politically, they would just have these really bizarre takes on, you know, what was going on in Israel or what was going on in the Middle East or what was going on with, you know, the, uh, like our border wars or, you know, narco terrorist groups or whatever. And I realized like, well, people just don't quite understand how war works and we don't really understand how geopolitics work. And, and the counter example to that is, you know, in America, everybody already has an opinion on what they, you know, think about, let's say abortion or voting rights or, you know, any sort of domestic politics.

• 2:08:26Jocko Willink?

  Gun control.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  Gun control, exactly. We have the nomenclature and the ability to sort of have those conversations. But what's happening right now is the United States is, and Americans in particular, are sort of waking up to the realization that, oh, China's a threat, Russia's a threat. The Middle, like what happens in the Middle East does affect us. Yeah, we do have narco terrorists trying to get in here. Wait a minute, we just went and took, you know, Delta Force just went and nabbed, you know, Nicholas Maduro. Like, what the hell is that about? Like, is that legal? Like, how does that even work? So there's, there's all these questions about how the world works. And so I, I thought like, well, this is something that I can, I can contribute to. And so I started a, while I was at Harvard, I just started a newsletter called The Overwatch. That's at theoverwatch.co is the website. And the idea is just to help explain geopolitics to Americans.

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  And, but then recently, over the last couple of months, I've been experimenting with basically making it into more of a video. And so right now, what I'm doing is, once a week, I'm sort of putting together a 25, 30 minute podcast and just explaining, hey, here's six or seven major geopolitical events that are happening around the world. And here's kind of how you need to be thinking about them. Because people don't really understand what's going on. In Burma, for example, because I always get the question like, oh, like, where is Burma? Like, what's going on there? And I don't get upset at all that people don't know where it is. I'm not, my mindset is not, well, how, how dare you not know? Like, like, you know, you're living over here. I don't, I don't, I don't care. Or I do care, but it's like, I'm not, I'm not judging people for not knowing. So what I want to do is I want to help, I'm helping to try to solve that problem.

• 2:09:52Speaker 01

  I'm explaining different little conflicts and things that are happening in Africa, down in South America. And I'm intentionally, the reason it's called The Overwatch, right? Sort of a, a, you know, a nod to my time as a sniper, right? You provide Overwatch and your job is to look at, survey the entire battlefield and pass good information back to your commander so he can make a good decision. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to give a good overview of what's going on in the world strategically. So you as the American voter, or just you as the American citizen can sort of understand what's going on. So that your first time, you know, hearing about, you know, this past week, you know, we took out a, you know, an ISIS commander in Nigeria using airstrikes.

• 2:10:30Speaker 01

  And it was like a joint coalition. And again, immediately you hear, you hear people saying like, why do we have troops on the ground in Nigeria? And, you know, and all this stuff. And so people People just immediately don't really have the nomenclature or the ability to kind of discuss it intelligently, or they're totally shocked and surprised by it. So the purpose of the Overwatch is just for regular Americans. Here's what's going on in the world. Here's why it strategically matters to the United States. And I try to come at it from a level-headed point of view. I am politically conservative and I am very pro-America, pro-Western civilization. But I'm not trying to beat over your head what to think. I'm going to tell you what I think about something, but I'm going to try to teach you how to think about these things. Let's talk about the geopolitical ramifications of whatever's going on. So, for example, we just talked about Burma.

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  Like, okay, well, why are Russia and China giving weapons to like some Burma army in the middle of Southeast Asia? Why does Russia care? Well, again, you look at a map and you suddenly realize, well, that gives them access to the ocean. They don't have to go through the Strait of Malacca. They don't have to, like, that gives them a huge advantage in the world. And they're thinking 10 years ahead, whereas Americans were only thinking to the next midterm election. And so I just basically, the purpose of the Overwatch and the podcast is just so people can understand what's going on, stay up to date. I'm not trying to get into grievance culture. I'm not trying to be overly sensational about it.

• 2:11:46Jocko Willink?

  Did you make up the term grievance culture?

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  No, I did not come up with that.

• 2:11:51Jocko Willink?

  I kind of like that one.

• 2:11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's what it is. It's there's this grievance culture. Everybody's playing victim or they're blaming everybody else for their problems. And I'm just not, I'm just not interested in being involved in that.

• 2:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was telling you before we record today about the podcast that Echo and I did. It was called What's Going On? And one of the things that I pointed out was the fact of when you start looking at the forces that come into decision-making and how many there are. And I think I brought this up on the podcast, but the amount of forces that are in play when you have to decide where you and your wife are going to dinner, right? You and your wife are going to go to dinner. Like, there are forces at play there. Hey, what, you know, have we been to this place before? She liked it, I didn't like it, or I liked it and she didn't like it. What's our financial constraints right now? What's our time constraints? How long is this going to take? What about the time three years ago when I took my wife to a restaurant and she didn't like it?

• 2:12:43Jocko Willink?

  And then we had a, you know, a bad experience and the whole, like, you've got all these things to try and weigh. And try and figure out like where you're gonna go to dinner. And that's just you and your wife going to dinner. So now we start talking about some major thing happening in the world, some major world event going on Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, like you, you name the place Sudan, like you name the place and all of a sudden, people just chime in as if they have calculated all those variables, you know, all these variables that that they, they probably can't even name 3% of the variables that are in play when you

• 2:13:26Jocko Willink?

  talk about these types of things. And, and so to think like, oh, well, that's bad because of this one reason. Well, there's a whole lot more everyone needs to know. And I like, that's what I, that's what I took away from your channel, your YouTube channel, is you're giving some very good nuance. And, and by the way, anybody that thinks they can sit there and predict how things are gonna go is an idiot. You know, if you think you're just gonna go, oh, if we do that, this is gonna happen. You have no idea what's gonna happen. You don't know about, you don't know about the mate, the morale of the maintenance crew that's working on the Iranian drones. Like, how, how do you know that? Like, and that's gonna play, that plays a real role. That's a

• 2:14:10Jocko Willink?

  real thing. So if you don't know that, well, how are you making predictions about what's gonna happen? It's very, very difficult. And so to think, you know what, I'm just gonna listen more and, and not try and pass judgment on what's gonna happen. But instead of listening, try and assess what's happening rather than pass judgment on what's happening. And it seems to me that's sort of what your, your take is like, hey, here's an assessment, not so much a judgment, but hey, here's what's happening. It could, could go a bunch of different ways. And, and I definitely like that. I also think it's interesting for you to be a, a, what'd you say, a semi conservative guy and pro American, and yet you've spent like literally years of your life in trenches

• 2:14:54Jocko Willink?

  in Burma, trying to defend, defend this native population from oppression.

• 2:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. One, one, I would say I'm actually very, very politically conservative, definitely not, definitely not semi conservative, very conservative. But um, yeah, I don't, I don't see a big difference um, between, here's the thing, I And I think we as human beings need to be loyal to certain principles and certain ideals. And you need to be loyal to humanity as much as you realistically can, right? Now, your loyalty needs to go to, you know, for me, my loyalty goes to God, family, country, and then other people's countries. But, um, so what I'm doing when I'm overseas is I don't see, you know, okay, so I think the best way to explain this, um, so, you know, the event in Iraq where, you know, I

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  got shot rescuing a little Muslim Iraqi girl who is a child of ISIS fighters, um, you know, why would I go risk my life to do that? I'm a white, conservative, Christian male. Why would, you know, it's like, it doesn't make sense in the modern mind why I would be willing to do that. It's like, well, because she's human and because it's the right thing to do. And, um, so, and because, because, because it's the right thing to do, that's what I'm gonna do. Um, so for me, I have no, there's, there's no cognitive dissonance in my head to go and serve other people and help other people. Uh, to whom much is given, much shall be required. I got to grow up in America. I got incredible training as a SEAL. Um, I was able to fight for my country. And now I've noticed that there's other people in other places that could use my help,

• 2:16:27Speaker 01

  could use my background, could use someone to stick up for them and, and say something for them. And, um, so that's, that's, that's what I'm doing. Um, so I have no cognitive dissonance on that. I think, I think it makes natural sense based on my values. Um, and then specifically around the, the geopolitics stuff, you know, yeah, I see all this, um, I see all this, you know, infighting and everybody having super strong opinions. One of the things, um, so I'd already been writing the newsletter, but I was in the process of kind of setting up the, the, the video concept and, uh, as well, because keep in mind, I'm still working full time running Stronghold. But, um, I was, uh, it was during this, the whole Iran things going on, and I saw this, uh, influencer, fitness influencer woman, um, a nice person, I'm sure she, I'm sure

• 2:17:10Speaker 01

  she's a wonderful person, but I saw this fitness influencer lady, and I'm like, why is she popping up on my feed? And so she's got this video about the Strait of Hormuz, and she's got this 35-minute video explaining this Strait of Hormuz, and I thought, I gotta click on this. So I click on it, and- And again, she's just reading off of a teleprompter that somebody else had gone to chat GPT and it explained, you know, whatever, what the Strait of Hormuz and why, you know, strategically important. And, um, and I mean, it had to have had a million views, a million and a half views. And I, I got, I got a little frustrated with that because I just thought, nice person, totally get it. This is what's trending. She's gonna make a video about it, whatever. But I just thought, okay, we as Americans deserve better than to be getting our geopolitical analysis from somebody who's never fought in a war,

• 2:17:53Speaker 01

  has never served in the military, does, is not educated on these things, doesn't read books about these things. Two weeks ago, had never even heard of the Strait of Hormuz, let alone the Strait of Malacca, let alone, you know, like what are all these different places. And so I just thought, okay, anyway, that just kind of helped, uh, sort of add fuel to my fire that I'm like, you know what, I gotta, I gotta start, you know, speaking up about this kind of thing. And, um, and really my goal, I'm sort of an educator at heart. I really enjoy teaching people things. I really enjoy, uh, philosophy. I love, um, you know, trying to figure out what, where I'm wrong about something. I'm very comfortable admitting if I'm wrong about something. And so for me, this, you know, talking about geopolitics and what's going on. This is going to become more and more important to America and to Americans. We, we can already see that geopolitical events overseas are shaping our domestic politics.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  You know, whether it's like Israel versus, you know, the Palestinians or, um, you know, Russia versus Ukraine. I mean, you have people now that are saying stuff about Russia. Where they're going, well, like, you know, at least, at least the Russians are trying to, you know, uh, you know, follow like Christian values or, or something or other. And like the Ukrainians, they're all a bunch of heathens and, you know, or Zelensky and stuff. And you're just going, guys, like, what are you talking about? Like Putin is out there just like, you know, murdering and massacring people. And like his troops are like mass raping people. And it's like, he's not, he's any, any, any sort of semblance of Christianity that that guy has. It's literally just a, a tapestry. It's just a covering so that way the local, you know, Russian Orthodox will follow him or something like that.

• 2:19:17Speaker 01

  That's, that's all that's going on there. It's not real. And so you need to think about incentives. You need to think about, one of the things I was, you know, studying at Harvard was, um, decision science. And so just kind of looking at incentives and psychology is mostly just, mostly just psychology type stuff. And, you know, you look at, okay, like, why do people do what they do? And you need to, one of the biggest things is just incentives. And we're thinking in terms of, you know, again, being at the school there, the whole thing is you're, you're, you're, you're thinking about grand strategy. You're thinking about, um, policy. You're thinking about foreign policy and, um,

• 2:19:50Speaker 01

  So again, this is just something that most Americans don't really spend a lot of time thinking about. You think about actually during the Biden-Trump election, the one where I believe it was the one where Biden, yeah, it was the one where Biden won because he only did one election against Trump. But they skipped the second debate, and the second debate is typically centered around foreign policy. The first debate is usually domestic policy, the second one is, you know, foreign policy. And then they refuse to even have a conversation, you know, for whatever reason, they're blaming each other for whatever. But my point is, is there was no outcry. There was nobody was, no American was going, I want to know Biden versus Trump's, you know, concept of foreign policy. We didn't, the conversation didn't even happen, and nobody was even upset by it. But it really matters because it matters to our borders, it matters to our trade policy, it matters to our security, it matters where

• 2:20:35Speaker 01

  we send our troops, it matters, you know, it matters as China expands, as Russia tries to expand. We're looking at Iran right now, you know, having a vice grip on this vital waterway, directly affecting you at home. So there's that, but ad infinitum, going on in the world. And then, now, and then, don't even get me started on like, the mineral wars, and drugs, and all that kind of stuff, and then human trafficking. And so, anyway, so there's, there's so much there to kind of look at, and just sort of generally be aware of. And that's, that's my purpose with the Overwatch, is to basically just try to help people kind of understand a little bit without being all overly hysterical. But while still taking a clear stance, like, I'm pro-Western civilization, I'm not going

• 2:21:19Speaker 01

  to sit here and pretend like we have some sort of moral equivalence with the Chinese communists. We don't. We're better. Screw those guys. And we need to win, we need to beat them on the global stage. And that's, that's, that's what I'm focused on talking about.

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's better to be a friendly bully in the world. You know what I mean? Like, hey, you should be a friend. Hey, if you're the biggest, strongest bully, but you're cool to everyone, that's, life is good. You know, if you're out in the schoolyard, and the one bully is you, and you let everyone play hopscotch, and you let everyone use the jungle gym, cool. But the minute you, you know, get overtaken by another bully who decides, oh, only I get to play scot, hopscotch, or only these people can use the jungle gym, now we have a problem. And by the way, you, there's nothing you can do anymore, because you're weak. And so, you need to be the benevolent bully in the world. That's my political stance when it comes to that. And also, you know, from a neighbor perspective. You know, you, you, look, what your neighbor's doing is their business.

• 2:22:16Jocko Willink?

  But at a certain point, if you let your neighbor, your neighbor can get to a point where it's going to impact what's going on in your street, you know? You can't sleep at night because they're having big parties or whatever the case, their, their yard is, you know, a fire hazard. So if that starts to happen, you gotta go, hey, listen, I don't really want to interfere with my neighbors, but my neighbor's behavior impacts the way I live my life. And we need to come to some kind of an agreement where it works. Now, another, another, just to, just to bring up one more thing that I thought was a really interesting take. You, you on, on one of your podcasts, you were talking about the, the woman that basically defected to Iran. And she went from being like an Arabic or a Farsi linguist of some kind in the, in the Navy, right? In the Navy or Air Force?

• 2:23:01Speaker 01

  Air Force.

• 2:23:02Jocko Willink?

  In the Air Force, she joins the Air Force, she becomes a linguist, she, was she Farsi?

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, Farsi.

• 2:23:08Jocko Willink?

  Learns Farsi, converts to Islam and eventually becomes a, a spy. What, what road does it, what, what does the algorithm look like that causes that to happen to her? Your assessment?

• 2:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So give a little, a little bit more context to you, a little bit more flavor. So this is a, uh, her name is Monica Witt and right now, to be clear, uh, for legal reasons, she's suspected by the FBI of, you know, allegedly spying for the Iranians. Uh, but she's white, uh, grew up in a relatively Christian home, uh, joined the Air Force, became a counterintelligence specialist, ironically. And, um, so then during one of her deployments to Iraq, she started to read the Quran so she could understand, you know, so the, um, the, the culture. Um, she was trained in Farsi at the Defense Language Institute here and here in the United States. It's where we send our, our military folks to learn, uh, foreign languages. And then after she got out of the military, she got a, a private sector job.

• 2:24:04Speaker 01

  I'm not really sure what she did, but during that job, she went to, uh, two different conferences in Iran, um, which is, which are basically just put on, basically just propaganda conferences put on by the Iranian government. And when she was there, she actually converted to Islam on Iranian state TV. So there's a video of it out there somewhere, I'm sure of her actually converting to Islam. And then while she was there, she was then sort of recruited by the Iranians to spy for, um, to spy for them. And so she came back to the United States. And, you know, started gathering information and I don't, again, I don't know what her job was, but she had a top level clearance job somewhere in the private sector having to do with intelligence. And then the Iranians, they, they arranged for her to be able to go back to Iran. So she moves back to Iran. They get her stuff with a computer and all this kind of stuff. And then she's giving,

• 2:24:49Speaker 01

  she started giving the Iranians all this intelligence on her coworkers and, you know, the bases that she worked on and all the different private projects that she has access to and just top secret clearance and, and all that stuff. So, um, you know, and so right now the FBI is offering $200,000 for any information that leads to her arrest or, or whatever. So, and again, this is all alleged. So, you know, she has a right to a fair trial and all that. But, um, the, the, the way that, the way that this stuff happens is people become disillusioned with their own life. Obviously, I don't know the specific instances, you know, whatever it might have happened to her in life. I don't know. I'm not going to try to make a psychological evaluation of somebody I've never met. But what I will say is if you are not living your life by principle,

• 2:25:33Speaker 01

  and if you are not explaining to people why America is the better force in the world, if you're not, if you are not giving people the, um, the understanding of, of why that is and, and like why freedom is better than these other tyrannical ways of life, you will become easily susceptible because we take these things for granted. As Americans, we take, we take the idea of, you know, private property. We take that for granted. Like, we don't even understand. No, no, no. You go overseas, there is no private property. You know, the, the, the tribal leader, he'll just take whatever belongs to you because it belongs to him. And there's nothing you can do about it. And we don't even understand that concept. And so, um, what happens is, is, um,

• 2:26:14Speaker 01

  people like Iran, or Russia, or China, or just any nefarious actor, because we also have freedom of speech, you can reach the American people and you can tell them anything that you want to. And if you are not grounded in your beliefs, if you do not understand why America is exceptional, and we are exceptional, if you don't understand why America is exceptional, and, um, why, why we have set things up the way we set them up, you become very susceptible to somebody coming along and going, "Well, is that really..." Is that really the way it should be? Well, what about the inequality? Well, what about this? Well, what about that? And you've never, you've never thought of these ideas before. And so then you go like, oh my goodness, my entire society has, has lied to me. And I remember that one time that somebody did something mean to me. And so now all of a sudden, your heart turns against the very thing that, you know, you, your heart should have been, you know, engaged with.

• 2:26:58Speaker 01

  And so then that's how people become susceptible to being recruited by, you know, by these foreign adversaries. And then also, we also need to talk about that a little bit, too. You look at, you look at modern warfare, we're talking about drones. We're talking about, you know, coming up against, you know, airstrikes and stuff. The intel battlefield now, the sort of counter intel, sort of propaganda war, is now in everybody's pocket. It is in your pocket. Think about just this Iran war going on right now. So Iran turns off the internet, right? For multiple reasons. But they then start pumping out all of these propaganda videos on social media. And they're doing it, making Lego videos, they're doing all these things to try and change the minds of Americans. And it's working. We saw Hamas do that.

• 2:27:39Speaker 01

  So Hamas goes in and kills a bunch of Israelis, commits, you know, per capita, an attack that's 40 times worse than 9/11. And then all of a sudden, they play the victim and they're pretending like, oh my goodness, why are the Israelis coming in here to get their hostages back? How dare they do that? You know, and then, so, but all of that information is being pumped into the brains of anybody who's willing to pick up a phone and look at it. Meanwhile, we don't have the ability to get them the same information, right? It's like you're not able to tell the Iranian people like, hey, you know, life's better over here. Because, because of the information control. If you look at China, China specifically with TikTok, the Chinese, the TikTok algorithm in America is entirely different than the TikTok algorithm in China.

• 2:28:22Speaker 01

  So in China TikTok, you're not going to be getting dumb, dumb dancing videos and anti-America, anti-Western civilization propaganda. No, you're going to be getting, you know, you're going to be getting entirely different stuff. You know, the teenagers there in, in China, you're going to be getting pro-China stuff. You're going to be getting pro-China history. You're going to be getting things that are less brain draining for you. And they're intentional about that because information does matter. So my point is if you go back to World War II. Think about this, think about how World War II might have changed if Hitler, every single night, in perfect English, was able to talk to the entire American population. Anybody who wants to tune in can listen to Hitler give a speech anytime he wants to. And he's gonna try to change the hearts and minds of Americans and try to get them to

• 2:29:05Speaker 01

  like, "You really need to come over here, you know, just stay over there," you know, whatever, whatever his mindset would be. It'd be an entirely different world, but that's the world we live in now. Putin and anybody who works for him can put any kind of information on your phone anytime they want to. And same thing with China, same thing with Iran. And so, you as an American, you now are part of the propaganda machine. It's no longer this foreign intel op, it's now in your social media. And people need to be aware of that. And again, that's another reason why the Overwatch is important, because it's like, alright, let's just take, let's take a step back, let's take a level-headed look at what's going on geopolitically, what are the incentives, what's actually going on here, why does this matter to America, and being able to just explain that in a calm, intelligent manner, I think is so important right now.

• 2:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I couldn't agree more, man. Great assessment. And, um, yeah, the thing's great. I guess, how's the, how's your physical health, bro?

• 2:30:00Speaker 01

  Been pretty good, pretty good, yeah. Could be better.

• 2:30:02Jocko Willink?

  Because that was a crazy story, last time you were on, you were talking about weighing 325 pounds and just what you did to get your, get your health back in line. All good?

• 2:30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, mostly good. But the issue I'm dealing now was dealing with some low back pain, but I'm dealing with that. But yeah, other than that, no, it's been good, it's been good. And I'll tell you what, too, you know, we talked about mental health last time I was on a lot more, and, you know, I'll tell you what, like, having, you know, being, being married and having, having a child, granted, luckily I got myself sorted before getting married, right? So obviously, don't use marriage and children as a crutch to fix yourself. But what I find is-

• 2:30:39Jocko Willink?

  That may not work.

• 2:30:40Speaker 01

  It's not gonna work. But what I found is that, you know, the responsibility of taking care of my wife, taking care of my daughter and another kid on the way, that responsibility, if anything, that brings, that brings us higher level of happiness, of- Contentment, you wake up in the morning, you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing. I gotta take care of my wife, gotta take care of my kids, gotta take care of stronghold. Gonna, you know, do something for Overwatch today as well, you know, and then, and that's, and that's your purpose. And I think, I think a lot of, I think a lot of veterans in particular, well, obviously we're dealing with the veteran suicide crisis and a lot of, a lot of issues there.

• 2:31:17Speaker 01

  I think a lot of it, because when you look at a lot of the guys who are, who are committing suicide, they're, it's, they're not committing suicide because they were in combat. A lot of them, they're committing suicide, were never really in combat. They were never, it's not like PTSD from what they saw in the trenches. That's not, that's not what's going on. It's this despair. It's this lack of purpose. And I think that when you're in the military, especially as a young man, just experiencing myself, you know, joined when I was, or enlisted when I was 17, went to bootcamp when I was 18. Went right into SEAL Teams. The sense of purpose and meaning that you have and the sense of belonging, even if, even if you're not the most popular guy in your platoon. So you know what your role is. Like, hey, I'm the comms guy. Hey, I'm the, I'm the machine gunner. Hey, I'm the whatever, right?

• 2:32:00Speaker 01

  And you have a purpose and you have a, and you have, and you have a meaning and you have an identity that you've earned. And when you get out of the military, it's like you lose that, you completely lose that. You lose this brotherhood. You lose that purpose. And so now you're gonna go, alright, I'm gonna, looks like I'm gonna go become an IT specialist, you know, doing whatever. Maybe I'll do some investing and, and, and there's this despair because you peaked when you were 25. At least you feel like you did. You feel like you peaked. You're like, man, I was, I was in, you know, Afghanistan and I'm 25. I'm like smoking bad guys, calling in airstrikes. I've got responsibility. Like, I'm a man, you know, I'm like doing, I'm contributing to the world. And then you get out and all of a sudden you're like, okay, what am I doing now? And this- TPS reports?

• 2:32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, TPS reports, exactly. Yeah, you're doing TPS reports. And yeah, so I think there's a, a big sort of pandemic of despair that I think is happening and guys just don't fully realize that. And so my, my point with that is just, for me, the added stress of being a husband and a father is, it's, it's like a good stress. It's a you stress. It's like, it's a, instead of a distress, it's a you stress. It's, it's, it's a stress that forces you to be better and forces you to be more locked on. You can't just, you know, have a bad day and, you know, not do anything or, you know, whatever, let yourself go. You just can't do that. You have to, you have to stay more locked in. And so I, yeah, it's a-

• 2:33:23Speaker 01

  Long story short, yeah, things are good. I could not be happier. Life is wonderful. Yeah, very grateful.

• 2:33:29Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Does that get us up to speed? We're good for now?

• 2:33:32Speaker 01

  That's it, yeah.

• 2:33:35Jocko Willink?

  Where can people find you? So you got on the interwebs, it's strongholdrescue.org. You have theoverwatch.co and then on YouTube, you've got theoverwatch with Ephraim Mattos.

• 2:33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, people can just type my name in, Ephraim Mattos.

• 2:33:53Jocko Willink?

  You know, I tried that and it's actually, doesn't come up for a while.

• 2:33:56Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:33:56Jocko Willink?

  So you'll get like 50 videos from Andy Stumpf and me and like a bunch of other people.

• 2:34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:01Jocko Willink?

  But as far as your actual show, I think you have to put in theoverwatch with Ephraim Mattos to get it to populate in there. Cause I tried it, yeah. But it's great, it's great. I'm a subscriber, I'm on the newsletter and so it's great. So check that out. And then on Instagram and Twitter X, you're at Ephraim Mattos. That's correct. Is that what we're dealing with here?

• 2:34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:34:25Jocko Willink?

  For people to find you?

• 2:34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely too. And then just a quick word too about Stronghold. So again, the way that we operate is we, we work off of a micro donor approach. So again, we're nonprofit, everything that we do, everything, all the stories I told, everything, everything that I was talking about, the ambulances, and again, I've only, we obviously don't want, we only have time to talk about a fraction of what's going on. But all of that, all the medicine, all the ambulances, all the stuff, the operators that are going in the field. By the way, we do train our people, sorry, we do pay our people, we do allow, you know, our people that like make an actual living and going and doing this professionally because the people we serve deserve that. So the way that it all functions is 80 or 90% of the money that we bring in comes in just from monthly micro donors. So just, so if people are interested, they can sign up at strongholdrescue.org. And you know, we ask if you want to pitch in, maybe pitch in a dollar a day, 20 bucks a month,

• 2:35:11Speaker 01

  something like that. And if you do, we'll send you a stronghold t-shirt. It's the same kind of t-shirt that our guys wear in the field. And on the back, we have our motto, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." And if you want to help be a part of that, we would greatly appreciate it. And people can check that out at strongholdrescue.org.

• 2:35:26Jocko Willink?

  Strongholdrescue.org, that's what this is all about.

• 2:35:31Jocko Willink?

  Echo, any questions?

• 2:35:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is just for my own curiosity. So, how long?

• 2:35:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh oh.

• 2:35:36Speaker 01

  Oh, here we go. He's pulling up the mic. I'm like, alright, here we go. Here goes forty-five more minutes.

• 2:35:40Speaker 02

  How long at a time do you go over there?

• 2:35:42Speaker 01

  Um, so I've done trips that were anywhere from four months. Uh, I've been also as short as maybe two, three weeks.

• 2:35:48Speaker 02

  So as far as acclimation, you know, how's the mosquitoes over there?

• 2:35:52Speaker 01

  Mosquitoes are actually very, very manageable. There's not a ton of mosquitoes. It's actually a very, very beautiful place. So the Karren Hills, they call it Kotulay, which the, the direct translation, there's no like direct English translation, but it means basically like the, like the peaceful land, the evergreen land. It's like the beautiful emerald green land. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. It's a beautiful climate.

• 2:36:11Speaker 02

  Cause you know how like, I don't know if you ever watched that show Naked and Afraid? You ever heard that?

• 2:36:15Speaker 01

  I, I've seen clips of it. I've never, I've never, never watched it.

• 2:36:17Speaker 02

  Cause you know when they go into these beautiful jungles and stuff and they're like, you know, oh yeah, yeah, all good. But then they get eaten by bugs and you know, like everything in there is trying to kill you, you know, in one way or another. So it's not like that.

• 2:36:27Speaker 01

  Well, there, it's not like that with the bugs. There are snakes and stuff. So I'll tell a couple of quick snake stories. Um, so I was in a, we're, we're in a reconnaissance mission. We were within a hundred yards of a Burma Army outpost and this Burma Army was firing into this village. Um, and so one of the local guys, um, he was a, a local sniper. And so he had this, uh, he had a rifle. And, um, so I was, we were taking turns watching this particular outpost, waiting for the Burma Army to pop their heads out and fire on the villagers. And so I'm in this position, literally just a hundred yards from, from the enemy, but I'm firing across the river. The Burma Army has no idea that we're there. And, uh, so there's all these rockets and RPGs and stuff being fired back and forth by the Burma Army. And so what happens is the snakes, whenever there's a battle that pops off in the jungle, they get spooked.

• 2:37:11Speaker 01

  And they're sort of, they get sort of disoriented and they just start going everywhere. They freak out. And so we're laying there at the edge of this village, a hundred yards from the Burma Army. If you stand up, they can see you. Hiding, we're hiding in these bushes. And, uh, I was with a couple of commandos, uh, a couple of the Karren commandos. And, uh, one of the guys, he like pops up on his knee. He goes like, ah, he's like, makes this like totally girly noise. And then one of the other commandos pulls out this giant knife and just starts slapping at the ground. And, uh, basically during this firefight, a snake rolled right up into our position. Um, and And then actually, uh, the, the Harvard Christmas deployment, I was, um, uh, airstrikes coming in. We hear that, we hear the, you know, we hear the, uh, the aircraft is, you know, is, is, is coming around. Um, and I gotta jump into my trench. And so as I go to jump into my trench, I see a scorpion,

• 2:37:56Speaker 01

  um, right on the edge of the trench. And so I pull out a K bar. It was actually my, my SQT graduation K bar.

• 2:38:02Jocko Willink?

  And uh, Got your first kill with that thing.

• 2:38:03Speaker 01

  So I slap, well, I slap at it. I try to, I try to stab it and I'm like, I need to get into this trench. So I go to slap at it. I miss the scorpion and then it falls right into my trench where I gotta jump into. So I'm sprawled over the trench as this aircraft is coming in and I'm stabbing at the ground. Eventually I kill the thing and then I jump in as the, you know, as this, as this gun run comes in. It wasn't a close gun run, but you never know until the, until the last second anyway.

• 2:38:26Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy. I was just at, uh, we did a battlefield, uh, review of Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. And one of the, I was doing a bunch of reading before I went out there, but one of the, one of the things I was reading about is when Jackson is making his flanking maneuver on the Union troops and the Union troops had no idea that, you know, he had to walk like 14 miles. He did it in a very, a very clandestine way. So they had no idea. And there's a Yankee guy, a Union guy that wrote like, they're sitting there and all of a sudden from the wood line comes all these like squirrels and rabbits and deer. They, they like come out and he's like, oh, that's where, and it took him, you know, whatever, three seconds to go, oh, that's weird. Why are all these things? Oh, shit.

• 2:39:05Jocko Willink?

  You know, because it was, there was whatever 30,000, 30,000 men were online coming their way. And just drove all those animals out and the guy sees them all break out in the field and goes, oh, that's weird. I wonder what the, oh, shit. And sure enough, there it was. Yeah.

• 2:39:24Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 2:39:24Jocko Willink?

  So that's kinda weird with the snakes getting disoriented and just going anywhere.

• 2:39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But other times I've been in trenches and the snakes are coming right at you and you're like, start slapping the ground or throwing stuff at them. You're like, get away from me, man. Yeah. Not the, not the deal.

• 2:39:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. You, you know, you hear about all the experiences and stuff. And then for someone who's, has never been there, you don't. All these little details that are significant in my opinion, like Brad, because you have this, these huge, crazy, risky missions, but on top of it, you got the wildlife and everything else.

• 2:39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:54Speaker 02

  In there, but that's way secondary compared to what you're doing. So a lot of us, we don't even, we don't understand the full picture. You see what I'm saying?

• 2:40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:40:02Speaker 02

  Even your minimal, most minimal conflict scenario, which is like stuff that you're not even mentioning, the snakes and stuff is like one of our real kind of spooky things back here.

• 2:40:13Speaker 01

  You want to hear something else that's freaky too. So there's these tree leeches in Burma. So you know, you get in the water and there's leeches and they'll latch on to you and suck your blood. There's tree leeches and they'll, they'll sense the, they'll sense you walking and then they'll sort of drop from the, drop from the trees to try to drop on you. So they're not, they're, they're pretty small. It's, it's a little freaky. Um, I've only seen him a few times, but uh, yeah, there's been a few times or like crossing rivers, you get out and there's, yeah, you, you look down, you got, you're pulling leeches off. And I've got like videos too of like leeches, sort of like inching along my hand and I'm just kind of looking at it. Yeah. It's, it's a, yeah, definitely interesting.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  That reminds me of, uh, the first time I saw Jurassic Park. I saw it in the theater, but I was on my first deployment in the teens and I had, I'd done like a, a trip to Pan, oh no, I hadn't gone to Pan. I'd done a trip to Thailand. I'd done, done some time in the jungle in Guam. And like, I knew how just everything that you're saying, Echo, like I knew 100% like mosquitoes, snakes, hot freaking coral under your neck, just, just totally the, like a, like a tough environment. And then in Jurassic Park, they like, they're walking for a while and then there's like, hey, we're going to sleep here. And they're just like, all lay down, you know, on the ground, I'm going to get some sleep. And I'm like, this is bullshit, man. Being the J is freaking harsh, man.

• 2:41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the J is, is extremely harsh. Yeah. It's not a, not a fun place to be hanging out. If you're not, if you're not properly equipped, yeah, it's, it's, it's horrible.

• 2:41:39Jocko Willink?

  And I use that term because when I first got to SEAL Team One, there was, we used to have the Australian SAS. Exchange guy there. And so he would talk about when you're going out in the J, mate.

• 2:41:52Speaker 01

  Oh, that's great.

• 2:41:53Jocko Willink?

  So that's why I call it, still call it the J. And then in Guam on my first deployment, there was a bar and it was called The Jungle. So you can guess what we all called that.

• 2:42:03Speaker 01

  Called it the J.

• 2:42:04Jocko Willink?

  The J, right?

• 2:42:05Speaker 01

  That's so funny. My, my, um, so I did, I did two platoons at Team One. And my second platoon was to Pecan. We were based out of Guam and just doing, you know, foreign, you know, training foreign forces. Um, out there. But, uh, yeah, we started calling it the J too. We just started calling it, and I don't think anybody heard, had heard that anywhere else. Like we just started calling it that. So it's just, it's just real quick. Everybody's like, it's the J dude. Until you, until you've been in there, you don't know.

• 2:42:28Jocko Willink?

  Don't want none of that. Apparently Echo don't want none of the J.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  Probably not, I can totally imagine.

• 2:42:33Speaker 01

  Totally fair.

• 2:42:34Speaker 02

  My dad was in Jurassic Park, by the way.

• 2:42:36Jocko Willink?

  What's he, what was he playing?

• 2:42:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, background actor. Seems like, he's one of the first guys on screen.

• 2:42:41Jocko Willink?

  Did they film that in Hawaii or something?

• 2:42:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:42:43Speaker 02

  From Kauai.

• 2:42:44Jocko Willink?

  He's one of the first guys on screen.

• 2:42:45Speaker 02

  Well, you know, like they're

• 2:42:46Jocko Willink?

  This is kind of a big deal. Why are we just learning about this right now?

• 2:42:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I might have mentioned it. In that first opening scene when they're like, he's explaining to him, they're trying to walk over the rocks and stuff. And you have all the native kind of workers there.

• 2:42:57Jocko Willink?

  Is he one of those native workers?

• 2:42:58Speaker 02

  He's one of them who walks by. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:43:00Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's pretty cool.

• 2:43:02Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty cool. He's still cashing those checks too, I bet.

• 2:43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I don't know. Maybe. He was, actually, my dad was in pretty much all the movies shot on Kauai. Pretty much.

• 2:43:11Jocko Willink?

  Name like three other ones, cause I don't know how many.

• 2:43:13Speaker 02

  So Outbreak, that's another one.

• 2:43:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:43:15Speaker 02

  Keep it in, uh, Jurassic Park. And then there was one more, I forget.

• 2:43:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:43:20Speaker 02

  Well, oh, this one was, the, the other one was, um, it wasn't on Kauai, it was on Oahu. It was like old school movie.

• 2:43:25Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:43:25Speaker 02

  Before I was born, I think.

• 2:43:27Jocko Willink?

  But he got in there.

• 2:43:27Speaker 02

  He's in there, yeah. He was like a cab driver or something like that.

• 2:43:30Jocko Willink?

  Any lines?

• 2:43:32Speaker 02

  I don't think he had any lines.

• 2:43:33Jocko Willink?

  But still looking good.

• 2:43:34Speaker 02

  Looking good. Representing and looking good. Big time.

• 2:43:37Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 2:43:38Jocko Willink?

  Any other questions, Echo Charles?

• 2:43:39Speaker 02

  That's it. Good to see you again.

• 2:43:40Speaker 01

  Good to see you.

• 2:43:41Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Ephraim, any, uh, closing thoughts?

• 2:43:44Speaker 01

  Uh, no, that's all. People can check us out at Stronghold Rescue and thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

• 2:43:48Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Awesome to see you again, man. Uh, thanks for coming back. I know it's always a gut check for you to travel out here, but, uh, thanks for what you're doing. Thanks for your service. To the Navy, to the nation, to the teams. And, uh, thanks for what you continue to do today. And I think you're going to do a lot, obviously, continue work with Stronghold. But then the Overwatch, I think is going to help open people's minds, get them to calm down, get them to listen, get them to learn, so that we have a better world. Thanks for what you're doing, bro.

• 2:44:13Speaker 01

  Excellent. Thank you.

• 2:44:15Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Ephraim Mattos has left the building. He's clearly got a lot of stuff going on. Clearly made a lot of good things happen in his world. So awesome to see him, awesome for him to come by. You know, we, we touched last time on that, that little situation he got in when he was up to 325 pounds, man. Got his, got his, went to a, went to a hotel and looked at the ocean for a month. Started working out, figured out what his problem was, food addiction, the whole nine yards. Got to get after it.

• 2:44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:53Jocko Willink?

  But you gotta be careful.

• 2:44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:55Jocko Willink?

  And you know, what he said on that thing was he can't, he's like a, if you're an alcoholic, like a, like a legit alcoholic, you can't drink anymore.

• 2:45:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:03Jocko Willink?

  If you're a legit heroin addict, you can't be like, you know what? The, the third Thursday of every month, I like to shoot up. You know what I'm saying? You can't do it.

• 2:45:12Speaker 02

  I know what you're saying.

• 2:45:13Jocko Willink?

  The tweakers, they're not like, hey, you know what? Saturdays are good for meth.

• 2:45:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:45:18Jocko Willink?

  Cause it gets me fired up for Saturday. No, you can't do that.

• 2:45:21Speaker 02

  It's different.

• 2:45:21Jocko Willink?

  So he straight up was like, no, I can't, he can't have the sweets. Can't have them. Or he'll just be like full fiend activity. Now, what we can do is we can eat stuff that's good for us.

• 2:45:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:45:34Jocko Willink?

  I got some good stuff for you at Jocko Fuel. Check out Jocko Fuel.com. We got protein. We got energy drinks. We got this right here, this hydration, which tastes so good. It's kind of a sweet. I worry if someone that's addicted to it, they could get addicted to it. But it'd be healthy, so it'd be good to go. No, no, uh, red 40 or whatever that is. Red five, red 40.

• 2:45:54Speaker 02

  Dye, red dye.

• 2:45:55Jocko Willink?

  Red dye 40 and yellow five, I think is the two major ones. We don't use either one of them.

• 2:46:00Speaker 02

  This one's clear.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Clear.

• 2:46:02Speaker 02

  Cause it's clean.

• 2:46:03Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we got the best protein powders. We got all kinds, we got the best stuff. So check out Jocko Fuel.com. And by the way, you can also just go to your local retailer. Wherever you buy your groceries, wherever you buy whatever. We, there's a decent chance there's Jocko Fuel in there. So go get some. Also, OriginUSA.com.

• 2:46:29Jocko Willink?

  We don't want to support Chinese communism. It is very oppositional to what we believe. We believe in freedom, they don't. We believe in liberty, they don't. We believe in individual prosperity, they don't. They believe the state. So when you go and buy something that's made in China, you're supporting slavery, lack of freedom, oppression, that's what you're supporting. So don't do that. Buy American-made. And that's why you go to originusa.com and you get a pair of jeans, boots, hoodie, sweatshirt, gi, rash guard, training gear, hunt gear. You can get it all there and it all is guaranteed

• 2:47:13Jocko Willink?

  to be 100% communist free. Originusa.com, go get some.

• 2:47:18Speaker 02

  Also, don't forget about Jocko's store. A little bit of hype around Jocko's store right now. Sugar coated lies, the shirt. Okay, people seem to like that shirt. So we released it to the wild. Like I've been mentioning this for the past few weeks. So, you know, the people on the email list, they got dibs. We sold out unfortunately, but I did another rush order. So, you know, we're still available. We're still rolling with it. But you do have to kind of hurry up because they sell out like super fast. Anyway, um, yeah, that's a good one. Sugar coated lies.

• 2:47:46Jocko Willink?

  Do you want, do you want to defend your use of AI in your promotional video?

• 2:47:50Speaker 02

  Um, no, no, no. I mean, no, I don't, I don't. Okay. Depends what you mean by defend.

• 2:47:56Jocko Willink?

  Get everyone up to speed. Echo Charles made a video. In the video, he utilized some level of AI to make a creature eating a donut.

• 2:48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, accurate.

• 2:48:08Jocko Willink?

  And there was commentary on your video that said, well, a lot of it said, cool, go, great shirt, blah, blah, blah. But some of it said, Why are you using AI? Why aren't you paying an artist? Why aren't you? Why are you destroying the world? Echo Charles?

• 2:48:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 2:48:27Jocko Willink?

  So, I want to give you a chance to defend yourself.

• 2:48:29Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:48:30Jocko Willink?

  And your use of AI.

• 2:48:32Speaker 02

  First off, I would have to clarify, and I kinda tried to, because it did hit me after a little while. I'm like, wait a second, is it?

• 2:48:40Jocko Willink?

  You got triggered.

• 2:48:41Speaker 02

  Our people?

• 2:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Triggered.

• 2:48:42Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 2:48:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you did?

• 2:48:43Speaker 02

  Follow me. No, no, no.

• 2:48:44Jocko Willink?

  You didn't get triggered at all?

• 2:48:45Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 2:48:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool.

• 2:48:47Speaker 02

  Well, I'm the artist. Yeah, I'm the-

• 2:48:49Jocko Willink?

  No, the computer is the artist.

• 2:48:51Speaker 02

  Well-

• 2:48:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I got you.

• 2:48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, but, put it this way, I think they, they're actually getting mad at you, I think. Because it's like, hey, you, Jocko, you used AI for your thing, why couldn't you pay an artist? They didn't realize that, like,

• 2:49:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:49:04Speaker 02

  I'm the person who makes all the shirts and stuff.

• 2:49:06Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:49:07Speaker 02

  So technically, hey, I'm the artist, apparently.

• 2:49:09Jocko Willink?

  And you got paid.

• 2:49:10Speaker 02

  I go, we got paid for that one, yes. We got, I got paid for my work, my labor, my art, right? Um, now, we made a video voluntarily, I made a video, and I used, for the B-roll of the video, I used AI to make a guy chomping at gross doughnut, make it extra gross and slimy, disgusting, it was, it was a good way to do it. I thought. Sent it, yes, so people got, uh, jarred, we'll say, by the AI. Usually, usually, it's gonna be a creative type, which I understand. But, that wasn't the whole thing that kinda made a question mark come in my head. Mine was like, hey, are they mad because the video was made with AI? Or do they think that AI made the shirt? Because that'd be way different, see what I'm saying? So I didn't know, because someone was like, oh, Jocko's using AI, sellout.

• 2:49:54Speaker 02

  I was like, bro, that was just a video, fun video about a shirt that we're selling, like, we're not, you know? So I think, oh man, they think it's the shirt. So I kinda went in there, I was like, shoot, because that's-

• 2:50:04Jocko Willink?

  Once you clarified it, did it get cleaned up or no? Did people, did people say, oh, okay?

• 2:50:09Speaker 02

  Well-

• 2:50:09Jocko Willink?

  Or is people still mad at you?

• 2:50:10Speaker 02

  I just found one of the comments and, you know-

• 2:50:12Jocko Willink?

  You finally got some haters out there, bro.

• 2:50:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, no, no.

• 2:50:15Jocko Willink?

  Life's been too easy for you, I think.

• 2:50:16Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 2:50:16Jocko Willink?

  You finally got some haters.

• 2:50:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's-

• 2:50:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, you wait, now that I think about it, you've always had your haters.

• 2:50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's-

• 2:50:22Jocko Willink?

  You've always had your haters, people that didn't want to hear Echo's opinion on anything.

• 2:50:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, it's fair, that's fair. Jack! And, the, I don't even think it's haters, I think it's an accurate look. If someone's watching Jocko Podcast and they hear me chiming in and they don't like that part of it, that's, that's accurate, that's accuracy from the field, you see what I'm saying? That's accurate feedback. Look, is it-

• 2:50:40Jocko Willink?

  I agree with a lot of it.

• 2:50:41Speaker 02

  Hey, man, it's, let's face, sometimes I agree with it. So I'm not mad at that. I'm not mad at factual feedback, you know, it's not like they were like they really loved it, but just for some weird reason that, you know, it doesn't work like that. See what I'm saying? Those, these are real, this is real feedback. So, um, I, from the, so I asked somebody, like one of the people, I said, oh shoot, do you think the video is it? Are you mad about the video being AI or the fact in the video, whatever being there or the, do you think the shirt was made with AI? And then he said, oh, I think it's the video everyone's mad at. And I was like, oh, all right. Well, hey, man, fair, fair enough, you know? I think the, the jarring nature of the AI-ness, maybe that, that's what's called AI slot. Once like, brother, this is AI just for the sake of AI.

• 2:51:23Speaker 02

  So if it lands like that, it's like, okay, cool. Noted, man. Doesn't change the fact the shirt was still dope. I, I liked the video.

• 2:51:31Jocko Willink?

  I thought it was cool as hell. I was surprised when, when the comments were, uh, very hateful towards Echo Charles.

• 2:51:38Speaker 02

  It was more against the AI, but I didn't see my name. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 2:51:43Jocko Willink?

  Actually, you're right. Do people even know that you do any of that?

• 2:51:46Speaker 02

  I think a lot of times they don't. Yeah. So I don't know. To me it's accurate. It's like, what do you call a data point, you know?

• 2:51:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, don't you have to design what that guy looks like and stuff?

• 2:51:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it's actually, it's like really hard to do. You know how people are like, oh, it's just a computer. It is, it is true. That part is true, but you know, it's kind of hard. It's like CGI, you know, but you know, it's like, oh, the CGI character. It's like, bro, you know how hard it is to make a CGI character like good? It's, it's kind of hard, but that part literally doesn't matter. Like the, let's say a shirt or like the shirt you're wearing. Are you like, oh my gosh, the guy who designed that shirt spent 12 years on the, like, no one really cares that much. Most of the time. See what I'm saying? So that's not the point. The point is if someone's going to put out a successful video, me, put out a successful video and it's unsuccessful. I can't blame other people and be mad at whatever. It's my fault. You see what I'm saying? For doing the unsuccessful or, or for failing to succeed.

• 2:52:41Jocko Willink?

  Look at her over here taking ownership. Good job.

• 2:52:43Speaker 02

  Look, I would love to take credit for that, but it's like I said, if you, if you're flying an airplane and you have a freaking bumpy landing and people are like, hey, I love your airplane, but it was a bumpy landing. You know, you're what are you going to say? No, it wasn't a bumpy landing. You know how hard I worked on that landing? It's like, the fact is, is a bumpy landing. That's the fact. Everyone thought it was bumpy. Just because you didn't think it was bumpy, doesn't change the fact that it was bumpy according to all the people you serve. See what I'm saying?

• 2:53:10Jocko Willink?

  Got it, man.

• 2:53:10Speaker 02

  Got to take this feedback. Anyway. Sugar coated lies is still available despite or in spite, I don't know whichever the video having some AI in it. Jocko's real. You were real in the video.

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:23Speaker 02

  By the way. So congratulations on that being a real person.

• 2:53:27Jocko Willink?

  Jack.

• 2:53:28Speaker 02

  Yes. Also, uh, what that came from was the shirt locker. It was the March 2024. So I made the, the design way before I was even using it ever. March 2024, uh, edition of the shirt locker shirt, one of the shirt locker shirts, which is a subscription scenario. You get a new design every month. Sometimes they're bangers apparently. But they're outside of the box. Um, pretty much every time. Anyway, people think they're interesting. It's a subscription, new design every month on Jocko's store.com. Also, Independence Day is coming up.

• 2:54:04Speaker 02

  We're gonna have a this year's Independence Day shirt. If you want to get a jump on that, put your email in, in the website, on the front page, on the bottom, put your email in there.

• 2:54:11Jocko Willink?

  I need to confirm the design.

• 2:54:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:54:14Jocko Willink?

  Confirm the design yet.

• 2:54:15Speaker 02

  I'll show it to you after this. I already submitted it, but that was today. So.

• 2:54:18Jocko Willink?

  We can recall if.

• 2:54:19Speaker 02

  No, no, no, it's good. You like it. Yeah.

• 2:54:21Jocko Willink?

  You're not the judge.

• 2:54:22Speaker 02

  Okay. I've been the judge literally for 11 years, but okay.

• 2:54:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe all of a sudden. You've thrown some things out there that have been not, that I should have judged.

• 2:54:31Speaker 02

  You might be right. Yeah.

• 2:54:33Jocko Willink?

  All right. Well, check that out. Also, we got some books. Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. Dave Burke, Need to Lead. Check those out. Uh, leadership books I've written as well. And then of course, the Warrior Kid books. Check those out. Primalbeef.com. If you need some steak. Go get some of that or ColoradoCraftBeef.com. You can check that out. Echelon Front, we have a leadership conference instructional in San Diego, July 8th through the 10th. It is two days where you will learn the skill of leadership that you will be able to apply in every aspect of your life. So if you want to go. Go to echelonfront.com and check out events. Also, we have an online training academy at extremeownership.com,

• 2:55:18Jocko Willink?

  extremeownership.com, and there's where we teach the skills of leadership through the interwebs. And if you want to help service members, actively retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mom Ali. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And then of course, check out heroesandhorses.org and Jimmy May's organization, Beyond the Brotherhood, check out Warriors in Need, bringing people into the aviation civilian sector. And then finally, as you heard about today, StrongholdRescue.org. To connect with Efrem and Stronghold Rescue and Relief on the interwebs,

• 2:56:00Jocko Willink?

  go to StrongholdRescue.org, check out his podcast slash YouTube channel, The Overwatch with Efrem Mattos. And he's on YouTube, The Overwatch with Efrem Mattos. And on Twitter and Instagram, he's at Efrem Mattos. If you want to connect with us, go to Jaco.com. And then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because you're getting force fed a giant propaganda sandwich that you don't even know what it's doing to your health, but it's not good for you. So be careful. Once again, thanks to Efrem for coming by. Thanks for your service to the country and your continued service

• 2:56:41Jocko Willink?

  to protect innocent communities in war zones. And of course, thanks to all of our military around the world right now in harm's way, protecting freedom and our way of life. Also, thanks to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for protecting our way of life here on the home front. And everyone else out there. Two things. First of all, be grateful for what you have. Cause as bad as you got it right now, and let's face it, it gets pretty rough out here. Gets pretty rough out here. But if you look at your situation, you compare it with other people in the world. Without

• 2:57:26Jocko Willink?

  basic food, without basic shelter, without health needs, not to mention, not to mention being under the threat of real violence, like random bombs from the sky, or drones, or mortars, or artillery, just randomly hitting you. That's that's a pretty rough way to live. So be grateful if you're in a slightly better environment to that.

• 2:57:53Jocko Willink?

  And the second thing is,

• 2:57:56Jocko Willink?

  what can you do to help out?

• 2:57:59Jocko Willink?

  How can you support? What, what might be a tiny little thing for you, like 20 bucks a month? To StrongholdRescue.org, might be a little tiny thing to you. But that is likely massive to someone that is in need. So if you can, help out.

• 2:58:18Jocko Willink?

  And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.