460: IT'S NOT THE OPPS!!! Destruction Comes From Within

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 460 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Destruction comes from within.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  This is something I've been thinking about

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  a lot lately. My last job in the Navy was running something called Trade At Training Detachment where our job was to take platoons and task units, what they call now troops and get those groups of men ready for combat.

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  And so we, you know, we're putting them through the training and you end up doing something called FTXs, Field Training Exercises. These are big training missions. They're full mission profile, we call them, meaning you do the entire mission. You do the planning, you do the preparation, and then you go and you execute the insertion, the infiltration, the execution, the exfil, the extract, you come back, you debrief. So this is a, it's as realistic as we can make it. That's the goal.

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  You're in a complex environment. There's pressure. There's a lot of things you've got to sort out. There's a lot of different things that have to happen. It's, it's teamwork, right? Without teamwork, there's no way you could get even the mission planning done. So teamwork has to happen, just like in any other environment, any other type of project, right? Whether it's a construction project, whether it's working at a hospital, whether it's working on a movie set. Sure. Doesn't matter. There's a lot of teamwork that has to happen to make something come to fruition. Now, doing this with SEAL platoons, most of the platoons would, they'd get up to speed. They'd get up, you know, they'd get the job done. They'd go out, they'd execute the mission, they'd accomplish the mission effectively,

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  and they'd move on to the next block of training. Most of the time that would happen.

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it wouldn't happen. Sometimes the platoon or the troop or the task unit would not be successful in the mission. Sometimes.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  They would fall apart.

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  Now, when a platoon would fall apart,

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  it wouldn't be because of the, the opposing force, like the bad guys, the guys, it wouldn't be because of them. It wouldn't be because it was hot. It wouldn't be because it was too hot, too cold. It wouldn't be because of the sea state. You get some giant waves, a platoon falls apart. No, that doesn't happen. What's really hot, a platoon fell apart. No, that doesn't happen. It's really cold, a platoon fell apart. No, it doesn't happen. The op four is just too crazy. It doesn't happen. Or even the super complex mission.

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't make a platoon fall apart. Good platoon.

• 2:57Jocko Willink?

  Normally, what would make, or what, let me rephrase that. When a platoon would fall apart, it would not be because of these external factors that I just named off. The bad guys, the weather, the sea state, the equipment. It wouldn't be those external factors. When a platoon would fall apart,

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  destruction came from within.

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  It's because the OIC, the officer in charge, is antagonistic to the platoon chief. Or the chief is antagonistic to the leading petty officer, or the leading petty officer is antagonistic to the officer in charge. Or the E5 mafia, or four guys from the E5 mafia hate the platoon chief.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  And now all of a sudden, we have a little problem, right? And here's, here's the, the situation that could unfold. These, now these, these external pressures, because going through the training is very difficult. These missions that we put together are extremely complex. They're, it is going to be very hot or very cold. It is going to be super complex. The op four is going to be aggressive and hostile.

• 4:12Jocko Willink?

  And these external forces, if the platoon

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  is solid, those, that external pressure makes them better.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  It brings them closer. It bonds them just like combat. Like a combat unit gets bonded when they get put under that pressure.

• 4:35Jocko Willink?

  But sometimes that external pressure would catalyze the destruction. Sometimes you would see, because look, if the platoon chief and the platoon commander,

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  if they're not really getting along, but then it's like, hey dude, we gotta get this done. Alright, let's go. I mean, that's, that's 97% of the time. 3% of the time? What are you talking about? We're not doing it that way. So what we have is we have, when people are supposed to be going in the same direction, they're supposed to be unified, now they're going in different directions. You know, in, in the book Extreme Ownership? Sure. There's a chapter in there about Boat Crew Six. And Boat Crew Six is this losing boat crew, and they're losing all the races during Hell Week, and they're getting crushed because of it. No bad teams. And Boat Crew Two, that's the name of the chapter. Boat Crew Two is winning every race. And so they switch the leaders.

• 5:31Jocko Willink?

  They take the winning boat crew leader, they put him with the losing boat crew. They take the losing boat crew leader, they put him with the winning boat crew. And now the boat crew that was losing now starts to win.

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, part of that is like, well, what did you actually do? You know what I mean? Because yeah, the guy stepped in and one person makes that much of a difference. Why, what did they do different? Well, they, what that guy essentially did was get everyone to row the boat in the same direction at the same time. Because you can imagine in Hell Week, like, one guy, you know, hits the other guy's oar. What are you doing, man? It's not me. You need to get on with the cadence. Like, they're yelling at each other. Instead of just rowing the boat with the oars at the same time in the same direction. That's how you win a race, by the way. Not, dude, you need to put out harder. I am putting out. Shut up. I see you over. You know what I'm saying? These people are bickering at each other. They're losing.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  What we did in Trade Ed, we didn't want these fractures to be exposed overseas. So yeah, of course, we're working on attackers, the guys, we're working on their individual skillsets. We're making sure they can shoot, move and communicate. All those things are happening. But we also apply enough pressure in the training environment to, if there's problems, these problems are going to be exposed. They're either going to expose them, we're going to have a fracture, we're going to have destruction, or it's going to just bond us together. We're going to learn how to work through things. Our goal was always, of course, like, we didn't want a platoon to fail. We didn't want a troop to fail. Of course not.

• 7:07Jocko Willink?

  These guys are all our friends, by the way. Like, it sucks when a platoon wasn't doing good. It's terrible. But we did want to put them, put enough pressure on them that we see, like, how is this unit, especially like this platoon commander and platoon chief, this LPO and this assistant platoon commander, the E5 Mafia versus the platoon chief or versus the LPO, they can have all these, all these things working in harmony, hopefully. But occasionally, there's no harmony at all. So what we did, remember when Peter Attia was on? And I think it was the first time he came on, he talked about working in ER room and how when a family would lose a family member,

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  shot, killed, stabbed, whatever, car accident, if the family

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  was close,

• 8:00Jocko Willink?

  they would become even closer. If there was fractures in the family, those fractures would expand and explode and ruin the situation. So it's a very similar thing here. So at Trade Ed, we would be paying attention, like, we've got to make sure that these people are not, you know, that they get along. Simply put, make sure these people get along. Because if you and I are overseas and we're not getting along, it's going to be a freaking problem. It's going to be a big problem. We have to learn how to get along. We have to get tested that we get along. Have you ever seen someone that when there's pressure on, they? They start to lose their mind.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, and what I mean by losing your mind, like they lose their temper. They're mad at everybody, they yell and scream. And you know, look, if you and I are in a pressure situation and you start yelling like, hey, Jocko, you need to get over here. And I go, hey, cool. Yup. Got it. Echo, I'm coming. You know what I mean? I can, I can de-escalate that thing right away and we can continue to move forward. But if you say, hey, Jocko, get over here. And I go, who the hell you think you're talking about? Now we have a problem.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  We have a problem.

• 9:10Jocko Willink?

  So someone in that pairing needs to be able to make sure that the pairing is going to work. And by the way, there might be times where I'm getting frustrated and I yell at you, Echo, get your ass over here. And you go, hey, cool. Got it. Got it, bro. And you come and support me. And then three days later, now you're under pressure, you're frustrated. Hey, Jocko, I need you over here right freaking now, dude. And I go, yep, I'm on my way. Sorry, I'm late. You see what I'm saying? We can mutually support each other. We can cover and move for each other.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:42Jocko Willink?

  At Trade Ed, we would be testing that.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  And you know what's funny is it wasn't like a, hey, there wasn't a checkbox, like check continuity and relationship between the platoon commander and the platoon chief. Cause honestly, the reason we didn't have that checkbox is because the vast majority of the time is no factor. The vast majority of time, it's like, hey, the platoon chief and the OIC or the chief and the LPO, the vast majority of the time, they're gonna, there's gonna be, there's gonna be little things, but they're gonna be, they're gonna be, figure out how to work them out.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  Occasionally, we'd start to see some friction.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  And the Trade Ed guys were pretty good at spotting some of that friction because it's so obvious. It's real obvious when it's happening.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:25Jocko Willink?

  Cause you start to see like the, the brief is disjointed, the planning sets like, hey, why is the chief over in this room planning? And then the officer's in a different room planning. Well, well.

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  You guys gonna, you know, get together?

• 10:41Jocko Willink?

  And so then, you know, sometimes the Trade Ed guys would give it like the, um, hey, did your chief always talk to you like that?

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  It's a little bit of a dick move, right? Or like, dude, you're always, he's not listening to you, huh, chief? So you guys do that on purpose? It's a little bit of a test. Yeah. And actually, it wouldn't, it actually wasn't like, oh, here's my intention. But I think the way it lands is like, hey, does your chief always like, does your chief always talk to you like that? Cause you know, the OIC'd come in, hey, chief, I think we need to get this done by seven. Hey, sir, we don't need it done by seven. We need it done by seven thirty. I gotta get my guys to dinner. And you're like, oh, you hear, you hear that tone? Yes, I do. You hear that tone, like, out at land warfare? From a platoon chief, you're like, oh, friction identified. Yeah. Because a good platoon chief's like, hey, boss, got it.

• 11:37Jocko Willink?

  But guys are gonna actually go to dinner at seven thirty. I got a couple of other things we gotta wrap up. Oh, cool. Got it. No problem. No factor. No factor.

• 11:44Jocko Willink?

  Or you hear, you know, the chief goes in, hey, hey, boss, I see the way we're looking at target. We might want to consider using whatever, two sniper elements tonight. Negative. We're only using one. Oh, if you hear that. Yeah. Yep. Again, it's not, it's, it's, it's, it doesn't happen very often, but it happens. Like I said, most of the time, people realize that they gotta work together. They realize that they're gonna need to come to some kind of an agreement and overcome differences. And there's definitely differences. Like, if you're planning for a mission,

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  the chief thinks assault from the north, the OIC thinks assault from the south. The LPO thinks assault from the east and the system, two commanders, assault from the west. Everyone's got a different idea. Uh, should we put the supporting element on this terrain feature or on this one? Well, one person thinks this to one, there's stuff to argue. Should we use helicopters? Should we use a Humvees? Well, you know, I think we know, we should maybe offset this strike. You know, everyone's got their own little idea. And there's a lot of different ways to skin the cat, by the way. As long as you're following the fundamental principles of combat leadership, every one of these different ideas can work. So the good thing to learn as a leader is that as long as the cat's getting skinned.

• 13:08Jocko Willink?

  As long as the cats getting skinned, we're going to be okay. Now, if we want to sit here and argue about how we're going to skin the cat and the cat runs away. You know what I mean? The cat didn't get skinned. Or by the way, like, I think we should skin the cat one way. You think we should skin the cat the other way. Now we're both trying to skin the cat these different ways. And they don't work together. We got a problem. So. Most of the time, like I said, most of the time. One of the leaders.

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  Could put his ego in check. And that's what it boils down to. Most of the time, the leader could put. His ego and check. One of them, the platoon chief, maybe, maybe the assistant platoon commander is like, all right, cool. He's been doing this for a long time. Maybe the chief's like, you know what? I gotta give this kid some opportunity to lead. I got it. I'm gonna stay. You know what I mean? Like, somebody goes, you know what? All right, ego's going into check. Yeah, I know. We're all trying to accomplish the same mission. We all want to skin the cat. We all want to accomplish the mission. I'm not going to freak out here.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  But if they can't do that. And it really does just boil down to ego. If they can't put their ego in check.

• 14:15Jocko Willink?

  Next comes the eye roll.

• 14:19Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? Like, if I can't put my ego in check and you ask for something and I roll my eyes, it's like, that's the beginning. Next thing goes a snide remark. Right? Goes nonverbal eye roll.

• 14:33Jocko Willink?

  Next thing is a snide remark.

• 14:36Jocko Willink?

  After that. The next step. Undermining.

• 14:42Jocko Willink?

  Undermining, which is followed closely by oddly enough. Sabotage.

• 14:51Jocko Willink?

  And all this is kind of comes to fruition with just. Out outward in fighting.

• 14:58Jocko Willink?

  So the snide, the eye roll turns into a snide remark. And sometimes the snide remark is like, dude, I gotta talk to you. You know what I mean? Or like, you give me a snide, dude, let's go. Come here, dude. You know, if I say, hey, Echo, we need to get this done by seven, you go. Oh, is that the call? And I go. Okay. Hey, dude. I'm just trying to get this stuff done. If you if you got a different time, let me know, dude. Like, we gotta, we gotta get this done at some point, right? So, you know, each one of these moments, there's a, there's an opportunity to deescalate. At each moment, there's an opportunity for someone to deescalate.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  You know, and of course, there's someone goes, well, you shouldn't, you shouldn't accept that kind of behavior. I'm not taking that kind of stuff from Echo.

• 15:42Jocko Willink?

  Talk to me like that.

• 15:45Jocko Willink?

  That's when we have a problem. And when we go down that for that, that path of eye roll to snide remark to undermining to sabotage to infighting, eventually what that ends up with is destruction. It's destruction. And yeah, the platoon is certainly going to fail the mission, but the platoon isn't going to fail the mission because the mission wasn't possible to do. The platoon isn't going to fail the mission because the machine gunners didn't lay down enough cover fire. The machine gunners didn't lay down enough cover fire because the platoon chief and the OIC were fighting about where those machine gunners should be. And the machine gunners were standing there waiting to be told where they can go to get a good line of sight of the target.

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  And by the time they got there, it was too late.

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  That's why the platoon is failing. The machine gunners are going to do the freaking machine gunner job all day.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  But when they don't even know what their job is, because we got people infighting and undermining and sabotaging. Oh, you want to put the snipers up on that hill? Okay, cool. Watch this. Put the snipers up on a hill. Doesn't make any sense. Now they get overrun.

• 16:47Jocko Willink?

  We got problems.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  So occasionally,

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  platoons would have to repeat training.

• 16:59Jocko Willink?

  And usually that's such a red flag. Now you've got the commanding officer going, hey, what is the freaking problem here? And most of the time they work it out. They get their shit together. They come back, they redo the training, reload, we would call it.

• 17:16Jocko Willink?

  Reload the training and they, then they get it done. And you're like, cool, man. Sorry it took a little extra time, but we're all good, man. You guys go have an awesome deployment. Occasionally,

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  people get fired.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  You know, the commanding officer might come out, I'd be like, hey, sir, cuz so I'm in charge of training, but there's a commanding officer of the SEAL team that's in charge of the SEAL team. So I'm like his tool to use to get people trained. Trade at is a tool for the SEAL team commander to train his platoons and his troops. So when I'm sending a message back going, hey, sir, these guys just failed their second FTX, we have three more. You may want to come and assess. And he'd come out and be like, what's wrong? And I go, well, here's an audio, cuz I would record audio. Here's an audio, uh, recording

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  of your platoon, one of the platoon chiefs and his OIC last night. I'm not getting over there. You get your freaking shit over. You see what I'm saying? Yep, cool. These guys don't get along, sir. And now, they try and figure that out. What's the scenario? What are we dealing with? So, and occasionally, so occasionally someone will get fired. Maybe it's the platoon commander, maybe it's the platoon chief. Don't know. Usually one of those two. Maybe it's the LPO, but generally speaking, not generally, it's gonna be the platoon chief or the platoon OIC. And quite frankly, it's generally gonna be the officer. Uh, cuz the platoon chief is in that role for a reason. You know, he's got to jump

• 18:52Jocko Willink?

  through quite a few more wickets at that time. Uh, but plenty, that has happened as well. I won't say plenty, but it does happen. So destruction comes from within, is my point in saying this destruction comes from within. And this happens in companies, uh, teams that I work with. And, and listen, the market can be difficult. And competitors in business can be ruthless and the supply chain can be unreliable. And the cash flow can be problematic. All these, there's all kinds of problems running a business.

• 19:29Jocko Willink?

  But all those problems, the vast majority of the time, they're just problems that the team can get solved. I mean, unless you have some product that no one wants, or you're in an industry that no longer exists, or something like that, and you didn't adapt. Well, if you didn't adapt, well, again, we have, we have an ego, we have a leadership problem. But adapting to a new market, offsetting the competitors' moves, dialing in your supply chain, like, all those things are things that can happen. Those aren't problems that destroy companies. Those aren't problems that destroy companies. When, look, there's not a company in existence that hasn't had the market change on. There, that hasn't had the competitor do something that really caught them off guard, that hasn't had their supply chain have issues, right?

• 20:13Jocko Willink?

  This happens in every industry, every industry.

• 20:18Jocko Willink?

  You need some new regulation. I was just trying to think of what industry would not have those problems, possibly like a financial. But then there's some new regulatory environment that gets imposed upon them, and now you gotta make adaptations.

• 20:31Jocko Willink?

  But so it's not these problems that destroy the company. It's the egos. It's the agendas. It's the emotions, by the way, which are also tightly wrapped to your ego. It's the arguing, it's the storming off, it's the not having discussions. It's the failure to listen. It's the

• 20:51Jocko Willink?

  it's the failure to have a relationship, which means listen, trust, respect, influence, and care. The failure to do those things

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  is where destruction comes from. It comes from within. Now, listen, we want to build relationships with people. That means trust, listen, respect, influence, and care, right?

• 21:12Jocko Willink?

  Are there snakes?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  There are snakes.

• 21:17Jocko Willink?

  There are snakes. They, they, they're out there. There's people that you build a relationship with them, and they're gonna take advantage of it. And they're gonna try and screw you over. And they're gonna take everything that they can, right? The thing is with, two, two comments on that. Number one, you know what? You know how you can identify a snake?

• 21:38Jocko Willink?

  Do you know how to identify a snake? Well, they hiss, and they slither, and they stick their tongue out, right? They give themselves away.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand.

• 21:45Jocko Willink?

  They give themselves away. And if you're paying attention, you can watch these snakes move, and you go, oh, I see what this is. I see what's happening here, which is why it's important.

• 21:58Jocko Willink?

  Topic for another day.

• 22:01Jocko Willink?

  When you trust, listen, respect, influence and care. You do so from a point of leverage where you're not gonna give the snake the opportunity to bite you in the neck. You need to keep that snake at bay a little bit, right? You are gonna let him into the yard, you're not gonna let him into your kitchen.

• 22:21Jocko Willink?

  Now you can defang him eventually, or you can realize, oh, it's not a snake, that's good, okay, cool.

• 22:27Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 22:30Jocko Willink?

  Generally speaking. Yes, you do have to watch out for snakes. But most of the time, here's the problem with being a snake, the, the, the snake. You ever heard Jordan Peterson talk about, um. Sociopaths and psychopaths, like they burn every bridge in their town. And then they gotta move to a different town. Because they're just burning bridges everywhere. So. That's kind of what happens with the snake, they're burning this bridge, they've burned this other bridge, they burn this, and eventually, like, it's real obvious. That they're just over here burning. And they're, they're not to be trusted, they're a snake, it's a problem. And you stay away from the snake. So that, that does happen. But most people.

• 23:12Jocko Willink?

  If you take care of them. They're gonna take care of you. If you listen to them, they're gonna listen to you. If you allow them to influence you. They're gonna allow themselves to be influenced. If you treat them with respect, they're gonna treat you with respect, that's what's gonna happen the vast majority of the time. And as long as you don't like, say, hey, Echo, I just met you, you, I, I'm gonna put a lot of trust in you, here's my bank account, and here's all of our money. If you need to, you know, here's an unlimited credit card, and you're a snake, dude, you're gonna clean my bank account out, I'm never gonna see you again, or, you know, whatever. So we're not doing that.

• 23:42Jocko Willink?

  But we are building relationships.

• 23:46Jocko Willink?

  Barring the snake. Which again, keep your heads up for. The destruction comes from within. It comes from us not building relationships, it comes from us not listening to. My platoon chief, or my OIC, or my COO, or my. Frontline workers that are telling me that we're doing something wrong, that's where destruction comes from.

• 24:13Jocko Willink?

  And what's interesting about this and probably the reason that I've had been thinking about this is like, what do you see when you look around America? Right here. Listen, there's external threats to America. Right? There's other countries aggression. There's supply problems. Uh, there's limited resources in the world. There can be economic strife, right? All these things can happen. But all those are just problems that, you know, we need to solve, figure them out, work together to figure them out. They're not existential threats.

• 24:58Jocko Willink?

  None of those threats, if we're unified, could ever destroy us. None of these external threats, if we're unified, could ever destroy us. We could have some hard times for sure. We could be tested for sure. We could feel the pressure for sure. But we could survive, just like a good SEAL platoon. Pressure, attacks, casualties, we work through it. We unify. We work together. Same thing in America. These external threats that we have, whether it's the supply chain,

• 25:41Jocko Willink?

  whether it's the economy, whether it's aggressive states out there, okay. We can survive those things. But what we have to be careful of is being more and more antagonistic towards each other and allowing ourselves to become more polarized.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  It's, you can certainly see some polarization in America. Is it the worst it's ever been? No, it's not. It's not actually the worst it's ever been. I hear that sometimes. It's the worst it's ever been. We had a, we had a freaking civil war.

• 26:21Jocko Willink?

  Six hundred thousand dead. That's 2.5% of the population of the country at the time. It's equivalent to seven million dead, right? If we had that level of death with our current population, seven million dead. So, that's bad.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  That's antagonistic

• 26:43Jocko Willink?

  relationships.

• 26:49Jocko Willink?

  Go in the late 60s, early 70s.

• 26:53Jocko Willink?

  Police were being executed. There was bombs all the time in America. Bombings happening. Police being executed.

• 27:03Jocko Willink?

  This was happening in America.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  You ever heard of COINTELPRO?

• 27:09Jocko Willink?

  So, at the same time, you had the Black Panthers executing police. The Black Liberation Army executing police. You had our government doing operations

• 27:25Jocko Willink?

  against

• 27:27Jocko Willink?

  civilians that, and the civilians were doing things that the government didn't like, i.e. the Black Panthers.

• 27:37Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I want to say like 25 or 30 Black Panthers were killed because of these government operations that were happening.

• 27:48Jocko Willink?

  Um, so you had antagonistic groups going at each other.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Straight up, yeah.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  People dying.

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  Bad, bad relations, even in the nineteen, nineteen twenties. In the nineteen twenties, there were eight million members of the KKK. Eight million members of the KKK. That's between two and four percent of the population was in the Ku Klux Klan.

• 28:15Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if you, if you break out like the percentage of people that were, uh, what's the word eligible for the KKK?

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Eligible, sure.

• 28:25Jocko Willink?

  So like the white people, it was like ten, twelve percent.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:30Jocko Willink?

  Of the whites.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:31Jocko Willink?

  Were in the Klan.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, we got some division going on right now, but it's.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's different.

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So it may feel bad and, and, and what makes it feel so bad right now is social media.

• 28:47Jocko Willink?

  But we, social media makes you feel bad. Makes you feel worse, I should say.

• 28:54Jocko Willink?

  Makes you feel like it's, eh, there's just hate everywhere. Fortunately for me, I live in the world. I don't live in the, in the Twitter. I don't live in social media. So I talk to humans.

• 29:10Jocko Willink?

  And there's, humans are pretty cool, actually.

• 29:16Jocko Willink?

  Most of the time. You know what I mean?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  We just got done with jujitsu training.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  Hannah Willink, Rana, got her purple belt sheet.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Doing it.

• 29:24Jocko Willink?

  But like, who's on the map? Everybody's on the map. Everybody.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Not to mention two or three other teams.

• 29:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, other teams, yeah, other teams. Uh, Atos is there, Legion is there, Tenth Planet, like, there's just people. But yeah, but so, yeah, it's definitely other teams and we could talk about the, uh, the animosity that you could have between teams. But that's a little jujitsu thing. As a nation, as a people, who's on the map? Everybody, everybody's on the map.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:55Jocko Willink?

  Just a bunch of people. Like, there's no, it's actually even hard to.

• 30:02Jocko Willink?

  Uh, give a stereotypical person at the gym today, right?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:08Jocko Willink?

  Cause you literally had everybody.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  Everybody. Like, there wasn't like, oh, everyone, you know, looked like Echo and Jocko. If we're, if we were a prototypical jujitsu person and you walked in there, you didn't see a bunch of Echo and Jocko looking dudes. You saw everybody. Male, female, uh, big, tall, rich, poor, whole nine yards. Everybody's in there just trying to jujitsu. So, cause I'm in the real world and I don't sit there and reflect my day.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  And think that everything's catastrophic. Which

• 30:44Jocko Willink?

  is what causes a lot of this strife. A lot of this antagonism is caused by the fact that we're looking at a little screen all day. And the screen and the, the things in the screen are rewarded for making people mad. That's what's happening. The more explosive thing that you can say, the more likes and reshares you're gonna get. Which inspires you to say something even more explosive. And quote, and dunk, and all this other stuff.

• 31:23Jocko Willink?

  And then on top of that.

• 31:28Jocko Willink?

  Look, there's other, well, as I mentioned, we have adversaries in the world.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  Our advert, our adversaries are in the game of getting us to be mad at each other.

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Russia. Russian bot farms. Is that a real thing? Oh, yeah, it's a real thing. It's a real thing. There's a stat.

• 31:52Jocko Willink?

  Now, I think is, uh, 2019. Ninety-five percent of Facebook pages for American Christians will run out of Kosovo and Macedonia.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 32:05Jocko Willink?

  At one point Elon Musk, he's the guy that owns Twitter. He changed the name to X. Dude, he just launched a freaking rocket today and it landed. It got caught between these two giant arms. Dude, it's, I was like, I had a good workout today. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, if we could launch a rocket into space, that's proving the next step of going to Mars. So yeah, good job Elon Musk. But at one point Elon Musk said 20% of the people, or I don't know what, of the accounts on Twitter

• 32:45Jocko Willink?

  were, were bots. That's 47 million bots were in there. 20% of the, 20% of the situation was fake.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Just out there doing it.

• 32:56Jocko Willink?

  Just out there, just get, and so you wonder why like, oh, the likes and tweets and retweets. So where are those bots at? And how do you get people mad at each other? Well, just get them to look at their screen and get people to say hateful things and freaking make them aggro. And you're going to get people pissed off.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  And they start to look at the other side in a more negative light. Can't believe that person, people are saying that kind of thing, right? So you got Russia doing that. You got China, China with the whole TikTok thing, right?

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  It's a big, it's a big compromise of personal data. It's a culture nuke.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  It's a culture nuke. That's what it is. Do you know what brain rot is?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Brain rot?

• 33:45Jocko Willink?

  Brain rot.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  I don't think I've heard that before, but it makes sense. I think.

• 33:50Jocko Willink?

  No, it's, it's an actual thing. Cause I still have one daughter that's 15.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  So she's in the game. Like she, she can, she can brief me on what's happening. But they call it brain rot, brain rot is an actual thing. So there's like, All these, uh, they're like memes and they're videos and this whole thing called brain rot. And even the kids call it brain rot because they know what it is, but it still is just moving through the ethos or through the, through the, through the atmosphere of the youth. So what is brain rot? Brain rot is like literally wasting time. Okay. And wasting time on your phone, but you're, what you're wasting your time on is this brain rot stuff. Okay. So like mindless.

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  Mindless stuff, but it's also, also in that like up above just wasting time. It's also introducing things that are not healthy.

• 34:50Jocko Willink?

  That's where introducing things into the culture. I shouldn't have said a cultural nuke. I said, I should have said a cultural, uh, Trojan horse. Right? These little things just get interjected into the culture. Whether it's, and if, hey, if it's just a waste of time, which is a significant thing. If that's all it was, it's still bad. But then when you start introducing thoughts. Little ideas. Little ideas.

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  And you start thinking, wait a second. When you start presenting both extreme left wing views and extreme right wing views, you're introducing these thoughts.

• 35:32Jocko Willink?

  And you introduce those thoughts to young undeveloped minds. And now instead of them spending time

• 35:42Jocko Willink?

  learning from their parents, learning from reliable sources and historical sources. Instead of learning from, literally they're learning from Tik Tok. They're learning from implants. There's, they're learning from people that are propagandizing things that are just gonna infect their brain.

• 36:09Jocko Willink?

  So you have that going on. Um. Have you ever heard the term it's an op?

• 36:16Speaker 01

  It's an op.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  It's an op.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, fully.

• 36:18Jocko Willink?

  In what way?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Uh, like a psy op, right? Like it's like a thing. It's like they're trying to get you. They're trying to like, yeah, this undercover agenda that's used against you to capitalize on something that you do, whatever.

• 36:31Jocko Willink?

  So, perfect. That is a great term. And

• 36:38Jocko Willink?

  there's, they're, they're real, number one.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:41Jocko Willink?

  Like even if you take the advertisement that you saw on TV or that you got in your scrolling, like that's a little op that's going on.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  Right? It's a little op. They're trying to get you to think about the thing.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  Right? Cool. Oh yeah, I see that. Oh yeah, I'm gonna think about it. It's a little op going on, but the, the op that's maybe done by the extreme left, maybe done by the extreme right, that little op that's going on. By the way, who's running the extreme left? Who's running the extreme right? Is it actually American humans? Or is it outside in, outside sources? Gee, I wonder. So

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  here's my recommendation.

• 37:25Jocko Willink?

  It's all an op. Like, it's all an op. They're trying, everyone is trying to get you to think of this or to think that.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  With the media that you're consuming is trying to move you to believe something or to think a certain way.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and keep in mind, that's only on one level. You're falling, or not you, but

• 37:50Jocko Willink?

  we.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  We can myself included, fall for these ops on other level, on many different levels, because you have groups of players or whatever, right? So you even like, um, let's say I'm gonna

• 38:03Speaker 01

  I'm a say outlet or entity that's gonna capitalize or benefit from pushing this or pushing that through attention, through money, through, you know, like, so if I'm, if I'm a news place, right, independent or otherwise, and I push this inflammatory thing, whether it's true or not, I get the, the views, I get the numbers, I get all that. I don't care how it affects you at all. In fact, quite frankly, I want it, I, I don't care if it's good or bad for you. All I just want you to do is push it, push it some more, get mad, get at, at the very least inspired in a negative or positive way, don't care, to keep pushing it, to spread it, spread it, spread it. So I get the

• 38:46Speaker 01

  numbers, boom, there's my op. That's just one level.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  Just one level. You gotta think for yourself. No, no one is telling you the truth. No one is telling you the truth. They're telling you what they want you to hear. That's what's happening.

• 39:05Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to McG. He, he was talking about some, this theory that's out there right now, which is like the death of the internet. Have you heard of this? The internet is dead. The reason the internet is dead is because AI is just gonna be able to manufacture just anything. And next thing you know, Echo Charles is gonna be on, you know, on, uh, on YouTube saying, you know, I support Nancy Reagan for president this year, you know, like, like just totally falsified and be totally believable and like no one will be able to tell anything. And so just every piece of information that you got, you'll just never know if anything is true unless you're literally talking to me face to face right now. So it's kind of an interesting concept. And then he showed

• 39:44Jocko Willink?

  me a commercial for some, I don't know, for something. And it was AI generated. It was, you know, it said, hey, this is an AI, an example of an AI-generated commercial.

• 39:59Jocko Willink?

  And it's all fake and it looks 100% real. It looks 100% real and McG is like this is a he's like this is like a $3 million thing to shoot and somebody probably did this on their computer for you know I mean of course they invested time and effort to learn how to do it but still it's getting to the point where it's like I just keep putting in the prompt and cleaning up the thing and it gets better and better so if they can do if they can make something look perfect like actual humans I mean it was only I don't know three months ago six months ago where someone when they started

• 40:40Jocko Willink?

  posting like pictures of people that were not real but they looked like a photograph and now those same people that were just a photograph before are now moving and talking.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yep, yeah, it's true.

• 40:53Jocko Willink?

  So everybody's running an op on you.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, the good news about that is not to go.

• 41:00Jocko Willink?

  Which part?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  About AI.

• 41:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, AI. Or the op part.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  No, no, no, the op part is.

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  What's the good news about AI? Talk to me.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  There's two good news but but yes, okay, so the AI part or whatever with with the development of that the uh there's comes the development of the other side like the security part of it so um actually I know a guy his name is Luke Newman just reconnected a few days ago he he's on like the board or whatever he's he's on this thing that basically provides some digital like watermark on things basically to be able to differentiate whether this is AI or authentic it's like one of those so I don't know what stage of development it's in or where I don't know that but I'm just saying with this development comes this other development as well so you get some pushback you get some resistance against um just free freaking free range taking advantage of this thing because it's true I mean even now like

• 41:51Speaker 01

  I could I'd be like okay I need Jocko to say something right something cool or whatever I don't know Jocko but I know a guy who maybe could kind of look like Jocko maybe not his face but whatever I'll have him say it I'll clone his voice do a face swap the AI will you know deep fake his face and freaking light it kind of cool and put some grain on there and it'll look and sound exactly like Jocko. So you can do that literally right now with with not that much skill. But if we know that the landscape is like a bunch of that going on and we already know that I understand. Yes. Okay. So the whole internet could be dead or there will be many, many ways to differentiate. Okay. Or to check at the very least check. Oh, is this real or is this not real? Is this suspect or not suspect? We we see it already. We don't like how you you scroll through and then it has that little stripe on the bottom.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  This may or may not be factual. I don't know. Whatever it says, you know?

• 42:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, community notes on Twitter.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Twitter and all this other stuff. So what I'm saying is that's the good news. You know, it's not going to be this freaking bum rush of like false information that you literally have no recourse for being able to tell like if it's true or not.

• 42:52Jocko Willink?

  Did you see the the Optimus robots yet?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:58Jocko Willink?

  Tesla robots. They're just walking around, talking to people, having full conversations, moving their hands, like just chilling.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool. But and I I saw a video of it. It's like, oh, yeah, it's gonna be able to babysit your kid. Freaking that kind of a robot kind of defeats the purpose of babysitting my kid. So babysitting my kid, I guess.

• 43:16Jocko Willink?

  Because your robot could be going to the grocery store while you are with your kid.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's one of the many, I think. I think, for example, yeah, like, or I don't know. The neighbor comes over and sure, I guess it I guess it's from observing report scenario, sure. But the neighbor comes over and freaking destroys the robot and freaking kidnaps my kid. I don't know. It's like, it seems like a person there is going to be way better just because it's a person.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  How do you feel about autonomous driving?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a that's a weird one. Yeah.

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  Because my brother Leif Babin's like, dude, he's like, no way.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:52Jocko Willink?

  And I always think like, brother, he's not like humans are good drivers.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, they actually kind of suck.

• 43:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  I mean, compared to like a machine, I guess. Because it might be kind of a psychological kind of trick, but it feels like, sure, maybe the computer will be better drivers overall. And they can communicate with other cars who aren't even near you and like all this whole system and it can kind of account for all this stuff. But when there's a glitch and someone.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  loses their life or gets injured or something like this. It's kind of like, what do we do? Like, who do we turn to for the blame? Like, it's hard, you know? And when you get in accident with someone rear ends you, bruh, the guy's right there, you know? It's like this accountability.

• 44:32Jocko Willink?

  Well, no, I think it's inherently, we want to have control.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:37Jocko Willink?

  We don't trust, we trust ourselves, not necessarily for a good reason. More than we trust a machine. It's always tripping me out like, you know, when some, they'll say something is handmade. Versus like machine made, but in a way, machine is perfect.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  Now, it's not always true with certain materials and certain things are harder, but like a car. Like there's certain cars that are handmade, Rolls Royce is handmade. And I get it, but it also takes them a long time and they've cost $500,000.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:09Jocko Willink?

  And is it that much better than a freaking machine that rolls off the line?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever been in a Rolls Royce before?

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:17Jocko Willink?

  You have?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  A Rolls Royce?

• 45:18Jocko Willink?

  Rolls Royce?

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Where? Wait, wait, is Rolls Royce and Bentley the same thing?

• 45:23Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, they're related somehow, but Rolls Royce is like next level.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  I, I was in an old school, I used to be a valet, by the way, Aloha Tower, Honolulu, about 1997, eight ish. But you know, yeah, we drive a lot of cars and yes, Rolls Royce was one of the, but it was an old school one, the one that I remember specifically. It was kind of one of the older ones. It was super nice though.

• 45:42Jocko Willink?

  Was it nice?

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:43Jocko Willink?

  Was it an old one at the time?

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like 1960 or I don't know, whatever it was.

• 45:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, I guess my point is sometimes we, we want to, we don't trust the machines.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  Right? Even though a machine might be more trustworthy, more trustworthy in a lot of ways.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Here's what, here's why the, and it kind of goes back to what I said about like someone to blame or, and, and less about blame, but just more of the, the moment to moment troubleshooting scenario, which actually at the end of the day, might be part of the control scenario. Cause like, you have a factory, right? Not, there's handmade, then there's machine made, whatever, right? You have the factory, usually it's kind of like the factory just rolls them out. That's what it feels like, you know, they just rolls them out. But what if there's a defect or whatever? And I know the reality is like, you know, you ever watched that show, How It's Made?

• 46:32Speaker 01

  It's a really therapeutic freaking show, but anyway, it's a real like mellow show about how random stuff is made. So sometimes it'll be in a factory, right? I don't know bottles or I don't know, whatever. It's like catcher's mitts. I don't know, whatever. So sometimes the factory and then they'll always show, there's always a quality check person at like this, this, this stage of the game and all the different stages. There's always a person there kind of checking, but still it's like he's mass checking it. It's like, you know, like hundreds of them are coming through and he's just picking out the ones that are that don't pass or whatever. But that that aside, when a machine factory kind of they don't, you don't, it doesn't seem like you account for the defects, you know, even though they're rare, we'll say, but there's like, there's a defect there. Meanwhile,

• 47:17Speaker 01

  the handmade person, every single one is meticulously troubleshoot throughout the whole oh, little defect fixed, fixed there. There's a person there doing it at every, every single step of the production process. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, it might actually halfway go, go to that control.

• 47:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Just, just a note. Origin USA, we have factories, we make clothing. The weird thing is you can't, there's some things you can automate, but a lot of it, you, you can't automate it because every, because material is just its own, it has its own little mind. It's given input and it only, it takes the, it takes the skill and intelligence of a human being to move that piece of material at the right moment, the right speed, because it's all, there's little tiny imperceptible variables that are there in a piece of cloth.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:09Jocko Willink?

  That there's only, only a human can do that, some of those jobs.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  So technically the, like the origin gi is handmade. It's a handmade.

• 48:20Jocko Willink?

  Everything at Origin is handmade.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Straight up.

• 48:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Now there is certain like belt loops because of the size of them and the narrowness, like you can automate the making of the belt loop itself.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 48:33Jocko Willink?

  Even though there's people that have to do certain part of the belt loop automation. So there's things that you can automate, but ultimately a human has to, if you're pulling the, the waistband through, there's too much variability in the material that you cannot just have a machine do it. You can't do it. Now you can have a machine can. Work on a piece of metal.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 48:58Jocko Willink?

  Like you can, you can put a piece of steel into a machine and you can kick out a knife.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:05Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's not, cause you, cause you can make that, that material so uniform. That there will be no defects.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that makes sense. So what it's the human, I guess there's some, some psychological. Satisfaction of the reliability of human judgment, I guess. As accurate or as inaccurate as it ends up being.

• 49:30Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  It's just something there.

• 49:32Jocko Willink?

  Because going back to my brother Leif Babin, look, we might think, hey dude, I don't trust a, a computer.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:40Jocko Willink?

  To be driving like, okay, here's a question. You're gonna, you're gonna take your kids and put them out on the sidewalk. And you're gonna have a car or gonna put them on the road and a, a car is gonna drive between them.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:52Jocko Willink?

  Would you rather have a human do that or a machine?

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I, I, yeah, I'm, I'm right in the middle of that because everything that Leif Babin is thinking about and, and concerned about. So am I hundred percent. But then the whole like, the numbers, you know, like on paper, I kinda can't ignore that either, you know?

• 50:12Jocko Willink?

  So check this out. Here's the task. Someone's gonna drive up, your, your children have to be 10 feet apart. And someone has to drive between them at 60 miles an hour.

• 50:25Jocko Willink?

  Do you want the Tesla to do that? Or do you want? Here's, I'll just make, you want a random human? Because you know, there's some people that would be so scared of killing your kids.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:38Jocko Willink?

  That they would freak out, like it would be horrible. I would rather have the Tesla do it.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  In that specific situation, I'd rather the computer do it. Yes.

• 50:45Jocko Willink?

  Now, if you could select the person, then you'd probably go, all right, I'll take.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Maybe even, maybe. Cause think about it like.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  I guess we see machine error all the time too, but let's face it, human error, bro, that's like a thing. That's like a leading role in a movie right there, human error. Come on, you hear that about that all the time. So I don't know, man. I guess it's like this weird dance that we're gonna be doing. Anyway, you know, like a lot of stuff is straight up automated that can kind of put us freaking out, really.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is what's scary is that there's automated social media activity happening, which is sole purpose is to get into your mind. And run an op on you. So, so I guess, and, and by the way, there's also humans that are running ops to try and get inside your head and make you certain, think a certain way. So when you, when you receive data.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  Run the data through a filter. Make it a data point, not the truth. There's a big difference between the data and the truth. And here's another thing that's really. What, one of the things that they're taking advantage of for, for human instinct. Is that it is easier to build, to destroy than it is to build. It is easier to destroy things than it is to build things. So if we're doing construction, what is easier? To build a building or to destroy it? Right? If you're gonna build, think of how hard it is to build something. Think of how hard it is to build a house or a commercial structure. Or a freaking airport. Like, think of how hard it is when you start.

• 52:27Jocko Willink?

  Pouring concrete and having can leave or something like, there's so much stuff that has to be done correctly. In order to build a structure. It has to be done sequentially. It has to be within certain parameters. Now, what skill does it take to destroy something? A building? Like, if you give a nine-year-old a wrecking ball? He's got it, bro. You know what I'm saying? Like, he could make it happen.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  You got it, that's for sure.

• 52:54Jocko Willink?

  Philosophically speaking, like, like, speaking of philosophies, it's easier to find flaws in existing philosophies. Than it is to create nuance.

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  Like if you're gonna create a whole new, it's much easier just to look at some other philosophy and poke holes in it. You know what's funny is that in the same vein, criticism is a lot easier than creation. A lot easier. Have you seen the really good example of this is YouTube? Is where there's people that create things on YouTube and there's people that criticize what was made.

• 53:32Jocko Willink?

  Which is, some of those are funny, right? But it is an easier move, right? It's easier just to, uh, like someone makes a movie? And then someone critiques the movie. Obviously, the critique part is easier than the making of the movie. Someone writes a book, someone critiques the book. The guy that's critiquing the book, it's like, bah.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  You don't gotta come over nothing.

• 53:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, how about the song? Like someone creates a song and someone else goes, your song sucks. You see what I'm saying? So destruction is easier than creation. It's easier to destroy than to build.

• 54:11Jocko Willink?

  Rhetorical structure, by the way.

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  It's much easier to

• 54:20Jocko Willink?

  to rip someone's ideas apart than it is for someone to present a holistic idea. Much easier to sit there in the freaking cheap seats and just be like, oh yeah. And it's the same thing with ego. For our ego, it is so much easier for our ego to just go and rip someone down than it is to come up with your own idea and present it out there to the world. Right? So building things and putting them out there is a, is hard to do because your ego is at risk. Cause if Echo makes a video and people are like, this video sucks, your ego gets hurt. Whereas it's much easier for you to make a video about someone else that made a video and make fun of their video.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  So what this means is that people, generally speaking, will, given the opportunity, it's a lot easier to try and destroy things. And the reason I say this is because it's that what that does is it makes it easier on social media. The social media algorithms prey on this. It's much easier for me to dunk on someone and then that gets shared. We end up, we end up in a world of destruction rather than in a world of creation. And that's kind of where we're at.

• 55:40Jocko Willink?

  Sure, is there an inspirational side where people are like, oh, this is a really good, you know, video, a really good clip that someone put out there. I like, it's positive, it's good. Those things get circulated, sure. Not as often as the freaking destruction gets circulated. The destruction gets circulated. And so if you find yourself, if you find yourself in destroyer mode, which is a video that we made, but it's a different context, you find yourself trying to destroy rather than build, just be careful. Just be careful. We did, we also did a podcast on flipping over the chessboard. Do you remember that? It was on the Underground Podcast. It was like, hey,

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  it's when people get so frustrated with the game that they just flip over and they're not going to play the game anymore. That's easier than it is to get in the game and study the game and move forward. And we do that. You can find people that do that in life. It's easier to wake up in the morning, dude, I'm up doing this stupid freaking game. I'm not getting on this hamster wheel. I get it. I want to be on the hamster wheel. So it's easier to not get on the hamster wheel. It's easier just to be like, these jobs are stupid. This, you know, this is stupid. This is bad. It's either easier to try and rip it down than it is to go, you know what, I'm going to do this. I'm going to build. It's going to take me years on the hamster wheel to where I can actually get something productive and I can make a step up. And now I'm on the top of the little

• 57:07Jocko Willink?

  hamster crate, which is where I want to be. But that's hard to do. It takes effort. It takes work. It takes planning. It takes discipline.

• 57:18Jocko Willink?

  But it doesn't take any discipline, but I'm not doing, I'm not playing that game. Flip the chessboard over. So if you find yourself either on a large scale in life, being in a destructive mindset, or if you find yourself on a day to day basis and what you're doing is trying to rip people down, you're trying to destroy, just be careful, just pay attention to that.

• 57:41Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when you see someone

• 57:46Jocko Willink?

  that has been possessed by an op.

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  But they bought into it, dude. Let's face it, you go down the rabbit hole, there's a chance you may not be coming out.

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  I have friends that I talk to

• 58:03Jocko Willink?

  that they're watching a different movie than I am. You know what I mean? They are watching a different movie than I am watching.

• 58:12Jocko Willink?

  They're

• 58:15Jocko Willink?

  when you see someone, they're possessed by an op. By the op, by that op, by this op or the other op, they're possessed by an op. They have been manipulated into believing that what they've seen, what they've read, and what they've watched, and what they've scrolled through is the truth. Not the truth. It's bullshit.

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  So if you are interacting with someone like that, whether there's someone that you know, or there's someone that you don't know.

• 58:45Jocko Willink?

  If you take the direct approach with them, I'm just giving you a heads up, it doesn't work very well.

• 58:52Jocko Willink?

  The direct approach is not the best approach. Try the indirect approach. Go and listen to podcasts 285, 286, 287. BH Del Har, understand that the indirect approach.

• 59:03Jocko Willink?

  Utilize the indirect approach when you're dealing with other people, especially people that have been possessed by the op.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  Those are another slang word, speaking of brain rot, there's ops, right? You get this? You with this? You tracking? This person's ops. This is different. Ops means the opponent, the opposing force, right? The bad guys. This is a psy-op. It's being ran on you and me. When you open your phone, psychological operation has begun. That's what's happening. Recognize it. If you are, and then put a filter on everything that you're reading, everything that you're seeing, and remember that that is not the truth. It's an op. It's a freaking op.

• 59:48Jocko Willink?

  I had an officer one time.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 59:52Jocko Willink?

  He's actually the officer I talk about in the book Leadership Strategy and Tactics. He is the person that guided me in the direction of becoming an officer myself. He was a prior enlisted officer. He was the most humble guy. He was awesome.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  DC?

• 1:00:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes. We call him in the book, we call him DC.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 1:00:12Jocko Willink?

  One thing that he told me.

• 1:00:15Jocko Willink?

  He was an officer. He's a prior enlisted guy, but he's an officer. And he said, he said, never trust an officer. Don't even trust me. He kind of, you know, it's a, it's a fun statement. If, if you're freaking out right now, if you're in the military and you're like, hey, Jocko was telling everyone not to. That's not what we're saying. It was a, it was a. What would be the best way to describe what that was? It was a. A data point. It was a data point.

• 1:00:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, he said it one of those times like, hey, never trust an officer, not even me, you know, just like, oh, okay. Why did he say that? Well, he said that because keep in mind that you're going to have some awesome officers. Keep in mind that you're going to have some bad officers. Keep in mind that that officer, you know.

• 1:00:59Jocko Willink?

  He has to have a career and they have to move forward in their career. Just keep that in mind, right? And look, that guy's one of the best, that guy is the best officer that I, well, definitely one of the best officers that I ever worked with. And so I'm not, your officers out there, calm down.

• 1:01:16Jocko Willink?

  Actually, you should take this into consideration. You should tell your guys this, hey.

• 1:01:21Jocko Willink?

  This is on, on you as leaders.

• 1:01:25Jocko Willink?

  But that idea of don't ever trust an officer, don't even trust me. I'm gonna tell you right now, when you open your phone, when you start scrolling, when you start reading the news. Don't ever trust it.

• 1:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Don't even trust me. Don't even trust Jocko podcast. Don't trust it.

• 1:01:45Jocko Willink?

  Question it. You should question everything. That's what you should do.

• 1:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Now, if you have that mindset of like, okay, everything's an op. When I, when I hear something, it's an op. They're trying to make me think something. Keep that in mind.

• 1:02:01Jocko Willink?

  If you, if you run into someone that has been possessed by the op, don't try and use the direct approach with them. It's not going to work. Doesn't work.

• 1:02:13Jocko Willink?

  What you need to do is use the indirect approach. Go listen to 285, 286, 287. BH Delhart. What does that mean? The indirect approach, try and understand their point of view.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Like, oh, you say this thing, cool. I wonder, I wonder why they think that. Try and think how you could actually believe that. Try and think, how were they right? How are they right and how are you wrong? Try and go through that mental exercise.

• 1:02:43Jocko Willink?

  And then just keep an open mind and discuss it.

• 1:02:47Jocko Willink?

  You're not always going to be right. They're not always going to be right. We don't always have all the facts. You don't have to have a freaking opinion on everything. You don't have to have a right or wrong answer. You don't have to know the conclusion of the movie while you're watching the movie.

• 1:03:03Jocko Willink?

  I don't. I have an open mind. I'm collecting data points. I'm not making decisions based on one eighth of the data points that I received from one human who's trying to manipulate my brain to make me think something. I'm not making any decisions off that. I'm not making any statements about that.

• 1:03:23Jocko Willink?

  If you have an open mind, then you can start to understand the environment that you're operating in.

• 1:03:34Jocko Willink?

  The pro, the challenge of the open mind is that the open mind is counterintuitive. Because the, having an open mind means you're exposing yourself to external ideas, which you don't like, because your ego doesn't like that kind of thing. Your ego thinks you know everything already. That's what it thinks.

• 1:03:51Jocko Willink?

  So we have to put our egos in check. By the way, you can't force someone else to put their ego. It's like if you and I ever come to just set your ego aside for a minute, echo and listen to my viewpoint. That doesn't work.

• 1:04:06Jocko Willink?

  I told someone the other day, it's against the law of physics. It's against the laws of physics to be able to put someone else's ego in check. That's like, you can't do it. Right?

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Jocko Willink?

  You can't do it. It's against the laws of physics. I can't tell you to put your ego in check. It doesn't work. You might shut your mouth for a minute, but your ego is not in check by any stretch of the imagination.

• 1:04:28Jocko Willink?

  So it's on us to put our ego in check.

• 1:04:35Jocko Willink?

  And listen. And trust. And treat people with respect. And allow them to influence us. And care about what they're doing.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  So that's it.

• 1:04:53Jocko Willink?

  Destruction comes from within.

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  That means that you are the person that can stop the destruction. In order to do that, you gotta own it. You gotta recognize that you're the problem. You've gotta keep an open mind.

• 1:05:12Jocko Willink?

  And if you do that, you'll make your life better.

• 1:05:17Jocko Willink?

  And you'll make the lives of the people around you better too. So there we go.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Oh, is there, do you, and I want, I'm tempted to ask and say on an emotional level, but I don't know if I will or not. Just say on, is there a certain level of your thought of the difference between an enlisted guy who becomes an officer? And then a not, and I don't know what's the other pipeline, just officers.

• 1:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Just officer.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Is there a difference? Uh, what, they ultimately both become an officer. We'll say in this hypothetical, is there a difference?

• 1:05:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, well, I mean, obviously they Got there through a different path.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Right, but as officer, officers, same, officers, officers.

• 1:06:01Jocko Willink?

  Yep, well, here's the thing. I've known amazing officers that went to the naval academy. I've known terrible officers that went to the naval academy. I've known, known amazing officers that did ROTC. I've known terrible officers that did ROTC. I know, I've known incredible officers that did OCS. I've known terrible officers that did OCS. I've known incredible officers that were Mustangs, which is prior enlisted.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Known amazing officers that were Mustangs. I've known terrible officers that were Mustangs.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  the pipeline does not matter as much as the character of the human does. So when I meet someone, you know, look, the, the Mustang officer, the prior enlisted officer definitely has some level of advantage because he has experience in that trade. But at the same time, the officer's been in charge for a, you know, if you got an officer that's been an officer for 10 years and an enlisted guy that's been in for 10 years and then became an officer four years ago, so he's got 14 years experience versus 10 years experience, or let's even take a less extreme or a more extreme case. An officer that's been an officer for six years

• 1:07:13Jocko Willink?

  versus an enlisted guy that was enlisted for five years and then became an officer two years ago. So the enlisted guy, the prior enlisted guy has a little advantage because he worked in the job. The officer's been in charge. He's been in leadership positions all the time, so he should have hopefully some more leadership experience. Again, those are just the facts.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it is.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Jocko Willink?

  Some people out of the gate, they do a good job as leaders.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Some people out of the gate, they do a terrible job as leaders. So my point is

• 1:07:47Jocko Willink?

  I unfortunately.

• 1:07:51Jocko Willink?

  The protocol used to become an officer matters a lot less than the raw material that goes into the pipeline.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 1:08:00Jocko Willink?

  I was surprised by that. When I came in, I thought, like, when I came in the Navy, I thought the dudes that had gone to the Naval Academy and were like, in my mind, I thought these guys were going through leadership training for four years, like focused leadership training for four years. And when I started having Naval Academy officers, some awesome, and they'd be like, well, what happened with this freaking knucklehead over here? Who's arrogant or has a huge ego or who treats the team guys like shit? So I was like, oh, okay. You don't, and what I found out is that you don't learn a lot of leadership at the Naval

• 1:08:45Jocko Willink?

  Academy or at West Point. There's some of it, maybe they're getting better now, but you know, back in the day,

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  it was, back in the day, it was like, you know, you're going to college, you're learning electrical engineering and you're doing drills, but you're not learning to lead.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  Leadership is a skill that you need to be taught.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:07Jocko Willink?

  And some people will have an aptitude for it. Some people don't need any education at all, to be honest with you. Some people are just freaking good leaders. They can get better and they will get better as they learn the skills, but they got some natural skills, just like a guy that's seven foot two, he's going to be naturally good on the basketball court when it comes to scoring, bro, period, end of story.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's come easier.

• 1:09:30Jocko Willink?

  Now, he's going to have to learn some skills, learn how to box out, right? You know what I mean?

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  Like, he's got to learn some skills, got to learn how to rip that rebound down.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, dribble, the whole deal.

• 1:09:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But he's seven two.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Jocko Willink?

  Now, you take a guy that's five eight, he's gonna, he's gonna be less impactful.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna have to learn a lot more and get a lot better.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Jocko Willink?

  So, most leaders are like between five, ten and six, two.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, uh, that's, you know, what we look for.

• 1:09:59Jocko Willink?

  Which means they all, six, two or five, eight, no matter where you are in that spectrum, you got a lot to learn if you want to be a, an asset on the basketball court. Like, if you're six, two.

• 1:10:12Jocko Willink?

  You're a little bit, you know, that's not really going to help you. You're gonna have to be good. You have to learn the skill. That's the same thing with most leaders.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  So the, so, um, let's say, so you know how you get a job, we'll say, let's say, not you, but you know, you get a job and you were, let's say you're part of a frat in high school or not high school, sorry, college. And another guy in this other department is part of that same frat, maybe 10 years before you or something like this, but you guys are still kind of bro-ing out because you guys were part of that frat back in the day. That's what I'm asking. So like you're, because you're an officer.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Jocko became an officer, former enlisted guy. Is that the correct expression?

• 1:10:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  So if, when you regard two other guys, one went to the academy, one former enlisted, do you kind of bro out that same frat boy bro out with the enlisted guy officer more so?

• 1:11:06Jocko Willink?

  I would say that.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Not on an official level. I'm just saying on a cultural.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  On an unofficial level.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Me Mustang.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to bro out more with the Mustang than I would the academy guy. But it would be very minor compared to the academy guy bro-ing out with another academy guy.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:25Jocko Willink?

  Like they have way more to bro out about. They did four years in this institution. They learned, you know, that other team guy, like he might've been at a different team, you know, maybe he deployed different places. We're still like, it's, it's all good, but we don't have like, like, like some like, we didn't, we didn't go through, um, some bonding experience together.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Real specific.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's not real specific. Like we both went to OCS. It's nothing. It's like no factor.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  I understand. Yeah. No, no, no. Cause the reason, the reason I said that is because when you're talking about, um, DC, when he was like, hey, don't trust anyone, any officer, even, even me. And then you kind of were like putting caveats on it like, hey, officers don't get, kind of like, they were officers and you're not, right? You were an officer. You can say whatever you want about officers.

• 1:12:09Jocko Willink?

  That's the funny thing. DC saying that he was an officer. That's why it was so kinda neat that he was saying it.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  But he's a Mustang is what I'm saying. That's why I asked. I was like, wait, you guys are talking like you guys almost like you're not part of a certain club that you might be insulting. You guys are all officers, right? Right? Oh, maybe not. Maybe there's a little diva. I don't know.

• 1:12:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a, there might be a little bit of that, but I never felt too strong about it. I was never like, dude, that guy doesn't get it. He wasn't a prior enlisted guy. I never, I never thought like that. But again, because it had so much more to do with the, the human being than it did where they came from.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I guess the question was, does that exist though? You know, like is it that, that differentiator, you know, in the, within the culture? Because like I said, the whole frat boy thing, like the example or whatever that is, like that's a literal thing in existence. Like if you guys went to the same frat, like you're, you're different. You guys are a little bit separate. Look, not, it's not like you're going to get a raise or, you know, something like this or something.

• 1:13:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's like you're from Hawaii.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:11Jocko Willink?

  When you meet somebody from Hawaii, like I've watched you start bro-ing out with people that are from Hawaii.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. Right. Same thing with you.

• 1:13:18Jocko Willink?

  But what I'm saying is that's a shared culture that you had on an island. You know what I'm saying? So this Mustang over here, this officer, like he might've done totally different. We just don't have a common.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Other, there's a little bit.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, fully. Like if you met someone, like when you meet someone that has a twin.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  No, that's same as.

• 1:13:39Jocko Willink?

  It's same as Hawaii?

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  It's, it's there for sure.

• 1:13:42Jocko Willink?

  You met someone.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Who maybe has a shaved head or something.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe a little bit more than a shaved head, like

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  uh, someone that used to work as a bouncer.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  As a bouncer. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I get it.

• 1:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was a bouncer too. Oh yeah. You know, okay.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 1:13:57Jocko Willink?

  But you know, he was a bouncer in La Jolla and you were a bouncer downtown.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  So I was reducing it down to like a straight up binary, like either it exists or it doesn't exist. And it doesn't matter the level it exists. I'm saying, does it exist in the culture in some, I don't care if it's like 1%. But you know what I'm saying? Like if, if you're wearing a freaking black or jeans, if you're wearing jeans and I see you at a freaking, I don't know, wherever at the store and I'm wearing jeans, it's like, bro, we don't bond over jeans. It doesn't exist, that level of, you know?

• 1:14:26Jocko Willink?

  So it exists a little bit. Let me tell you something. When you would, when I would say, oh, we've got this, we're getting, uh, this other officer's coming over to work with us.

• 1:14:38Jocko Willink?

  It would, it wouldn't be, he's an academy guy, he's a Mustang, like that wouldn't, that wouldn't be in the descriptor, the initial descriptor. It might be three sentences, maybe three paragraphs down, like, oh, where, where'd he come from? Oh, he's coming from team two. Oh, okay, cool. Right on.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Mustang.

• 1:14:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's like, uh, where was he at before that? Oh, he's actually a Mustang. Oh, okay, cool. Or, oh, no, he went to the, oh, he's an academy guy. So, so it's, it's like a pretty low differentiator, and that's in the SEAL teams, dude. Like, the SEAL teams, I'm sure in other uh, parts of the Navy, maybe there's a whole, maybe there's more of it, like, have you ever heard the term ring knocker before? It's like someone's wearing their Naval Academy ring and they like knock rings together, I guess, like a, like a little, a little derogatory remark.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yep, I get you.

• 1:15:24Jocko Willink?

  But again, it's the sent, look, the sentiment of that statement

• 1:15:29Jocko Willink?

  isn't, isn't like to be taken literally.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully, and that's really what I was.

• 1:15:34Jocko Willink?

  The sentiment of the statement is like, hey, be heads up.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. And I, I actually wasn't addressing the sentiment of the statement, I was addressing your, your person, like, your kind of positioning on the whole thing. Cause you're like, hey, officers don't get insulted, whatever you said, right?

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  But I'm like, bro, you're an officer. What the hell are you talking about? Like, they are gonna, you know, you can say, you know, but if there's that differentiator, even this much, then it makes sense, is what I'm saying. I'm not saying good or bad, I'm freaking, to me, it makes sense.

• 1:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and what the way I looked, once I became an officer, the way I kind of like looked at that, the way I carried that with me was, I need to earn the trust of these guys. You know what I mean? Like,

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:16:14Jocko Willink?

  I can't be, you know, there, if you do things that are untrustworthy, if you say something, you say you're gonna do something, you don't do it, or you, you know, say not to do something that you're doing, you know, if you're doing those kind of things. They're gonna, they're gonna seize on it. You gotta, you gotta work to earn their trust. So I would add that to the statement. Never trust an officer. Don't even trust me. And by the way, if I'm talking to you and you're an officer, that means you gotta earn the trust of the boys.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Jocko Willink?

  Because they should be suspect of you because you hold power over them.

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  You know, just like we talked about driving a vehicle between two people. It's like, well, that officer has a lot of influence over what you're gonna be doing. So if you don't earn their, the trust of your troops, it's gonna be a problem. They're looking at you going, hey, you're gonna drive a vehicle between my two kids.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:07Jocko Willink?

  At sixty miles an hour. You're gonna be creating operations, approving operations, leading operations that we can get killed on. So if you think I'm just gonna give you my trust, think again. So if you're an officer, remember that that trust is not given because you wear a rank. It needs to be earned.

• 1:17:30Jocko Willink?

  Thought complete.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I dig it. So remember, rewind a little bit. Remember when you were talking about the kind of the escalation of interior deteriorate deterioration, like first it's something, then a eye roll, then a snide remark.

• 1:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Eye roll was first.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So it's probably just before an eye roll is probably just like a stare.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  And then it turns into an eye roll. Yeah.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure there's subtle, little intermediary stages, but the snide remark, right? Or actually I might even add, I mean, in the spirit of intermediary freaking steps, there's the, before the eye roll is the maybe the, um, what do you call it? The tone, tonality, like instead of, okay, I'll do that. It's like, okay, you know, like the tone is different. But anyway, snide remark, how do we deal with a snide remark? Right? Cause interior, the fracture is already in existence, right? Where, I don't know, hypothetically, I don't know, you're asking somebody to do something, you know, maybe your tone was off. I don't know, whatever.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  So when I say, hey, Echo, can you get to the gym right now? We gotta do a special recording. And you give me a snide remark back.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  A little time would have helped.

• 1:18:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, dude, I'm sorry. I just, I figured out, or I found out I gotta leave tomorrow and I were record tomorrow afternoon, but I gotta go on a trip. I can't get out of it. So I apologize, man. It's on me, but we gotta get this thing done. So just explain, you know, because, because the other end of the spectrum is, hey, Echo, can you come to the gym right now? We gotta record something and you give me a snide remark.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, little time would have helped.

• 1:19:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Well, you know what? If you can't do it, I'll find somebody that will. You see what I'm saying? We can just escalate and we're just getting stupid.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:06Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? If it's, oh, it's too much trouble for you to come down. You know what I mean? Is that where we're at? You know what I'm saying? It's like just escalation is stupid.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Okay. So let me ask you this too, in, in.

• 1:19:14Jocko Willink?

  But recognizing and taking ownership of the fact that I, oh, I'm not, I didn't even explain to you. I just, I just said, Echo, come down to the gym. I didn't say, hey, hey, bro, I forgot to tell you that I actually got, I have a trip I gotta go on tomorrow. We got a client that's got some issues on one of their sites and I'm gonna go up there and help them. Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah, I gotta record it today. Cool.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:32Jocko Willink?

  See what I'm saying?

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. So, okay, here's another hypothetical and it's for a reason. So the, let's say, okay, we're, we're coworkers and there's an employee situation. Let's say we're all workers. I don't know, five, 10, 20 of us. I don't care. You're the boss. I'm your second. I don't know. We'll say, uh, you asked me to do something and I do not only a snide remark, but I already have a history of mouthing back to you like passive aggressive tone, whatever, like publicly in front of people, right?

• 1:20:01Jocko Willink?

  See, now we're bypassing the fact that I didn't solve this problem when it was a little seed in the ground that I could have taken and planted in better soil.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Yeah, I do.

• 1:20:13Jocko Willink?

  But, okay, so I missed it.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  The reason that I do ask that and would totally make sense. And actually, I don't even know why I'm surprised you said that. I guess I'm technically not, but yes, of course you would say that, but a lot of us, I'm not saying me, not, not saying me, but some, some of us.

• 1:20:29Jocko Willink?

  So we failed to deal with it.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Yep. And we find, hey, look, we just got turned on to Jock on the whole extreme ownership scenario, right? And we find ourselves in this scenario. What are we doing? What are we doing?

• 1:20:39Jocko Willink?

  So, snide remark in public.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, in front of people.

• 1:20:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Which actually makes a little bit of a difference.

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, it makes a big difference. Yeah. So what I'm probably gonna do is like, yeah, hey, I probably give it just like that. Like, Roger that, Echo. Hey, you know what? Let's get this thing knocked out and yeah, I can see it's I can see the way this landed isn't the way I wanted it to land. We'll talk after and I'll try and understand your viewpoint and make sure I'm supporting what you're trying to get done. Because what I don't want to say is I'll talk to you later because that's right, you know, I'm about to punish you. Yeah, I'm about to punish you. Everybody. Yeah, be sure to yeah, everyone be sure that you know that I'm, you know, I might, I might just kind of let it slide a little bit like, yeah, Roger that echo. You know what I mean? Like, okay, cool. And then I'm gonna go, hey, man, I can see that what I said really bothered you

• 1:21:27Jocko Willink?

  because the way you reacted to it. I felt it and I want to, I want to get down to figuring out what the problem is because I don't want to, you know, you're, you're my number two guy. If I have beef with you, bro, I mean, my whole world sucks. So what am I doing wrong? Talk to me about how I can better support you and give you what you need so we can get this mission done.

• 1:21:48Jocko Willink?

  It's a good one. Very good. Check. All right, everybody. Let's try and not destroy ourselves from the inside. By the way, everything I said applies to us on a personal level as well. Like, we destroy ourselves from the inside, like very seldom is it some external force that wrecks our lives.

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  Brad, you're over here talking about, yeah, for this also applies on a personal level to me. And look, I'm gonna speak for myself. I get it. But for me, this is all this does is apply on a personal level. I mean, let's face it, fucking dealing with you all the time, you know. Check. All right. Well, speaking of us on a personal level, some things that you can do to improve your life.

• 1:22:35Jocko Willink?

  Your work, your relationships, your health is get after it. Workout. Jacofuel.com. If you're, go check that out. If you need food, we're doing the Walmart 434 tour. Next stop is Bentonville, Arkansas.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  It's the data.

• 1:22:53Jocko Willink?

  Down there, it's the end of October. I think it's the last weekend of October. I forget. Twenty six, something like that. Anyways, we'll be there down in Bentonville. Um, come and check it out. We're gonna do a little PT. The one we did here in San Diego was kinda epic.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:09Jocko Willink?

  Lots of getting after it, as they say. Anyways, jockofuel.com. We have the milk that you need. That's protein. We have hydrate. We have greens. We have energy drinks, which I've had two today. Which is a little, get some.

• 1:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Joint Warfare.

• 1:23:26Jocko Willink?

  Super Krill. I had a woman at the Walmart said, I couldn't run until I started taking super krill.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:33Jocko Willink?

  And now I'm doing burpees and running. So check it out. Joint Warfare, Super Krill. If you need immunity, um, check that out. And then Time War. Time where the long, the long-term strategic health. Check out Time War. Jockofuel.com. You can also get this stuff at Wawa, Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hanaford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, Shop Right, HEB Down in Tejas.

• 1:24:03Jocko Willink?

  Meyer in the Midwest, Wegmans out east, Harris Teeter. Lifetime Fitness, Shields. Small gyms everywhere. We got you. We're, jiu-jitsu gyms too, by the way. If you wanna carry this at your jiu-jitsu gym, we're going to Pedro Sour.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, hell yeah.

• 1:24:20Jocko Willink?

  We're going in Atos.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Hell yeah.

• 1:24:22Jocko Willink?

  We're going to the troops, right? Obviously, we're in Victory. We're in Legion. We're, you know, we're there.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  We in there.

• 1:24:29Jocko Willink?

  If you want us in your gym. Email [email protected]. And get some. Also, if you're doing jiu-jitsu, you need jiu-jitsu gear. Uh, go to originusa.com. You might be hunting. If you're hunting, you need hunting gear, go to originusa.com. If you're going out for dinner with your wife, you're gonna need a pair of jeans.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:24:50Jocko Willink?

  Go to originusa.com. If you're a little chilly at night, you need a hoodie. Originusa.com. If you need something on your feet. Like a pair of boots.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Mock toe boots.

• 1:25:05Jocko Willink?

  If you're gonna need some of those, go to originusa.com and get stuff that is handmade.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Handmade.

• 1:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Right here in the United States of America and it's made with materials from the United States of America. That's what we're doing. Originusa.com. We've got some folks deploying right now from Origin USA. Going into North Carolina, well, we're in North Carolina, but moving into the areas in North Carolina that have been affected. It's starting to get cold there. Luckily, we had, we made clothes. So we're giving a bunch of, we're working with Tulsi.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:41Jocko Willink?

  She's out there. Tim Kennedy out there making things happen. So we're supporting by donating a bunch of warm clothing or some of our warm hunt gears being donated to those families that are up in the hills and don't have houses. And so,

• 1:26:00Jocko Willink?

  that's what we're doing. Trying to support our fellow Americans. Originusa.com. Check it out. Made in America, baby.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yep. Made handmade in America. Very good. Also Jocko's store called Jocko Store. So what this is, is a place you can get your t-shirts, hoodies, got some hats on there, shorts, all kinds of stuff, apparel, if you will, representing the idea of discipline equals freedom. Good. Good. That one as well. Anyway, it's jacostore.com. Also, if you are interested in what's called the Shirt Locker, which is a new design shirt every month.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Creative, well, creative, maybe not the correct term, even though it probably is the correct term, but they're a little bit outside the box, we'll say, but like it's a new one every month.

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  You have your own podcast with yourself.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  People, people seem to like it.

• 1:26:49Jocko Willink?

  And you're having a discussion with Echo Charles.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Hey, man, these things.

• 1:26:52Jocko Willink?

  Good evening, Echo. This is Echo.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  We call it troubleshooting in real time. See what I'm saying?

• 1:26:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Getting rid of the trouble, I guess, in a way, but nonetheless, yes, it's called the Shirt Locker, but it's on jacostore.com. You can go there, click on their Shirt Locker. You know, you can get an idea of the kind of designs that we're putting out. Like I said, every month, it's a good one. So check that out. So yeah, everything. Jocko Store.com.

• 1:27:12Jocko Willink?

  Also.

• 1:27:14Jocko Willink?

  Primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. Awesome steaks and meat for you, your family, from our families at primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. Check them out. Also subscribe to the podcast, also jockounderground.com. We're getting ready to record one of those right now. Also YouTube, Psychological Warfare, flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books, adult books, kids books. We're over here getting after it. Check those out if you want. Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. Want to come to one of our events?

• 1:27:55Jocko Willink?

  You want us to show up at your location and teach the leadership principles that we learned on the battlefield? Go to echelonfront.com. We also have online training of those principles that will help you. Yes, they'll help you with your team, but yes, they will help you with your family. They will help you as an individual human being. Go to extremeownership.com for our online training. Take the free courses that are on there at a minimum. They're free. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also check out Micah Fink's Heroes

• 1:28:39Jocko Willink?

  and Horses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And finally, if you want to connect with us, we're on the interwebs. I'm at jocko.com. You can check out all this stuff there. We're also on social media. I'm at jocko willink, echoes at echo charles. Just remember that it's an op. It's all an op. Don't fall for it. Thanks to our service members in uniform around the world who put themselves into harm's way. So we can live our lives. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all other first responders. Thanks for stepping into harm's way here at home

• 1:29:23Jocko Willink?

  to keep us safe. And everyone else out there.

• 1:29:29Jocko Willink?

  We spend a lot of time looking around at others blaming this person or that person or this competitor, that competitor, and we get lured into thinking it's them.

• 1:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Don't fall victim to the op. Don't be a divider. Don't play the game. Don't go down the easy path of destruction. Destruction is easier. Destruction is the shortcut. Don't go down that path. Instead, build. Help others, unify people, find common ground, and be a good human. And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, Zeko and Jocko out.