#523: Chris Miller on Leading the Defense Industry During War

Chris Miller previously served as Acting United States Secretary of Defense. Before that, Miller served as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Prior to serving in civilian leadership at the Department of Defense, Miller was a Green Beret, commanding 5th Special Forces Group in Iraq and Afghanistan. This episode is co-hosted with my wife, Polina Pompliano, the founder of The Profile. In this conversation, we discuss the invasion of Afghanistan, America’s wars in the Middle East, leadership training, Special Forces, and what it is like to be the acting Secretary of Defense. ======================= Public Rec is the first to bring tailored sizing to leisurewear so that you don’t have to choose between comfort and style. They make leisurewear in waist and inseam sizes because they believe comfort starts with a better fit. And when things fit better, they look better. No tailors. No settling. No stress. Comfort and style, all in one. Check out publicrec.com/pomp and use POMP10 at checkout for 10% off your order. Step into a better fit today with Public Rec. ======================= As one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online, thanks to our excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options and rigorous security standards -- but this is only part of the story. We’ve been on the forefront of the blockchain revolution since 2011: http://www.kraken.com ======================= Coinbase Wallets are adding support for .crypto and .zil domains through their partnership with Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable Domains provides an all-in-one solution for blockchain domains. You can send money using these new domains instead of long Bitcoin wallet addresses, while also storing your domain in Coinbase's collectibles section. Go to unstoppabledomains.com in the dapp browser to register and manage your domains. =======================

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

• 0:02Speaker 00

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

• 0:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Chris Miller previously served as Acting United States Secretary of Defense. Before that, Miller served as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Prior to serving in civilian leadership at the Department of Defense, Miller was a Green Beret, commanding 5th Special Forces Group in Iraq and Afghanistan. This episode is co-hosted with my wife, Polina Pompliano, the founder of The Profile. In this conversation, we discuss the invasion of Afghanistan, America's wars in the Middle East, leadership training, Special Forces, and what it is like to be the Acting Secretary of Defense. I really enjoyed this conversation with Chris, and I think you will as well. But before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

• 0:56Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I wouldn't let them advertise on here if I didn't think that their clothes were incredibly comfortable. Publicrec.com/pomp, use code POMP10 at checkout for 10% off your order, or you can click on the link in the description. Step into a better fit today with Public Rec. I did, and so will you. Next up is Kraken. They are one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world. Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online. Thanks to their excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options, and rigorous security standards. But that is only one part of the story. They have been on the forefront of this revolution since 2011.

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• 3:06Anthony Pompliano?

  This makes it so much easier for millions of users to send and receive crypto by using their name, like pomp.crypto. That's what I have, pomp.crypto. Ah, sounds awesome. It's the stress-free experience needed for mainstream crypto adoption. Plus, .crypto domains are NFTs that are stored in your wallet, so you permanently own them and can transfer to your other wallets as needed. Head on over to unstoppabledomains.com and get your name .crypto to make your crypto life easier. Again, unstoppabledomains.com. Once somebody else buys your domain, you can't get it. First come, first served. Go to unstoppabledomains.com today. All right, let's get in this episode with Chris. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:50Speaker 00

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

• 4:21Speaker 02

  All right, Chris, so you have an incredible story. Can we start with where were you and what were you doing on September 11th, 2001?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  I got to tell you, I don't think I have an incredible story. I have a story and I did my job and that's what the country expected of me. And there are so many people that did way more. At the end of the day, though, the American people paid me to do my job. September 11th, 2001 was one of those days. And I think it's interesting you bring that up because a lot of people, the younger people now don't recall the like searing experience that that had for so many of us. I was went for a, it was in the morning and it was a beautiful, it was a beautiful fall day, just one of those magical days.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  And the non-commissioned officer that I was working with, Sergeant Major Mel Bynum, was my partner and we decided to go for this beautiful run in the morning. And we ran around, we were at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. We were in the 5th Special Forces Group, which is the special forces group that's responsible. The special forces groups are responsible for different parts of the world. Our part of the world was the Middle East. And we went for a run and it was just magnificent. And it was one of those days that starts and you're just like, this is going to be a great day, you know, thinking about going home early, you know, and like, ah, take the kids out. And got in the car and we were driving back to work because we were at an out, we were at this outstation called Clarksville Base.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  It's just one of those days. And on the radio, I was listening to this really probably inappropriate morning show. It was called the John Boy and Billy Show. It was only in the South, right? It was really funny, you know, at the time. And all of a sudden, the announcer broke in and said, hey, something, something's happened. And it wasn't funny, you know, it was like. Something really dramatic has changed in our lives. We have a report of a plane crashing in the World Trade Center. And it was just so striking, the tone of voice. There was no joking anymore. You're like, okay. And as you recall, like back in 1942, I'm making that up, some plane,

• 6:38Speaker 03

  small plane crashed into the Empire State Building. So the pundits were like, oh, maybe it's nothing. By the time we got back to work and I walked in to our intelligence section in the, in the unit I was, I was in third battalion, fifth special forces group, walk in there and you know how sometimes history, when you look back on things, you're like, did I really experience that? Or did my mind create that after the fact? Well, and so I've thought about this a lot. I walked in, they had the TV on and we saw the second plane go into the building. And I always have to think back. I'm like, did you really see that? Or have you just seen it happen so many times? I was, so that happened. And I was like, is that live? And everybody goes, that's live. And I said,

• 7:22Speaker 03

  okay, our world's just changed at that moment. And it was funny. Well, it wasn't funny. That's a horrible word to say. We just, we knew that some, we were going to go to war. I don't know why. And I was called, I was a company commander, which is a major, which is, I was responsible for six 12 man A teams. And there were men at the time. Now, thank goodness, there are women in them. Biggest, biggest change we should have done 20 years ago, but that's neither here nor there. Thank goodness. But at the time, they were 12 man A teams. And the 12 man special forces A team consists of two medics, two engineers, two communications experts, two weapons experts,

• 8:07Speaker 03

  two senior non-commissioned officers that handle operations and intelligence, and then two officers. So I was in charge of six of those. And what I had was called, that's an A team. I had a B team, which is a headquarters element of, you know, about 10 people. So we're like, wow, something just changed. I got called over to the battalion headquarters. Battalion headquarters, there's A-team, company commander, battalion. So battalion has three companies. Each company has six A-teams, though in the battalion, there are 18 A-teams. We went into the battalion commander's office and what I really recall was this, hey, there's nothing to see here. You know, things happen in the world all the time. Just dial it down a notch.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  That's, that's what I, that's what I heard. And I'm like, uh, no, the world fundamentally changed. And here was the crazy thing, and this is the genius of special forces that I don't think I really appreciated at the time. We left that meeting and I walked over to the company I commanded. It was this old crappy World War. It wasn't World War II. It was Vietnam-era building. It was just nasty and we had this long hall. And I walked in and every A-team was, had pulled all their equipment out of their wall lockers and had lined it up in the hallway and everybody's going through checking their equipment, checking batteries, making sure things are maintained, making sure nothing's broken.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  And I was like, okay, game on. They knew. So our A-teams were like, they knew we're going to war. And they're like, what's up, sir? And I'm like, keep going, going to war. But that was not the instructions I was given from my higher headquarters at that time. But we all knew the game was on and that we were going to be a critical part of that. We knew it was Bin Laden. Everybody was, don't jump ahead of yourself. This isn't Al Qaeda. We're like, yeah, it is. So Chris, when, when you think about kind of the days after September 11, there was a whole bunch in the public sphere of, you know, what happened, who did it, why? And kind of a crash course, if you will, on extremism, especially on the religious front in the Middle East.

• 10:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And kind of why there would be such deep hatred for America and the American ideals. What was transpiring at the highest levels of our military over those days? So on September 11th specifically, it was dial it down. You know, this isn't a big deal. But at some point between that and, you know, I think early December of 2001, we end up training and invading Afghanistan. And so kind of how do we get from the response on September 11th, which was maybe a little bit more lackadaisical to actually going to Afghanistan?

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Thanks, Anthony. And so it was so interesting. I was like an eyewitness to history. I call it like the fly on the wall. Like, I don't know why I experienced all this. Serendipity, fate, karma, I really don't know what it is. And as the things developed, you've read in the books now that there was a Camp David meeting, like right after the 11th, where I think, who was director? George Tenet, I think, was director of the CIA at the time. And there was this meeting with President Bush where they're like, Tenet's like, we're going to get this on. And the other guy, Cofer Black, was the head of counterterrorism. Legendary guy, let the flies walk over their eyeballs or something. I forgot the, you know, he had this great line that still resonates.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  I just remember, so I didn't know that meeting happened. I was instructed by our group commander, group, A-team, company, battalion, group. Group has three battalions of, you know, three companies of six A-teams. I know it's confusing as heck, but that's, that's the big deal. And at the time, it was a guy named legendary guy, Colonel John Mulholland. He retired as a lieutenant general, just absolutely legendary figure that I've just like been a mentor to me. He's like, oh, my gosh, he's like my second father. I can't say enough good about him. I'd worked with then Colonel Mulholland prior. And he goes, Chris, go down.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  To the United States Central Command, that's the, that's CENTCOM, that's the, that's the military organization that's responsible for the Middle East. And go down there and his instructions were get us in the fight. And I was like, I know how that means, mission type order, that's pretty good. Went down there, left on the 16th of September. The reason I remember that date is it's my anniversary. And usually my wife would be extremely upset with me for taking off on our anniversary. And this is the one time she's like, get the hell out of here. It was really, and, and that's when I knew it was serious, you know, I knew it was serious. Thousands of Americans were killed. But I'm like, wow. Went down there and here was what I learned, Anthony. And people will now say, oh, that's

• 12:58Speaker 03

  revisionist history. I'm just going to try to relate to you what I experienced at the time. I was a Green Beret, I was a special forces officer. The, the purpose of United States Army Special Forces Green Berets is to conduct unconventional warfare. Unconventional warfare is when small teams, 12 man teams or smaller, go behind enemy lines into a hostile, a nation state that's controlled by a hostile regime, in this case, the Taliban. You go behind enemy lines, you link up with resistance forces, insurgents, guerrillas, and then you, we, Green Berets, will provide them training, advice, support, air support,

• 13:41Speaker 03

  logistics support, and help them take back their country from the reigning, ruling regime. So, you know, I'd been in special forces at that point, 2001, I went in special forces in 93, do the math, I'm not going to do public math and just Don't do public math. And went in there and we're like, this is what the regiment was created to do. The special forces regiment, the Green Berets had never truly conducted an unconventional warfare campaign. The reason special forces and unconventional warfare, if you recall World War II, and you recall occupied France, and small commando elements dropped in before

• 14:24Speaker 03

  D-Day, and worked with McKee and the, the resistance forces and brought them together and helped them and communicate. That's kind of what our thing was. And then after World War II, there were these visionary people. That Aaron Bank and some others that father of special forces said, we can't get rid of this because the Soviet Union is going to invade Western Europe. So we're going to have these green berets are going to stay behind or they're going to jump behind enemy lines. And then we're going to have this this inflame flames are going to build in the rear of the Soviets. And we're going to, you know, take them out from behind. So that was, that's kind of the classic unconventional warfare. That's what special forces, green berets were created to do. And we've never really done it. Some people will say, oh, we kind of did it here. And they're like,

• 15:08Speaker 03

  we never did it. So I'm going to get hate mail now. Oh, actually, Chris, in 1982 and Pakistan, you know, whatever. I'm just saying that we really hadn't done it. And so going down there is like, we know what to do. This is, this is tailor made for unconventional warfare. Here's the thing. The military doesn't always like the weirdo special operators because they kind of like, they don't wear uniforms all the time. They grow their hair long, facial hair, stuff that the big military typically doesn't like. And the big military was like, we have a plan. What we're going to do is we're going to go invade the country. And this is how we're going to do it.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  We have all these forces in Europe, tanks, you know, Bradley fighting vehicles, tons of infantry and artillerymen. And what we're going to do is we're going to put them on trains. We're going to move them down to Uzbekistan. We're going to mass combat power through the winter and when the spring, because you know, the mountains, you know, all this stuff you brought up, like, we didn't know a lot about it. We'd heard, you read, read Rudyard Kipling and watched, you know, movies and we're like, this is going to be really bad. So the military, the large military was like very conventional approach. And they were going to come down there and build combat power. And then in the spring, they do this big, you know, tanks coming across bridges and floating, you

• 16:29Speaker 03

  know, crossing rivers and stuff and, and helicopters flying in and all this stuff. And we're like, yeah, we don't have time for that. And so it was one of those moments where the senior leadership was desperate for solutions. And I think the CIA had come up with some ideas too, like I noted earlier in their meeting at Camp David with President Bush. So it, this was my interpretation, and I was there, by the way, was, oh crap, we need some ideas to Secretary Rumsfeld like yesterday. Anybody have them? And all of a sudden, Those of us that were Green Berets, it was like, hey, are there any Green Berets here?

• 17:11Speaker 03

  And like, oh, you forgot about us. Here we are. We're just sitting here drinking coffee. We got the call and they're like, we need a concept yesterday. We'd already had it done. This guy, Bob Kelly, there were just some remarkable, remarkable people down there. And it, I think it became, okay, well, we gotta do something. Yeah, let the Green Berets go do their thing. Let them mess around and then they'll kind of prepare for when the, the major military forces move in. And then when the spring offensive comes, they can, they can help with that. So that, that was my recollection and it's right on how that thing went down.

• 17:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And so Chris, when you think about the actual kind of initial invasion, for those who've watched the movie 12 Strong, it's from my understanding, pretty accurate in the sense of we literally dropped off a couple of Americans and when they did their thing. And so when you're seeing that kind of in preparation, then it actually starts to happen. Talk a little bit about just the uncertainty and the unknown. And especially when you're in a position more of kind of command and control and the position of leadership. And you're sending, you know, what is deemed to be the, the most physically fit, kind of our best warfighters into this situation, but fully understanding, you know, we haven't done this before, right? And, and there's going to be a lot of things that we're going to battle learn and, and the people on the ground are going to have to

• 18:34Anthony Pompliano?

  use the training that they have and frankly, just their intuition to, to survive and thrive in this environment. And so kind of as it's actually transpiring, what's going through your head or what are the memories that you have? Kind of being in that leadership position?

• 18:47Speaker 03

  I just remember a couple, a couple of things. Boy, I'm gonna have to not sleep well tonight after this.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  I just remember like General, Colonel Mulholland at the time, he's a Colonel. That's like, that's like mid-level management, right? And here he is in charge of the most significant.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  Military operation in modern history and he's the one who's making the decision. I'm not making the decisions about who's going into harm's way and when they do it and how they do it. He is, uh, I'm just, I'm just the spring butt, if you will, like, hey, we need to go faster. And I, I don't even know why he still talks to me because I was such a difficult young person at the time.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  How old were you, by the way, Chris, in the time?

• 19:34Speaker 03

  Thirty, let's see, don't do public math. I was born in sixty five. So what was I thirty six ish at the time? And, uh, here's the thing, the brilliance of the special forces regiment, the green berets. It's not the officers, it's these incredible non-commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers versus a commissioned officer. Commissioned officer is commissioned by this, by Congress, usually as a college degree. The problem with special forces is, you know, three quarters of your non-commissioned officers all have more better degrees than you have because they're just incredibly capable and self-starters and they're like, well, I'm going to get my college degree. And I'm going to get my masters while I'm at it. They're, so it's, it kind of puts the thing on the head

• 20:17Speaker 03

  of, of the military where the hierarchy, the power is with non-commissioned officers, the experts. And I got to tell you, at the time we went into Afghanistan, it was a really rare time. And you brought up twelve strong. That team was, uh, led by Mark Nuch, Mark Nuch, great guy. He's a captain, right? He's got like six years in the army. He's the new guy. Bob Pennington is the next guy who was his warrant officer, his second in command. Bob had been in, he'd been an NCO, he'd been that warrant officer. This dude had forgotten more about special forces than Mark Mute ever knew. Mark's going to kill me when he hears that. And then, I'm just kidding, Mark.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  And then you had ten NCOs that were, had been the team sergeant, the head guy had been on that team for fifteen years. He had been a team sergeant probably for four years. These folks had, most of them had been in Somalia or had been in Desert Storm in nineteen ninety one. But they'd had ten years where there was no money. You didn't get to do anything. And these guys were hyper creative, hyper creative. And these guys decided it's brilliant. They're like, hey, What are the two things that we can't do in two weeks to prepare? You can't do language proficiency and you can't do physical fitness.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  So all they did was study language. In this case, we studied the wrong one, by the way, although Russian help in some ways. But you know, Pashtun, they're only a handful of people that spoke Pashtun. So you had this, you had this core enormously talented, experienced people. And it doesn't exist right now. And that's not a criticism of the regiment because we've been at war for 19 years and we have, we've had to cycle more and people get injured and killed. But it was a really rare moment in the history of the special forces regiment of the Green Brays. So it's like, you guys go, you figure it out. And Colonel Mulholland was brilliant. He would do the risk assessment, right? And so he was, he was constantly dealing with Washington DC.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  But down and in, you just trust your people. You're like, hey, so Colonel Mulholland's key task was to determine, he had a great partner from the CIA. What groups should we support? Because there's everybody coming to the table like, hey, why don't you come help us? You don't want it, we didn't want to embarrass the United States by supporting some horrible person. You can argue whether we got it right or not. It was kind of, we were kind of busy at the time. So that was the key thing was figuring out who that was. And then, then it's, it's an act of faith. You know, Colonel Mulholland would give them the launch order and they would get on the back and of helicopters and fly through these. Colonel Mulholland tells a great story. He was under unbelievable pressure to get in, get in, get in.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  It's like, the weather's not right, the weather's not right. They were flying through the Hindu Kush and these helicopters were at max capacity, right? Like they're, they're redlining, they're on the absolutely outside of the envelope for their performance.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  And he was, Colonel Mahal, and I don't know how he did it, superhero to me. He was getting pressure from Secretary Rumsfeld and probably from the West Wing as well, like, get going. He held his line. The parameters are this, we will not violate the parameters. He told me later that Secretary Rumsfeld came in for a visit after things had calmed down. They flew him on one of the routes where literally walls of the helicopters, or I'm sorry, the walls of the valleys are literally five feet from the rotor blades. And then it was like, you get it now, you understand why I was holding off. So that was the thing. You talked about physical fitness. So you're going in there, you don't know how long you're going to be there. And Green Berets always over prepare. The problem is that ends up

• 24:10Speaker 03

  being you carry everything in your back. You have what's called a rucksack, a backpack. You're putting 150 pounds in there and then you have to move. So here, the guys came up with this crazy idea. They're like, hey, those John Deere Gators that we see them driving around at range control. So like, sure, why not? So we cleaned out Clarksville, Tennessee of every Gator vehicle. And what they did, because it was really small, they could put it back in the back of the helicopter. And then they piled all their crap in there. So they're very light. They're just in their combat equipment so they can move and fight. And following behind is, you know, the, the, the junior guy who is the new guy, he's driving

• 24:54Speaker 03

  the Gator, you know, which was another example of innovation, right? Nobody, that's not in a manual. Like, hey, we got an idea. We called it a mobile mission support site. Usually you pile all your stuff up and you leave it there and then you can come back. And they're like, we can't, we don't know where we're going. So they, they created a mobile, uh, mission support site using, uh, John Deere Gators. It was crazy. So that's how they afforded, kept their fitness up. Because when you're carrying 150 pound rucksack, it crushes you. I mean, it physically, mentally destroys you. And you, you're comment ineffective after, oh, six hours.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Can you, can you talk about, I'm fascinated by what it takes, you just mentioned physically to prepare for a mission like that. But how do you get trained mentally? Like, how, how can you prepare for uncertainty and not knowing what's gonna happen at all?

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Well, first off, these morons, and I say that with the, with great love, uh, our next level, they're always looking, the Green Berets are always looking to improve their performance. So before it was cool to, you know, read self-actualization books and, and think about mental performance, think fast and slow, or whatever that book is. I'm gonna read that. I started it, but man, that's a long book. I got through the, I got through this introduction. You know the one I'm talking about.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Oh, I know.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  They're always talking about, and that's like, what makes special forces special. And we came to the decision, you know, it's not equipment. It's not, um, it's not, um, it's not always training, but it's always looking for the next edge. So we, they'd identified that way before it was cool. Like, mental performance is critical. But here's how it starts. It's pretty brutal. It starts with, like, I want to be a Green Beret because I don't want to be, uh, I want to have some autonomy. I want to have some authority. I want to have some creativity. So I want to leave the big military that doesn't always embrace it. Not, sometimes it does, but typically not.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  And then they see like these, you know, Green Berets that, you know, get to drive, wear civilian clothes and drive civilian cars, uh, and not have to get yelled at for, and have to pick up cigarette butts in the courtyard, etc., what the military typically does a lot of times. So these people volunteer and they go to this thing called Special Forces Assessment and Selection. It's a three-week Rube Goldberg insanity, where you go in there and you've been brought up in the military where you're told what to do every single moment of the day. You will be at this place at six o'clock, zero six hundred, you will be in this uniform, you will do exactly this, you will walk in formation.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  And then you end up with this, at this Fort, Camp McCall at Fort Bragg. You show up there, they tell you, you will have, the, these are the required items, items. These are the things you can't bring. And then you show up there and you dump all your stuff out and a sergeant looks at it and makes sure you have everything. And here's the crazy thing. You can, like, I took like two cartons of cigarettes. And because it wasn't on the, you, it wasn't on the list of things you can't take. Oh, no. Cigarettes because in, in these training events, cigarettes are worth food. You know, it's kind of like gale time. So the, the guy's like, the NCO is like, huh, I haven't seen that. You smoke a lot. And I'm like,

• 28:21Speaker 03

  nope, starting now. And he just started laughing. He goes, well, I, usually people try to stop smoking here. I haven't seen that. And right there, you know, like, I'm in a weird place, right? The guy actually laughed. So you're down there and all, everybody wants detailed instructions. They have a board and they're like, what do we do, Sergeant? What are we doing tomorrow? Take your instructions from the board. There's a board. And they'll say, zero, six hundred, this uniform, thirty-five pound rucksack. Like, ooh, okay. No other instructions in that. You show up at zero, six hundred, you got your uniform, you got your thirty-five pound rucksack and this, and sergeant gets up and goes, the next selection event is you will move

• 29:07Speaker 03

  under your own power over land for a set distance.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  You're like, okay, what else? How long are we going? How fast are we supposed to go? Because there's always standards in the army, like you will do at this. And you're kind of shocked and you're waiting. So of course, somebody's like, Sergeant, how, how, how far are we going? A set distance. Like, what the heck did we get into? Then, hey, Sergeant, how much time do we have? Do the best you can. So it always became, read the board, move over land, and do the best you can.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  So that takes that people, some people would collapse because they're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. But the people that thrive in environments where it's, uh, where it is flexible and, and not predictable, uh, just thrive there. And so that's, that's how they break it out is just, you're put in this situation where if you're not an independent operator, you will, you will either fail or you'll self-select and drop out. And so people are just constantly dropping out. And the good people, great people, and they're like, I can't do this. I mean, this is, this is ridiculous. I need somebody to tell me what the hell to do every day,

• 30:21Speaker 03

  which is fine. We need that in the army too. So that's really how, that's the indoctrination. And then you go through a year-long training program where once you're through that, and it's really a gut check. At the end of the day, it's like they're looking for people that won't quit. And you hit a point in those things where you just become angry. And you're like, I'm not going to quit. I'll die first. You Navy SEAL teams in hell week, you know? I love watching the Discovery Channel where they do the hell week thing. And I love listening to the instructors when they go, yep, we know almost to the hour when the last person will quit. And then at that point, you know, we've broken them all down. And at that point, these people are going to quit. The only way they're going to, they're not going to quit.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  They're going to be disabled, permanently disabled, or they're going to die. And at that point, I love that part with the SEAL teams where they go, now we're going to rebuild them. We're going to build them in our image. And the same thing happens in special forces assessment and selection. You hit a point where you're like, you're just so doggone angry. You're like, hell with it. I'm not quitting. I don't care. They could do anything to me. I will not quit. That's what you want in a Green Beret.

• 31:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And so Chris, when you think about, um, kind of the team dynamics and communication specifically, right? If you, if you really think of what makes these great teams is each individual person, uh, has a certain amount of strength, both physically and mentally. Uh, they can shoot, move and communicate at, you know, a very, very high level of proficiency. Uh, but also they have great ability to work within a team. And so it's not just about the individual strength. It's actually their ability, uh, and their cohesiveness with the rest of the team. And some of that is, uh, they may be naturally good at it, but also there's just the constant repetition and practice and, and, um, kind of training that goes into it. Uh, but then you actually, actually add another level of complexity, which is you have a team on the ground. And that team on the ground is probably better equipped than most on a battlefield,

• 32:14Anthony Pompliano?

  both with the physical gear that they have, but also all of the support, whether it's air support, medical support, and then also kind of the command and control that they can communicate with. And so, how did you think about the idea of, you know, at the absolute atomic level of the individual soldier, we have the best of the best on the ground. And then when they're together on a team, we need them to be able to work together. But then also, we need them to be able to communicate with people who are not there on the ground and be able to do that effectively so that we can help them. And so when you get through those multiple levels of complexity, are there certain lessons that you've learned over the years or takeaways that you have that you say, look, whether it's, you know, on the battlefield or inside a corporation, or if you're the founder of a company, like, these are the things that you learned from a leadership

• 32:56Anthony Pompliano?

  perspective to to kind of integrate across those different perspectives?

• 33:02Speaker 03

  Wow, that's a, that's a heck of a question. That's, that's a big one. I'll take it by chunks. I'll try to take it by chunks.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  Every situation's different, you know, that's the key thing. Like, here's where I love to go, and this is why I love special forces, hyper decentralized, trust your people, give them broad mission type guidance, give them a left and a right limit, and tell them, hey, listen, I trust you, don't, you can bother me anytime. You can come and ask questions anytime you want, but you, you're smarter than I am. Just go do it. And this is the end state we want. And they'll, they'll, they'll create magic. And, you know, I could sit there and I could come up with my plan and think, well, you know, I'm a college graduate, I've got a master's degree, and I'm, I'm pretty, you know, I got this. And they, if you just give them some leeway and just tell them which direction to go and trust them

• 33:57Speaker 03

  and support them, they'll come up with something 10 times better. But that's not always the case, because sometimes you do need to be hyper micromanage on them. But that would be, because every situation's different. There might be a time where they're based on the political sensitivities that you really have to go into the details. I always felt, though, if you told them the political sensitivities, they'd come up with the right answer. So assessment and selection is

• 34:24Speaker 03

  There's also a week where it's all about teamwork. And I talked about Rube Goldberg. I'll give there, you'll show up, you got your 12 man, a team man at the time, like I said, now thank God we have women in there. And there's a Jeep, old Jeep, you know, World War II style Jeep, missing a wheel. They're like, you gotta move this Jeep. Uh, the mission is, uh, you have to, this Jeep is critical. It has critical supplies in it. You have to move it back to the repair facility. And there'll be like, there'll be some poles and stuff and you're, you're the team leader now. And you're like, what the hell do I do with this? And but of course there's somebody, well, you know, I had this problem when I was in Montana, when I was growing up.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  And that's the leadership test is are you going to tell everybody what to do? Or are you going to say, guys, what do we do? So they'll come up with this Rube Goldberg thing and then physical fitness, it just kills you. But the thing you learn too, is the teamwork part that you brought up, Anthony. Who can work in a team? Who can take like weird orders? Who's willing to step up when somebody's not feeling well? And then you have this ruthless thing called the peer review. Oh my gosh, so you have to vote one to 12, who's the best and who's the worst? And if you're 12, you're probably not going to the next phase. So there's this ruthless meritocracy and calling process. And you just don't get to say like, oh, I don't like Jim.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  It's like, why don't you like Jim? Jim failed on this event. We were down and out and he, you know, he didn't, uh, he quit. So that's how that works. Now, oh my gosh, high functioning teams, I'm just still amazed, still learning, learn every day, want to learn more. And I think I really, my, my absolute in my essence is like, give people their freedom. And tell them, give them their expectation, but get out of their way. Uh, it's like, you know, the key thing, don't do anything illegal, immoral or unethical. Other than that, everything's up for, uh, negotiation.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  So I felt that that was the best thing, but so often it's uncomfortable. When you're in a new situation and maybe it's a new product line, or you're trying to get into a new business space. And so your instinct as a boss is like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold on tighter. The thing you'd, I had a great boss one time, Ken Tovo was like, no, at that point, decentralize more, decentralize until it's uncomfortable. And you're like, ugh, jeez. I think that hasn't let me down, but you gotta really, you gotta be invested in your people because they will screw up sometimes. And of course, in combat, that comes down to people getting injured or killed. But unfortunately, that's the way you learn.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  So after this mission in Afghanistan, you come home and to me, it's so fascinating because it's kind of like you watch that movie, you talk to people and you've done something. I'm guessing because it was secretive, like nobody knows what you just went through and you're back. How do you feel? Are you like, I can't believe that everybody's just going about their business and I just went through this crazy experience?

• 37:39Speaker 03

  Wow, you triggered a memory there. What I found fascinating was when I was in Tampa, planning the war for Colonel Mulholland. Like I told you, I went down there the 7th, September 16th. I was there for a couple of weeks. I remember going to the mall. I worked, I was working like 22 hours a day, but I had to go pick up, Colonel Mulholland was coming in like, you're out of control. I need to come down there and see what the hell you're doing.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Why are you going to the mall?

• 38:07Speaker 03

  So I went, it was the first time I'd been quote unquote, you know, not working because I was going to pick them up at the airport and I swung by the mall and people were in there, you know, just doing their thing. And I was really, I was like, we are fixing to drop the freaking hammer halfway or halfway around the world. And like, I know what's going on. I know all the secrets and I'm like, planes are moving, people are moving. We're going to go, we're going to really, really do some stuff and Americans are going to be injured and killed and we're fixing to go to war. Most, a serious decision a country takes. And that was just absolutely surrealistic to me. And I remember I went

• 38:49Speaker 03

  and got ice cream at this, and I was just like, people are eating, they're eating ice cream. I'm like, holy shit. That, that was more. Surrealistic for me than coming home because coming home. Uh, it was before I even got in the plane coming out of Afghanistan while I flew out of, uh, it was Pakistan. I flew out of there. Uh, it was like, hey, got something else going on when you get home. Like, don't plan leave because we're going into Iraq. So I had to go back and start planning for that and getting ready to go on that. So I didn't have a lot of time when I got home to really process any of it.

• 39:22Anthony Pompliano?

  So Chris, when you think about, um, kind of the American battlefield today, uh, I think that there's still debate between unconventional warfare and kind of the mechanized, uh, military and, and the more conventional types of, uh, combat that we've been engaged in, uh, in the past. What's your general take in terms of, uh, should we use technology and unconventional warfare to fight every battle? Uh, is there a place for kind of the conventional military and, and conventional tactics? How, how do you kind of balance, uh, those two different things today?

• 39:54Speaker 03

  I think we're in a era of strategic transition and we don't really, obviously China is the major competitor. You know, everybody knows that, but what's that mean for the military? What I experienced, you know, my last job was the, I, I was the acting secretary of defense in charge of that whole thing. Uh, you can laugh if you want, but I was, and you know, we spent $740 billion and we build these huge weapon systems. I mean, world-class aircraft carrier, crown jewel of the Navy, 14 billion. That's what the B, billion dollars a copy for one. Uh, we're going to build two or three of them typically for carriers. You have 10 to 12. That's a lot of money.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Think about the aircraft that we're building right now. It's called the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, I think. That's 1.7 trillion. That was with a T, not a B, trillion dollars. The F-35 is the largest military procurement program in the history of the world. When I heard that, I'm like, come on, that can't be true. The Romans built an entire interstate system throughout Europe that is still being used. You know, you go to England and you're on the M5 and they're like, oh, this is the roadbed that the Romans built, you know, 2,000 years ago. I'm like, that cost more than adjusted dollars, didn't it? They're like, no, no, I'm like, that, wow, the Roman roads are still here.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  F-35 is not going to be here in 1,500 years. I mean, it's just not going to be. So I think.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  I think our primary competitors, autocratic totalitarian regimes do not fear our conventional power because they learned in Desert Storm and in the last nineteen years, do not fight the United States toe to toe because we will clean your clock. We will, I mean, it's done. Now, winning, winning the military battle, the fight versus transit, transferring that into strategic gain, like winning, we have not been clearly very good at because we haven't been able to convert military victory into strategic accomplishment in a long

• 42:09Speaker 03

  time. So my thing is, we need, we can't discount special operations, unconventional warfare. They also in the military call it a regular warfare. That's like information operations, psychological operations back in the day. It's, it's security force assistance where you go in and help friendly countries and try to develop their infrastructure and their forces. There's also this thing called civil affairs where these are brilliant people who, okay, well, we're having a problem in this country in Africa and if we don't get a handle on it, we could have to do large force employment later, which costs a heck of a lot of money. Send dozen of them down there and they, they, they learn all about

• 42:52Speaker 03

  the culture and they find out the needs of the people and find out where the fault lines and the fissures are and try to, try to strengthen the host nation government and connect them with their citizens for their needs. That, that to me is where we are right now, is that's more important tool than to have large formations because if we ever, ever fight the Chinese toe to toe, it will be the greatest strategic error in the history of America and it's ridiculous. So you brought up, here's where I am and, you know, I'm probably going to get run over by some black limousine from Northrop Grumman or something because, you know, the industry is huge and they, they have huge vested interest in continuing the paradigm.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  I see what's happening with startups and mid-cap companies out in Silicon Valley, up in New York. A lot of them are just in small towns right now that are developing, leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, you know, small, you know, the application, the make or mark stuff where you're able to produce stuff individually and bespoke. And then taking that, here's where I am. The most important weapon system that this nation has is the six inches between our service members' ears. And that is,

• 44:13Speaker 03

  there's not a lot of money in that. You know, like, okay, yeah. So I really, really strongly feel that we have over bow, the pendulum's too far towards the conventional warfighting stuff. And we need to bring it back where we recognize the importance of non-traditional, unconventional, irregular, asymmetric, gray zone. There's a whole, there's a whole liturgy of words that you can lexicon that you can use. So that's where I am. And I think that the spirit and the creativity that is happening in America, because remember the old days, it was like, the government told industry what to do, and they did it, and we paid them really well. It's on its head now. You guys know that. It's on its

• 44:56Speaker 03

  head. No, the creativity is happening in the commercial sector with startups and small companies. And so we, Department of Defense, Ash and Carter, Ash Carter was, he was the first one, him and Bob Work, this is deputy, brilliant guys. They're like, uh-oh, paradigm shift, get with it. Department of Defense has not embraced it yet. It will, but it takes a long.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  I could ask a million questions off of that, but, um.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  I don't want to get run over by the black SUV.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  So, um, you, when we started, you mentioned you were just a guy from, from Iowa. Um, how meticulously did you plan your career in the military? And did you know what you would do when you came back? No?

• 45:46Speaker 03

  No.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 45:47Speaker 03

  No. You know, some people, you have a great line and I, on one of your things about you would go to job interviews and they're like, oh, what's your, what's your five year plan? I'm like you, I'm like, hey, doing something I enjoy, feel like I'm contributing, feel like I'm learning and feel like, uh, you know, paying the bills. So my, I had my wife's name on my computer. I'm really Chris, not Kate, but that's fine. Sorry about that. My computer broke yesterday. Long story.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  So, you know, it was just like, do things that matter and learn. Take care of your family. So I just attributed, I never had, never had a plan. Oh, I have friends, so I learned this, you know, I had friends that would, they had every year marked out, I'll be at the stage here and then I'm going to work for this person. I never did that. And I, the thing I saw, I don't know about you all, but the thing I saw, the people that overplanned, boy, never worked for them. I was like, ah, the big thing in the military would be, I want to go to this unit. I'm like, I go wherever they tell me. I don't care. I just go. You know, work hard, it sounds, it sounds so cliche, right?

• 46:58Speaker 03

  Show up, figure out the network, figure out the incentive structure, figure out what's important and then, then exploit and get some work done.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Um, so I saw a picture of you when you went to Afghanistan and you had the beard, you had the crazy hair. And how do you, how do you transition from being in the field to being in an office, being more strategic, uh, and then focused on policy? Cause I feel like not a lot of people can transition like that. How did you do it and, and why did you do it?

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Survival. I, you know, I did 22 years in quote unquote, the field and field units. And always kind of thought like, I'm like, this policy stuff sounds kind of interesting, but you'd never want to go to Washington DC if you're a field soldier. It's just kind of one of those things. But ultimately, you're going to go to Washington DC. My wife loves, likes Washington DC. So I was at that point where I'm like, I'm not getting a field assignment. Those days are over. You know, it's like, kind of like, okay, it's a good run, but uh, you're now going to, I have to go learn about the enterprise. That's what they call it, enterprise assignment and ended up in Washington DC in a policy shop.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Not against my will. It was another thing I was told like, you're going, you're going to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low intensity conflict. This is what I knew about the Pentagon. I thought that I was going to work for a secretary, like in the secretarial pool. I mean, old school, right? I'm like, you need to work for a secretary. I'm like, whatever. You know, I had no idea. So I, thank goodness we had the internet by that point and I was like,

• 48:40Speaker 03

  I was supposed to be at work. I was actually mowing my lawn when I got the call and I got on there and I checked. I was like, oh, I had no idea that in the Pentagon, I always thought like, everybody was just a uniformed person. I had no idea there was a civilian side office, the secretary of defense civilian oversight. And then you have the uniformed services, the joint staff and the army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, now space com, pretty cool, uh, space force. So I had no idea. And so I walked in there completely, complete me a fight going, what did I get myself into? But man, it was like fascinating because you, when you're a Green Beret, all you love learning about new cultures. Like, that's a new culture. I mean, doing different incentive system, different language.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  I was like, hey, this, okay, gonna figure this one out. So it was kind of just your typical. Got to survive, so I have to figure this one out. And but at that point, you're like, okay, I'm broken down now and I'm not gonna. I had this dream that I'd retire.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  I gotta shave my beard, cut my hair.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  I had a dream I was gonna go back and do that when I retired. I retired after 27 years in the in the service, you know, kind of got out my own terms. I'm like, I'm still healthy. I'm gonna go hostage rescue team, FBI, I could do that. And then I saw this video, one of their, you know, hype videos where this truck, this bread truck comes screaming up to this building. And they're all these hostage rescue team guys on the top of the thing and they jump onto this roof. And at that point, I was like, oh, man, my, I, my back, I had sympathy pain. I'm like,

• 50:15Speaker 03

  I guess those days are done. I'm not going to be carrying a gun anymore. That's what I wanted to do. But you also have to, and that's the key thing in the business is you have to recognize when your day is done and you need to hand it off to the next generation. You also have to realize that if you go on target again, you're putting other people at risk because you don't want to have your back go out when you're like, you know, humping, lugging out casualty. So at that point, I'm like, I think I'm a policy guy now.

• 50:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So Chris, you eventually kind of rise through the ranks and become the Acting Secretary of Defense, which is, you know, one of the highest positions of power and influence within the defense kind of sector.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  Man, just saying.

• 50:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you step into

• 51:00Speaker 03

  No joke.

• 51:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you step into that role, what are the things that you're thinking about in terms of learning, kind of the culture and the objectives, the challenges that you're facing? And then maybe walk us through like the first, you know, 60, 90 days. Like, how do you actually walk into a new role and and from a kind of execution standpoint, actually tackle the job without stepping on everyone's toes, but also kind of moving things forward?

• 51:25Speaker 03

  No, my first job, the in in Washington DC, the coin of the realm is being a presidentially appointed Senate confirmed official. That's like, that's a big deal, you know, in DC, it probably doesn't mean anything at home. My parents are like, what? I don't understand what you are. But in DC, that's a big deal. And I was selected and was confirmed by the Senate to run, be the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. And a dear friend of mine, Chris Costa, shout out, goes, you need to read this book. I'm like, oh, God, I don't know if I can. He gave me the first 90 days. Forgot who wrote it. So I gotta read this. This is the book. This is your roadmap. And I'd always been a little skeptical of some of that stuff because, you know, in the, in the military, they always say, don't do anything for the first 30 days.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  Just learn your organization. I can never do that. I'd be like, oh, God, no, we gotta get moving. So I decided, learning organism, at least I think I am, or try to be. It's like, I'm going to implement the first 90 days. So I read the book and I'm doing my listening tour and I'm doing all that stuff. You know, all this stuff you're supposed to do. And it was fascinating. There were some issues. It was just, I was like, this is gonna be great, you know? I'm gonna get the like, place needed to be transformed. Unbelievable workforce that was, was ready to go, but wasn't, wasn't really being listened to as much. So I'm like, this is great. And then, of course, President Trump decides to get rid of Secretary Esper, Mark Esper.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  And there are only a handful of us that are eligible for the job because we're Senate confirmed. We have national security experience. And I get the call like, hey, getting rid of Esper. You know, you want the job? I'm like, well, I don't particularly want the job, but it's not, you're not asking me. You don't go to the Oval Office for, oh, no, I'm really not interested. Thanks a lot. I took, took the king's coin and, you know, I'm just gonna go ahead and, nah, thanks. I've got a good gig. You know, you're not allowed to do that. You're self, you're a public servant, you know? President asks you to do something. You serve like that, what, remember the West Wing? I served at the president. I mean, I kind of take that stuff seriously. I'm nonpartisan and kind of.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  But you know, that's what you're asked. So I go in there and I'm like, I only have 73 days. So that book, the first 90 days, not gonna work.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  I'm gonna write a book. Just kidding.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Hours, because in that point, you were in a transition. You're in charge and it's chaos. And but you got, you have your job to do and you have to, a lot of people thought I was just gonna sit around for 73 days and not do anything. I'm like, oh, hell no. I was the guy who used to complain about all the morons that were in charge of the place and now I'm the moron. And I said, there's like, that would be hypocritical of me if I went in there and just didn't do anything. Because the only things we really needed to do, there were three things. One, no military coup. Two was no major war. Three, don't have troops in the street beating up Americans.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  You could argue all day about the, how the third one went down. But at the time, I was like, I'm not, there's more than we, there's more that we want to do. So I had a job jar going in and

• 54:41Speaker 03

  draw down the war, end the war. I want to end the war. I'm sorry. I'm done with that. I'm like, it's, we gotta end this thing. We gotta move on. Gave it a great shot. God bless everybody. Love them to death, but it's time to move on. Uh, that was number one. Number two was I really felt strongly, and the president did too, was the Department of Defense needed to do more. 71,000 Americans die every year from illicit drugs coming in from south of the border. And the Department of Defense was not doing what I felt was enough. And so that was another thing. I thought that was a national security issue. A lot of people in the Department of Defense like, no, that has nothing to do with warfighting. I'm like, Wow, seventy one thousand versus how many people got killed by terrorism last year?

• 55:23Speaker 03

  A hundred? I mean, tragic for the hundred. I'm not saying that, but I'm like, come on. Seven hundred and forty billion dollars a year, one million people in uniform. Well, actually, it's more than that. One million civilian employees. I'm like, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can actually commit some resources south of the border.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  So that was the other thing I wanted to do. I felt like transforming the department for competition. I felt we were still stuck in the Cold War model. We still are. And I knew I was gonna lose, but I was gonna be the one who forced the issue. So I moved special operations, low intensity conflict, the civilian people that oversee our commandos. I moved them out from underneath. They were like buried in the bureaucracy. I made them a direct report to the Secretary of Defense, but that was just a, that was a side hustle. Because what I really wanted to do was bring together information, cyber, space, all these functional things. AI, security, all these things that are now like stove piped all across the defense.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  I'm like, let's bring them together because those are the capabilities that we need to embrace. So those were the type of things. And then the mechanism I used, I, I read that Innovator's Dilemma. I mean, that book changed my life. I know people probably make fun of it now, but Clay and Christian May, rest in, rest in peace. I read that book when I was younger. And I was like, okay, innovation, you know, you have your three models. So the model I used was I basically put a startup in the front office that reported to me. I had about ten people. They were all career civil servants. They weren't political appointees because political appointees are kind of transient, right? These are all people I'd worked for and I trusted. And back to your point about like, hey, how do you get high functioning teams moving?

• 57:10Speaker 03

  I was like, hey, this is the end state. I'll give one example. I told you I was in Karshikhanabad, Uzbekistan, K2. That place was a toxic waste dump. We didn't know it at the time and a bunch of a bunch of veterans and service members had had medical issues from it. So brilliant guy, Al Broadbent, buddy of mine, grew up in the military. He was a civilian lawyer at the time in the Department of Defense. It's like, I don't know what's going on. Go fix it. So we had about eight things that we wanted to do. And but here's the thing, we knew all of us, I'd been in the Pentagon long enough. I talked about like learning the culture. I knew how the place worked. So the whole idea was to play it back against them. Like I knew how

• 57:52Speaker 03

  I knew how the process worked. I'm like, okay, we're going to exploit the heck out of this. And I knew that we can move faster than the bureaucracy could. So we just decided to flood the system and just get everybody so can everybody create chaos was what I was doing. So no one could figure out exactly what our key tasks were. There were so many of them. And then there were ways that you you could keep pushing on your eight key issues and no one knew which ones to resist because the nature of the frozen middle of any bureaucracy, right? It's like everything's fine. We don't need to do anything. So we we would have the frozen bureaucracy so confused that we were bypassing and doing all that. So that was the mechanism I used

• 58:37Speaker 03

  in the Secretary of Defense's office.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Okay, so when you were in the Secretary of Defense office, you mentioned you were there for 73 days and a lot happened, including the storming of the Capitol. Is there anything you wish you had done differently? Or how do you evaluate it now, looking back?

• 58:57Speaker 03

  I'm hyper hypercritical of my performance. That's the nature of being a former special operator is that's the one thing you get done with, you never did good enough. I'm telling you, it was amazing growing up. You would have, you'd be like, we did everything right, the operation went perfectly. And when you did the after action review where you did your hot wash after the person that led it, they would always find fault, you know, and and I love that. And they're like, you know what? You could have turned left two seconds earlier and you're like, Yeah, so I love that and I embrace that. And so I absolutely did a hot wash and all that. And the story has not been told.

• 59:42Speaker 03

  And you know, that's where I realized I thought national security was above partisanship. That's the criticism I have of myself was I was so freaking naive. I was like, well, now, I mean, at the end of the day, we're all Americans and we care about national security and we're not going to politicize this. My experience from that was, oh my gosh. And that's what we're experiencing right now. The truth has not been told. The full story has not been told. And, and my

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Do you mean, when you say that, do you mean the whole story has not been told in terms of how politicized every action is?

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  No, how the, what has not been told yet is in the complete narrative of what happened that day. And the Department of Defense, I have been, you know, harshly criticized and Ryan McCarthy, the Secretary of the Army, have been. And my wife and others are like, wow, what do you, what would you have done differently? I'm like, you guys don't know the story yet. When the story comes out, I will stand by every decision I made and correct proper use of the armed forces. So that's not one, I'll tell you what, I know when I screw up is I lose sleep over it and then you have like some moral guilt. You know, we all have that, right? We all have that like, oh yeah, kind of like I messed that one up.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  But you know, maybe sometimes you're in a situation where you have to posture and say, oh, we did it all right. I have not lost a single moment's sleep about the decision making and what the Department of Defense did that way. And, but, but it hasn't been told yet. And frankly, you know, until Congress pulls their you know what out of there, you know what, their head out of there, you know what, and has a honest, and I'm not being political right now.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  We're not going to know. And that's what I'm seeing right now is like, I, I, you know, I watched the testimony and I'm like, they're like, oh God, they're pushing me under the bus. That's fine. But we'll get our say. And I think when it's all said, the problem now with this, you know, entertainment, media, political complex, that is just driving this hyper partisanship even further apart and just driving wedges into our country. I'm sorry to get so emotional, but I live that, you know, when they're attacking your children. I mean, come on, give it a break. For heaven's sakes, we're still Americans. We should still have some respect for each other. And so I'm like, when this story is told, the problem is, it's all the narrative's been

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  established. So now you're like, page 26, retraction, Miller and McCarthy and the Army and the Department of Defense were not complete morons that day. Actually, when we looked at it, everything they said was accurate. So it'll come out one day. But that was probably the biggest failure on my part was this idea that I was dealing with rational people that had the best interests of the country. And that definitively is not the case.

• 1:02:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Chris, when you think of, when you, when you think of, you know, that incident or others, and it's really interesting, because the people in the story, if you will, always have more information. Is it something that you think, let's take January 6th, whatever, as an example, there are contextual things that eventually come out, and that changes the way that people view it. There's specific, you know, ABC thing happened on that day. And that's what changes kind of the evaluation. And I know that you probably can't share too much in terms of some of the things that aren't public yet. But just, what are the things that you think, and I'm asking from the perspective of, there's a lot of people, I think, now understand they have

• 1:03:20Anthony Pompliano?

  the power of the internet kind of at their fingertips, and they desire to be kind of independent thinkers. They don't want to just take the narrative that's fed to them from, you know, various media outlets and kind of the mainstream talking points. And so, any advice or kind of breadcrumbs you can leave them in terms of, hey, when you're evaluating a situation like that, here's the things to look for to be able to think for yourself, rather than just accept those narratives?

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  I think you guys are thought leaders on this and I'm not trying to, you know, give a shout out to you guys, but discussions like this are important. I have a son that's 20, daughter 25 and 27. And they do exactly what you just described. They are so sickened by the partisan media. And so I ask them like, how do you get your information these days? I think there's a huge business opportunity. Everybody's like, no, there's not, nobody wants it. I'll tell you, I have a friend that's like, he just consumes all the political stuff. And he did for the longest time, he goes, I'm just back to watching the evening news. I'm like, what? Like, no, that's what our parents did. Nobody, you know, you can see the ads for the evening news.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  It's clearly not our, you know, demographic. He goes, nope. I just want somebody to tell me what happened and I'll decide. But my kids, I mean, they don't even follow mainstream media. Isn't that amazing to you?

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  The trust is eroding.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  Destroyed. I mean, well, my kids, so they're my, you know, they're my touchstone. That's they're my demographic, my market research. So, you know, I'm like, hey, how do you get your media these days? How do your friends do it? So that's really, really critical. But when you talk about, and so I think there is a generational issue going on, to tell you the truth. There's a generation in my generation, we're like the last generation that was born before the internet or some crap like that, right? And we have this fixation. And I'll tell you what, it's really funny. I've been in situations where people were in, were in like decision-making forum and they're plugged in on their phone, getting all the updates.

• 1:05:26Speaker 03

  And one of my truisms, it's, I didn't invent it, but you know, first reports are always wrong. First reports are always inaccurate. It's played out time and again. So now you're in a situation, you brought up decision-making in the current environment, information environment. You're getting bombarded with information coming from all different directions. And then you have this huge pressure to make a decision because everybody's like, Weak, he's weak, she's weak, not making a decision, you know, come on, didn't you see what's on CNN right now, or Fox, or whatever.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  Ooh, uh, you know, uh, U2 song, Mom, we gotta go there, talks about Bloody Sunday, where fact is fiction and TV reality, I mean, Bono and the crew wrote that way back when, and that still resonates, where fact is fiction and TV reality, and that's kind of where, that's where we are right now, and so, it's really, really difficult, uh, it's, it's, you have to factor it into your decision making, I'm not saying, and I did not do it as well, but by the same token, the worst thing you do is you do something, or you respond in the information environment that's wrong, and then you're like, now you're cleaning that up, so that's, that's one of those things where I'm like, first report's

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  always wrong, take a deep breath, do some planning, just, it might be 30 seconds, so, all right, what's going on, what's next steps, okay, what should we do, then, you know, the classic, the plan does not survive first contact with the reality, true that, but that's not the point, Eisenhower talked about, it's not the plan that matters, it's the planning, and even if it's 30, 45 seconds, you've actually slowed things down, take a deep breath, unplug and think, and so, you know, those are the, the key factors, and then the final one is like, wait until the last moment to make a decision, because information keeps coming in, everybody wants to make a decision

• 1:07:29Speaker 03

  too fast, and that's where you brought back Anthony, the information environment, now, instead of just your subordinates or your peers that are like, you need to make a decision, you need to make a decision, now you got this whole flood of people saying you're an idiot, you don't know what's going on, and it takes enormous, I don't think it's courage, I say, I would say, discipline, it takes enormous discipline to just hold, stick with your principles, uh, so, it, I don't know how people are gonna do it in the future, but you brought it up, young people are like, heck with this, I think there's huge opportunity out there to break through, I think that's what this next generation wants, wants to serve, wants to believe, and they're seeing us, not you guys.

• 1:08:15Speaker 03

  They're seeing me and other people above us going, wow, that's not, that's just not right. I got a lot, I got a lot of hope, I gotta tell you.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. And I think you're seeing it more broadly where journalists for media companies are leaving to go independent. And it's across fields. It's in finance, it's in media, it's all, it's all across the board. One thing I want to ask you is that you've had a really long and rich career, even though you hadn't really planned it. But you mentioned kind of the importance of your family. You have a wife, you have kids. How did you balance your professional aspirations with making sure that you had strong personal relationships too?

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  Not well.

• 1:08:58Speaker 03

  I mean, it's, thanks for that.

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  You know, special operators are by design obsessive compulsive. I mean, and that's their greatest strength, right? But it's their greatest weakness too. Because they are so committed to the mission, they're so committed to their teammates. That that would oftentimes destroy their family life. And that was one of the biggest challenges I think we faced in the last 19 years. Where wars used to be like in a hundred hour war or whatever, great, deployed for six months back home. You're off for next 10 years. Don't worry about it. We only do wars every 10 years. You're good.

• 1:09:47Speaker 03

  You know, but this last 19 years, and that's why I was just so committed to ending these damn things. Actually, there's only one war. It's global war on terrorism, but I guess I'll say wars because it's all over the world. Is that, is so that was the leadership thing. The transition from like, you gotta go. Why? Because the team's gone. Because every, every one of those people is gonna, is, will feel guilty. So I would have to be the bad guy and I loved it. I love being the bad guy in this one. I don't mind being the bad guy to begin with. But you're like, you knew, because my best partner was the battalion surgeon, our doctor.

• 1:10:28Speaker 03

  And he, client, patient, client privileges, you know, all that. So let's not, I'm not going to give his name because he'll put, well, he's, you know. But he'd like, hey, you need to go talk to so and so. That's all I'd say. And that was the cue. You go down there like, what's going on? They were like, everything's fine, sir. Everything's great. And you know, then you'd have to be that empathetic listener and you just have to act of listening. You work through it and then finally you find out like this guy, this person's in crisis, you know?

• 1:10:57Speaker 03

  And uh, hey, at that point, you're like, you're not deploying. No, I've got to deploy, sir. Like you just tell everybody like, hey, Jimmy's not deploying. You guys shut up. And they'd be like, and you know, the team, they all know what's going on. They're like, oh, thank God. Someone cares, you know?

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  But so that was the real tragedy, but my, I was just blessed with, uh, my wife and I are, you know, it are, are solid and she raised the kids and we'd talk about things, but uh, I always tried to lead by example because that's the other thing, you know, you're supposed to kind of like set the example. Uh, but didn't do it as well as I would, I would wish, but thank God and my wife raised the kids and you know, they're all semi. Now they're great. I mean, they're in good shape. So, but that was the real, that's the tragedy of war, right? I mean, that's the tragedy of being at war for 19 years. We destroy, I mean, nothing good comes out of war, nothing. Uh, and it's just a tragic event. You have to do it sometimes. I, you know, that's, I'm not like, I'm anti-war.

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  Everybody should be anti-war, but there are some times where, you know, as a nation, we have to go to war. And, but when you do it for 19 years, the cost psychologically, physically, emotionally and family relationships. And so my thing would be like, the other thing I said, you will be home for the birth of your children. No, I don't care, sir. I don't care. I don't care about you, but your wife cares. And if we're going to keep doing this damn war, I need your wife to be partnered and part of this. So I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it so your wife, when you need to re-enlist, she will support you. I'm doing it for the country. Okay.

• 1:12:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a real, real struggle.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Um, but one more question I have is, uh, we haven't really touched on like the mental aspect of going to war. Um, when I met Anthony and he went to Iraq, I was like, so what like, how can you sleep at night, given everything you've seen and been through? And he was like, what you said, he was like, I had a job, I did my job. And I, to me, it's so interesting from the outside, seeing how people can compartmentalize some of this stuff. How, how did you do it? Like when you came back?

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  You're hearing Anthony. I mean, I'm just like a blowhard right now. Blah. I mean, uh, we, everybody has a different experience, I would, I would say. Uh, and then for, uh, I gotta tell you, I think mostly it's just a desperate situation. And it's not like you're gunfighting every day. You know that Anthony, you're like, you only have a couple of times in a deployment where it's like, okay, this is for real. This is what they paid me to do. That's the other thing, you know? Uh, for, in my situation, you know, volunteered, they paid for my undergraduate, they paid for my graduate. My wife and I, she gave birth, obviously. We had three kids, uh, in military hospitals. You know, I don't know how, you

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  want to know how much it costs you to have a kid in a military hospital? It's like seventeen dollars and ninety cents, because you have to pay for the meals. I don't even know why. But like, oh no, all the healthcare is free, but you have to pay for the food. And then, you know, when it comes down to you're going into combat, you're like, man, this, this is what they paid me to do. They didn't, this isn't a social welfare program. That's not what the military is, right? It's like, some people think it is, it's not. It is for one thing, and that's going to fight our nation's battles, fight our nation's wars. So you're like, and I mean, Anthony, I know, I'm sure you've been there where you're like, oh man, this might not work out right. I might be dead before this day's over. And you go through

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  the whole, I go, I should say, I, I go through the whole cycles of mourning, where I'm like, begging God to like, give me, you know, an excuse not to do this. Please let me, you know, break my leg. And then you get to acceptance and and you just go, okay, I'm getting on the helicopter. I'm getting in the truck. I'm going to do this because that's what the country paid me for. Signed a contract and you could say like, that is so incredibly immature. And how could you be such a blind loyalist? But something's got to get you on the helicopter and you're like, man. Uh, so that's how I dealt with that. But, uh, you know, Anthony, the other thing I noticed, uh, the things that bother me are the moral guilt, you know? It's, it's where you knew you screwed up and, um,

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  and those are the ones that, you know, what you wake up in the night and you're like, and you know, you, you work through it and you process it some, you know, but everybody has to deal with it differently. And regrettably, that's what we talked about. When you go to war, uh, you're going to lose some people psychologically and emotionally, and it's really tragic. But that's what, that's why it's so important that the nation has a really serious conversation about going to war because it destroys people's minds and their health and their families. And it's all right, but let's just have the discussion upfront that we're willing to do this because people are going to be consumed by it. Anthony, over to you, sir.

• 1:16:06Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I, I think you're dead on. I, the only thing I would add is, uh, I've told Plana and a bunch of friends many times that, uh, the biggest pacifists you'll meet are, uh, people who've been to war because they understand that, uh, you know, what it entails and the destruction that it causes. And, uh, I think it's Marcus Luttrell's got this great, uh, speech that he gives where he basically says, listen, you know, if you're a politician, your job is to be as diplomatic as possible and do everything in your power not to send me because when I go, I'm going to bring hell with me. And, you know, the US military is better than almost anyone at doing it. Um, but you got to understand that it's not a, you know, completely, uh, positive thing. And so, uh, if we can, uh, you know, one, avoid wars, great. If we can end them, even better.

• 1:16:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and I think that it, uh, kind of your, your line of thinking around, um, our role as this like global police, uh, and the constant obsession with going to war in a conventional way, especially, right? Technology is one thing, but when you start to put, you know, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the ground, uh, it's just, it's dirty, right? That's why it's war.

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. You know, it's like if it was peace, it would be peace. You know, it's so it's like you nailed it. And I mean, those are it's hey, we got to do what we got to do. I got that, but let's just do it. And I just, you know, man, I just remember the waste. You know, you're just like, wow, I mean, it's it's an amazing experience. Let's be perfectly honest. You're not supposed to say that, you know, Mattis got in trouble like some people need killing. I'm not saying that, but some people need killing. Uh, there's, uh, but that just like dawned on me and like, you know, it's Super Bowl, right? You've trained, you've been and you're like, of course you want to go do your job.

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  And that was my, you're just like, wow, this is nothing goods coming out of this. It's just enormously wasteful. Uh, so wow, yeah, it's just like, those are the. And here's the other thing that I've been saying lately, we brought up January 6th. And I'm, I, I remind people, I think if we were having this discussion about January 6th in 1954, we wouldn't be having this discussion because, you know, as you know, only 1% of the American public serves in uniform right now. I think about 7% of the population, I might be off on that, are veterans. And but in 1952, you had every probably 85% of Congress had served.

• 1:18:38Speaker 03

  Uh, in one capacity, the American citizens had served. And if they didn't, they know someone who has served. They knew the nature of military operations. They knew the nature of war, just like you were talking about. Everybody knew that, right? And now we have a situation where people, you know, my, my tagline is, you know, this isn't halo. Or I always call it say call to duty, but I think it's call of duty, you know.

• 1:19:01Speaker 03

  I got corrected on that. I thought it was really funny. Somebody goes, you, you called it the wrong game. You totally lost credibility with that demographic. I said, I wasn't trying to get credibility with them to begin with. The point I was trying to make was that, you know, Anthony, you know how military operations work. It's just not like snap. And so on January 6th, you know, general order one, I still remember it from my army experience. You know, in 1983, you did not get to eat chow until you had memorized general order one. And you're like, what the hell? I can't eat. I will guard everything within the limits of my post and quit my post only when properly relieved. So this idea like, oh, poof, we'll just take the National Guard from one side of town

• 1:19:43Speaker 03

  and plop them down at the Capitol. No, no, no, no. If people that had military knowledge and experience would go, you gotta move people, you gotta coordinate, you need to backfill them in because you just don't pull people off their posts because they're banding in their posts. So you need to backfill people in. All this takes time. You move them, you're moving across town through a congested environment. And then, oh gee, they re-equip and back to my planning point. American mothers and fathers send their treasure. We're not just gonna throw them into a gunfight, or it wasn't a gunfight there, but into a flipping riot without some

• 1:20:25Speaker 03

  modicum of planning and coordination. Anthony, you know, oh, well, gee, we're going into that intersection. Who owns it now? Metropolitan Police Division Department. Well, we probably should call them and tell them that we are going to be moving in from the west. There's going to be a convoy of bad MFers coming in because you don't want them now to think, what the heck is going on? So those are the kind of things that really concern me about where we are is this of lack of familiarity with the military. And that's why I think this is a important show that you're doing and Anthony's experience and others' experiences. I hate talking about this stuff. I'm like, I'm over. I'm like, I don't want to talk about this.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  It was really hard to research you because you have never talked.

• 1:21:11Speaker 03

  No, I just want to move on with my life. But I also realize that we have an obligation to try to educate our citizenry so that they're better informed about these really serious decisions. And back to your point about when they hear information, they have a little more context.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  I love that. My final question for you is, now that you said you were unemployed, what is your next chapter? What are you gonna do next?

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  I started our own company. It's called I can't believe you did that because I was gonna send you a note and go, hey, can I give a shout out? What I'm doing next? So thanks for doing that.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  How these things work, whether that's how it works.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  I'm curious.

• 1:21:51Speaker 03

  Set up a, we're sending, setting up our own company here in DC. It's called Boundary Channel Partners. Boundary Channel is the road that connects National Airport, the Pentagon, to Northern Virginia, and then gets you to all the bridges. And also in the Potomac River, there's a Boundary Channel, which is this beautiful, so we call it connecting the world, but it's not gonna be your classic, you know, lobbying, influence peddling company like most people do here. They leave government and like, oh, yeah, I'll get you a meeting with so and so or a phone number. We're not doing that. What we really want to do is we, so the team, stupid, stupid, smart people, and we know government, but more importantly, we know international affairs.

• 1:22:33Speaker 03

  So what we're trying to do is we're trying to, we don't want to go into government space. Like, we're over that. We want to support commercial entities that might not have the mass to have a strategic planning team or a business development team for international stuff, because we know everybody, like, you could country, been there, or I know somebody's been there. So what we want to do, and our real thing is mid-cap, we don't want, Northrop Grumman's not gonna hire us, because you heard my pitch about like, we're going the wrong road, we're going down the wrong road on this. So my thing, and our team's thing, is to look at companies that have innovative stuff, that want to scale, and, you know, hey, give us a call and we'll, we'll give you a some risk assessment.

• 1:23:17Speaker 03

  We'll give you some ideas. You might decide like, like now, that's, or if we don't know, we're not gonna keep taking money from you, or like, wrong person, call them. So we're doing that. I'm also writing a book about coming up. That's a whole new experience, lifelong learner. Well, somebody offered, like, would you write a book? I'm like, sure, if you can sell it. So we're in the process of doing that now. Uh, for the purpose of trying to educate the American people, but it's gonna be more forward leaning than the things that we talked about. You know, China, yeah, one of my plugs is, here's the other one. I'm sorry, dude. Now I'm on my soapbox.

• 1:23:56Speaker 03

  I gotta tell you, I've done my survey of the young generation, my kids' generation, and we have got to put, expand universal service. And I'm not talking about just like, "Oh, you gotta go in the army." No, no, no, no, no. Environmental, healthcare, schools, infrastructure, have an overseas component. If you wanna go carry, if you wanna join the military, that's fine, too. Eighteen months, do that, and then you're lined up, almost like the GI Bill, where you'll have opportunities for college or to start your own business. So those are the things that I'm taking on, because I'm not giving up on America yet. It's, we got problems right now, we know that. But I'm not, I'm embarrassing, and my friends

• 1:24:40Speaker 03

  and family would just never be able to tolerate me if I just walked away from the thing. So I'm with you guys. That's why I think it's really important that what you're doing and having these conversations.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Chris. This was excellent. I learned a lot, and we'll do it again, hopefully.

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

  All right, good luck. If you need anything, let me know.