234: How to WIN Using Your Mind Rather Than Brute Force. Applying Couter-Insurgency to Life. FM 3-24

0:00:00 - Opening. 0:09:39 - Counter Insurgency Manual. FM 3-24 1:50:57 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:55:35 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:21:07 - Closing Gratitude. 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 Jocko Podcast number 234 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So I was working with some Echelon Front clients the other day, talking about leadership. And I was talking about the minimum use of force. Have you ever heard that phrase before? Yes, I have. So we talk about it from sort of a combatives, a tactical perspective. But I was talking about it from a leadership perspective, meaning that you want to lead. You want to lead most of the time with a minimum use of force.

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  So I want to do as little as I can to make you do what I want you to do. That's, that's a good rule of thumb to lead with.

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  I was also thinking, and this is you might, I don't know if you're going to find this funny. You might. I was thinking about leaders being legit. Have you noticed I use the term legit? Yes, I use it more now. You've, you've acquired it. I've acquired it, yes. And, and we, we know what it means, right? We, we use the term to mean like, that's cool, but it's a little bit stronger, right?

• 1:19Jocko Willink?

  Means kind of approved. But then I was thinking about the, you know, the source of that word legitimate. Because once again, I was talking about leaders being legit. And actually beyond that, leaders being legitimate leaders. Think about that, right? Think about the difference in your mind when you think of a legitimate leader or someone that's an illegitimate leader. There's a huge difference.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  Because when a leader is viewed as illegitimate, then they're not respected. They're not listened to. If someone gets put into a position because they're the boss's favorite or because they backstabbed someone, right? To get into that, to get that promotion, they're not going to be considered legitimate. A legitimate leader, and that hurts their ability to lead. So as I was thinking about these two things, the minimum use of force and legitimacy. And I recognized both those thoughts in my head from.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  The Counter Insurgency Manual FM3 Tac 24. Now, here's a little history behind this manual. When I arrived in Ramadi, you know, this is the, this is the manual that I read when I arrived in Ramadi. So what happened was, I arrived in Ramadi, I went to an intel briefing. During the intel briefing, there was this massive link diagram of all these bad guys. A bunch of them connected, how they were connected, who they were connected to. Some of the bad guys had little red slashes through them, made them be killed, or a little green slash through them meant they'd been captured. But, the thing is, this massive link diagram didn't really look all that much different as the link diagram that I had left in Baghdad, two and a half years prior. So, in my mind, I kinda realized, wait a second, if we're still doing the same thing,

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  and things don't really look all that different, this isn't good, and... Well, it seems like we're losing. So, I don't know what necessarily thing triggered my brain to go and read the Counter Insurgency Manual. I must have seen something, you know, I used to read all these, and still do, I'd read, you know, these sort of military websites, and, you know, military news, and those kind of things. And somewhere in there, I had seen that this new, this new field manual was coming out. And I knew that this new field manual had been written by General Petraeus and General Mattis.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  Both those guys need no introduction, both incredible leaders. Very, very well-known inside the military when I was in, and now both of them are well-known outside the military. And that, reading this, so I, so I went and Googled it on the regular internet. And so now, this is like, May, yeah, this is May of 2006. And I'm trying to remember, I don't think I saw the whole completed manual. I think I saw an, either, I think I saw chapters of it, and I did a little research, and it turns out that they, they did.

• 4:32Jocko Willink?

  They had sort of assembled the initial chapters, and released them as quick as they could, just to get this information out there.

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  And when I read it, it definitely shaped the way I thought about the Battle of Ramadi. It shaped the way that Task Unit Bruiser could operate in the Battle of Ramadi. And really, it ended up shaping the way I think about a lot of different things about leadership and business and the teams and, and life.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  And so, I actually dug around the internet and I found one of these early versions. So, one of the versions that I found of this, it says on it, FM3 Tech 24.

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  And it's June 2006. That's when this, this is the final draft. So, I think, I think the thing I read was probably just a little bit earlier, probably one of the few chapters released. And also, when I read that, I read what I read, and again, I wish I remembered it better. What I read, I read the whole thing. And when you see the whole manual, it's 250 pages, and there's a lot of stuff that gets into stuff that wouldn't have been as pertinent to where I was and what I was doing. So, I think I probably saw the first two or three chapters of this, and I absolutely know for a fact I saw the first chapter, which is what I want to dive into today. Now, this is, this is, this is what made me want to dive into, because, believe me,

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  this is one of the first manuals that I wanted to cover. I said, "Oh, you know, I should cover the field, I should cover the counter insurgency field manual, we should go and read that." Well, here's the deal. It is a huge manual, right? And a lot of it digs into the weeds and kind of gets really granular on, you know, how you do logistics inside it. So, there's a lot of really deep, not, deep's not the right word. There's a lot of very tactical techniques that you're going to use to make things happen inside of a counter insurgency. But, what I find fascinating about this is the way that it relates to absolutely everything. It's, especially from a leadership perspective, especially from a leadership perspective.

• 6:47Jocko Willink?

  Because you start thinking about things, you start thinking about the way the world is formulated. And if you think about it from an insurgency and a counter insurgency perspective... You start to see things much clearer and the reason is because let's face it if you if you want to take a look at things you want to say oh war is comparable to everything right everything is comparable to war could is it possible to say that

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  okay well it's possible to say that but if you don't include insurgency in that and counter insurgency in that look war is not always especially in business especially inside into inside of a business inside of a team is it really a war when you know I'm trying to get some of one of my subordinate teams to do what my other subordinate team is doing and they're giving me resistance is that war is that an all out war not really it's more like an insurgency and what I've got to do I can't just go to war with them if I go to war with them I'm going to destroy them that's the goal of war insurgency means I'm going to form relationships I'm going to bring people on board I'm going to get rid of the people that are bad actors like it's a

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  totally different much more nuanced thing and that's what allows you when you can put when you can look at things through the prism of insurgency and counter insurgency it gives you it will give you some

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  it will give you some visibility on how to handle situations so it's real easy to say ah we're at war with our competitor okay I get that we're at war with our competitor we're going to go to war with our competitor we're going to go to war with this other team

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  but when you say hey we've got people inside of our own organization that don't agree with what we're doing all of a sudden it takes on a totally different meaning because if you go to war with them what do you do you destroy them can you can you effectively and perfectly destroy only the things that you want in a war no war means there's going to be collateral damage means people are going to you know it's a it's a gnarly thing so but insurgency and counter insurgency is more nuanced it takes more

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  you have to use a scalpel instead of using a battle axe right that's what you're doing and so when you start seeing things as an insurgency and acting as if you're utilizing counter insurgency procedures to to try and solve that problem it's a much more accurate way of saying hey

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  Everything in life is comparable to war.

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay, does everything in life compare to war? Maybe, but that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, this allows you to make much better analogies like that. I'm not saying there's perfect. I'm not saying everything in life is war. No. This allows you, if there's a war analogy, if there's a war metaphor there, if there's things to be learned from war, you have to learn from the insurgency and counter insurgency mindset. So, let's get into this. It's, and, and I want to make sure that I, I kind of point some of this stuff out as we go through. So here's the forward. This manual is designed to fill a doctrinal gap. It's been 20 years since the US Army published a manual devoted to counter insurgency operations.

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  At 25, since their Marine Corps published its last manual. With our soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it is thus essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counter insurgency operations. And they call that COIN. Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it must be informed by contemporary experiences. So what's cool about this is, and they, they reference the counter insurgency and the insurgency in Iraq in 2005. Like, that's how up to date this thing was. And they were trying to get this information out there as quick as they could. This manual takes a general approach to COIN. The Army and Marine Corps recognize that every insurgency is contextual

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  and presents its own set of challenges. So guess what? Every little disagreement that you have inside your team has its own little contextual things that are happening in its own set of challenges. So you have to be able to adapt to that. You cannot fight former Sadamists and Islamic extremists the same way you would fight the Vietcong, the Moros, which is a Philippine,

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  let's call insurgent group, or the Tupamaros, which was in Uruguay. The application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each vary considerably.

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  And it goes on to say that nonetheless, there's common characteristics of insurgencies. It says, "A counterinsurgency campaign is, as described in this manual, a mix of offense, defense, and stability operations conducted along multiple lines of operations." So that right there, if you take that little thing right there into your mindset, because if we just say we're going to war, what does that mean? It means, optimally, we're just going on offense.

• 12:10Jocko Willink?

  Maybe we say we're going to go offense, but we're gonna have to go on defense sometimes. But then stability, like, what does that mean? That means you're trying to keep this whole organization together. Right? You're not worried about this. When I'm going to total war with Echo's country, I'm not worried about stability for you. I'm worried about just destroying you. I'm going on offense.

• 12:32Jocko Willink?

  And then conducted along multiple lines of operations. So that means there's all kinds, it's not just fighting. It's not just guns.

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  "It requires soldiers, Marines, to deploy a mix of both familiar combat tasks and skills, more often associated with non-military agencies, with balance between them depending on the local situation. This is not easy. Leaders at all levels must adjust their approach constantly, ensuring that their elements are ready each day to be greeted with a handshake or a hand grenade."

• 13:07Jocko Willink?

  What does that do to your mentality? I mean, just think you're going into a meeting. You gotta be ready to deal with a handshake or a hand grenade.

• 13:16Jocko Willink?

  That's what you gotta be ready for. "To take on missions only infrequently practiced until recent years at our combat training centers, to be our nation builders as well as warriors, to help reestablish institutions and local security forces, to assist in the rebuilding of infrastructure and basic services, and to facilitate the establishment of local governance and rule of law." That's what you throw the military into, all that stuff. That's why counterinsurgency is so hard.

• 13:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just everything I just said. Going to war is like the easy part. Here's the bad guys, go kill them. That's the easy part. Everything else I just said, that's what makes this so complicated. Conducting a successful counter insurgency campaign thus requires a flexible, adaptive force led by agile, well-informed, culturally astute leaders. Probably the opposite of what the stereotypical military person is. Is our hope that this manual provides the necessary guidelines to succeed in such a campaign in operations that inevitably are exceedingly difficult and complex. Our soldiers and Marines deserve nothing less. And it's signed David H. Petraeus,

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant General, US Army, and James N. Mattis, Lieutenant General, United States Marine Corps. So there's your introduction. Right out of the gate, you can see we're dealing with something totally different. Just infinitely more complex. Chapter one, and this is the only chapter we're going to cover today. And it may be the, look, like I said, it gets into some very granular stuff, but this is such a good opening. Chapter one insurgency and counter insurgency. Counter insurgency is not just thinking man's warfare. It's the graduate level of war. Special Forces Officer in Iraq 2005.

• 15:06Jocko Willink?

  And this is what's, what's really cool about this is the Battle of Ramadi is seen as a model of counter insurgency. And I was lucky enough to be there and lucky enough to sit in brigade, brigade op orders and division op orders and to sit with the, the brigade commander and listen to what his thoughts were and hear what the input was and hear. I mean, it just was, I was so lucky to be a part of this.

• 15:39Jocko Willink?

  To be there. So, starts off overview insurgency and counter insurgency are subsets of war. Though globalization and technology and technological advancement have influenced contemporary conflict, the nature of war in the 21st century is the same as it has been since ancient times. A violent clash of interest between or among organized groups characterized by use of military force. Success in war still depends on a group's ability to mobilize support for its political interests and generate sufficient violence to achieve political consequences. Means to achieve these goals are not limited to regular armies employed by a nation state.

• 16:24Jocko Willink?

  At its core, war is a violent struggle between hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, attempting to impose their desires on another. It is a complex interaction between human beings and is played out in a continuous process of action, reaction, and adaptation.

• 16:45Jocko Willink?

  War.

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  This manual is available for free on the interwebs. Google it. I'm not going to read the whole thing today. I'm going to hit some highlights. Says this also, "Its scale and complexity should never," this is talking about counter insurgency, "its scale and complexity should never be underestimated by leaders and planners. Indeed, the possible scale and complexity must be understood before the beginning of any such operation." This is a mistake we've seemed to make over and over again. You think you're the big badass American military. We're going to go in there, we're going to squash these, these enemy soldiers, and the peasants will be on board. You know, the local populace will be on board when they

• 17:31Jocko Willink?

  see the freedom. And we just underestimate this thing all day long. You underestimate how hard it is to do this. How hard it is to actually execute a, a counter insurgency. Talks about a couple of different aspects of insurgency, a couple of different kinds, a revolution.

• 17:51Jocko Willink?

  Which they describe as an unplanned spontaneous explosion of popular will. Another one is a coup d'etat, which is a small group of plotters that replace state leaders with little support from the people at large and an insurgency is an organized, protracted, political military struggle designed to weaken government control. Insurgencies normally seek to either overthrow existing social order and relocate power within the country.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  Talks about internal wars, as the name internal wars implies, these are primarily conflicts within states, not conflicts between states, and they all contain at least some element of civil war. That's why I think so much of this is pertinent to being a leader, because so much of being a leader isn't about how you're taking the fight to the enemy, it's how you're handling the people inside your own country. That's what's hard.

• 18:50Jocko Willink?

  Handling the people inside your own company, handling the people inside your own organization. Let me tell you something. At Echelon Front, where we do leadership consulting, we spend at least as much time helping solve the problems inside the company, as we do helping companies figure out how to solve what they do to beat their competitors. Because if you don't have a squared away organized situation inside your team, you're not going to beat the competitors, you're not going to defeat your enemy. So this counter insurgency, these counter insurgent tactics are what you use to help

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  your own team stay unified. And if you don't utilize them correctly, guess what you get? You get an insurgency.

• 19:43Jocko Willink?

  And at worst, it rips your team apart.

• 19:47Jocko Willink?

  But even if it doesn't rip your team apart, it has you rowing in different directions. And when you row in different directions, you don't go where you're supposed to go. So you need to, you need to keep a check on that.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  One possible exception to this rule involves what can be termed a liberation insurgency, where indigenous elements seek to expel or overthrow what they perceive to be a foreign occupational government. Such a resistance movement could be mounted by a legitimate government in exile, as well as elements competing for that role. Well, another thing that happens in business, businesses get bought. Businesses get bought by bigger businesses. Businesses have people get inside and take over. There's hostile takeovers. There's all these kinds of situations. And then you get these little insurgencies inside companies, inside businesses, inside teams. Also, it can be outside actors get involved.

• 20:43Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward to it. In all cases, the long-term objective for all side remains acceptance of the legitimacy of one side's claim to political power by the people, state, or region. So, if you're a leader, and you are in a company, and you're not considered legitimate, you're basically out of the gate, you're probably going to be dealing with an insurgency. That's just how it's happening. It's gonna be rough. Another little section here. The scale and complexity of coin should never be underestimated. The effort requires a firm political will, and extreme patience on the part of the government, its people, and countries providing its support.

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  Widespread security requirements also limit flexibility. Again, seeding the initiative to insurgents. There's all kinds of reasons that the insurgents have an advantage, right? Oh, another quote here. The contest of internal war is not fair, as most of the rules favor the insurgents. Most of the rules favor the insurgents. Iraq, they absolutely did. Did the insurgents in Iraq care if they wounded friendly civilians? Not one bit. Did they care if they killed each other? Not one bit. Did they use torture? Absolutely. Did they use terror? Absolutely. Did they do the most brutal and savage things to the local populace? Yes,

• 22:11Jocko Willink?

  they absolutely did. And they didn't care at all. So they have a complete advantage when it comes to the rules. And whether you're talking about the tactical rules, or the actual rules of engagement, or the law of armed conflict, they don't care about any of that.

• 22:31Jocko Willink?

  The insurgent can make exorbitant promises and point out governmental shortcomings caused by the insurgency. So yeah, so you make a mistake fighting an insurgency, they're going to use it to their advantage. You you kill civilians by accident. Oh, that's going to be a, you know, national news, world news, global news. They're going to take advantage of that. They want that to happen. Fast forward. Coin is not an approach to war that can be classified simply as foreign internal defense. It features a full spectrum of operations, including stability operations like any other campaign. In all cases, however insurgencies will not be defeated simply by killing insurgents. Since the insurgents, since the insurgent begins with strategic initiative,

• 23:15Jocko Willink?

  meaning they have an advantage, the counter insurgent is usually involved initially in more defensive than offensive operations. That's the way it kind of kicks off. They're attacking you. You don't even know who they are. Victory cannot be gained until the people accept the legitimacy of the government mounting coin and stop actively and passively supporting the insurgents. That right there, I was smiling when I read this because that's one of the quotes that I just completely ripped off from this when I read it for the first time and I started using that all the time. You know, I started saying, well, you know, when my boss would ask me, you know, what are you guys trying to get done? I'm like, sir, you know, we're trying to, we're trying

• 23:56Jocko Willink?

  to stop the passive support that's happening for the insurgents. And all of a sudden I sounded smart. Stole stole stole words from them. Because that's what there was a lot of in Ramadi. In Ramadi, there was local populace was so scared that if an insurgent came into their house and wanted to use their window to shoot their sniper rifle from, they would just like get out of their way, give them some bread, you know, we don't want to bother you. You do what you got to do. We're not, we're not here to cause you, they provided passive support. And that happens inside companies too. You know, you get the whatever, that one element that used to be here, they're gonna help you. They're gonna give you a hand. They're not definitely not going to rat you out because they see that illegitimate leader that whatever stepped in.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  They just want to keep their job a lot of the time.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly. They don't want to make any waves, right?

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  This gives a good section that kind of talks about the histories of insurgencies. That's why it's worth pulling out this book.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  Um, each insurgency is unique, although there may be similarities among them. In all cases, the insurgent's aim is to force political change.

• 25:13Jocko Willink?

  And this is important, and I was trying to read my note here. Force political change, but actually sometimes, especially in business, the goal is to prevent change, right? They don't want some new system. They don't want some new procedure. So they have a little insurgency to fight against. They're fighting against change.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  Specific types of insurgency, here's some things that you're supposed to try and figure out. What's the root cause of the insurgency? How important is that, right? If you're in a team and you're in a business, you're in a leadership position, and there's some kind of an insurgency happening, you feel that. Find out what the root of it is. Where is this coming from? Next, extent to which it enjoys support, both internally and externally. Who's on board with this? Bases on which insurgents appeal to target population.

• 26:10Jocko Willink?

  Insurgents motivation and depth of commitment. Where are they at? Like, how much does this mean to them? Likely insurgent weapons and tactics, operational environment which insurgents seek to initiate and develop their campaign. So there's some things to look at. And this is why, again, this is why I think this is important, because

• 26:30Jocko Willink?

  if you just look at your own team and you just think, oh, they're against me, I'm at war with them, it's a problem. The way you fight that war is not going to be correct. If you look at it as an insurgency, you say, okay, how do I actually assess this? And this becomes, this gives you such a strategic advantage.

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  Several different types of insurgents. Some of them seek to completely change the existing political system anarchists, egalitarians, traditionalists, pluralists, they got good little definitions for all these in there. Some do not seek total political power in a state. These are secessionists, reformists, preventionists, commercialists. And you gotta try and figure out what it is that your insurgents are seeking. Insurgent strategies, you've got conspiratorial. Conspiracy conspiratorial strategy involves a few leaders and a militant cadre or activist

• 27:34Jocko Willink?

  party seizing control of government structures or exploiting a revolutionary situation. This is what's interesting. Such insurgents remain secretive as long as possible, emerging only when success can be quickly achieved. That's definitely something to think about because you think everything's going cool, right? You hear a little bit of murmur here, a murmur there, someone's talking about this method that we're using, someone's against some way, some change that we want to make. You hear little whispers and then all of a sudden, one day, boom, you get hit in the face with it and you weren't ready for it.

• 28:16Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta watch out for that. Military focus, these are ones that are gonna use military force to try and make things happen. Urban organizations like the Irish Republican Army and Latin American groups have pursued an urban warfare strategy. Approach uses terrorist tactics in cities to sow disorder and create government repression.

• 28:46Jocko Willink?

  Those such activities have not generated much success without wider rural support. Um, you also got the protracted popular war.

• 28:56Jocko Willink?

  God, that's an, that's a, it's just an ugly tour term, protracted war. What does that mean? It's gonna last a long, long time. And what sucks is from a psychological standpoint, like if you and I are gonna train jujitsu

• 29:13Jocko Willink?

  and you know that I'm just a guy that's just gonna go protracted war. Like you don't want none of that, right?

• 29:18Speaker 01

  No, I tend not to.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  Hey, well, let me, let me, let's say you set up the clock, the timer, and you put five minute rounds on there. And then I walk over and I just turn it off.

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  There's no time limit. It's just gonna be a protracted war. We're going and I don't care how long it takes.

• 29:37Jocko Willink?

  I was thinking of doing a is there still, is there a jujitsu tournament right now? That's no time limit, submission only. Does one exist right now?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  We've had some variations of it, attempted.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:51Jocko Willink?

  But is there anyone that's doing no time limit? No submission only.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  I think there's certain ones that have like those types of matches, but there, I think there's specific like special matches. Like no time limit matches or something like that. Not all of them, but it's actually it's pretty rare, but yes, I've seen that.

• 30:10Jocko Willink?

  What if we do a jujitsu tournament called protracted war?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 30:17Jocko Willink?

  The thing is you gotta be ready.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  You gotta be ready for

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  Think about this as a competitor.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  As a competitor.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  You're like, I gotta hydrate because I might be fighting for the next nine hours.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Well, that's what the UFC was.

• 30:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. So it was the first ones were what, how many, how many before they made?

• 30:33Jocko Willink?

  The time limits.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  15 minute time limit with like a overtime or so. Uh, it was one and two, I think, and three.

• 30:42Jocko Willink?

  Something like that. So you'd have to do this. I had an idea you do because you gotta figure most matches aren't gonna last like nine hours.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:54Jocko Willink?

  Very few matches would last nine hours. I think, I think very few matches would go over an hour, but occasionally you would get two just really evenly matched humans. And you know how hard it is to submit somebody that's good?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:11Jocko Willink?

  But if you had three mats running at the same time and they were all had a no time limit protracted war on each one of them. So that way, if you have an audience that wants to see this, they can watch whichever one is is happening because let's face it, some of them is going to get, you know, the guy's going to get a position and he's just going to start grinding somebody down, but it might take two hours. Yeah. I mean, if I got, if I was in, if I was going against you in this tournament and I got a cross side, it would be a long time. Yeah, I would be there for a long time. Yeah, I wouldn't rush it. I would cook you for a while.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah.

• 31:49Jocko Willink?

  Why, why would I rush?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, no reason. The, and I think that was the whole thing about jujitsu to begin with, like how, you know, Haley Gracie's, you know, smaller guy, you know, and they, he lets the, you know, he can put himself in safe position, positioning to minimize damage, all this stuff. And then the guy gets all tired and then he can use his, you know, leverage or whatever. Like there was a lot of them. His matches, old school, over one hour.

• 32:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  When they had no time limit, but you gotta be ready for that. Yeah. As a competitor, but as far as tournaments go, as an audience member too, you gotta be ready for that.

• 32:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, that's why maybe you're doing it with multiple matches going on at the same time. And that way you can, you know, you can kind of highlight the big, the match where there's action happening.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  I watched a, I don't, I don't think it was no time limit, but it was one of those ones that I think it was like a 30 minute time limit. It was like a super fight at one of the early tournaments that I did. And they were super good. They're both really good. So they're even and like none of them even scored a point on each other. And after a while I was like, bro, this is, I like jujitsu a lot, but it's kind of boring.

• 32:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's the, you know what the problem is there? The time limit. The time limit because when you have a time limit, you're like, oh, well, I was training yesterday. I was like,

• 33:09Jocko Willink?

  there was something like forty seconds left. I could see it on the clock. And I was fighting, I was rolling with Andy. And I was like, fighting to keep him in, you know, from passing my guard. And then, you know, there was like thirty two seconds left. And I was like, hey, man, even if he passes my guard right now, you know, he's, chances are, he's not going to finish me. So, so I'm not saying I let him pass because he definitely passed it, but,

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't kind of.

• 33:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, I kind of like then lock my hands and I kind of sat there and I'm like, you know, and even he knows it.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  He knows it. He's laughing. He's like smiling or whatever. He said, yeah. So that's in your head.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:47Jocko Willink?

  So when you, when you're in these things, you have a time limit, you're like, hmm, whatever, I can, I can, I can hang out for another seven minutes.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:56Jocko Willink?

  Not just, just don't expose anything. But if there's no time limit.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a different mentality.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  Mentality. So when you're going into those protracted wars, if you're the, if you're the insurgent, bro, you live there.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:11Jocko Willink?

  You live there.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  It's your life now.

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  So, so you don't care how long, you know, when we, when we fought Vietnam, when we fought in Vietnam, the Vietnamese, they're not going anywhere. They're not, they're at home.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:24Jocko Willink?

  You know, we have to go over there. When we're fighting in Iraq, they're at home. The insurgents are there. They live there. There was foreign fighters, of course, but Afghanistan, same thing. So they have this weapon on their side, which is time, the protracted war.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  This is gonna sound kind of off, but I was watching this. It was like a one, it wasn't a documentary, but you know, the kind of where it's like on like Discovery or one of these. And then they, uh, they proposed like, what if this happened? How, you know, like there's a show called What If Humans Disappeared or something like that. You ever heard of that where it's like, okay, after, you know, ten years, the cities would start to get overgrown and after, and they have the CGI and it's pretty cool. So there was one where it said, what if, uh, aliens took over?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  And how would we beat them? Cause if aliens took over, they would, that's what they would be. They wouldn't be like, oh, let me just come and live with you guys. They, that's what they're saying. Chances are.

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  Chances are they're, they're not benevolent.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, not to help people. They're here for earth, you know?

• 35:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  It's kinda like, I mean, think about it. That's every living thing. It's kinda like, bro, I live here now kinda thing. Like, we gotta, um, so anyway, they're saying, how would we fight the aliens? And they're, they're breaking it down. Like this is what the aliens would do first. This is what they'd do second. This is what they do third. They're just totally breaking it down. I was like, dang. But they're saying at the end of the, at the end of the day, the best way we could win is through, I think they call it guerrilla warfare? Or maybe insurgency, I forget what they called it, but that's what they would say. It's like, we live here. So we have that advantage of like, we can hide for, you know, months and then attack and then go hide again, you know? Cause we live here. Meanwhile, they're here. So it's like.

• 36:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're here. They gotta run supplies from their own, whatever alien spaceship.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they gotta make moves and they gotta, you know?

• 36:19Jocko Willink?

  Me into a protracted conversation about alien invasions. I'm losing this war over here.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  But it's, it's the exact metaphor though, you know, like where if like aliens are coming over, whether it be to take over or to get some alien job done, bro, we live here. We don't, you know, we can take hits. We're still living here.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  This is the thing that's ridiculous about this argument is what level of competence does the alien, do the aliens have?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  We'll say varying levels of competence.

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So if they're, let's face it, we could get invaded by aliens that were not that advanced and we would just kick their ass real quick.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Like on District Nine or something like that?

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, but I don't, I don't, I'm not familiar. When, where did that battle take place?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  South Africa.

• 37:01Jocko Willink?

  What was, who, who were the insurgents?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Aliens. Oh, no, the insurgents were, I guess that's not really an insurgent situation. Yes, sir.

• 37:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about an actual wartime situation that I was unaware of.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the aliens came down? Yeah, I don't, I don't know, but, um, yeah, on that movie. Yeah. I guess, you know, District Nine was not about any kinda insurgency at all. It was more that show.

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  What was their competence? What was their competence?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  The alien?

• 37:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Basically, it was like aliens. I don't know. I forget why they were there. No one really knew why they were there. But it's it's essentially the ship didn't it didn't crash, but it sort of got jammed up. And they were sort of stuck there.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  So they would they find after a few months or a month or whatever they they were the human people went up and with their helicopters because the alien ship kind of came didn't crash, just hovered and stayed there, didn't open, did nothing. So they go up and they explore. They open the alien craft. Pretty good, good show. Anyway, they open it and all the aliens are all starving and freaking, you know, they're messed up. Like they're desolate, you know?

• 38:00Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  And so they're like, hey, well, they're not hostile. So what do we do? Just leave it? I don't, you know, so they set up these camps for them, you know, they'd help help them or whatever.

• 38:10Jocko Willink?

  So the aliens were kind of quarantined.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  They were.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  But they had a lack of food.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Lack of food. So they kind of shuffle supplies, but probably they're sort of aliens, you know, like, I don't know. What do you do? You can't just let them live with us because they're kind of whatever. So it's kind of that situation. So it was less about fighting them. It was less about that. It was more about some other issue.

• 38:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I guess you'd have to figure that if an alien element made it here, they're pretty advanced. They got some technology. So I don't think we're going to be coming up against the the JV team.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  No, that's what that show was saying.

• 38:40Jocko Willink?

  The JV team isn't going to show up on Earth.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  Right? Because how did they get here? They designed some kind of a spaceship.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:49Jocko Willink?

  Got here. These are some, these are some Elon Musk level smart.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Well, then again, technically, uh, sure that but that does that indicate? Or does that um, does that prove that they're going to be squared away in all ways? You know, maybe they just have this new technology. They can do this stuff, but does that mean?

• 39:07Jocko Willink?

  If you can make a spaceship that can get here, I mean, you had to, you had to fight to get here. This was not easy.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's a different kind of fight when you think about it. See what I'm saying? It's kind of like, you know.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, maybe they're just people that if imagine if they just didn't even have the concept of violence, right?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  It just was war. It just was totally foreign to them.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:25Jocko Willink?

  And so they could show up here and the first one that, you know, tries to do something, somebody just hits him in the head with a bat.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they're like.

• 39:33Jocko Willink?

  Just all shocked.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, all confused and what?

• 39:35Jocko Willink?

  But is that even possible that there's a group that just has no comprehension of violence?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  If there is, you know what they'd be? They'd be aliens. Because, you know, see what I'm saying? Things work different. You see what I'm saying? You know how like, um, every once in a while, like you'll, you'll get a situation where, I don't know.

• 39:52Jocko Willink?

  This turned into a grounded podcast real quick.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  I'm thinking of something real like ambiguous actually right now, but let's say, okay, let's say you're, you're the alien. You go to a distant planet and you're like, we're gonna take over. So we're gonna, we're gonna bring this poison. This poison is like the most lethal poison ever created here. So we're gonna take this and we're just gonna exterminate them all. Like that's how, so we're gonna go and then you go to this distant galaxy, you go to their planet, whatever. Perfect for, you know, perfect, just like Earth, whatever. And you go, you start spraying this poison.

• 40:22Jocko Willink?

  And they're licking it up.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like, oh my gosh, it solves like a bunch of their problems and makes them super, you know, it's like that. Kind of situation. I'm just saying, it doesn't prove that just because they know how to travel through dimensions or whatever. It doesn't mean they're gonna be successful in everything. You see what I'm saying? It could be, it could be the opposite.

• 40:40Jocko Willink?

  Right on. All right, well.

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  Protracted war, that's where we were at.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  Mao's theory of protracted war outlines three phased politico military approach. Strategic defensive. This is where the enemy. And in this case, you're flip flopping back and forth and who's the enemy, but the enemy, meaning the government has stronger forces, so you're in defense. Then stalemate where you're doing guerrilla operations.

• 41:12Jocko Willink?

  And then offensive is when you actually have

• 41:16Jocko Willink?

  beat down the government forces enough that you can actually have a real war with them, almost like a conventional war. And then it talks about how you can go. These stages, you can go, you can go through one stage, you can skip a stage, you can come back to the stage. So that's what happens with protracted war. It's very hard to, speaking of protracted war, it's very hard to get the submission on the insurgents. Cause every time you get them, get them in a chokehold, they slip out and they slip away, right? And now you can't go and find them because they slip back in with the local populace.

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  So you you've got to kind of, you know, check for that. So that's protracted popular war. They got traditional, many contemporary insurgencies fit a more traditional approach based on clan, tribe, or ethnic group. Such insurgency typically has an entire community join the effort as a whole, bringing with them their existing social and military hierarchy.

• 42:14Jocko Willink?

  The primary struggle in an internal war is to mobilize people in a battle for legitimacy. And I think that word legitimacy and legit is one, the thing that made me start thinking, maybe I should do the counter insurgency manual, because think about how often that happens in an organization. The leader is either legitimate or not. And if you're, if you're not considered legitimate, everything is hard. And if people think you're legitimate, everything is that much easier.

• 42:51Jocko Willink?

  So when you are acting as a leader and you do things that negate or detract from your legitimacy, you're doing a whole lot more damage than you think you are.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  Every time you use your authority in an abusive way, your legitimacy goes down. Every time you tell a lie, your legitimacy goes down.

• 43:15Jocko Willink?

  Every time you do the right thing, your legitimacy goes up.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like, you know, when people will say, I demand respect, you know, like that thing.

• 43:29Jocko Willink?

  You automatically just lost respect.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of, right?

• 43:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  It's because that it's not really how like.

• 43:35Jocko Willink?

  By the way, you don't even have to say that. You can just act like that. Just act like you demand respect.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, just call me sir, damn it, kind of thing. I'm not saying there's anything wrong calling someone sir or whatever, but you know, that kind of stuff, like they'll harp on that kind of stuff. Like you can tell someone's reaction when they're reacting to this detail where it's like, oh, Brad, you're, you know, like, I see what you're doing right now. And you're basically saying like, I demand respect. I'm not gonna, I mean, me earning it, that's a whole different thing. You see what I'm saying? But you do, you just better give it to me, kind of thing. So it's like one of those, you know, if you're illegitimate, that tends to be like what it looks like. If you're legitimate, it tends to not be what it looks like.

• 44:17Jocko Willink?

  It's just a good little framework to think and to to filter your actions through. Does this make me more or less legitimate? Mobilization means there are five means to mobilize popular support. Persuasion, coercion, reaction to abuses, foreign support, apolitical motivations. A mixture of them may motivate anyone individual. So persuasion.

• 44:42Jocko Willink?

  Political social security. And economic benefits entice people to support one side or the other. This is where you're like, hey, we're gonna take care of you. Coercion. This is the carrot and the stick, right? Persuasion is the carrot. Coercion is the stick. You either get on board with what we're doing, or we're gonna give you a beat down. Reaction to abuses, this one is important. A government that abuses its people or is tyrannical generates resistance to its rule. Think about that from a leadership perspective. Think about all those three things from a leadership perspective. You can either use persuasion, you can use co- so carrot, stick, and then. Reaction to abuses. So if your abuses, if you abuse people as a leader.

• 45:23Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna have been injured, maltreated, victimized, dishonored, or had close friends or relatives killed by the government, particularly by security forces. May lash back at their at their attackers. So when you're abusive to people. It's gonna come back at you. It adds fuel to the insurgency.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  So you're saying the insurgency will use that?

• 45:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Like that's in the other tactic? That's how you get people to come on board. If I show up at your house and I was like, hey, Echo. I was real sorry to hear about your brother.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:52Jocko Willink?

  I'm really sorry to hear about your brother. I can't believe that they did that to you.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:56Jocko Willink?

  I can't believe the government security forces did that to your brother. Do you wanna fight back?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:03Jocko Willink?

  Here's what we're doing. You see where I'm going with this?

• 46:08Jocko Willink?

  So that what does that mean? That means that when you're fighting an insurgency, you can't add fuel to that fire. You have to be very careful.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:18Jocko Willink?

  And how you act towards the populace. Because the populace. Because the insurgents will utilize your abusive actions. To bolster their cause.

• 46:31Jocko Willink?

  Foreign support, obviously you can have people on the outside that like to see, that want to support some insurgent inside of a country. Apolitical motivations, these are, here's criminals, mercenaries, people attracted by the holy warrior's romantic status and others whose self-images of being a warrior and a fighter for a cause might also join insurgency. I think you saw a lot of that in ISIS, people that were just criminals and just wanted to go get, get crime on.

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it wasn't like they were promising a whole bunch of nice stuff in, in the Islamic State.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 47:13Jocko Willink?

  Other than authorized rape of, you know, women, children, girls and boys.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  There was, you know, I'm not gonna say how I saw this, but I saw some ISIS promo videos. Like promo, like, I don't know that they were recruiting videos.

• 47:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  I've seen some of those too, but it was like a promo, like advertisement for this cool like club kind of thing. I was like, dang it.

• 47:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wait, were they ones that were like insanely violent?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 47:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so they were just kind of real positive?

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it would show like, yeah, they were, there was, there was a whole bunch of them. And yes, they're the insanely violent one that were kind of like produced a little bit, you know, that was, yeah, that was kind of odd. It was like weird, um, cause I don't, I don't know who they were marketing to. I mean, I couldn't relate to the audience that they were marketing to, we'll say that. But yeah, and the other one, the nice one was odd because of like what, everything else they've been putting out, you know? Then it was like, almost like this utopian commercial.

• 48:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the, that's a crazy world of, I guess, social media. Have you heard my new term for the social media?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:25Jocko Willink?

  Emotional media. It's not only for social media, it's actually all media.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:29Jocko Willink?

  Cause every media right now is just emotional media. How can we make everyone hyper emotional? What story can we show to make everyone freak out? Let's do that. What video can I tweet or share on?

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  The gram to make people get super crazy.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:48Jocko Willink?

  Let's do that.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which one can we can people retweet? That's a big one where they'd be like, okay, this is like super retweetable. Cause you're gonna get all fired up and then you're gonna say something along the lines in your head. You can say something along the lines of, can you believe this guy said this? Boom, retweet. Everyone who agrees with you, boom, they're gonna feel the same way, hopefully retweet too.

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's also actually some people that weren't really thinking about it, see that and they go, wait.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 49:17Jocko Willink?

  They get emotional.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:18Jocko Willink?

  And then you get a whole

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  millions of people.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:26Jocko Willink?

  Next little sections is about causes, a cause as a principle or movement militantly defended or supported. Insurgents may create artificial contradictions using propaganda and misinformation. Insurgents have much to gain by not limiting themselves to a single cause.

• 49:49Jocko Willink?

  Insurgents employ deep seated strategic causes as well as temporary local causes, adding or deleting them as circumstances demand. So you get this sort of whatever your, whatever your problem is with the government. Like if you're an insurgent in Iraq, people, you know, not only do they say, well, well, in Iraq it was, you know, the, the Ba'athists have been in charge forever. And not only that, but we don't have whatever, you know, we don't, we don't sell our oil. We don't, we don't get enough money for our oil. Whatever grievance you have becomes part of something that we adopt.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:23Jocko Willink?

  And that can happen inside any team, right? What starts off is, you know, if you're mad, you know, I'm telling, I'm mad because we're using a new method and you're mad because we didn't get a pay raise. Guess what? Now we got it. We're both, I'm mad about both now. I'm gonna adopt, you're damn right, we need more money.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:41Jocko Willink?

  And that's how the insurgencies grow. They start adopting all these different problems.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:47Jocko Willink?

  All these different causes unify them into one giant cause.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it like solidifies the like enemy. Like that's the enemy versus us.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  Any country ruled by a small group without broad popular participation provides a political cause for insurgents. Exploited or repressed social groups by the entire class, be they entire classes, ethnic groups, or small elites, may support larger causes in reaction to their own or narrower grievances. So, again, as a leader, when you're looking at your team, internal, see that you might be getting multiple causes turned against you. Next section's about mobilizing resources.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  And, obviously, insurgents, well, resort to tactics such as guerrilla warfare and terrorism, not only because of their disadvantages in manpower or organization, but also because they usually begin with limited or inadequate resources compared to the counterinsurgent. So, that's why you end up with guerrilla warfare. Asymmetrical warfare. They talk about money, they talk about insurgency and crime. Sustainment requirements often drive insurgents into relationships with organized crime or into criminal activities themselves. This is absolutely true. I know the Iraqis had all kinds of crime going on, or the insurgents had all kinds of crime going on. Smuggling, and black markets, and the whole nine yards to try and pay for what they were doing.

• 52:24Jocko Willink?

  And then, you know, in Afghanistan, they got this massive drug trade to support the insurgency. So that's definitely something that can be problematic. Elements of insurgency, leaders, combatants, political cadre, auxiliaries, and mass-based leaders, control the insurgent movement. They are the idea people and the planners. They usually exercise leadership through force of personality, the power of revolutionary ideas. Isn't that interesting? The power of revolutionary ideas. Isn't it kind of interesting? Like, you always hear me talk about how, I was a rebellious kid, and I'm even, I was rebellious in my Navy career, without a doubt.

• 53:06Jocko Willink?

  I was rebellious, I always have that kind of rebellious thing. But this, the idea that the power of revolutionary idea, of revolutionary ideas...

• 53:18Jocko Willink?

  There's like a natural human kind of, there's a natural human draw to that. And you know what? My best example of that, which you, my friend, will give me a full salute and credit for.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Dude, right.

• 53:35Jocko Willink?

  You know what it is? What is the, what is the insurgency that you think of that everyone is drawn to and everyone supports?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Insurgency that everyone draws to.

• 53:43Jocko Willink?

  Every, just about every human being supports one particular insurgency.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  I don't know. Individual responsibility, I guess.

• 53:54Jocko Willink?

  What? Star Wars.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Star Wars, what? The show? The movie?

• 54:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the movie. Who are the, who, what's the name of? The Rebels.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:04Jocko Willink?

  Right? They're revolutionary. That's what's happening.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:07Jocko Willink?

  Why does, why do these revolutionaries, why does Che Guevara, you know, have this T-shirt that everyone, cause he's a revolutionary?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  Right? People like that.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:18Jocko Willink?

  Is this some weird, it's, I, I guess it's, can be kind of like rooting for the underdog.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  Maybe there's some kind of, some kind of attraction to that.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  That just naturally exists. That's why when we watch Star Wars, no, no one says, hey, I hope the empire wins, right? There's no one saying that.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Even the name, the empire. Yeah, I see, I see what, yeah, what, what's going on there.

• 54:44Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it, it's the American revolution, right? The revolutionary ideas.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:50Jocko Willink?

  People like that kind of thing.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, the under, I mean, that's a common story.

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  I guess, you know, I'm, as I'm thinking through it psychologically, you know what you like about it? You know what's naturally attractive about it?

• 55:04Jocko Willink?

  You take all your grievances in life.

• 55:08Jocko Willink?

  Right? I don't, don't make enough money. I didn't end up where I wanted to end up. My girlfriend dumped me. My boyfriend dumped me. I don't like my house. I don't like my car. I don't like my apartment. Whatever grievances you have, you can package all those things up and you can point a finger at them and you can say, those things are all wrong. I'm being revolutionary over here.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And you identify with that. I mean, back to the movie thing where you identify with that person. You're the one who said Star Wars. You're the one who said that. So you think.

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  What do they call just the rebellion? What do they call the rebels?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  The rebels, yeah, rebels, rebel base. Yeah, the rebellion in the Senate. Yeah, that's, yeah.

• 55:46Jocko Willink?

  And you support them. They're the underdog.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Versus the empire. Yeah, but that's most, that I don't want to say most movies because I haven't seen most movies, but that's a lot of movies, the underdog. Bro, that's it kind of, to be honest, it seems like all of them, like Bro, Karate Kid, fricking Rudy. I don't, I don't know. Name Rambo. I don't know. Whatever movies you watch or whatever.

• 56:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the underdog.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:10Jocko Willink?

  So those are the leaders. They're going to capitalize on the power of revolutionary ideas. Even in marketing, right? Even in marketing, people are like, this is a revolutionary new

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  pair of sneakers or phone or whatever, right? Everyone is attracted to that idea.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Remember on Rambo, First Blood, part two, this, that time where he was hiding in the wall?

• 56:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  It wasn't the wall. It was the mud. It was the mud wall essentially in the, you know, in Vietnam or whatever. And like he opened his eyes and you could only see his eye. And then he'd like undoes his fingers first, you know, and he comes out and kills everybody. That at the time was a revolutionary idea. Like, oh, he hid in the mud right there. That was kind of dope, the way he did it. You see what I'm saying?

• 56:54Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I think you just, I think you just nailed it.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  But it's true.

• 56:59Jocko Willink?

  Just captured it all.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  More or less.

• 57:02Jocko Willink?

  Combatants, combatants do the actual fighting and provide security. There's the political cadre. The cadre is the political core of the insurgency. They're actively engaged in the struggle to accomplish the insurgent goals. Auxiliaries are active sympathizers. Active sympathizers who provide important support services. And then you get the mass base. And these are followers of the insurgent movement, supporting the populace. And again, so inside your organization.

• 57:33Jocko Willink?

  Inside your team, you can identify who these people are when there's an insurgency going on. Right? There's the leaders of it that are kinda, I guess they have this advantage of they're standing up to the man, right? They're revolutionary. They got a little advantage there. There's combatants that are actually gonna try and make things happen. There's this cadre that's out there kinda, you know, running their mouths and sowing seeds of discontent. There's, then there's sympathizers and the mass base. So if you can identify who these people are, you can realize what you need to do to disrupt this insurgency from happening. And isn't it weird that as we talk about this, I just had this instinct right now, even in my own head, just right now as we're having this conversation.

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  Even I sympathize with the insurgents in like talking, I'm thinking about, oh, I got this new idea and the man and all that stuff. That's real. That's real stuff that you feel.

• 58:31Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I, you think it's because we're American? Or is it a global thing? Like, are we American that were raised, hey, you know, we're, we're Americans, we're revolutionary. We rebelled against the king.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe.

• 58:43Jocko Willink?

  We made our own country. We won't stand for this kind of, you know what I mean? That's America. But there's, but the thing is, it's universal.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  I feel like it's universal, yeah, because it's kinda like the, our need for balance. So you get like someone who's just starts out their starting point as an underdog, whether it be in a movie or in life, or just in any certain situation that you're presented with. If someone feels like an underdog, it just feels like an imbalance of some sort, power imbalance, whatever kind of imbalance. So we kinda, part of our mind, I think, anyway, that's what it feels like when I experience it. Part of your mind kinda wants it to be more balanced. We want him to get out of that underdog situation. So when he does, it's like, it's almost like a feeling of satisfaction, you know? It's almost like, it feels like justice or something like that. It's like, it feels so unfair, unbalanced that this, the empire's huge.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  We just like seeing the underdog win.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's what it is, what, why it is, I think. It's what it feels like.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  I guess that's, that's the traditional heroic. That's what it is. That's the, it's the traditional, it's one of the traditional, whatever there are for heroic journeys. One of those heroic journeys is, you know, David and Goliath. The little guy stands up to the big guy and we all appreciate that.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Rocky IV.

• 59:58Jocko Willink?

  Which

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Drago.

• 59:58Jocko Willink?

  Is that Drago? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Come on now, it's a good one.

• 1:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, dynamics of an insurgency, you've got leadership objectives, ideology, environment, geography, external support and sanctuaries, phasing and timing, leadership we know about. One thing they say is extreme decentralization results in a movement that rarely functions as a coherent body. So usually insurgents insurgencies are super decentralized, which means they have a hard time sort of coordinating mass, mass movements together. Objectives, they gotta have clear objectives. They got their ideology and narrative.

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  Narrative is a word that gets thrown around all the time. What's the story that we're telling? Right? And how do we fit everything into the story that we're telling?

• 1:00:52Jocko Willink?

  Ideas are a motivating factor in insurgent violence insurgencies gather recruits and amass popular support through ideological appeal recruits are often young men suffering from frustrated hopes and unable to improve their lot in life. It's what I just said.

• 1:01:08Jocko Willink?

  The insurgent group provides them identity, purpose and community in addition to physical, economic and psychological security. I mean, how just blatantly obvious is that? The movement's ideology explains its followers tribulations and provides a course of action to remedy those ills.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, I think again, back to that balance thing, you know, where we kind of want that, like, think about this too, where, okay, there's this place, I don't know where, Ireland, it was in Ireland, I don't think, I don't know, it was somewhere where you get like criminals, bad criminals, murders, like rapist type guys or whatever and. The in jail and it's not even called jail, I don't think. It's it's essentially a rehab center. But in the rehab center, this is what you get. You get like pets and you get it's essentially like a for therapy to rehabilitate them. So there's punishment and then there's rehabilitation, right? They they focus on no punishment. It's just rehabilitation and apparently from what I read or whatever, it's like pretty successful.

• 1:02:11Jocko Willink?

  That's good.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, though, with that. It feels super unsatisfying because you get a guy who raped, you know, a lady, killed her and then killed the husband or something like that. For example, he goes no punishment. He goes to this place where he gets pets. He gets um, he can hang with girls. He can, he makes friends. He gets like um, he learns like stuff, skills and stuff like that. He doesn't, he's not locked in a cell. He's at a like a little resort kind of thing.

• 1:02:37Jocko Willink?

  Even even murderers?

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Even murders, yeah. Yeah, hundred percent. So, yeah, there's no punishment part of it.

• 1:02:43Jocko Willink?

  So what, so where's the no satisfaction coming?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  But if that the person, the victim of this criminal is like your wife or something and this guy gets to go to a resort.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're saying they the victims have no satisfaction at seeing this rehabilitation take place. They just want to go blood for blood.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like that imbalance still remains because this guy gets to improve his life after he killed my wife meanwhile.

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  Are you sure it's murderers and everything?

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I read. That's why to me it was so impactful.

• 1:03:11Jocko Willink?

  Problematic. I don't know how well that would work here. Because you'd get some, you'd get some vengeance going down.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. But here was the thing and the point of the article was that there was um, like the, what do you call it when you go back to like you go to jail and then you get out? Then you go back to jail? It's like recidive.

• 1:03:28Jocko Willink?

  Going back to jail?

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, yeah, it's like relapse kind of thing.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  The rate was so astronomically good that no one went back to jail. It was like that. It was like it was so effective at rehabilitating the person. But meanwhile, when you think about it, man, there's still this massive imbalance. It's like people wouldn't be very happy with that. See what I'm saying?

• 1:03:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  But as a society, like as a whole, as far as groups, as far as criminals getting rehabilitated, which I mean, how can you be against criminals being rehabilitated? It's hard to be against that, you know? But we still don't get that satisfaction. We need that, you know? It's like that imbalance, that imbalance.

• 1:04:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, I I just back to this here, just this idea that you have and it it says.

• 1:04:13Jocko Willink?

  You know, young men, you know, that's who that's who we're talking about. We're talking about young men that are that are unable to improve their lot in life. And this is you how how you end up with these people getting drawn into these super usually extremist type organizations. The most powerful ideologies tap latent emotive concerns of the populace such as the desire for justice, religious beliefs, or liberation from foreign occupation.

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Ideologies provide a prism, including a vocabulary and analytical categories through which the situation is assessed. Thus, ideology can shape the movement's organization and operational method. You know, it's interesting, you start tracking on that, what do they call it here? Just vocabulary is what they call it. But you know, you track any sort of organization that's out there that sort of has a you know, you look at some some things you that's kind of got a weird culty feeling to it. One of the main things that gives something a culty feeling is when you hear the vocabulary that's all being used and it's all not just used, but it's used as like

• 1:05:26Jocko Willink?

  this weird kind of way to answer any questions and circular arguments and always comes back to these things. And you're like, oh, this is getting kind of funky over here.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah.

• 1:05:38Jocko Willink?

  Very strange.

• 1:05:42Jocko Willink?

  Environment, geography, external support and sanctuaries. These are all just really getting into some of the details. I will stop at this one, though. Phasing and timing insurgencies often pass through common phases of development. Not all insurgencies experience such phase development and progression through all phases is not a requirement for success. So there's different phases that you can go through. And like I said earlier, in this way, you got to pay attention. You don't have to go through every phase. You don't start at phase one, go to phase two, then phase three, and then you defeated at phase three. No, you can still go back to phase two. You defeat phase two, they go back to phase one. Then you think, oh, I think we're under control. Then they go to two again. Then they so they go back and forth. You got to pay attention to that.

• 1:06:25Jocko Willink?

  Talks about insurgent networks. Here's some of those insurgent vulnerabilities. Secrecy, because they gotta keep a secret. Sometimes they have trouble getting the word out there. Mobilization, it can be hard for them to to mobilize support.

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  For for a couple of reasons. One of the things they talk about here is to mobilize their base of support insurgent groups use a combination of propaganda intimidation and they may overreach in both. Counter insurgents should be able to use information operations to effectively exploit inconsistencies in the insurgents message as well as their excessive uses of force for intimidation. So definitely in Iraq, the insurgents went overboard in trying to intimidate people and it pissed off the local populace and it definitely pissed off the sheiks in the Battle of Ramadi, like they got pissed and some of them left, fled, some of them got scared, but some of them got mad and the local populace was saying, we're not, as

• 1:07:27Jocko Willink?

  soon as they saw that there was enough American presence and Iraqi government presence to say, okay, thank you for being here, we'll help you get these bad guys out, they were on board.

• 1:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Financial weakness, it's tough for them to find funding. Internal divisions, this is an important one to pay attention to. Counter insurgents must remain alert for signs of divisions within an insurgent movement. Again, when you're dealing with a group of people and they're all masked against you, look for those cracks, look for ways that they're not sort of in unison. And if you can exploit and expand those cracks, all of a sudden you can break down that, their unification, which is a positive thing. And isn't it weird, again, I have this little guilty thing in the back of my head that's like.

• 1:08:19Jocko Willink?

  I don't want to break down, you know, the rebels. Right? Because I've been programmed by Star Wars to support the rebels and by the American Revolutionary War. That's who I identify with. We identify with the rebels.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll tell you an example of that. You've watched The Matrix and I know this is, I know I'm real movie heavy.

• 1:08:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I I've watched it. I like saw it one time in the theater, so I don't remember much about it.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  So there's this guy, I forget his name.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  The guy from Bad Boys. Anyway, you know him, he's actor.

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  He uh I definitely know him then.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  What was his name? Not APOC. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So basically he's, so you know what The Matrix is about, right? Everyone's plugged into the matrix. And then meanwhile, Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne, Morpheus saves all these people from the matrix, right? And the the real reality is

• 1:09:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, the only thing I remember this whole movie is when I think the main character says, jujitsu. I know jujitsu. That's what I remember.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:24Jocko Willink?

  Trying to get that download.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got that. Yeah, for sure. So Morpheus plucks everyone, everyone out of the matrix. Matrix is like everyday life. You know, just look at a job and whatever you're living life or whatever. When you get plucked out of the matrix, the real reality is a straight up dystopia. Straight up machines running everything. You're living in, you know, in a post apocalyptic times. So this one guy, it starts to weigh on him apparently. And he's like, bro, I don't even like this. I kind of liked it better in the matrix, being ignorant. So he

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  ends up teaming with the agents, which is like the agents of the matrix.

• 1:09:57Jocko Willink?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Guys that roll around and and betraying the rebels. That's what that is right there. That when you get, you find little slight divisions and then you exploit them, you know? And and he, he ran the risk of bringing down the whole. Team, see what I'm saying?

• 1:10:12Jocko Willink?

  Wait, which team?

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  You know, Morpheus and the team.

• 1:10:15Jocko Willink?

  But he wanted to do that, right?

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so he didn't run the risk. He could have.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Jocko Willink?

  Wasn't a risk to him. He wanted to.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:23Jocko Willink?

  Does he, does he take the blue pill? Is that right?

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  No, he wished, he said, and this is what indicates that there was a fracture in it, just a little bit of a division. When he, it was like one of the early scenes with them, he was talking to Neo, the main, the one, the main character. And he was like, you're thinking this, I'm paraphrasing, he's like, why didn't I take the blue pill? He was like saying like, oh, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that. Meanwhile, I don't know if that was what he, you know, the blue pill is like you stay in the matrix.

• 1:10:50Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Red pills, you see, you know? So basically he was indicating that he was sort of thinking of like, that he regretted it a little bit, kind of thing. You know, that was like the little fracture that they showed in the story. But then, yeah. So, yeah, they almost, uh, they almost lost, but you know, Matrix or Morpheus, Neo, they're very powerful.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  They were able to keep it real.

• 1:11:15Jocko Willink?

  This is the Hollywood Podcast. With Echo Charles. And Echo Charles. Aspects of counter insurgency. This is, so all that kind of, I hate to say that was like the introduction, but this is where we get into aspects of counter insurgency. This, so this is how we actually overcome the insurgency. In almost every case, the counter insurgent faces a populace containing an active minority supporting a government and a similar militant faction opposing it.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  And they kind of lay out, oh, it's pretty much like a bell curve. Whatever the cause, there will be an active minority that totally supports the cause. There'll be a neutral or passive, that's the majority of people are just, hey, we don't really care. And then you've got an active minority against the cause, which this is something important to think about in life, especially in. Well, like, right now in America, that you, who do you hear from? You hear from the two way far extreme ends of the spectrum. Everyone else is just, you know, just trying to live a life and do the right thing and feels, you know, considers things sort of as a group, you know, like all, all pretty much the same.

• 1:12:31Jocko Willink?

  Hey, this is, this is, yeah, this makes sense. This doesn't make sense. This is smart. This isn't smart. And then there's people on the spectrums, I mean, on the outside of the spectrum that are jumping up and down screaming and getting crazy. They are not the majority of humans. They're a small number of people.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  But boy, they make a lot of noise.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  They call them what? The vocal minority?

• 1:12:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  The silent majority?

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think so. Silent majority was Nixon originally said that.

• 1:13:05Jocko Willink?

  Upon assuming coin mission, soldiers and Marines must not only be prepared to identify their opponents and approaches to insurgency they are applying. Counterinsurgents must also understand the broader strategic context within which they are operating. So you need to think about the bigger picture, obviously.

• 1:13:25Jocko Willink?

  Historical principles.

• 1:13:28Jocko Willink?

  Number one. Legitimacy is the main objective. The primary objective of any counterinsurgent is to foster the development of effective governance by legitimate government. All governments rule through a combination of consent and coercion.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Now, think about that from a leadership perspective. All leaders, just think if I said, all leaders rule through a combination of consent and coercion. That makes sense, right? You're coercing people to do, and they're consenting, they're saying, okay, we'll do it. Governments described as legitimate rule primarily with the consent of the governed.

• 1:14:13Jocko Willink?

  While those ruled as illegitimate tend to mainly rely on coercion, like making and forcing people to do things, which you've probably heard me say this at echelon front events, you know, when I, I'm always saying, well, I never really had to order anyone to do anything. We would just kind of talk about it and things would happen.

• 1:14:35Jocko Willink?

  Why? Because I was legitimately in these positions. I wasn't there just, hey, I got, I, I have the rank and that's why I'm in this position. Like, no, I have some experience. I listened to other people. Like, that's what's good. Citizens obey the state. Oh, this is talking about the illegitimate. So if you're an illegitimate leader, the citizens obey the state for fear of the consequences of doing otherwise, rather than because they voluntary voluntarily accept its rule. A government that derives its power from the governed tends to be accepted by the citizens as legitimate. So if you're, if you're elected, right? If that's where you got your power from, then it's usually considered legitimate.

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  It still uses coercion, for example, against criminals, but the bulk of the population voluntarily accepts its govern- governance. In Western liberal tradition, a government that derives its just powers from the people and responds to their desires while looking out for their welfare is accepted as legitimate. So that's your goal as a leader. And anytime that you rely on a leader, on your rank, on your authority, on your power, anytime you're doing that, you're taking away from your legitimacy.

• 1:15:46Jocko Willink?

  Legitim- legitimacy makes it easier for the state to carry out its key functions, which include the capability to regulate social relationships, extract resources in appropriate, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways.

• 1:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Governance that is not legitimate is inherently unstable because as soon as the state's coercive power is disrupted, the population ceases to obey it. This is when you hear me talking about, hey, you might be, you know, if I, if I bark and if I'm your boss and I say, Echo, you better wear your gloves when you're in this compound. Or I'm gonna fire you, right? You're gonna do it. But when I'm not there? You're not gonna do it. Wait, so, so this is why that type of leadership doesn't work. Coercive leadership. Threatening people, that's why it doesn't work. It's not freaking legitimate.

• 1:16:50Jocko Willink?

  Five indicators of legitimacy can be used to analyze. Frequent selection of leaders in a manner considered just and fair by a substantial majority of the population. That includes, that includes promotions, right? If people are getting promoted for good reasons. That makes sense, then they're considered to be more legitimate. A high level of popular participation in or support for the political process. A low level of corruption.

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  When you as a leader do things that you know aren't right. When you make little maneuvers that you shouldn't be making, guess what? Your level of legitimacy goes down. You need to maintain the high ground. A culturally acceptable level or rate of political, economic and social development. A high level of regime acceptance by major social institutions.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  Governments that score high in these categories probably have the support of an adequate majority of the population. As, as leaders that score well in these areas are also going to have a high level of support.

• 1:18:01Jocko Willink?

  Military action can address these symptoms of a loss of legitimacy. However. Restoring legitimacy can only be accomplished using all instruments of national power. Without the host nation government achieving legitimacy, coin cannot succeed. So you can beat people down all day long. That doesn't give you legitimacy. You can solve tactical problems with military might with brute force. Doesn't help you.

• 1:18:35Jocko Willink?

  You can't win. You can't win with that. Ain't it crazy to think this big military manual? You cannot win with just military force. You cannot beat someone into submission. It doesn't work. Well, it doesn't work on a long, long-term scale.

• 1:18:53Jocko Willink?

  Couple other things here.

• 1:18:56Jocko Willink?

  Unity of effort is essential. That's true with any leadership. Political factors are primary.

• 1:19:03Jocko Willink?

  One of the generals from Mao Zedong's Central Committee once stated that Revolutionary War was 80% political action and 20% military action. 80% of it is political action. 80% of it is maneuvering.

• 1:19:23Jocko Willink?

  Understand the local environment. You have to do this. Here's a couple. The local population is critical center of gravity of an insurgency. Successful conduct of counterinsurgency operation depends on thoroughly understanding the society and culture within which they are being conducted. Soldiers and Marines must understand the following about the population area of, in the area of operations. How key groups of society are organized, relationships and tensions above them, ideologies and narratives that resonate with the groups, group interests and motivations, means by which groups communicate, the society's leadership system. And what's so funny about this is at Echelon Front, when we go and consult with a company,

• 1:20:07Jocko Willink?

  these are the things that we're trying to figure out during our assessment phase. We're trying to figure out, okay, we figure out how their task organized, what's the, what are they set up like? Then we start going, what are the relationships? Where are the tensions? Then what narratives resonate with the group? With the different groups, right? You got the frontline leaders that are saying, oh, they never do that. You got the senior leadership that's saying, oh, what would they know? You see what I'm saying? There's little narratives that we're trying, group interests and motivations. You gotta know what those are. Means by which the groups communicate. How do they actually talk to each other? Is there an open line of communication? So these are all things that we look at to figure out how we fix leadership inside of a company.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Do you, um, do you do that because like, did you get that straight from here? Or do you just happen to do that and boom, there's a parallel?

• 1:20:57Jocko Willink?

  Well, we don't just happen to do that. In order to solve the problems inside of a, of a company, you have to understand these things.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Right, right. But you, you know, you knew that for sure.

• 1:21:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, but did you get it from there?

• 1:21:10Jocko Willink?

  I get what you're saying. No, I didn't get it from this. But when you know the way broadly, you see it in all things.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:18Jocko Willink?

  And I'm sure as I worked with companies, you start saying, well, how's your relationship with that department over there? You know, and, and hey, so, so explain to me what you think, where you think the company's going, right? What's the, what's the narrative? It just lines up.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:34Jocko Willink?

  Because you have to figure these things out.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  Do you go in kind of like good cop, bad cop, you know?

• 1:21:39Jocko Willink?

  You don't have to. You don't have, you don't have to have good cop, bad cop. Because, because everybody knows that we're there to help, right? There's no, we're not trying to bust them. We're trying to help.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, that's true.

• 1:21:51Jocko Willink?

  People tell us everything that they, you know, they, they, they're very open and honest with us.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you, do you ever do like little sly things like, and I guess I shouldn't say sly, because you know how like if you're really trying to ask this question, but you can't just come out and ask that question because you can't expect them to just come out and give you that straight dope answer. You, so you kind of ask these other questions to kind of get a frame.

• 1:22:15Jocko Willink?

  What you want to know is are there interrogation tactics that are being utilized when they're interviewing the personnel that we are consulting?

• 1:22:22Jocko Willink?

  That's your question?

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Of course, you know, but I mean, it's not there. You're right that they're not sly.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:29Jocko Willink?

  It's like we're getting information from people that they want to tell us. It's not, it's not, we don't have to set them up or coerce them to say things or we don't have to. We talk to them.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  Here's what the advantage that we have is people want their company to be successful.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:47Jocko Willink?

  And so when you ask them, hey, what works well, they tell you. When you say, hey, are there any issues? They tell you because they want, they want to have those issues fixed. This isn't, the easiest part of the job is gathering this information. Knowing what information to gather is important, but the easiest part of the job is gathering this information because people are over, they're just, they're just more than happy to tell us what's going on.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  Couple of things that are required of soldiers and Marines at every echelon. When you're, when you need to know about the cultural context. You've got to have a clear nuanced and empathetic appreciation of the essential nature of the conflict. So you've got to hear and listen to both sides. Wouldn't that, doesn't that make sense?

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and essentially like have some understanding, like, like, hey.

• 1:23:44Jocko Willink?

  And empathy.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like I can see how you think that.

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  I can see how you think that. I can see where you're coming from.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Jocko Willink?

  That's a good idea to have in your head for life, for living, for being a human.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  It's so true. Like the idea that like someone just doesn't get where that person's coming from. It's almost like, bro, that's just because a lack of effort, you know?

• 1:24:06Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And here's the deal.

• 1:24:10Jocko Willink?

  You're missing out. You're, you're missing out. If I argue with you and I don't listen to what you're saying and I don't see what your viewpoint is, there's no way I can defeat you in an argument. I don't understand you. How can I defeat you in an argument unless I understand where you're coming from? And, and not necessarily even defeat you. How can I find a solution if I don't understand where you're coming from? Because I'm not looking to defeat you in an argument. That's what you do when you're 20. That's what you do when you're 23, defeat people in arguments. When you're, hopefully by the time you're 48, like me, you actually don't want to defeat someone. You want to find a solution. There's a lot of arguing that happens just broadly.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  I mean, right now, we're seeing it all day long, every day in, in the emotional media, social media, mainstream media. It's just total. No listening, all talking, no perspective, no empathy. It's, well, I shouldn't say no, because there are a lot of people that are actually listening, trying to figure out what the solution is. But, but many people, they don't want to try and figure out what the solution is. They want to defeat the other person in an argument. Which is so pointless.

• 1:25:22Jocko Willink?

  So then you need to understand the motivation strengths and weaknesses of the insurgents. That's obviously important.

• 1:25:29Jocko Willink?

  You want to conduct intelligence drives driven operations, meaning we want to actually pay attention to what's going on. Want to gather good intel. Isolate insurgents from their cause and support.

• 1:25:44Jocko Willink?

  Smart move.

• 1:25:47Jocko Willink?

  Establish security under the rule of law. The cornerstone of any coin effort is security for the civilian population. And this is probably the number two line that I stole from this. Thank you, General Mattis. Thank you, General Petraeus. Because when I had to start discussing up the chain of command, what we were doing, why we were doing it, it was this line right here. The cornerstone of any counter insurgency effort is security for the civilian populace. Because what we were doing, tasking a bruiser, was going out and killing bad guys in order to protect the civilian populace. And that right there is the cornerstone of counter insurgency.

• 1:26:32Jocko Willink?

  So we were able to just get all of our missions approved up the chain of command because what we were doing was in support of the cornerstone of of of counter insurgency.

• 1:26:46Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for getting those chapters out early enough that I had this to lean on.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  Illegitimate actions, this is just so illegitimate actions by government officials, security forces and multinational partners are those involving the use of power without authority. Oh, wow. Power without authority. When you use power without authority or you abuse power, you you illegitimize yourself.

• 1:27:22Jocko Willink?

  Every action by counterinsurgents leaves a forensic trace that may need to be used in a court of law. Counterinsurgents document all their activities to preserve wherever possible a chain of evidence and more importantly as a means to insurgent propaganda.

• 1:27:41Jocko Willink?

  This is epic and I'll tell you why.

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  Because inside businesses, you make some little move, you make some little move and you think no one's gonna know it, but it leaves a forensic trace. And that's just a different way of saying, you know, I am always telling people, everyone's watching you and if you try and lie to them, they know it. That's what's happening. That's 100% what's happening. You try and lie to somebody, they know it. You try and make a maneuver on somebody, there's a forensic trace and they know it. Don't do your little maneuvers to try and take care of yourself.

• 1:28:25Jocko Willink?

  Prepare for a long-term commitment. Back to that protracted war idea.

• 1:28:35Jocko Willink?

  Here's some contemporary imperatives of counterinsurgency. Manage information and expectations. Achieving steady progress towards a set of reasonable expectations can increase the population's tolerance for the inevitable inconvenience entailed by ongoing counterinsurgency operations. So just setting good expectations. Setting good, realistic expectations and then moving towards them so that you can look around at the team and say, hey, look, we're making progress. This is where we're going and this is how we're getting there. We're making progress.

• 1:29:10Jocko Willink?

  Both the insurgent, both a counterinsurgent and the host government ensure that their deeds match their words. Do what you say, say what you do. Here's the other thing that triggered me into talking about this. Use measured force.

• 1:29:29Jocko Willink?

  Any use of force generates a series of reactions. There may be times when an overwhelming effort is necessary to intimidate an opponent or reassure the populace, but the type and amount of force to be applied and who wields it should be carefully calculated by a counter insurgent for any operation. An operation that kills five insurgents is counterproductive if the collateral damage of the creation of blood fuels or the creation of blood feuds leads to the recruitment of 50 more. Now, this was a little bit strange because there was some of that idea that, oh, every time you kill an insurgent, you create five more. I would definitely hear that. I didn't see it.

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  What I actually saw was the opposite. When we would kill an insurgent, the local populace would be like, okay, it was, they got emboldened, they got braver, they got tougher, they gave us more support.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  Why did they say that? Or what was their thought?

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  The thought is, hey, you know, and if you kill, if you, they see you kill, you know, some kid, some, some, some, uh, some family member, right? Some family member gets killed and you think, okay, well, we just created, you know, his five brothers.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Right, they're mad.

• 1:30:48Jocko Willink?

  And now they're mad. But actually, oftentimes it was like, hey, don't follow what Freddie did.

• 1:30:56Jocko Willink?

  We know, we know he was doing bad stuff and he got killed. And they kind of got it. And I'll tell you what, they also, to a, to a huge extent, understood collateral damage. The local populace understood collateral damage. So if we blew up a building or blew up a door and we entered a building and it shattered the windows and it turns out that we, you know, it was either the wrong building or whatever, and we'd say, okay, you know what? Hey, here's a bunch of, we'd give them a bunch of money, we'd apologize, we'd say what happened, explain to them. And they would be like, yeah, well, you are at war.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, they, and they would, and this is how I know that this is real, is they'd give us information. They'd say, oh yeah, you, I know who you're looking for. You're looking for that guy? Yeah, he's, he's been gone for two weeks. And then we'd say, yeah, thanks. We know it's our fault. Here's some money.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird how like to hear it, you know, because you know, you you get whether it be reports or like usually it's from someone, someone who has a different, I don't want to say agenda necessarily, but you know, like if someone's like against the war or something like that's kind of their their their deal, you know, so they're kind of trying to input not they're trying to convince that.

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  And I don't want to paint this, you know, beautiful picture because obviously there's there's there's obviously times where you know, the there's one of those brother gets killed and one of the other brothers says, I'm gonna go avenge, you know, go avenge. But you know what? Think about it. In a family. Right? The mom and dad, there's four brothers. One of the one of the brothers is out doing insurgent stuff. And he gets killed. The mom and dad are looking at the other brothers going, hey, do not go and do what your brother, does that happen all the time? No, not all the time. Sometimes the, you know, the dad says, well, avenge, you know, we're go avenge your brother.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:53Jocko Willink?

  Not usually.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So and then, yeah, the point is too, where you you from the outside, you kind of hear someone's argument and you and you kind of like, well, that makes sense. Just like how you said, where where it's like, yeah, the brother got killed. If your brother got killed, you would at the very least have some feelings of vengeance, at the very least. Not to mention people who live in a war zone who are down for the fight a lot of the time, they're gonna see their brother get killed. They're gonna be like, hell, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna come avenge. That that doesn't stick out as a lie.

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  It's so, yeah, and it is true. The problem is it's very simplified.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Jocko Willink?

  Right? Because because what's really happening? What's really happening is the dad is going, hey, do you remember Saddam Hussein? He was horrible. These Americans came and kicked his ass and got him out of here. And and and now we're moving in the right direction. Now you want to go fight them? What's wrong with you? And then that guy gets up, getting killed and the guy goes, looks at his brother and says, you see what happens?

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And see, and when you explain that, you're kind of like, whoa, that makes a lot of sense, too.

• 1:33:52Jocko Willink?

  It's real easy just to stereotype and throw everyone with a broad brush and say, oh, they're they, everyone thinks like this.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:00Jocko Willink?

  It's totally not true, man. Even in a family, there'd be some people, kids would be insurgents, some kids wouldn't.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's not to mention, like, some of the terror that these normal families have been, you know,

• 1:34:11Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  inflicted on them. And then it's like,

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, when you say they understand collateral damage, it's kinda like you, the way you said is almost like, and which is actually correct. From my perspective where it sounds obvious, everyone understands collateral damage, you know, like everyone kinda understands that, you know? But so why would we assume that they don't like everyone should understand. So when you say you're like, well, of course.

• 1:34:38Jocko Willink?

  Because we we dehumanize.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:40Jocko Willink?

  Dehumanize that local populace and think that, oh, they're just there. Here's a common emotion. You blew up my door. I'm mad. I'm gonna fight you now. When it's really, when actually you're dealing with human beings and we, people forget that we're dealing with human beings that are smart.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:56Jocko Willink?

  And they think, oh, you blew up their door. Now they're gonna wanna plant a roadside bomb. No, actually, when you blow up their door and you say, hey, we were looking for this guy. And he wasn't here. Do you know where he is? Yeah, he's been gone for two weeks. Hey, sorry about your door. Here's some money. By the way, we're gonna send a team out here and hang a new door for you, which we did.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:14Jocko Willink?

  And they go, yeah, appreciate it, you know, please, please let your friends know that there's no bad guys that live here. And by the way, the the only problems we've had on the street is that building down there. There's been some people in and out of there. You might wanna keep an eye on it. Okay, cool. Thank you.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so even hearing that, it's like, brother, that makes sense. In fact, that sounds more likely. If you were in that situation, you'd feel that way.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying. So this idea that every time one, you know, you kill a person, you kill a bad guy, that now five more, it's totally untrue. And not, not to mention, there's some people that are like, oh, sheesh, I don't wanna go get involved with that, right?

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:50Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that's what they say. There's a high deterrence level. There's a very strong deterrence level. Because what you, what people miss out on is just the, like you said, and the way I always explain Iraqi families. I'm like, oh, you wanna know what Iraqi families like? They're like a family. They're like a family. And there's be, you know, the dad's got this and the mom's got this going on and the kids and they, you know, they've got a rebellious kid, right? You go into one of the rooms, there's like weird pictures of whatever, you know, Iraqi movie stars. I mean, you know, music stars and like, it's, they're just, they're just people. And we just paint them with this broad brush of how we think

• 1:36:32Jocko Willink?

  they will react or how we've been told that they'll react. And it's just not true.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  Gotta learn and adapt. Oh, before I go there, who wields force? Who wields force is also important. Providing the police have a reasonable reputation for competence and impartiality, it is better to let police, and these are police that are local police, handle urban raids rather than soldiers and Marines, even if the police are not as well armed or as capable as military units, since the populace is likely to view that application of force as more legitimate. So you want the Iraqis to handle their own problems. Now, in Ramadi, there was, what made it tricky is a lot of the Iraqi army soldiers were Shia and the local populace in Ramadi was Sunni. That's why as quickly as we could, we got the Sunni policemen,

• 1:37:26Jocko Willink?

  Iraqi policemen that were from Ramadi to start doing these kind of things. Because there was more, in some cases, not in all cases, in some cases, there was more tension between the Shia soldiers and the local populace than it was between the Americans and the local populace.

• 1:37:45Jocko Willink?

  Learn and adapt. An effective counter insurgent force is a learning organization. Right back to our podcast we did with Dave Burke.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Good deal, Dave.

• 1:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Empower the lowest levels. Mission command is the conduct of military operations through decentralized execution based upon mission orders for effective mission accomplishment. What does that mean? It means hire commanders, empower subordinates to make decision with the commander's intent. They leave details of execution to their subordinates and require them to use initiative and judgment to accomplish the mission. Decentralized command, thank you.

• 1:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Support the host nation. And what the little part I wanted to pull out of this support the host nation thing is, American forces committed to coin are there to assist a host government. The long-term goal is to leave a host that is capable of standing on its own two feet. In that end, the host nation has to win its own war.

• 1:38:53Jocko Willink?

  Achieving this requires the development of viable viable local leaders and institutions. US forces and agencies can help, but host nation elements must be able to accept responsibility to achieve real victory. And then it goes on to warn that you can't, you can't be the easy button. When something needs to happen, you can't say, okay, well, we're Americans and we can make that happen. No, you need to actually not be the easy button.

• 1:39:18Jocko Willink?

  And this is one of the last sections here. It's called paradoxes of the counter insurgency, which if I would have named this section would have been called the dichotomies of counter insurgency. But you know what we're saying.

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  Principles and imperatives discussed above reveal that coin presents a complex and often unfamiliar set of missions and considerations for a military commander. In many ways, the conduct of a counter insurgency is counterintuitive to a traditional American view of war. And that right there, that statement is why I'm saying if you're going to start to overlay warfare principles in your business, in your life, you need to also include counter insurgency in there because sometimes they're counterintuitive. Sometimes they're different than traditionally the way you think of war. And I think this attitude, this whole attitude is so important to be able to take warfighting and overlay it into other scenarios.

• 1:40:20Jocko Willink?

  If you only know how to fight a conventional war of attrition, you can't overlay those principles over the rest of your life. They won't work all the time. They're not nuanced enough. They don't understand, they don't understand the complexities. And one of those complexities is there's paradoxes and there's dichotomies.

• 1:40:42Jocko Willink?

  Number one, the more you protect your force, the less secure you are.

• 1:40:51Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean? You have to take risks. And when you take risks, when you, when you get outside the wire, when you go work with the local populace, the more secure you'll end up being. So as a leader, if you stay locked up in your office, you feel like you're safe in there because you're not out there, you know, getting engaged with people, not getting asked tough questions, the, the less secure you are, you need to get out there. Next one, the more force used, the less effective it is, boom. When you're barking orders, when you're, you know, yelling at people, when you're, when you're saying you better do this or I'll fire you, whatever, whatever those things are, the more force you use as a leader,

• 1:41:33Jocko Willink?

  the less effective it is. When you use the minimum force required, that's the most powerful. The next is the more successful coin is, the less force that can be used and the more risk that must be accepted. So as you proceed down the path, you need to use less and less force and you have to take more and more risk, which is crazy. The initial reaction to the counter insurgency push in Ramadi was, enemy attacks are going up and American casualties are going up. And guess what? It was true. So some people up the chain of command, not, not my chain of, well, yes, all up the chain of command. Everyone was saying, wait, there's more, what's happening?

• 1:42:18Jocko Willink?

  There's more enemy attacks, there's more American casualties. This isn't working. No, actually that's exactly what's gonna happen. Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. Often an insurgent carries out a terrorist or guerrilla act with the primary purpose of enticing the counter insurgent to overreact or at least react in a way that can be exploited. If a careful assessment of the effects of a course of action concludes that more negative than positive effects will result, an alternative should be considered, potentially including a decision not to act. Now this is, You know, default aggressive, this is not default aggressive.

• 1:43:02Jocko Willink?

  Bias for action, this is not taking action, but default aggressive and bias for action. Bias for action is what the Marine Corps says, they want Marines to act. They want them to have a bias to actually do something. They want a bias to take action. Default aggressive is the echelon front. This is me telling young junior officers in the SEAL Team, hey, your default has got to be go take action. Make something happen. But both bias for action and default aggressive, neither one of those say 100% go. No, it's default, meaning that's what your default is, but you might have to adjust it. Bias for action doesn't mean you take action, it means you lean towards taking action. Sometimes you need to look at the situation and say, you know what's going to help here? Nothing.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  The best weapon, the best weapons for coin do not shoot.

• 1:43:51Jocko Willink?

  Counter insurgents achieve the most meaningful success by gaining popular support and legitimacy for the host government. So how often is it that you as a leader can make more progress? By instead of telling someone, no, we're going to do it my way. Instead of shooting them in the face with that, you say, okay, your way sounds good. You make, you increase your legitimacy. As opposed to decreasing it when you fire one off in their face.

• 1:44:25Jocko Willink?

  The host nation doing something tolerably is better than us doing it well. Hey, as a leader, when you got a subordinate leader, you know, you can do it better than your subordinate. But it's oftentimes better to let them do it good enough.

• 1:44:42Jocko Willink?

  If a tactic works this week, it might not work next week. If a, if it works in this province, it might not work in the next. You got to keep an open mind. You got to change, you got to adapt.

• 1:44:54Jocko Willink?

  Tactical success guarantees nothing.

• 1:45:01Jocko Willink?

  When Colonel Harry Summers allegedly told the North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975 that, quote, "You know you never defeated us on the battlefield," end quote, the reply supposedly was, quote, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant," end quote. Military actions by themselves cannot achieve a success in coin. Tactical actions must not only be linked to the operational and strategic military objectives, but also to the essential political goals of coin.

• 1:45:41Jocko Willink?

  Tactical success guarantees nothing. As a matter of fact, it's irrelevant, according to this North Vietnamese Colonel.

• 1:45:54Jocko Willink?

  Last one, "Most of the important decisions are not made by generals."

• 1:46:04Jocko Willink?

  It's the competence and judgment of soldiers and Marines at all levels. Senior leaders must set the proper tone for actions by their organizations with thorough training and clear guidance and then trust their subordinates to do the right thing. Preparation for the tactical level leaders requires more than service doctrine. They must also be trained and educated to adapt their local situations, understand the legal and ethical implications of their actions, and exercise subordinates initiative and sound judgment to meet their senior commander's intent. You, at a company, in an organization, as the CEO, as the COO, as the president, as

• 1:46:45Jocko Willink?

  the guy in charge, most of the important decisions are not made by you, they're made by someone out there on the front line, so you better lead them correctly.

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Little section on successful practices and unsuccessful practices.

• 1:47:11Jocko Willink?

  I'll read some of the unsuccessful practices. Place priority on killing and capturing the enemy, not on engaging the population. What does that mean? That means when you have a problem inside your team and all you do is attack like whoever you think is doing it. That's where your priority is instead of building relationships with the group. You're wrong.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  So when you're a little kid and

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  someone, I don't know, broke the water heater and no one wants to fess up. So when your dad comes and says, uh, someone tell me or else you're all, you'll, you'll all get punished. Is that sort of the same thing like you shouldn't do that?

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  That's collective punishing and it's, I don't, I don't, I don't really agree with collective punishing. There are times where it's used, for instance, in team building exercises like SEAL training.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're going to get that all day long.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. One person makes a mistake, they're going to make everyone pay and they're doing that actually to create some sort of friction. Right? What's wrong with you, Echo? Keep your head under the boat. We're going to keep doing this until Charles gets his head under the boat. Come on, Echo, what's wrong with you?

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of like a two little pronged effect, right? One, you, you want to put more heat on that guy because like letting the team down. A lot of times it's more punishment than letting yourself down, especially when they're all right there. And then the other part is yeah, that friction. Put some stress on everybody.

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  Stress everybody out.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  Do it. I remember in football, they, we, there's like, okay, so you know, when, okay, in football, you say, um, you know, you say what's called a cadence. You say, set down hut or go or whatever, right? The quarterback says it, whatever. So if you jump, if you start before the actual count, you know, you, you call for false start, offside. Yeah, depending on office defense, you know, people call different things sometimes. So anyway.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  There are certain drills like to drill that in your head and it's always it's like an ongoing drill anyway. So if so if we're gonna do like some conditioning or something, it'll be in the conditioning. So everyone will line up, let's say it's wind sprints, they'll be like, okay, the count is on three. So they'll set down hut, hut, hut on the third hut, they go. Some people still jump offsides during the conditioning, see what I'm saying? It's like a drill that constantly goes. So if one guy jumps offsides, everybody pays for it. And sometimes the guy who'll jump offsides doesn't pay for it.

• 1:49:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, they'll call him out, be like, you just go ahead and sit down, Charles.

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, or basically in a wind sprint situations, the common thing in our situation would be like, okay, let's say it's a fifty yard wind sprint, right? You start at the at the zero yard line and you run to the fifty or whatever.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  So it's the count's on two, set down hut, one guy jumps offside, Echo jumps offside. Echo stays there, everyone else goes five yards back. So now they have a fifty five yard wind sprint, I only have a fifty, I do it again, they go five yards back again. See what I'm saying? So it's like, it puts way more pressure on you to get it right. So you so you do learn, I think, but some people can get into this weird downward spiral because they're so stressed about everyone mad at them now. So they don't even think, so they can't like get their get their act together, it's funny, but it's.

• 1:50:33Jocko Willink?

  It's a good way to create stress.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:50:37Jocko Willink?

  Uh, some of the successful practices, the other unsuccessful practices are, you know, very sort of military based, conduct battalion sized operations as the norm. That's too big, concentrate military forces in large bases for protection, we know that that's not gonna work. Focus special operations forces primarily on raiding, like, hey, we're gonna go capture, kill bad guys. That's not where you wanna put the focus. You could, you need to do it for sure, but it can't be the focus.

• 1:51:06Jocko Willink?

  So that, so then there's some of the successful practices are emphasize intelligence, focus on the population, their needs and security.

• 1:51:16Jocko Willink?

  Focus on the population, focus on the people.

• 1:51:20Jocko Willink?

  Expand, establish and expand security areas, isolate insurgents from the population.

• 1:51:27Jocko Willink?

  So those are the kind of things that help out. Place police in the lead with military support. We, we, we absolutely tried to do that. We put the Iraqis, we brought the Iraqis with us, we, we put them in the lead. So those are some solid, successful practices. And here's the summary from this first chapter, counter insurgency is an extremely complex form of warfare. Truly war at the graduate level. At its core, counter insurgency warfare is a struggle for the support of the population. Their protection and welfare is the center of gravity of friendly forces and I'm.

• 1:52:04Jocko Willink?

  The decisive terrain. This is something that I stole. Well, I think this is the third like big thing that I stole from this to sort of start selling counter insurgency up my chain of command. Was this idea that the center of gravity, the decisive terrain in this fight was not an airfield, it wasn't a part of town, it was the people. If we got the people. Like, you know, when you, when you storm a beach, once you get the beachhead, you know, you want to get a foothold, that's the, that's the decisive terrain. If you're taking an island, you want to get the high ground. Here it wasn't the high ground, it wasn't the, the, the beachhead, it wasn't the airfield.

• 1:52:48Jocko Willink?

  It was the people. Gaining and maintaining that support is a formidable challenge. There are a host of non-military agencies who efforts must, whose efforts must be synchronized and coordinated with those of military to achieve these aims. And this, this thing closes out insurgents are also fighting for the support of the population, but are constrained by neither the law of war nor the bounds of human decency. They do anything to preserve their greatest advantage, the ability to hide among the people. These amoral enemies survive by their wits, constantly adapting to the situation.

• 1:53:29Jocko Willink?

  To defeat them, it is essential that counter insurgent forces develop the ability to learn and adapt rapidly. And continuously.

• 1:53:45Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:53:48Jocko Willink?

  learn and adapt rapidly and continuously seems to be a common theme here. On this podcast in the books that we review in the people that we talk to in the lessons that we learn. We seem to hear it over and over and over again.

• 1:54:07Jocko Willink?

  As one of the primary and most important attributes.

• 1:54:13Jocko Willink?

  Of winning. So I think it's pretty clear. That you need to take lessons like this. And if you can learn to apply them and you can universally apply them, right? There's no and it says in the book, it says you can't just universally apply these things that you always have to be smart enough to pay attention to run a feedback loop. See what's actually happening and adjust. And you can only do that, by the way, if you're humble enough to to actually listen to the feedback loop.

• 1:54:49Jocko Willink?

  Everything is related. Everything is connected.

• 1:54:55Jocko Willink?

  And you can overlay these things. Into whatever part of your life you need to.

• 1:55:04Jocko Willink?

  To counter. Whatever insurgency that you're facing, whether you're on the battlefield. Whether you're in business, you're a leader. You're you're facing an insurgency in your own family. Sometimes. And we also have to pay attention to the fact that we might have an insurgency going on. Inside of us.

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  An insurgency of weakness.

• 1:55:37Jocko Willink?

  And sloth. Trying to bring us down. Echo Charles.

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any recommendations how we could fight the internal insurgency that we are facing every single day?

• 1:55:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's there. Hundred percent there. Okay. You know, when you. When you got a workout planned.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  And then boom, you feel the battle going on inside all the reasons why today should actually, you know what? Think about it, today should be a rest day. That's the one side, you know, and the other side is like, nope, shouldn't be a rest day. In fact, you're, you're weak right now and let's get stronger. Let's push, there's a lot of physical benefits. And if you overcome this feeling of not wanting to do the workout and you do it anyway, that's even, now you're getting stronger mentally too. And now, you know, but meanwhile, it's like, boom, it's a little battle. The other side is like, but you got all that other stuff you could be doing that you need to do. You got this stuff to do. If you get that done, boom, you'll be way better off. I'm just saying you'll get some recovery, you know? So it's like two battles going on.

• 1:56:39Jocko Willink?

  Insurgents are in there.

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And they're, and it's like that, when you said the insurgency on the inside, it's that. It's the weak part of, it's happened to me before. Oh, go ahead and go ahead. Let the cat out of the bag right there. So if I'm working on something, right? Whatever it may be, and it's, it's time for the workout or whatever, like that part of me would be like, God, just do it tomorrow. Do the workout tomorrow, cause look, you got all this thing that you're in the middle of getting that done is actually better right now, where it's beneficial, you know? That insurgent is trying to win the heart and mind of my whole actions. See what I'm saying? Like showing me the benefits, you know, of like skipping the workout. That's kind of evil in a way, you know?

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  But yeah, we gotta fight against that. Anyway, so, yes, so what are we doing? Boom, we're working out.

• 1:57:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  Don't skip the workout.

• 1:57:32Jocko Willink?

  Don't skip it.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  If you're injured, skip the workout.

• 1:57:34Jocko Willink?

  Today was, today, this very day.

• 1:57:37Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:57:37Jocko Willink?

  I, I knew, looking at my week ahead, cause what is the day of the week? It is Saturday right now.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:57:44Jocko Willink?

  So I looked at the week ahead and looked at tomorrow. I'm pretty booked up tomorrow and the whole week is kind of crazy. And I know that we needed to get this done. So my first thing, you know, I always wake up early in the morning, work out, but I knew I had to prioritize this. And I actually got it done pretty quick. I, you know, I had already read it, so now I was going through, making notes and whatever. And I, but I woke up and did that first.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  Before the workout.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  Before the workout, cause I had to prioritize and execute.

• 1:58:14Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I understand.

• 1:58:15Jocko Willink?

  So now it's like, you know, I, I spent like three or four hours finishing the reading, looking a couple of things up and then I was going through, you know, highlighting. So now it's like ten thirty or something like that. Had a little food and I had all kinds of excuses. Locked and loaded.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Especially if you eat though, that's.

• 1:58:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so. So what I did was. Yeah, I had a little insurgency going on.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  And. Then I just texted you and said, hey, one o'clock. Let's do it. And I said, as soon as if he is. I don't care if he responds or not. I'm just gonna go get after it before I eat a like legitimate food.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wait, did I get what the workout?

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, just went knocked out a workout.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:02Jocko Willink?

  Just did sort of a combo workout. Took me forty minutes. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:59:08Speaker 01

  Still solid.

• 1:59:08Jocko Willink?

  But but I just had to get it done, you know, had to get it done, had to overcome that.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  Insurgency situation.

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  Cause sometimes those insurgents can make good points. They're making good points all the time.

• 1:59:18Jocko Willink?

  They know what they're doing.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:20Jocko Willink?

  They absolutely know what they're doing. That's why you gotta be able to counter them.

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  Um, ah, man, I was thinking this.

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it, insurgencies are successful often.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, they're not.

• 1:59:31Jocko Willink?

  If you don't know how to counter them, you're gonna be in trouble.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Big time. What? Um, so I was thinking this yesterday when I was working out. Same way you were that one time you're teasing me about squats or whatever. You were like, oh, I wonder if Echo Scott, remember you saying that? Okay, so I was kind of the same inverse, reverse, whatever scenario where I was like. I wonder if Jaco could do this workout. Like, what if me and Jaco traded workouts, whatever given day? And we had to do the same workout, same weight. Everything. If you can't do it, oh, there's an indicator you can't do it kind of thing, right? So.

• 2:00:04Jocko Willink?

  If you can't do it, it's an indicator that you can't do it.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? That I'm saying that's the purpose of trading workouts, you know, like you always wonder like, I wonder if I could do that guy's workout. I wonder if I could do the, you know, that that football players workout, whatever, you know, you kind of wonder that every once in a while. Especially when you see guys working out hard, like I wonder, you know, these CrossFit guys or whatever. So that's what I was thinking. I was like, I wonder if I, I wonder how I would fare with Jaco's workout because there's two kinds of, kind of, kinds of like. Roadblocks, if you will. One is like if I just can't do the weight, like, let's say your squat is just, it's a bigger squat than me, you know? So if you got freaking a set of twenty, a set of fifteen, a set of nine, and a set of, however that goes. And you're you and I gotta use your same weight and I simply can't get 20 reps with that

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  weight. I just physically can't do it. It's kind of okay. There's that. That's one. Then the other one is like, this is like, I gotta tap out. This is too hard for me. I gotta rest more, or I gotta like, not do 10 sets. I can only do like five or whatever. You see what I'm saying? There's that too. So both of those and probably there's other stuff too, is like, you wonder how would I fare in that exact workout? Same, you know, weight, like we're now work a similar weight as far as body weight or whatever. So it's like, I was wondering that, like, I wonder if, then I was like, first I was wondering, I wonder if I could do Jaco's, then I was, then I was thinking, I wonder if he could do mine. I don't think I could do yours.

• 2:01:30Jocko Willink?

  I think that there is be a Venn diagram where there'd be an overlap in the middle where we could both do each other's workouts. Then I have some workouts that you wouldn't be able to do. And then you have some workouts that I wouldn't be able to do. Yeah. Cause of our specialties, right?

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the metcons, I feel like, I don't know. Cause yours are more extended, right? Your, your metcons, they're like,

• 2:01:56Jocko Willink?

  Probably.

• 2:01:56Speaker 01

  Like what? 15, 20 minutes or something? Yeah.

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  Or more.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. See? So, but they're gonna be less intense though.

• 2:02:04Jocko Willink?

  Depends.

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, I was wondering that. So maybe one day we're gonna see. We should trade straight up, have the workout. I have rest periods built in too.

• 2:02:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's, that's one thing is, yours seems more structured.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  You know, I guess not, I guess not really. Cause, but I just basically, I don't have rest periods.

• 2:02:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:27Jocko Willink?

  Generally, most of my workouts don't have like a rest, like a time where you're like three minutes of rest. I don't generally have that.

• 2:02:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I do for sure.

• 2:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Cause what I'll be doing is some other exercise during that period.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is yet another type of like workout, you know, like stimulus free. Because let's say you're just, let's go, okay, let's go basic example. If you go, um, you know, five sets of 12, we'll just say, right? There's a huge difference with not only the weight you can do, but just overall what you're doing to your body for that workout. If you go one minute rest in between those sets and three minutes rest in between those sets, you're doing like essentially you're doing two different things to your body. You know, so it's like, all right, which workout am I doing then? That's what that's why rest is is kind of set in there. But then if there's no rest in between the sets and you program it like, oh, I need to get 500 pull ups. I don't care how I get them. I just got to get them.

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  I don't know as fast as I can, I guess, or whatever, or just you just got to get 500 pull ups. It's kind of that's part of the workout too, you know? So it's like, it's almost like it's you're doing a specific thing to your body there too, you know? So it's like that fits, you know? You don't have to have rest periods and I program them in for a reason. See what I'm saying?

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, you have a specific purpose, but nonetheless.

• 2:03:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Nonetheless, I forgot. Yes, I'm going to tell people how we can stay on the path. Effectively, healthy and, you know, effective and healthy. Anyway, yeah, so when you're working out, you're going to need fuel, eat good. 80 20 is good. 80% clean, 20% freedom.

• 2:04:07Jocko Willink?

  80% discipline, 20% freedom. Interesting.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  Well, diet wise, that's recommended. You go 90 10, you go 90 10, you start going 70 30, then you that's a slippery slope. That's what I think. Nonetheless, you want supplementation for your joints, for your brain, for even protein supplements, boom, we got you Jocko Fuel supplements, joint warfare for your joints, obviously krill oil, omega threes all day and antioxidants, by the way. Also, discipline and discipline go, which are essentially the same thing, different delivery systems, cans and powders. It's true.

• 2:04:44Jocko Willink?

  And and pills. What are they called? Capsules.

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  Capsules.

• 2:04:50Jocko Willink?

  Cause I told, I told Be Little at the beginning. So we started making discipline. I said, hey, man, this is really good stuff. Yeah. I, this is exactly what I, this is what we want, right? I said, but I, I talk for long periods of time for a living. And if I have to drink this to get my, get that hitter, if I have to drink this before I go out and start talking, and then all of a sudden I gotta go to the bathroom. I said, I need a pill. I told him, I said, I said, put this stuff into a pill. He goes, okay. And he made, uh, what is it called? It's a compressed, not a capsule, but like a compressed thing, whatever. And I don't really like those. So then I had to send him back.

• 2:05:36Jocko Willink?

  Bro, and he goes, he said, he said, you said pill. And I said, I thought that a capsule wasn't. To me, that's the same thing. You take a pill, right? I didn't know that a pill was a, whatever that compressed thing is, and a capsule is something different.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:05:50Jocko Willink?

  But if you need that little, like you need it, boom, you can take a, a, the capsule. Discipline.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Not a pill, not a gel cap.

• 2:05:58Jocko Willink?

  Which actually this stemmed from, so I forget what happened in the world, but there was controversy about veterans and drugs. And someone was saying something like, you know, what do you expect to happen when these, put all these vets on drugs? Put them on amphetamines. And I said, I said, we're not on amphetamines. And he goes, pilots take amphetamines.

• 2:06:27Jocko Willink?

  And I said, I texted Dave Burke.

• 2:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, good deal.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I said, I said, do they give you guys amphetamines to take? And he goes, no. I mean, this is all within, this is, this is on Twitter. This is probably two years ago. He goes, no. And so I go back to the guy, go, no, they never give pilots amphetamines. And then I get, as soon as I tweeted that, Dave Burke.

• 2:06:51Speaker 01

  Good deal.

• 2:06:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He goes back, he goes, bro, I just screwed you. He sent me a text. He's like, bro, I just screwed you. And I was like, what? He goes, he goes, they definitely give it to us. And I, and I was like, and I. I was like Roger, I said, hey, I was wrong, but guess what they call them?

• 2:07:06Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:07:07Jocko Willink?

  Go pills.

• 2:07:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:07:08Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I was saying to, to belittle. I was saying, hey, man, we need go pills. No, we don't need amphetamines in them. In fact, we do not want amphetamines, but we do want the feeling that discipline and, and the, the discipline powder gives you.

• 2:07:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Little cognitive kick.

• 2:07:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, little, little get up and go.

• 2:07:29Jocko Willink?

  Yes. That's why we call it discipline go. Anyways, there you go. That's a little information behind that. We got chocolate white tea. We got milk, strawberry, chocolate, uh, for kids. We got mint peanut butter, the whole nine yards.

• 2:07:41Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:07:42Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and all the stuff is available at Vitamin Shoppe or it's available at originmaine.com.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Yep. Speaking of origin main, other things on there besides chocolate feel like gizzen rash guards for jujitsu. When we go back to jujitsu, if we haven't already.

• 2:08:00Jocko Willink?

  We're kind of getting back there.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 2:08:01Jocko Willink?

  I think there's a, a, a underground moment. There's definitely people training.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Uh, that's.

• 2:08:07Jocko Willink?

  JP's training, Texas is open.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. There's, uh, I think I heard a thing that gyms are opening, uh, June 15th or something like this.

• 2:08:17Jocko Willink?

  They opened with a bunch of restrictions.

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:19Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, but we're getting there.

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Coming out from the underground for sure.

• 2:08:23Jocko Willink?

  So you're gonna need a new gi.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  Yep. Origin gi, best ones factually in the world, by the way, and fully in America, of course, made in America, of course.

• 2:08:33Jocko Willink?

  Which is kind of important right now.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 2:08:35Jocko Willink?

  You want to get your stuff that's made in America, not made in China.

• 2:08:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:42Jocko Willink?

  That's my recommendation anyways.

• 2:08:43Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 2:08:44Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about jeans. Don't forget about boots.

• 2:08:49Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about t-shirts, hoodies, and don't forget about joggers. Unless you're me, if you're me, don't get joggers.

• 2:08:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, just forget about them, actually.

• 2:08:59Jocko Willink?

  There's a whole, a whole just.

• 2:09:03Jocko Willink?

  A whole, there's a whole just plethora of reasons why if your name is Jaco, don't get joggers. They just don't work. Just was not meant to be.

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  Don't put them on.

• 2:09:15Jocko Willink?

  If your name is Echo Charles.

• 2:09:17Speaker 01

  All day.

• 2:09:17Jocko Willink?

  All day.

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  Joggers all day. Oh, yes, sir. Yes, orjamine.com also. Jaco has a store that's called Jaco's store.com. That's where you can get your shirts, custom shirts. Maybe you stretching that word custom for, but nonetheless, you can't represent discipline equals freedom. Good. Take the high ground, the high ground take you. Get after it. It's a good one. Anyway, shirts that will rep, you can represent on the path while you're on. Path. Good stuff. Anyway, some hats on there, some other cool stuff. So yeah, if you like something, get something. Uh, we have an email list. Here's the thing.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  I always feel kind of odd, for lack of a better term, saying, hey, sign up on for our email list. It, it feels weird saying that.

• 2:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's because you have been conditioned in your life that every time somebody told you that and you did it, you got a bunch of junk.

• 2:10:18Speaker 01

  Yes. And I don't want to say spam necessarily, but yeah, it's one of these things where, and I'm down. I am down for the email list a hundred percent. If I'm like, oh, wait, I do want updates on this stuff right here. Like I'm down. I'm not conditioned necessarily against it, but here's the thing. I have felt the sting of signing up for the email list, hoping that I'll be updated with like new cool stuff that they offer or whatever. But meanwhile, they're sending me like, oh, happy Valentine's day from XYZ.com. It's like, bro, I don't care about you wishing me happy Valentine's day in my email inbox, which, let's face it, our email inbox for most of, for some of us, we'll say, I think most of us, but whatever. Our inbox is kind of sacred. Like bro, stay out of there if, if you don't have something significant.

• 2:11:03Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it should be.

• 2:11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So anyway, my point there is if, if you sign up for this.

• 2:11:10Jocko Willink?

  So you're saying all this, now you're going to tell everyone that you should sign up for the email.

• 2:11:12Speaker 01

  I'm not saying anyone should do anything ever, maybe not ever, but I'm not saying in this case. But I'm saying we do have an email list. If you do want updates, and here's basically what I will send out is like if there's a new design or a new hoodie or a new whatever, that's it. Pretty much for the store. With the occasional, and when I say occasional, I mean very occasional exception where if there's like some important announcement. And important is like, very, it has to be very important.

• 2:11:42Jocko Willink?

  What's an example of an important announcement that's come out on the email list? Cause I'm on the email list. Yeah.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  None.

• 2:11:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that's what I, I was gonna say, I haven't got any more.

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just saying.

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Rebecca Charles.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 2:11:54Jocko Willink?

  On the email list.

• 2:11:55Speaker 01

  None have been, but I'm saying if there was like, hey freaking no podcast for one month or, you know, something that like, I would anticipate a bunch of people trying to email me or you about. Then maybe, but I mean, I can't think of anything offhand specifically, but it'd be real important, I think. I will firmly believe that it's important. Anyway, otherwise you're just gonna get new stuff every what? Once a month, maybe once every two, three months?

• 2:12:21Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  Maybe. So anyway, I'm not gonna abuse you. That's what I'm saying. I realize that everyone's inbox is sacred.

• 2:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Where, okay, so let's get to, okay. Where do they sign up for this email address list thing?

• 2:12:33Speaker 01

  On jocko story.com at the bottom.

• 2:12:36Jocko Willink?

  Should I make some kind of an email? Hey.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  No, man. Okay. I don't think so. You know, leave everybody alone.

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  That's like what people are all into, like, oh, you should do it.

• 2:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and I dig it. If it's, that's like the, what do you call it?

• 2:12:51Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever gotten an email from somebody that's like, like you sign up for an email list? And then you get an email, but it says it's from like the person you go, oh. It's from so and so, but then it's just a mass email?

• 2:13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, cause sometimes it is from that person, but it is a mass email. But sometimes it's from like their marketing company.

• 2:13:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess those are the ones that I go, come on, man.

• 2:13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, bruh, I felt all good. But well, this one is good because this is actually from me.

• 2:13:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  So I'll try to make it look cool and official, you know, with some cool pictures on there, but, but yes, it is coming from me.

• 2:13:27Jocko Willink?

  I have friends.

• 2:13:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:13:29Jocko Willink?

  That. You know, kind of have email list, right?

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:13:33Jocko Willink?

  And, and I'm on their email list. But then I'm also have, you know, will exchange personal emails, right? About whatever topic. And I'll get an email from, like an email will show up and I go, oh, oh, that's cool. So and so. And then I open up and it's one of those things. I was like, oh dude, that's a bummer.

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. What do you mean? Like Sam Harris?

• 2:13:56Jocko Willink?

  Just whoever. Yeah, you name them.

• 2:13:58Speaker 01

  I signed up for Sam Harris's email list, but it was ha- happened to be at the same time where I sorta like met him and sorta like know him. And then I seen it like from Sam Harris. I was like, yes, Sam Harris is emailing me. And then it's like his podcasting. I was like, I felt that it was cool. I signed up for a reason. So I was expecting, but that expectation that it's actually him emailing you being like, hey, great to meet you or something like this, you know?

• 2:14:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's funny. No, I get, I get, I get, you know, quite a few friends like that. Where, and you know, I don't, I'm not a big communicator and I don't have a ton of friends anyways. So when I do get emails from my friends, it's always, because I get a lot of business emails, obviously. But then when people email my personal email, you know, and I go, oh. And then I see that it's a form email. Oh, well.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Maybe not quite as excited.

• 2:14:48Jocko Willink?

  But sometimes it has spurred me to email them, right? I've gone, you know, and then they email me back and we have a cool something, you know, but it reminds me.

• 2:14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:57Jocko Willink?

  I say, why, what gave me that feeling like, oh, that's cool to hear from this person or that person? Maybe they were thinking the same thing. Why am I not emailing them? Who am I supposed to not, not taking any initiative here?

• 2:15:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:15:08Jocko Willink?

  So then I'll take some initiative and say, hey, I listened to your last podcast or hey, I saw you do that thing. And they go, oh, cool. You know what I mean?

• 2:15:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:15:16Jocko Willink?

  So it's a little indirect prompt to kind of relate to people.

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Reach out, man.

• 2:15:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:24Speaker 01

  Can't pick up a phone.

• 2:15:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  It's true. All right. Well, nonetheless, there you go. So yeah, jocko store.com. That's where all this stuff is. Also, if you want to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. I know it sounds kind of weird because you probably already are subscribed. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

• 2:15:41Jocko Willink?

  I am. Yes, I am.

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, of course. Yeah, me too, Jocko. But if you're not subscribed, you want to subscribe, boom. Let me remind you that that option is available for you.

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  We also have some other podcasts. We have a podcast formerly known as The Thread, which I was this close to renaming and I didn't like it. And then I found, then I found the ultimate new name for it. And there's already another podcast, which I can't even believe exists with this name that I can't believe has already been taken. So I'm still in the midst of finding out a new name for that.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  Well, what was the name?

• 2:16:15Jocko Willink?

  I can't, I'm not gonna say it.

• 2:16:16Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 2:16:17Jocko Willink?

  Because it's just, I'm not gonna say it.

• 2:16:21Speaker 01

  We're just so, you're so let down.

• 2:16:22Jocko Willink?

  I was so disappointed. And also, I want to see if there's a way that I can still manipulate the name enough to use it.

• 2:16:29Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right, right. Gotcha.

• 2:16:31Jocko Willink?

  But I, but I don't want to give it away. Grounded Podcast, where we talk about jujitsu, which we talked about jujitsu today a lot anyways. So, but we talk about it even more. And we talk about life. And we talk about everything else on the Grounded Podcast. We got the Warrior Kid Podcast for your warrior kids. We got Warrior Kid Soap from IrishOaksRanch.com, a young warrior kid making soap. So that everybody out there in the entire world can stay clean. We got a YouTube channel, which is where Echo takes videos and he puts them on there. Sometimes he puts modifications. I said last time that he should, he should put enhancements into just the podcast. So when I

• 2:17:12Jocko Willink?

  talk about counterinsurgencies, when I talk about weapons, some things should happen in this. You didn't do it. Whatever. Total lack of initiative, but it's all good. I'm sure there's someone out there that would love to modify these things.

• 2:17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, to me, the jury is still out whether or not that's a good idea. So, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna think about it.

• 2:17:33Jocko Willink?

  Why don't we test it? Why don't we see? Next time when we do this podcast, you know, you make your little notes. You make your little, you make your little notes. You should be like, oh, when I talk about, oh, there was this massive explosion. You could just make a little note that says, one hour and 37 minutes, explosion.

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  Here's the thing.

• 2:17:52Jocko Willink?

  For somebody that freaking just puts explosions everywhere.

• 2:17:56Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Yeah. And I'm, I'm an explosion advocate as far as video goes, 100%. But here's the thing. Here's the thing with that. So let's say I put a cool machine gun sound explosions, you know, whatever I put, whatever we put, and one single person on YouTube. With one of those ghost accounts that like, you know, no profile picture, one of those guys says, "That's corny." Brother, it's gonna like devastate me, I think, us.

• 2:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  And we can't do it. That's an indicator.

• 2:18:28Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you need to harden up. We need to toughen up. Also, we got psychological warfare, a bunch of, uh, me talking about your moments of weakness, little psychological hitters. We got flipside canvas, little visual hitters. Flipsidecanvas.com. Support Dakota Meyer while you're at it. We got a bunch of books. The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocols, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3, Mikey and the Dragons, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, Extreme Ownership, and The Dichotomy of Leadership. Check out those books if you like what we talk about on here. Echelon Front, that's our leadership consultancy. I talked about it a couple of times today. We solve

• 2:19:10Jocko Willink?

  problems through leadership. That's what we do. Go to echelonfront.com. And by the way, if you want me to come and speak to your company, don't go to a speaker's bureau, and don't Google Jaco speaking.

• 2:19:25Jocko Willink?

  Just go to echelonfront.com. That's what we do. We have EF Online, which is revamped.

• 2:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Come and check it out. It's online courses. It's online, not just online courses, it's online interactive. If you want to talk to me, if you want to, if you want to hang out with me in a Zoom meeting, get on to efonline.com, and you will get to, I will be sitting there answering your question.

• 2:19:55Jocko Willink?

  muster, our leadership seminar event gathering, Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th. We're doing it. Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. We're doing it. Every gig we've ever done has sold out. Extremeownership.com, if you want to come to that.

• 2:20:14Jocko Willink?

  And if you need leadership in your organization, go to efoverwatch.com. We got military, prior service military personnel that understand the principles we talk about, and they're ready to come to work at your team. Also, AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Mama Lee, Mark Lee's mom.

• 2:20:35Jocko Willink?

  She's out there on the grind, helping in a multitude of different ways. Service members, active duty, their families, Gold Star families around the world. That's what she's doing. You can go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org to either get involved or just donate. And if you haven't had enough of my protracted discourse, or you need more of Echo's arbitrary tales, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to everyone out there in

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  uniform right now, trying to keep order from becoming chaos. And you're doing it voluntarily for us. And a massive thanks to police and law enforcement out there, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service. You do some of the hardest work in the world. You don't make a ton of money. You do it with massive risk for yourselves and you do it to keep us safe. And we thank you. And to everyone else out there. And there are lots of insurgencies going on, lots of insurgencies happening in your

• 2:21:56Jocko Willink?

  life, in your business, in your relationships, in your family, in yourself. And it's really easy just to say, hold the line. It's real easy. I say it all the time. But you gotta remember all these complexities. You gotta remember that more than just brute force, you have to use your mind. You can't just outmaneuver. You have to outthink. You have to give and you have to take. You have to think strategic and you have to play the long game. And it's not easy. But that's how you win.

• 2:22:37Jocko Willink?

  So go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.