Transcript of #135 Scott Mann - The Real Cost of America's Failures

Scott Mann. Welcome back.

Thanks for having me back, man. It means a lot to be back here, man.

I've been looking forward to this conversation. We have.

I know. Me, too.

We've done quite a bit together over the, what, 2024?

Yeah. It's been a busy year.

No kidding. But I think, man, I just owe you a huge. I just want to say thank you for being my friend and the stuff that we've broken together, the legend interview, the Massoud interview. I mean, I couldn't have put those together without you, the way that it all came together, and. Thank you.

Well, this feeling is mutual. I mean, being a small part of it and really watching you unpack all that, and I think giving a voice to our global war on terror community and asking questions that, frankly, all of us have been asking, but not being heard was really cool, man. So, look, to be even a small part of that, that's as good as it gets. So it's been awesome watching you guys do it, and your team's amazing. Like, watching the teamwork when we went to Vienna, and then what's happened since then is equally impressive.

Thank you.

Cause they're just a great bunch of guys, man, and they're really getting after it. And I think it shows, right? I think it shows in the stories that are coming out of this thing, good and bad.

Everybody here definitely believes in the mission.

They truly do.

And, you know, I couldn't be more blessed with the guys that are on this team. But, man, I'm just. Thank you.

Yeah.

My honor for being there, for helping me do that. And we made some waves. We made some big, big waves.

Yeah, for sure.

With the petition, with calling certain members of Congress out with. And just bringing exposure. I think the biggest thing is just bringing exposure. I mean, I personally feel like we strong armed the. Is it the Ag or the Ig?

The IG. Well, the cigar, right. It's the inspector general for the Afghanistan war.

I feel like we strong armed them one way or another. I think it stemmed from our work together that they've admitted that they accidentally sent $239 million to the Taliban, knowing that, you know, from legend and sarah, that it's more like 40 to 87 million a week. But, hey, it's a start, right?

Yeah. I mean, I will say John Sopkos and the cigar folks, from what I've seen, they've been very persistent in their pursuit of this thing. The State Department has been very reluctant, I think, to reveal stuff. And even, you know, I think you doing what you did brought a level of energy, and, frankly, just revealed some things that I don't think would have got revealed. I just. I really believe that. And I. And including that late report from cigar about the accidental distribution of millions of dollars to, you know, the Taliban. The timing is just too weird for that not to have been pressured by what. By what's been done here. So I think it's great. I think there's probably more to come, honestly. Cause this is just an ugly animal. And I think there'll be more stuff that will come out of this.

I hope so. We'll continue to cover it as everything, you know, continues to develop.

Yeah.

But. But let's get to you, Scott. So, got a new book coming out. Nobody's coming to save you. A green Beret's guide to getting shit done releases October 1.

Yep.

And so I want to cover your life story.

Okay.

And then I want to get a little more in the weeds on some of the stuff that we've done together and some of the intel and information that we've kind of gathered up from doing this, and then get into the leadership book.

Okay. Great, man.

So, I know you're no stranger to the show here, but I still got to give you a proper introduction here. So, retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, you are a former US Army Green Beret with combat tours all over the world, including Columbia, Iraq, and multiple tours in Afghanistan. You are the president and founder of Rooftop Leadership, a New York Times best selling author of Operation Pineapple Express, and number one international best selling author of game changers going local to defeat violent extremists. You have spoken on three TEDx stages and are also a playwriter and actor in your recent play, brought to film about the afghan war and the unforeseen cost of war on veterans, called the last out eulogy of a Green Beret. And I just want to say that the whole team here, actually, you gave us that invite, and we got to witness that play here in Franklin. And you guys did a hell of a job.

Thank you. You know, it was emotional. So cool having all y'all at the play in Franklin. But you know what a lot of people don't know, too, is that that's where you met legende.

That's true.

Honestly, I think it's where a lot of this started. Was in a play about the war with men and women who were involved in the war, having conversations after the play. And that's really why I wrote it, man.

Well, you did a hell of a job.

Thank you.

You are the founder of Task Force Pineapple and 501 C three Operation Pineapple Express relief, where you actively advocate in Congress and on national media outlets for the safe pass and resettlement of our abandoned afghan allies. You're also the founder of the 501 the hero's journey, where you are dedicated to helping veterans and military families find their voice and tell their story as they transition out of the military in order to bridge into civilian. In order to bridge the civilian military divide. You came out with a book called nobody is coming to save you. A Green Berets guide to getting big shit done, which is a practical guide for leaders who want to make a big impact on the world. Your greatest accomplishments are your 26 year marriage and your three grown sons.

That's right. 100%. 29 years now.

29 years.

It'll be 29 years this veterans day.

Wow.

Congratulations to Monty.

Let's start it off with, I love the family stuff, man. And, you know, it's. I keep getting these guys in here. I mean, we worked in a industry, special operations, right, has one of the, if not the highest divorce rate of all occupations.

Yeah.

And I keep getting these gems that somehow have made it through their entire military career with one spouse and have been married for a long time. What is the secret to a successful marriage?

Well, Monte and I, and I think you and I talked about this. We were actually married before, very early in our lives. When I first started in the military, it only lasted a few years. No kids, same with her. But we got married right before I started special forces and the tryouts, you know, and I think one of the things that was we talk about now was I was very upfront with her about what she was getting into and what that world was going to be like. And I don't think I was as much with my ex wife, and I think that had an impact, but so very upfront, being just very honest about the life that I wanted to pursue. But if, you know, look, there's no magic pill. I think we've certainly had our ups and downs and a lot of challenges. I'm a recovering alcoholic, so I definitely gave plenty of challenges to the marriage over the years. But I would say that one of the things that we still do to this day is we fight for each other. We fight for each other. And I can't tell you how many times she's picked me up off the floor and how many times I've jumped in the breach for her, you know, and that's just something that we committed to when we had kids, little kids, we said our mission is to get these little kids, these little boys to become young men who will be protectors and then they will leave and it will still be you and me.

And how do we fight for each other to get date nights, to go on long weekends together, to have folks stay with the kids so that we don't lose that fire. And, you know, that was a really important move, looking back on it, because even now at 56 and 55, we still fight for each other. And it's pretty damn cool, you know, because she's my person. She's my best friend. I don't know if I'd be alive without her. Honestly.

I love watching you guys, man. It's just a, you can tell there's a lot of love and you can tell you guys have each other's backs no matter what. And it's just, it's just nice, even outside of the special operations community, just to see a healthy marriage. I mean, it's, there's not a whole lot of, there's just not a lot of healthy marriages out there. And it's your, you are an example.

To, well, thank you. I appreciate that. I feel like sometimes I drop the ball in terms of, you know, how I do it, but I do feel like it's, we've done something right. You know, we've been together 29 years. I look at you and Katie, I look at what Tom Satterle and I were talking the other day about the same topic. And I do, I do think it is important that couples continue to talk and work with our community about relationships and that we talk about that stuff because it is a big part of what, not just special operations but military service and I think just daily life. I mean, how do we preserve our relationships? How do we fight for our relationships when all this stuff's going on? I think we talk all the time about our industry or our business or all the other stuff, but the real mental health stuff and the stability stuff. If the, if the home is not in order, everything else is going to be a train wreck, you know, and I learned that the hard way. But it is refreshing to hang out with folks who really just value relationships.

I mean, I know for me at 56, for the rest of my life, that's who I'm going to hang out with is people who are, who value their relationships and value their partner and celebrate them. You know, that's who I want to be around.

Yeah. That's great advice. Thank you. Well, let's get into the interview, so, but real quick, everybody gets a gift. I know this is probably the only reason you're here.

It is the only reason I'm here, frankly. So cool, man.

I love going embarrass.

I can't wait. So thank you. And I love these damn things. And the fact that I'm getting them twice is not lost on me. It means a lot to be on here twice with you. Thank you. It really does. I have something for you.

Oh, I love presents.

So, you know, green berets, we pride ourselves in rapport building. Right? That's one of the things that you're taught in the Q course, is that when you go into the gorilla base and you meet with the G chief, you know, you've really got to think through those 1st 5 minutes of the engagement, because building rapport is super, super important, and it's the relationship that's the asset. Right. That really is what matters more than anything else. So I thought about coming here and what it means to me to be on the show with you a second time and just the friendship that we've built over the years. So I wanted to bring something to you because of all the cool stuff you have in this room. Everything is so personalized. But something happened a little while back that I thought you would really appreciate and maybe even want to display. But as we were talking about Pineapple Express over the last couple of years, I think one of the things that's been cool about it is this was a group of veterans from across the country who just tried to do something to help their allies when nobody was coming.

Right. And all I did was write the story and try to chronicle it as best I could. But what I found was a lot of people were inspired by these veterans who stepped into the arena when nobody else did. But they were also really inspired by the Afghans in the story. And that was my hope, was that the Afghans would really become the protagonists, these commandos and special forces and female soldiers and minister of foreign women's affairs who risked everything for freedom. And so I got this message from a lady on LinkedIn. Her son Tyler. Her name's Carrie. Her son Tyler had to do a book report on someone who had inspired him recently, and he had to, like, write about it and then do a sketch of this individual. So she sends this to me on LinkedIn. And Tyler drew this at 15 years old, and he's a huge fan of your show. He follows you, he listens to every episode. But he drew this picture of Nizam.

Wow.

Shooting and then Nizam on a mission straight from the book. Right. And he did the illustrations himself. Freehand, and then wrote his little book report on operation Pineapple express as where he drew information. And what his mom told me was that he really dials into your show, man. He really follows what you do, what you talk about. And she just talked about how savvy he is and how dialed in he is and how focused he is. And she asked me, she goes, you follow Sean Ryan? He's like, oh, yeah, all the time. You know, and he was so casual about it, like, of course I do. You know, and I just thought that was the coolest thing, man, to see how this had influenced, because we always talk about how our country's in trouble, and I. This and that, and, you know, you and I have had this conversation. I believe that. I do believe that this generation of young folks is our last best hope. Your kids and my kids and certainly Tyler, you know, somebody that would make the hero in his journey. Nizam.

Wow.

And take the time to draw him. So I had this printed out and framed, and I thought somewhere in here it would look pretty damn cool.

Definitely. Definitely going in.

And if it's okay with you, I'm probably gonna send him one of my gummies.

Hey, we got you some extra.

All right. Coming at you, Tom.

Wow. Thank you.

Yeah. Pretty. Pretty special.

This will definitely be in the studio.

Yeah. Awesome.

Starting right now. That is very cool. Thank you.

Man.

That's cool, man.

That's cool.

You know what I mean?

It does. And that's what I told his mom more than anything else. It just gives me hope that it's one thing to be inspired by you, or Tom Satterlee, or even Sarah, but to be inspired by our afghan allies, a commando like Nizam, I mean that to me just. It really is. It just. It warms my heart, man, because those guys really stood in our shoulder for a lot of years, and we should be inspired by them.

They did.

Yeah.

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Yeah.

I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them, and neither would you be. And so one of the things I do is I offer them an opportunity to ask each guest a question. Yeah, and we had a ton of questions.

Really?

Yes, for you. But I narrowed it down to one. This is from Tory Miller. Since your last interview with Sean, in the interviews with legend and commander Massoud, do you think we will have to go back to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban? If so, do you believe since our botched withdrawal that our relationship with partner forces and other tribes are now strained? Man, this was a great question.

Two part question, right? That's a great question. So, yes, I do think that we will have to go back. And my logic behind it is that the re emergence of international terrorism out of that safe haven is so profound that everything that we're seeing from multiple very credible sources is saying that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And I'm sure you and I'll talk more about this, but they are in such advanced stages that those operatives are already here. Right. So when it gets to that point, it is very difficult to stop it. What I believe is we unfortunately have a very short memory in this country. You know, when you look at 911 happened just over 20 years ago. You remember where the country was and those smoldering ruins and how he felt during that. There was this collective simmering anger of just retribution. And they turned guys like you and me and our units loose in Afghanistan for retribution. I mean, President Bush, you know, said it from the pile with the megaphone. He said, they're going to hear from us real soon. You know, and it was a pursuit of justice.

Right? And you had the yellow ribbons come out and the Budweiser commercials. Everybody was fired up. And we were a nation at war. And we deployed a very small percentage of these young men and women into a country that, frankly, had been at war for four decades. Like, that's all that country knows, is war. And what's interesting, though, is you think about Osama bin Laden quietly killed Massoud's daddy, Ahmad Shah Massoud, two days prior because he knew that was exactly what we were going to do. And he knew that we would go to Panchir and that we would partner with Massoud. And he had the foresight, the strategic foresight, to whack the resistance leader 48 hours before dropping through strategic surprise, the twin towers hitting the Pentagon, and would have hit the capitol. So think about that for a second. This was over 20 years ago. This was the level of strategic breadth and depth that al Qaeda possessed. Okay? Today, through your interview with Sarah Adams and others, it's excruciatingly clear that they have far surpassed that capability today, not just in terms of fighters, but in their sophistication. They're operating at a whole different level now.

And so they want us in the fight. The enemy has a vote. They want us to respond. We may be done with Afghanistan, but they're not done with us. It's not done with us. And so what you can bet on is that they are going to outdo the last attack, and they are going to do it at such a level of emotional impact that we will have no choice but to respond, because it's going to take us into a sympathetic state of retribution. And there will be outcries for payback. And all of these folks that have written checks to the Taliban and done all these policy, ill advised policy moves, theyll just skulk back into the shadows. Theyll disappear. And the Budweiser commercials will hit again. The country music songs, the, you know, the yellow ribbons will come out, except this time itll be my kid, maybe yours, you know, on c think itll be sooner than when yours would be ready to go, but it certainly could be mine and other people watching this. It could be our kids on those c think that they will go. The difference is. Takes me to the second part of the question.

I did a scene at the end of last out in Tampa that had never been done before in my play, where we actually turned the lights down at the end of the play, and we had Danny Patton, the Green Beret's son, Kayden. Like, we heard this blackout sounds of the country's been attacked. And this is at the end of the play. And it says, america is now responding. We think there are troops heading to Afghanistan. And as the lights come up, Danny's son Kaden is now full kitted up. He's now a green Beret, and he's rolling his parachute up and stepping out of the shadows is a commando in tattered rags. He's got an M four tricked out and all of the patches that he once wore, but it's all ripped up to shreds. And he's got his weapon leveled right at Cayden. And Cayden just looks up at him and there's this standoff between these two in this moment. And then we drop the lights, you know, because that is what our kids are going to walk into. They're not going to walk into the reception, I believe, of a resistance that is waiting anxiously for them to get there.

And, you know, you're going to have this link up of unconventional warfare. I think what you're going to have are thousands of pissed off commandos and special forces and interpreters who were left behind, who've lost their families, who've been co opted, in many cases by bad actors. And I, the very organizations that we trained that would have been the vanguard are now going to be probably who we have to deal with face to face. And I'm not saying we can't, I'm not saying we won't. But it is a completely different scenario this time because we wholesale abandoned a partner force that has, to this day, three years later, is still being hunted. And to think that we could just walk back into that country and say, hey, we're back. How you like me so far? It's not gonna go down that way.

You know, I've learned so much history from putting these interviews together with you, and I've learned a ton of information. And one of the things that just, you know, that sticks out to me that I say on every news interview, every time we talk about this now I say it. You told me 911 was a $500,000 budget.

Yep.

Now the government has come out and publicly said that they have accidentally given them $239 million. We know it's more than that.

Yeah, that's a conservative estimate.

But we know it's 40 to 87 million a week.

Absolutely.

Even if it is. Even if it was just $239 million. Well, that is, what, 400, 480 times, 478 times the budget that they had.

Yeah.

On 911.

Yeah. And they're ten x bigger. You know, probably close to 80,000 fighters. I think they had something like a couple thousand before 911. I'll have to check those numbers. And don't forget, too, they just had a couple of operating bases in Afghanistan at that time. You had Tarnak farms, you know, which is near Kandahar Field, and a few others. But you've got every NATO base that we built over there, Camp Brown. You've got Bogram, you've got Baskin. All of the infrastructure, all of that was just left behind. So they've rolled right in on these bases with well designed training areas and ranges, and they are training at a level that's unprecedented. And you think about that, the advent of technology that is accessible to them now. Think about the proliferation of drone technology that we're seeing coming off the battlefield in Ukraine. I mean, how fast has that advanced? And we already see that the attack in Russia at the theater October 7 by Hamas in Israel, these are all local distributed attacks of horror, you know, horrific attacks, not World Trade center type things, but where we live, work, and play. Right. And what I keep going back to is whether it's ISIS, K, whether it's the al Qaeda, they, the thing that we know is they love to outdo the last attack.

They're not going to be casual about the next one. They're going to make it a point to make it bigger and more spectacular and more paralyzing than the last one. And what I've heard Sarah and others say is that all indications are that they have trained heavily in close quarters, battle local distributed attacks, and that there's a very good chance that the next thing we see on the homeland could be an October 7 style house to house, restaurant to restaurant, synagogue to chapel kind of attack on a massive scale. Now you think about what would, what would happen if you had an October 7 style attack in Houston, Akron, Youngstown, Dallas, Miami, all at the same time. I mean, what did the DC snipers do? I mean, think about that. You talk about a 500k budget like the DC sniper shot out of the back of a car and shut down the beltway for weeks. Imagine the systemic paralysis that would result from an October 7 style attack across six cities at the same time.

I mean, we know what that looks like. You know, I want to say something. I think sometimes I feel like some of the information that we're talking about seems a little out there, or maybe not out there. Cause it's all happening, but it's hard for. It's hard for everyday Americans who have zero combat experience and are just going to work and getting by the day and not really. They're coming after you.

Yeah.

If there's one thing that we've learned being overseas, you know, I think a lot of people think they're coming after. They're gonna hit a military base. They're gonna hit a police station. They're gonna. They're looking for a fight. They're not looking for a fight. They are looking. They are looking for the easiest target with the most casualties that is going to get on the news.

Yeah.

And so. And where do we learn this from? We learn this from their tactics overseas. What do they hit? They hit markets. They hit mosques. They hit. They hit public places where there is little to no police or military. And that's what they're going to hit here. They're coming. They're not coming after you because you're a hard target. They're not coming after me. They're coming after mom and her kids and dad that goes to his office job every day. That's who they're coming after.

Yeah.

You people better start paying attention to what the fuck is going on, because this shit is going to happen. Yeah, this is going to happen. This isn't a political thing. This is a country with zero borders. They've already caught people. They have no idea how many people have come across already. And this is how these organizations operate. And one other thing, these organizations are not competing against each other anymore. Now it's 21 terrorist organizations working together, training together in Afghanistan with one common goal, and that is us.

Yeah. And that's well said. And, you know, they've broken through barriers even the Shia sunni barriers, you know, where Iran is very complicit in their work with al Qaeda. We're looking at an unprecedented level of collaboration between state and non state actors, also shia and sunni. That was, you know, you didn't see that prior to 911, certainly not on this scale, where Iran is offering sanctuary and resource support to al Qaeda, who is a sunni based organization. And, you know, Iran is Shia. And then you add to that, Sean, the part that you're dealing with a metanarrative here. This is a narrative that ends with the establishment of a caliphate in the west. This is basically a swath of territory that is governed by islamic law. It is an Islamisthen objective to occupy and govern, govern through Sharia law, you know, and it is. It is, it is administered by what they call a caliphate. And it goes way back centuries to, you know, periods of islamic expansion. And this is not, I want to be clear. You know, I'm not, I'm not saying that this is necessarily an islamic narrative. It is an Islamist.

And I think that's really important to clarify here because what we're talking about are very specific groups who maintain this very radical ideology that at all costs, they will expand this caliphate of Sharia governed territory into the west. And in order to do that, all forms of governance that are in existence today and ways of life must go. They cannot coexist. You know, and so that level of commitment, plus they've already demonstrated through precedence their willingness to hit us right in the chest cavity. They want us in the fight. They need us to be in the fight because that's how they bleed you from a thousand cuts. So they're coming. They're not afraid of our military might. They're not intimidated at all. And then the other piece that, to your original point, and I think this is really important to hash out, you talked about, like, when you hear some of these things that Sarah talks, talks about or legend or me, it's easy to go, well, okay, you guys were veterans. You fought in the war. The war's over. You know, let's move on, you know, because if there was a problem, the three letter agencies would be talking about it or the administration.

But here's the thing, and this is really important to unpack. When Afghanistan collapsed in 2021, right. Or even go back to 911, when, when 911 happened, the worst terror attack in our nation's history as a nation collectively, we said never again. It hit us so deeply that it was clear there was no really on the ground intelligence capability that could have gotten in front of this because we had indications and there was no ground strike capability. We weren't partnered with the Northern alliance. There was no partner force in the country, so we didn't really have any ability to strike. All we had was over the horizon. Sound familiar? So, for 20 years as a nation, we invested, and as NATO, we invested in building an intelligence apparatus that would prevent another safe haven and deep strike on the states and a partner force that could be the antibody to violent extremism in that safe haven. And we did both. We built those. We bled for them. We lost friends for them. We gave up our youth for that. And then on August 15, 2021, an administration literally turned the page on that like it never even happened.

Like it was a servpro commercial. And we walked away from 30,000 commandos. You know, we abandoned 98% of our human intelligence and just left it behind. And then we decided that we would deal with the Taliban as a legitimate state actor, and we would pay them humanitarian resources and counter terror dollars to go after ISIS, because somehow we feel like they can actually target them and they're at odds. But so in doing that, what we actually did, and then these veterans groups from all over the country, it wasn't. I mean, there were hundreds of them. Pineapple was one of many. But we picked up the phone, and we answered the phone when the government didn't, and nobody was coming in. We were talking to intelligence operatives. We were talking to afghan commandos and special forces members who had nowhere else to go. And these veterans, Sean, they never hung up the phone. They never hung up the phone in three years, they've cashed in their 401 ks for safe. Safe houses. They've cashed in their kids college funds to pay for food drops. Because these commandos and special forces and intel operatives, they can't show their face in public, right?

So they've kept them alive, and they've stayed on the phone with them. So when you have people like Sarah Adams, her network in that country is amazing. And the people that she's talking to are normally the people who'd be talking to three letter agencies. But guess what? They don't trust those three letter agencies at all. And those three letter agencies, and our administration clearly is not interested. When we asked Massoud, are you talking to any? Nope. And so as weird as it is, and as strange as it is, and I've never. It's like the Twilight zone. I believe the GWAT generation specific veterans and intelligence pros in that generation have more high fidelity information about what's coming to the homeland than our own government.

Yep, yep.

And so it's not far fetched.

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I mean, if I put my unconventional warfare hat on, I'm going to take infiltration. As long as you give it to me.

I was going to. Yeah, was going to say the same thing. So, I mean, what, I mean, I want to break that down a little bit more and, you know, I mean, we have, maybe the question I would be asking myself is why would we attack now? Yeah, I mean, let's war game it. Let's see what our, I think this about China. I think this is about a lot of, a lot of our adversaries. Why, why would you, why would you formulate an attack right now when the going so good?

I mean, yeah, yeah.

It's not a, this isn't a joke. This isn't over embellished. The borders are wide, wide open. We know legend has been talking about this passport issue, how they're, yeah, they are printing, they are printing legitimate passports out and handing them out to as many terrorists as they possibly can to get them into south Central America and have them funnel up through the southern border. And so as long as that border is wide open and nobody in America is paying attention, why would they attack now? Why wouldn't they just keep, hey, let's train some more guys up, get them passports, have them infiltrate into the US. Going still good. Get some more trained up, get them passports, get them in there, get as many, as many of these terrorists into the United States as we possibly can. And then if they ever do actually secure that border. That's go time.

Yeah.

I think hundreds of, of thousands of terrorists inside the United States just waiting for the go ahead.

I mean, it's certainly a very large number of bad actors have made it into this country. And I would say not only al Qaeda, ISIS, K type operatives, but you're also looking at state actors. You're looking at China, Russia, Iran. All of these state actors have unconventional warfare mandates. Right. You know, so Green Berets are your, your guerrilla warfare, unconventional warfare component of the Sof community. But there's other countries that have that same kind of thing. So imagine that. Imagine that subversion, sabotage. Operatives have made their way into the country that are not just non state actors like al Qaeda, but state actors. And is it far fetched to think that there's actually collaboration between them? Right. And I think there could be. I mean, certainly look at what's, you know, look at what's going on, for example, with Iran and the Taliban and Iran and al Qaeda. There is clearly a symbiotic relationship that was not there before. And so there's that. Then you take, I wind it back to look at what's happening in Afghanistan that people are, I don't know why no one's talking about this, but the al Qaeda 2.0 book that just came out verifies what sarah has been saying.

Verifies what legend has been saying. Three independent sources are saying that Hamza bin Laden is alive. He was not killed under the Trump administration. He is alive. He is the emir of al Qaeda, which means the brand is back. The bin Ladens are back. That matters to donations. It matters to how they are perceived to the islamic ummah. Like, it is a big, stinking deal. He is in Afghanistan. Why would Osama bin Laden's son be in Afghanistan? What possible reason could he be there if for nothing other than retribution? He is married to the daughter of Mullah Omar, the former commander of the faithful of the Taliban, to the daughter of Haqqani and to the daughter of Ayman Zawahiri, if you go into who those are. So the Haqqani network, right, is a massive network in Afghanistan that's part of the Taliban, but also kind of an independent network that really were very connected to Osama bin Laden. Right? And they're much more aggressive on a global scale, whereas the Taliban kind of has more of a regional focus. Haqqani has very much a kind of a global focus and a deeper alignment in many ways with al Qaeda in their global aspirations.

So. And then. And then Zawahiri was the former commander of the leader of al Qaeda after bin Laden died, that was killed on the porch with the drone strike. But what you have is this massive intermarrying. And this was what Massoud was talking about between the bin Ladens and the Taliban. So the al Qaeda group and the Taliban group are intermarrying. You know, and this is a very, very key thing to pay attention to. This is what Soleimani did with the Quds forces in Iran. He had his offspring intermarrying into Hezbollah. It creates this bond that when things go south, man, it's unbreakable. And no one's paying attention to this. No one's talking about this. The fact that Osama bin Laden's son is now the emir of al Qaeda is a very alarming thing. And so now, with that condition in place, you not only have this open border for infiltration to happen from the south and arguably the north, but you've also got Haqqani, who was the father of suicide bombing in Afghanistan. I mean, a very aggressive global terrorist. He's now the minister of interior, so he controls the passport office. So a lot of these guys that are here, they have valid passports, you know, and I've even heard from several.

Yeah, this. I wanted to make sure people realize this isn't, like, a fake id shop in college.

Oh, no. These are valid travel documents issued by the Ministry of interior. And frankly, he's moving with impunity throughout the Middle east. Now, he has a $10 million bounty on his head by the United States, yet he moves around. He just recently went to, I think, Saudi Arabia and was within miles of us troops. You know, there was a time when that guy couldn't lay his head in the same place two nights in a row. But now he is the minister of interior and is issuing with impunity travel documents to folks that can come here legally and just set up shop.

You know, I think there's even another piece that nobody's really thinking about. I think about it all the time. But, you know, we're talking about. We're talking about terrorist cells infiltrating the US, setting up sleeper cells. It's gonna look like October 7. It's gonna look like the mall in Russia. It's gonna look like these active shooter type attacks, probably some suicide bombing, stuff like that. But, you know, even on top of that, if you zoom in even closer, you look at what some of the other organizations are doing that are infiltrating the country right now. The cartel. Yeah, cartel. And these. These people aren't stupid. They're not. You know. Yeah. Some of them live in caves and whatever, but, I mean, we spent 20 something years there, and they're doing just fine.

Yeah.

And. But what I'm getting at is, if you look at what cartel has done, they're also. They're not just setting up little base camps here and there to run drug operations. They are embedding into our politics. They are embedding into local politics, state politics, federal politics, police stations. I mean, they are. Their web is just growing. I mean, I did an interview with this guy, Luis Chaparro. There was a. It was the. I'm gonna butcher this. So I don't want to say it, but it was something involved. Somebody very high up in police in California just got popped for being involved in fentanyl trafficking and connected to the cartels. Then you look at China. China also infiltrating into our country. Spies are sleeping with our politicians. There's no repercussions for that. They're also embedding into our politics. They're buying up our land. They're buying up real estate. You go to California, you see real estate signs all in Chinese. And so Taliban is going to be taking notes these terrorist organizations are going to be taking notes. They're going to start getting into our politics. They're going to start sending in intel reps. They're going to be sleeping with our politicians.

This is. This is. It's. This is like the new way. And. And. Oh, you think I'm crazy? Well, guess who. Who was there to negotiate with Taliban before the US even left China, was already negotiating with the Taliban on how they're gonna pull this lithium, this. This. The lithium out of Afghanistan. And they're setting up all these different camps all over the place.

They're on Bagram right now.

See? And so you think that the CCP isn't. Isn't colluding with Taliban and every. All the other 21 terrorist organizations and maybe setting up strategic locations side by side with China in the US.

I mean, I think that's why so many of the global war on terror veterans are so upset over how all this went down in Afghanistan, because the answers that we got from our politicians in the administration was things like, we're going to get out of Afghanistan so we can focus on near peer threats. The great. You know, so, as our last planes are leaving Hkaya, you have cargo planes landing in Bagram, offloading chinese nationals. You have, you know, black suv's rolling out of vehicles on the H Kaya airfield, heading to the russian embassy. You know, so there's. There's. And you. Then, of course, we know Iran I in the role that they are having in Afghanistan right now. So, to me, we completely seeded the key terrain, you know, the very place where the near peer threat is the most profound. We walked away from it. You know, we literally walked away and don't even have an embassy there anymore to manage the great. The near peer threat that we're dealing with. And which brings me to something that you said, too, Sean, that I think is really important. And look, I'm going to speak for me, but I've heard this from a lot of veterans as we've toured with the play and talked to people for a lot of.

For me, as I look at the country right now and I look at the politics of, like, this election, and then whatever is going on with that, for me, it really is. It's not. It's not. When we're talking about something like this, this is not a Republican, this is not a Democrat issue. I've served under commanders in chief from both parties. I know you have, too. And I, frankly found them all to be pretty underwhelming in their ability to prosecute this fight and their understanding in the depth of this fight. I found their policymakers and their senior admirals and generals to be woefully lacking in their command of this problem set and at times intellectually dishonest about what was actually going on. And I just know for me right now, I have a hard time when I hear some of the stuff that's coming out of DC and when I hear some of the rhetoric around what's going on because it is so clear what is shaping up right now. And as you've alluded to, there very well could be a level of nexus and collaboration between international criminal elements, state actors and non state terror groups.

That could happen because they all have a vested interest in seeing us drop. You know, and what if they do play to each other's strengths? You know, what if al Qaeda is able to move, I don't know, mortar rounds across the southern border to link up with terror groups, to implement ukrainian drone technology with drones at a football game? Now, if we're sitting here thinking about this in Tennessee, you know, that's not. I just, I don't think it's that far fetched. And what I've seen coming out of Afghanistan and following the congressional testimony with all. I just don't see politicians taking it seriously. I really don't. I feel like it's. Or the media, you know, I just, I feel like it's generally the GWAC community thumping the tub and trying to get people to please listen, pay attention to this. But as a national focus, it just doesn't seem to be there.

Why do you think that is?

Hmm?

How can you not take this seriously?

It's baffling to me because, you know, well, I have a theory on it and I don't know, but I go back to what President Bush said in the very early days of the post 911 attack, and he, I think it was when he was talking to Congress, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said, you know, this war will largely be fought in the shadows and it will be fought by special operators and intelligence professionals. And basically what he said, Washington, the rest of the country can go about your business. We got it. And that's exactly what happened. You know, even with the largest footprints that we had in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, at the end of the day, just over, I think, 800,000 troops from the US, not counting NATO, served in Afghanistan. You know, there's 300 plus million people in this country. 800,000 served in Afghanistan over 20 years. Wow. Right? And so I think what you, you had was what this one military spouse said to me at one of our plays, when we performed the play and she stood up and she was very upset and she said, you know, we fought this war for ten years and when my husband went to war, the rest of the country went to Walmart, you know?

And so I think there's a disassociation from what this really is. And almost this idea, at least in the american population, that our special operators and our combat veterans, it's like a fortnight game. It's like a video game. You just reset it, put them back in the game when you need them, you know, and it's not really that big of a deal. You just, you just got to deal with it when it pops up. And we still kind of have this isolationist mentality, like, let's just focus on what matters here at home. Let's get back to the economy, let's get. But the real. That's fine, but it's not like Vietnam, where you could walk away from Vietnam and really Vietnam's got to figure it out. We've got to figure it out. This one follows us home.

Yeah.

This one follows us home. This is just a battle in a very long multicentury struggle with these groups. This is the, you know, this is just another round, a round one by them. But they're not, they're still coming and they're coming at us with all 4ft. And frankly, we're in a far worse position than pre 911. It's just we've deluded ourselves into thinking that we're not.

I mean, I don't even. I can't even fathom if they do this as effectively as I think they're capable of. I don't. I mean, this looks really bad.

Yeah. I told Sarah the other day, I said there is significant blood on the hands of some leaders on the other side of this. And, I mean, at a scale we've never seen. I mean, and it's just, it's just baffling. And I think it's why so many g. What generation veterans are really, really struggling is because the national security threat is so high. I think it's also why recruiting and retention are so bad. Because the preponderance of a volunteer, a volunteer force is not an entitlement. You know, it's a very fragile thing. It's a national treasure to have a volunteer force in this world we live in today. And we've squandered it. We've just pissed it away. And one of the big things that I think has happened is how much of the volunteer force is comprised of legacy war fighters that come from. They see their dad or their mom or their uncle, and they join, you know, certainly why I joined. And I think with what happened on August of 2021, and we systemically walked away from our allies, and these young folks saw what it did to so many of our generation of warfighters.

They said, you know what? I think I'm good. I think I'll pass. That's what I'm hearing, anyway. It's anecdotal, but I think it's significant.

You know, what does it look like? What does it look like when it kicks off? I mean, from our response. I mean, what does it look like?

Yeah.

I mean, I'm being serious.

Yeah. Who. Right.

Who's gonna save us?

Right.

Who's gonna protect us?

Yeah.

We've demoralized police to the fact that they're not gonna act. And I hate to say it, but you can't blame them.

Yep.

We've seen so many cops. You know, yes, there are some bad apples. Get it? But you have cut their legs out.

You've made them the enemy, and now.

You see what happens.

Yep.

Now stores are getting ransacked, people are getting shot all over the place for their watches and their tennis shoes, and there aren't very many repercussions. No, cops aren't going to do anything because they're demoralized. Most of the good ones have probably quit by now. You have a military who. Where recruiting is completely down. I mean, it's on the citizens. You have politicians that don't take much of anything seriously other than, you know, daylight savings time and. Cause that's important. Right. But what does the response look like? Have you thought about that?

I have. I mean, I've talked to some of the. Some of the folks that are working the problem set hard, and they're a lot smarter on it than me. But just a couple of things that I think are probably worth considering on the response.

Who are you talking to that's a.

Lot smarter than you, Sarah, for sure.

Okay. I'll buy that one.

Way smarter than me and some other folks that kind of work at the state and local levels. You know, one of the things that Sarah and I are trying to do is to travel around and just talk to any state and local leaders who will listen about what is very possible. Right. As a manifestation of the next terror attack and to try to give them just threat information updates on what's actually happening in Afghanistan. What's happening here and different things that the way this could actually play out, what it could look like as a scenario. Right. And, you know, I talked to you about the October 7 thing. I do think you're talking about complex attacks. I think you're talking about localized attacks, again, where we live, work and play. If you. I think. And Massoud said something. I'd love to go back and look at it again, but he said something that was kind of cryptic, but yet not when you were talking to him, and you, you asked him something similar about what does this kind of look like? And. And he said, you know, al Qaeda has learned a lot. They've learned a lot.

The Taliban have learned a lot. And ISIS K are still very young, and it would not surprise me at all. You ask me what it looks like, and this is some speculation, but with some synthesis. If you saw ISIS k or some other organization on the front of it actually conducting the attack with a marionette behind it, that goes all the way back to Iran and the Taliban and al Qaeda, but there's layers of plausible deniability all the way up to ISIS K, who they could care less. Their mantra is to usher in the apocalypse so they're not too worried about retribution or attribution. And they've demonstrated that they'll hit anybody. Look at what they did in Russia. Look at what they've done in Iran. They will be the front, I believe. And if you look, look at Pakistan, and Massoud said this, too, when you interviewed him, he talked about how Pakistan, you know, they kind of made the deal with the devil with the Taliban during the war that we were in, they funded, you know, the Taliban, and they funded these insurgent groups, these terror groups, to overthrow the afghan government and defeat us.

And they provided sanctuary to do that. Well, now that the country has fallen and the Taliban are in charge, and Pakistan has seen, like, a 500% increase in terror attacks against them, against the very organizations that were sponsoring these terror groups. But it's not coming from the Taliban. It's coming from surrogate groups like the Tariqi Taliban and others. But you could walk that sucker back on a whiteboard to very likely that, you know, the Taliban senior leadership doing that. So there's already models for this. That's one I think you're going to see. High levels of collaboration. I do not think that Isis K and the Taliban are on the outs. I think that is a facade that we have, westerners have fallen for. I just don't buy it. I don't buy it. I mean, they may have some ideological differences, but I think they. And now that Haqqani has the level of assertion that he does, I think there's, even in the al Qaeda 2.0 book they talk about the ISIS K leadership is now directly tied to Haqqani. But there's still this plausible deniability that could be done. It wasn't al Qaeda. That was ISIS.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I think that's one that we've got to start. Our politicians have, inner agencies have got to start looking at that. I think the other one, I think you see is it's the levels of attack could be so horrific and so localized that there would be an emotional overreach on the part of the United States where the only thing we know to do is just send a bunch of 18 year olds over there with Bradley's fighting vehicles and do it again.

That's what you think the response will be. Go back to Afghanistan while they're all here?

I think it'll be a heavy response because we won't know what to do. You know, there's this story about when the. When the hijacked airliner, one of the airliners was, I think it was the one that ended up going down in Pennsylvania. But they. They scrambled a couple of jets out of DC. They didn't have time to put armament on them. And Penny was one of them as her first name, but they went up. And so their mission was to ram the airliner. That was what they were going to have to do. They were going to have to ram it. And they got up too late. It had already happened. But I think it's a metaphor, right? Box cutters and an airliner, and you're going to get up in an f 16, you're going to ram it. Like that's your response. And I think just based on the way we've stuck our head in the sandheen and doled out tax dollars to an enemy that's actually conspiring against us, how could we think our response is going to be anything except a bumbling overreach?

There is potentially so many of them here that this could just happen on and on and on. And I think the response looks. I'm not. I think they're going to send people back to Afghanistan. I think the response looks very similar to the problem that we're seeing in the schools with active shooters. There is no response. There is incompetence.

There's paralysis.

There is the. It's never going to happen to me attitude. We're not seeing any more funding go to. Go to protecting our schools.

Yeah.

Like, nothing's getting passed. And like I said, and it's not a, this isn't a political thing. You know what? Like half the country thinks it's gun control. Guess what? Nothing's been passed. The other, the other half thinks we need to arm the schools up and protect them. And teachers need to be carrying guns. Not much has been done.

Yeah.

You know, it's. I got kids getting ready to go to school. That's the number one thing we look at in every school. And I am displeased with almost everywhere I've seen.

I hear you, man.

There is no plan.

No, you're right. And I do agree with you. I do think there will be a level of wholesale systemic paralysis in the nation when this happens, unlike anything we've ever seen that will make 911 look like, as legend says, a dress rehearsal. Because if just stop and think about precedent in our past where the DC sniper, 911, like, what did that do to the nation? Just step back and go, okay? I mean, it was significant. You take an October 7 style attack that happened in Israel, they won't even.

Be able to cover everything that's happening.

And you put it in six, or like, now you put it in six or seven cities. Cause they probably could, based on the levels of infiltration they've been able to achieve and the time they've been afforded and the resources they have, there's no reason to think they couldn't execute that in six places across the country or more. You are talking about a level of systemic paralysis that this country has never seen. And, you know, who knows what that leads to?

I think they could be recruiting.

You certainly have evidence of gangs here now from the diaspora of Afghanistan where there are Taliban affiliated gangs, much like you have gangs in Minneapolis that are affiliated with al Shabaab. And that's very important to note as well, because once you have those, you have now tribal linkages, you have international linkages and they're in the criminal realm as well. Right? So they're narco trafficking as well. And they're tied into international gangs. So you've already got a nexus right there, you know, and there is growing evidence of Taliban affiliated gangs in the United States because of the. How many hundred thousand Afghans we brought over here, right? And a lot of them, we don't know who they are, right. And their kids are now, you know, 1718 years old. There's videos out of. And there's even there's been videos of Afghans going back to, as gang members going back to Afghanistan and shooting. Shooting videos.

Wow. Wow. Scott, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk about. I think this all falls on the individual.

Yeah.

Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. So let's get back to the show. All right, Scott, we're back from the break. We were going to talk about what individuals do, but we're going to shift that a little bit here because we were just having a. I want to. A couple things came to mind on the break. One is we started talking about, what else, what other parts of our, what parts of our infrastructure do you think that these terrorist organizations will come after, other than just humanity itself? But also. Sorry, I have to clear my head, otherwise I'll forget this stuff. The other thing that I'm interested in is, you know, I did. I said that I don't. They go for easy targets. I don't believe 100% that they are going to be after guys like you and I. Mm hmm. Because they know what we can do. They've seen it, and they know how capable american commandos are.

But with that being said, when we left Afghanistan, not only did we leave all of the weapons and vehicles and planes and helicopters and everything that we need to make war, we left that all there. But the other thing that we left there was, to my knowledge, none of the classified information at any of these out stations or the Capitol itself or the embassy was destroyed. And so I'm going to stop talking about the, the ramifications that what we've done there and how we pulled out and what that means for Afghanistan, but what it. I want to shift now to, what does that mean for me and you? Because while they had all of the biometrics and the addresses and the names and the family members of all of the commandos that we worked with, my name's there. My real true name is with socials and all of that in your name. And anybody who took part in that war, especially at a high level, working for intelligence organizations, special ops, maybe both. All that information is in Afghanistan. And so are they going to come after, in your opinion, the men and women who fought over there, is target number one?

Well, I think it's very possible. I mean, first of all, because it makes sense, doesn't it? I mean that if you were going to do high profile targeting and you wanted to hit morale and, you know, I think you got to back it up to what would be the objectives of terror attacks in the west by groups like al Qaeda or ISIS. K and certainly we talked about the caliphate as a long term objective, but, you know, establishing a level of what my friend Dave Phillips, who used to work at the agencies he calls horrorism. It's beyond terrorism. It's a level of horror that is manifested in our psyche, in our heart, where you are just literally, I mean, look at what happened on October 7. You know, that was horror. That was beyond terrorism. That was a level of atrocity and violence that is nowhere in the law of land warfare like you, that it just beyond the pale. And I think that is part and parcel of what these groups want to inflict upon us. It is a level of horror and suffering that causes and elicits a response, a collective response from us that results in overreach.

You know, the fighter jet against ramming the commercial airliner. Right. Because ultimately, if that becomes our response every time, that's a pretty predictable outcome on who wins that one. It's not us. So, you know, if then, if you buy into that notion, then would attacking veterans, high profile veterans, folks that, you know, are in the public space, would that, would that aid in that? And I think it probably would. And not to mention the fact that we are talking about some things that are disruptive. If these plans are in place, and I believe they are, then it's disruptive because the politicians are not, the media is not. I mean, you hit stuff with Massoud that his father was never even listened to when he went to France and he tried to warn the world that bin Laden was about to launch an attack he had completely blown off by major media outlets. I mean, Peter Bergen was about the only guy that actually, you know, listened to the dude. And then with his son, same thing. Nobody's listening. But you've given, now you've given him a platform. So does that illuminate your profile? Yeah, I think it does, and I think we'd be foolish to think it doesn't.

But I think also we've got to realize that where these guys are going to go is the heart of our civil society. I think that's what's at risk. What, you know, the things we love the most are the things they're going to target. Nothing is off limits. And I'm just going to read you a quick quote here. This is the book I was telling you about al Qaeda 2.0. It's written by William Archer. He's a former intelligence professional in the british intelligence service, plus some other authors that the transatlantic intelligence consortium. So it's a lot of folks like Sarah, who worked this problem set for decades, who are on the outside looking in now and are trying to warn us because of their context. And this is a quote from the previously thought dead Hamza bin Laden very recently. What America and its allies fear the most is that we take the battlefield from Kabul, Baghdad, and Gaza to Washington, London, Paris, and Tel Aviv, and to take it to all the american jewish and western interests in the world. And this is the emir of al Qaeda now, who is married to the former, the daughter of the former commander of the Taliban.

You know, saying this openly, like, this isn't. That's not a cryptic message, that's a declaration, the same way his father made a declaration right before 911. You know, and so I think that one of the things that I would love to see happen is these conversations are great. I would love to see more state and local conversations about scenarios and the ways that this could go down. I'd love to see red cell type conversations where you have state and local law enforcement response agencies, federal, but then also folks like Sarah Adams and others who are talking to a lot of these individuals and getting very high fidelity information that could be of assistance. You know, Sarah did a check to see if the Department of Homeland Security's. If you see something, say something process actually worked. She had some actual information about terrorist activity that would have been helpful. So she contacted the DHS site, and they said, well, what we would prefer is you provide this to local law enforcement. Right? So she lives in Tampa. And they said, well, we'll help you. You know, where are you? And she told them Tampa, Florida.

And the information went to the hurricane operations center. And Sarah and I, we provided that information to governor DeSantis and his team, and I think they've made adjustments to it. But the larger point is that we're not tracking. We're not tracking. And if we think we got caught flat footed on 911, like we are asleep at the switch on Ambien.

Wow. I want to get into. I know you and Sarah are traveling around, and, I mean, we've talked about this in educating state dignitaries and politicians on what may be coming. But before we get there, what are some of the. What are some of the points of our infrastructure that you think that they would find ripe for a hit?

Well, I would say the first thing is that anything that would hinder our ability to use these things. I mean, we have become. This is something I talk about in my book, but we are essentially in a collective trance state with these things. We live here. We live in this arena, in this represented realm, this digital realm. We don't live in the natural world. So I think anything where they could alter our ability to work on these phones, be in these phones, anything with the power grid, anything that, because we've become so reliant. A friend of mine recently, his wife had a C section, and I think there was a hack. Was it on Microsoft or one of the telecoms. But they had to delay the C section for 24 hours because of a hack that had happened on a telecom.

Are these guys hacking, too terrorist organizations?

Well, again, I think the. And it would be interesting, maybe you look at bringing some folks on that can address that. But I do think there's a level of collaboration between state and non state actors that makes hacking very viable.

Do you know somebody that I should talk to about?

Let me stew on it, and I'll. And I'll talk to some folks, too. But I think that would be a very. Cause when you start talking about vulnerabilities. You know, I mean, obviously, we want to be careful there. But I. But I. Again, at the same time, if we're talking about it in a conversation, you can bet that bad actors have long since been looking at it and are actively targeting. And so I don't think there's. It's not like you're talking about classified. What I think, though, is we've got to start having these red cell type conversations. For example, we're talking about power grids right now in substations. I mean, the ability to look at the redundancies of a substation and where it's most vulnerable and how it can be taken out with the least effort is unconventional warfare 101.

And it's a joke. I just want. I want. I want to paint how easy this is. I touch on the power grid all the time. I've had entire episodes dedicated to just exactly how weak our power grid is. If you don't believe me, how easy it would be to attack a power grid, drive around, find a substation, tell me how that's guarded.

Yeah.

The only thing that separates that from the external world is a chain link fence.

Right. And to that point, most of them.

Don'T even have a padlock to get in.

And to that point, when we talk about people that have come across the border and bad actors. Right. Anybody who is trained in subversion and sabotage, which is the meat and potatoes of unconventional warfare that you're talking about, whether that's from China, whether that's a sabotage expert from Iran or al Qaeda. The first rule of thumb is that kind of thing is like anything where you can disrupt at a strategic level with minimum risk and minimum output. Right? And that's what you're talking about when you're talking about these substations and other pieces of infrastructure. It's very, very vulnerable. And the fact that you've got all of this flood of potential bad actors who are trained in that, then to me, it's just mind boggling that we're not leaning into that and saying, all right, well, if these things have occurred, then what can we at least do to mitigate at a state and local level and at least have conversations that would prepare communities for this kind of thing as best we can? That's not happening. I mean, that's just not happening. There's not a conversation around this. And I think for me, as a global war on terror veteran who saw 911, who lost his ranger buddy in the Pentagon that day, and who lost a lot of friends in the war that followed, it just seems criminal to me that we would put ourselves back in this position again where communities are so at risk and we would not have responsible, at least have responsible conversations on how to mitigate at this point.

Instead, it is literally head in the sand. Let's focus on the economy, which I get it, but it's not going to matter, you know, if we've exposed ourselves to what I think we've exposed ourselves to, and no one's going to care about those other things when the reckoning comes for that, you know, it's going to all be, you know, the next 911 commission. How did this happen? You know, with a bunch of congressmen harumphing on what should have been done and who knew what when, and to have that happen twice in, you know, 30 years, it's just, it's disgusting.

I think that. I think the power grid is a very viable option for them. I mean, and then just going back to China, I mean, I've been talking about China for a long time now and the control that they have over our power grid. And, you know, a lot of people called me a conspiracy theorist for saying it. Oh, but guess what? A couple months ago, FBI Director Chris Ray comes out and says, hey, guess what? Turns out that China has infiltrated not only our power grid, but also our water treatment plants so that they could. And what that means for anybody that isn't tracking here with the. Look, our power grid is not. China manufactures the huge ginormous transformers. I think if I remember correctly, if you took nine of those out countries out of power, it's done. They have to rip over passes out. I mean, we're talking years to get another one of these in. On top of that, these. These. That's if they were taken out by, I don't know, an EMP or a bomb or they shot it or whatever. We don't check these for Trojan horse, malware virus type things.

I've talked to multiple people. General Robert Spalding, David Tice, cash Patel. It's literally the push of a button. And from China, and our power grid is done. And so I think what would be a very viable option for a China Taliban type of, they, you know, work together. I mean, China doesn't really have to do shit because Taliban and these terrorist organizations are so hungry to get us, they'll just do China's dirty work and be the face, just like we were the face overseas. Hey, that wasn't us that hit that target. That was the Afghans.

I think there's a lot of.

Hey, that wasn't us that took out your power grid. That was the terrorist organization. Oh, by the way, but we negotiated this while you guys were pulling out.

I think there's a lot of precedent happening right now for state actors to use non state surrogates. You don't have to look far to see that happening. Look at Hamas, look at Hezbollah, look at the Tariqi Taliban. You know, look, it's. It's. It's happening all over the place. Like, there's precedent for this. This is not. This is not some kind of, you know, theory that state actors using non state surrogates is a very, very viable theory, especially if those non state surrogates are well established, highly effective, combat trained islamist terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, ISIS, K, you know, who have a multicentury narrative to undo our way of life. It's a perfect match. And to think that that's not going to happen and that it's not, you know, in the near future, something that's going to go down, I just think it's diluted, you know, and now I think what we should be talking about is. Is mitigation. And how do we have responsible conversations at state and local and federal levels about what we do about this. And what I'm seeing, honestly, I'm not seeing either administration talking about it enough. And I'm not seeing the media talking about it enough.

Yeah.

And I, I hope that something that comes out of this maybe will be some folks just going, man, look, let's just, you know, could we actually have a, you know, a pre 911 conversation instead of a post 911 conversation?

Well, I mean, it sounds like that's kind of happening, just not on the level that we would like it to be. But the federal government is not functioning. It's not. And they're not taking this seriously. I don't think they're really taking any of the threats against the US seriously. But it does sound like some of the states are taking it seriously.

Yeah.

And so I know you and Sarah have been going around talking to, I know you talked to DeSantis. I think I called you once. You were on a flight to Texas.

Maybe we were going to go. We're trying to work that right now. Alabama has shown some interest. We talked to state Senator Jay Collins, former Green Beret, about it. You know, it's, and what, how many.

States, I mean, it's refreshing to hear that states are realizing that the federal government is not functioning and probably completely gone. What states are actually taking measures into their own hands and wanting to hear what you and Sarah and legend have to say about what's coming.

I mean, at this point, it's mostly been anecdotal responses to interviews that you've done with Sarah or me. And then a couple of where we've reached out and through contacts have actually gone into the office of Governor DeSantis and sat with him and his chief of staff and had the conversation. It's not that many, I mean, honestly. And it's because if you stop and think about it for a second, everybody is running 100 miles an hour at every level focused on their, you know, political thing, whatever that, whatever the flavor of the day is, that's what they're focused on. I mean, even when we've talked to some of the state and local politicians, they're so busy with all this other stuff. And so you try to elbow your way into the room and, hey, you know, I'm a gWat veteran and I'd like to talk to you about, you know, the re emerging terror threat from Afghanistan. How do you like me so far? It's, it's, it's not like it's, it's, people are hungry to do that or to hear that. And it's like I said in our, when we started this interview, we have a very short memory in this case.

I don't understand. I do not under what. What is a higher priority than this? And second of all, it should be.

The central issue in the election.

What looks better than the governor of your state coming out saying, hey, federal government isn't taking this shit seriously. This is a real threat. This is what our state is going to do to combat this.

I would love to see that with a plan.

I mean, that's like, if I saw that, I'd be like, that's our guy.

I think there's a range of folks in the GWAT community who would, if afforded that opportunity, would, would jump at the chance to sit down with state and local leaders and at least lay out what's being seen and heard in the realm that we're in. Because again, what I'm saying is this is an unprecedented thing, Sean, where veterans are getting information, in many cases unsolicited, from very well placed, very well trained, very highly vetted special operators and intelligence professionals who we trained for 20 years to do this task. And they are in country, they are seeing it, and they have a very high fidelity level of information. And so it's being provided. It's there, it's available, it's not classified information. It's coming straight to veterans. But it's just unprecedented that they have this. But where do you share it? Where do you, where do you actually sit down in a responsible forum and say, look, post 911, this is the stuff coming off the battlefield that we're hearing. This is who's here. This is what they're saying. These are the quotes that Hamza bin Laden is making now. You know, these are the threats that he's making.

This is where they, I mean, Sarah and others have information on the, on weapons tracks that went into Gaza, where certain fighters have trained for a lot of this CQB stuff in former NATO bases. Like, it's really solid info. And even just their analysis, you know, even if you just take. And these aren't disgruntled veterans. These are individuals who are the best of the best and who, for a range of reasons, whether it was what happened in Benghazi or whether it was what happened to our allies on August 15, 2021 or what happened on 911, we're just not good with sitting by and watching it happen again when we're getting information that tells us it's coming and this is what it's going to look like. And we know how it ends. We know how this one ends, you know, but yet trying to get folks to just listen and pay attention and put that other shit aside for a few minutes. It is. It's like pushing a needle up a noodle uphill, man. And so I hope that maybe this will jar some stuff loose, because we gotta do it. Nobody's coming. Nobody is coming for this one.

It's gonna be grassroots conversations that will hopefully mitigate to some degree.

Have you heard any feedback from the people you have talked to about what they're doing with their state? Has there been any proactivity?

A little bit. I mean, you know, and honestly, probably the most prolific was, for example, Governor DeSantis. He was very receptive of what was put out, very appreciative. And he's a gwaut veteran himself, and worked around the naval special warfare community, and so has an appreciation, I think, for the kind of the bottom up type stuff that we brought. And Sarah did a great job with it. And then my understanding is, the very next day, he took that information to. And talk to all of the sheriffs.

Nice.

And I thought, that's pretty squared away, man. And then he said, if you. And then we made connections to where his folks and Sarah could pass information if things continued, and they can. That's established. It's not like this isn't a heavy lift in that sense. I mean, a lot of it is connecting, much like what happened with Pineapple Express and these other groups. What you had were veteran groups. You had active duty folks working together, passing information to fill the gaps that the top down institutions weren't filling, you know, so we were, for example, in pineapple express and other groups, you had all these guys on the wall looking at thousands of Afghans that they couldn't discern who was who. So you had Green Berets and others on their phones. They knew who. We knew who the commandos were. We knew who the special forces were. They trusted us. And we could move them using remote comms to a right place, right time, for near and far recognition signal with those young paratroopers on the gate, and then present them responsibly as highly vetted individuals to that young paratrooper so he could pull them through that four foot hole in the fence.

So you knew who you were pulling through. It was a 20 year commando. His family. His name is this. It's on a baseball card. Right? And our generation of veterans came up with that, like that, in that chaos. And they provided that information to fill the. It was truly, you talk about soft for life and military for life kind of organization. It was that. I think it was veterans really stepping into the breach and just helping in a relevant way, I think that's still possible. You asked the question, what would we do at home with the communities and the disarray that they are? I think GWAT veterans could play a very critical role in this. They could play a very critical role in the sense that they could help just provide information and analysis and thinking about what this could look like. They've seen these people fight. They know how they fight, they know what they bring to the party. And we have those kinds of warfighters all over the country. If we started to create red cell conversations about that, and you've got organizations like the ones that wrote this book, why not connect them to state and local leaders all over the country and allow them to have forums on Zoom and other forums where they can talk about this and what to expect?

I mean, to me that's a no brainer, you know, and it could be done the same way Pineapple Express and these other groups did it. We don't need permission, you know, and, and I think they're already doing a lot of heavy lifting. But now I think they need to be connected to the folks at the grassroots community levels because I think that's where this thing's going to show up.

What are, before we dive into the individual federal government obviously isn't going to do anything. What can, what would you like to see or what are some things that states can do to prepare for what might be coming?

I mean, I think it varies state to state. And I think this, again, this would be a great idea to maybe bring in some state administrators who are proactive in this and let them talk about what they're doing or what they're seeing or what's possible. But what I've heard so far just in conversations. And again, this is a bit anecdotal, but there are really solid state agency capabilities that are in play here. As first responders that have looked at terrorism before. They have a good chain of command. They have. It's really about prioritizing the effort, and I think it's really about recognizing, because it's almost like if you think about it, in the 20 year war that we fought, you had this because of the post 911 commission and all of that. You had really a pretty good architecture of federal, state, local information sharing. It was very flat, very collaborative. You know, coming out of the smoldering ruins of 911, there was a lot of cross agency collaboration and I think multi echelon collaboration. When Afghanistan collapsed, that just shut down, that just stopped. And I think a lot of people are still, because there's.

Well, there's no threat now. There's nothing to worry about. It's over. And so I think people just moved on and they're executing their day to day, not recognizing the fact that there is very much a threat at hand here, probably worse than pre 911. Yet the apparatus that had been in place for federal, state, local information sharing is not there at all anymore. It went away with the Afghanistan withdrawal. And instead, what you've got is actionable information with GWAt veterans going to the hurricane operations center. You know, that's where we are. So the capabilities, I think, are there at a state and local level to at least look at it, the problem and go, okay, well, here's what we could do. The same way you would deal with a hurricane or some other disaster, but the conversation isn't happening, because one of the things our federal government can really do well is to tee up the priorities and the conversations, and, you know, they're responsible first and foremost for national security. Okay, so, well, al Qaeda is a threat. The Taliban are a threat. No, instead, the Taliban are a legitimate state actor that we're giving funds to.

So by definition, there's nothing coming down into what would been, have been well established channels about this threat, because they don't. The federal government doesn't see them as a threat. What you have are gwaut veterans who see them as a threat. So as a state and local leader, who are you gonna believe?

Wow. Wow. Let's talk about the individual.

Okay.

What would you tell families?

The first thing? I. I mean, I still hold out some measure of hope. I have to do that because I have three sons, and, you know, a couple of them would be at risk if this thing goes the way it could possibly go. I hold out hope that there's still political pressure that can be applied. So the first thing I say to any individual is, are you paying attention to this? You know, are you actually paying attention to this? Or are you doing, like, what you do when you drive by a housing project and say, somebody should do something about that? You know, other people should handle that, you know, but. Or are you taking personal responsibility for what's actually happening here? Do you feel it at a personal level? If you don't, then, you know, the only advice I can give you is defend your house and know your shit so you can do that, because the biggest thing that citizens could do right now is make this damn thing an election, your issue. And that's why I love what you did with the petition, you know, because what it did was honestly, and I've heard this from so many of our generation of war fighters.

You know, it gave a voice to a group of veterans and GWAC generation folks in a way that they just hadn't been heard since we shut the door on that, on that war. And look at what it resulted in, you know, 300,000 signatures, a very mobilized, activated voice that made its way into Congress. That has resulted in legislation. I think that has brought a lot of pressure and, frankly, illumination on the topic in a way that it's not going away. It's very clear now that this generation of veterans is not, that we're not going to go away on this. We're not going to walk silently away and let another 911 happen without at least being heard. And so I say if you can do that with your platform and you can mobilize 300,000 people to sign a petition, then what can an individual do in Youngstown, Ohio, or Austin, Texas, to make this known? Have you, have you talked to your mayor? Have you talked to your sheriff? Have you demanded some kind of bottom up outreach to the governor's office about what are we doing here? What is the plan if this goes down?

You know, I just think it is responsible citizens looking at the problem, and first of all, take ownership of the damn thing.

Let's break it down a little bit more, because people need, people need actionable plans that they can do where they feel like they're in a group. I think that's why some of this stuff never gets done. And so here's an example. If you're gonna call the mayor or you're going to try to educate or inform your sheriff, chief of police, it always goes better when these things come in groups. And, you know, I learned something very effective from Eric Prince. And instead of just doing the outcry, you make it a voting issue, because all of these people want to be reelected. Sheriffs want to be reelected. Mayors want to be reelected. Congressmen want to be reelected. Everybody wants to be reelected because that's their new identity. That's who they are. They think they're, they're in charge. They have power. And so when you threaten their reelection, shit starts getting done. And so, and that's what we saw with the petition, with 300. I don't know what it's at. I think it's close to 350,000 people now. Right. And what did we do? We called it out on the Trump interview, and magically, all of a sudden, we got somebody's attention, and they finally did something and so it needs to.

I feel like it needs to happen in groups. So maybe it's. Maybe you get all the parents at your kids school together and draft up a letter, and everybody sends the exact same letter and. But signs it with their name. Maybe don't stop there. Go to your church. Have your pastor, you know, get it out. Have your minister get it out. Get everybody a copy, sign it. Give them the address, even address the damn envelopes with the stamp. All you have to do is sign your name on this, put it in the mail, and raise the little mailbox flag. And then he's got. I mean, some of these churches are huge, you know, then he's got 10,000 letters going to his office, and those are voters.

Yeah.

And if you don't do something, we're gonna vote for the other guy, you know? And it just. It creates pressure, and it demands a response. And I think. I think that is the next step to moving forward personally, because we've proven that it works and nothing else. Nothing else has been working.

Yeah. And I think that's really good. And again, I would just call out to. To veterans. I'm speaking primarily to global war on terror veterans, but certainly Vietnam veterans, veterans of any generation, I think, are. Well, I just think they're well equipped to lead conversations and community level activities around this kind of thing. To me, it's just as pragmatic as preparing for a hurricane or a tornado or a natural disaster that could hit your community. You know, nobody in East Palestine, Ohio, ever thought that a train would derail in the middle of town and spew chemicals everywhere. You know what I mean? But it did. And look at what it. How it impacted that community. And you better believe now they have a community action plan for those kinds of disasters. But I think veterans are just well equipped for that. And I think that we've seen the enemy. We know how they operate, and we know they're very real, and we're pretty good at communicating a narrative. And again, I think it should be pointed out that what you've done with this, what Sarah has done, what legend has done, all of us are arguably underqualified to take this on in the terms of, like, what's been accomplished.

I mean, I look out over my skis all the time like it's a ski jump, thinking, man, that landing is gonna suck. That's what it feels like. I always feel like I'm out over my skis, and there's somebody way better than me that should be doing this, and I'm sure there are. That should be. But. But the reality is, right now, we've got what we've got, and we can either just sit dormant and hope it doesn't happen, or we can actually start to engage each other at a community level like you've talked about in a collective fashion and really start to look at it as a community problem. But also, I mean, honestly, are you calling your all. You're calling your congressman and demanding that this be a central issue in his or her campaign, you know, mobilizing people, like you've done with a petition for town halls to get it added to the agenda of what politicians are talking about right now as part of their platform. I just. I'm not seeing it. I just. There's such an absence of kind of personal concern for this issue. You know, you kind of get the head nod and, wow, that's too bad.

But it's like, man, have we really collectively forgotten that much since 911 2001? It's almost. It's hard to fathom, but it seems like we have, like, as a civil society, we've just literally erased our memory of it as if it never happened, you know? And a whole generation of veterans are sitting here going, what the hell? Just. What was that?

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, did it matter that I lost my friend over there or my wife to five deployments? You know, it just. It's such a contrast, Sean. And I think that's what bothers me more than anything is that you've got this little handful of veterans that are trying to stump the tub and sound the alarm. But a real absence of concern at the collective level, and it's exhausting, honestly. I want to go back to my job. I want to go back to my nonprofit. I want to go back to my life. That's what one person said to me in our chat room about this. He's like, I just want my life back. We're not victims. We're not walking around with a victimhood mentality. We're actually trying to take some kind of activated stance here and present ourselves responsibly where the institutions are nothing, you know? And it's exhausting, and it's not a complaint. It's just like, at what point? How long can you sustain this? I mean, how long can these veterans that are out there? And again, I know I keep citing Sarah, but, I mean, she does that on her own, man. Like, she is just constantly working that obsessively, but she doesn't have a lot of support for that.

She's just doing it it just needs to be done. But we're literally heaping this on a whole generation of warfighters who gave us so much for 20 years, man. They gave us so much. They didn't ask for anything. They just kept going and kept going. And now we're going to heap this shit on them. Just to me, the politicians and the media should be ashamed of themselves. They should be ashamed that you've got these seasoned, multi toured combat veterans that are the only ones sounding the alarm. And they've been through enough.

Unfortunately, there aren't very many politicians that feel ashamed of anything. And. But I do believe that the media is almost done. Tides are turning on that. And media is. They're pretty much done.

What do you mean?

They're going out? Yeah, I mean, it's. It's. Kat's kinda out of the bag, you know? I mean, I'll give you an example. We just did. I'm seeing it firsthand now. It's happening to me.

Right.

And we did. This is just one example, but about. Of why the media is dying. We did. I just interviewed, just did an interview with JD Vance.

Okay.

And I asked him if he would support. We're potentially facing a government shutdown on October 1. And I asked him in that interview if he would consider supporting a government shutdown on October 1 if we are still funding terrorist organizations. And he said yes. Well, NBC picked that article up and they spun it and said that JD Vance would support a government shutdown due to foreign aid. They replaced funding terrorism with foreign aid.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's what the government calls it.

But people are seeing that, you know, there was no mention, there was no hyperlink to my interview, no hyperlink to any clips. There was no source avenue for anybody to reference what was actually said. They just said, sean, in an interview on the Shawn Ryan show. This is what he said. Yeah, I'll have. We'll actually put the article up in this right now. It'll be overlaid so everybody can see. But. But basically what I'm getting at is media's numbers are dying and podcasts like this one are on the rise and the numbers are flipped now, now we're getting the numbers and the. I mean, a lot of these media organizations get like 50,000 views an hour, 50,000 viewers.

Well, it's like what you talk when you interviewed Massoud. Right? I mean, there's things that continue to come out of that interview and frankly, that we didn't know when we went into it that have to do with other resistance organizations, you know, levels of competency inside each of these resistance organizations. Like, you're not. You don't have the opportunity to evaluate any of that information because the news doesn't even cover it. They don't even talk about it. They don't inter. No one's interviewed Massoud like you did and, like, went to him and laid that out. And a lot of the things that are falling out of that interview, some good, some bad, like, that's. That's. That's necessary, I think, for, you know, who was it that was telling me the other day who said that, you know, pretty soon the highest commodity in the country is going to be truth because you just don't know what's true anymore. Yeah. There's no way to know what's true. And what you said that NBC did with. With that interview, like, they didn't even cite it or source it, just. So how do you know what's true unless you do these long form conversations where there's plenty of opportunities for you and me to screw up, plenty of opportunities to say things wrong, but also plenty of opportunities for people to get a sense of you, a sense of me, and start to get a sense of themselves.

Yeah.

You know, and we just don't do that anymore. And when you're dealing with these kinds of topics, honestly, what people have told me about Pineapple Express in the book is I had no idea that our afghan commandos went through that. I had no idea that the minister of women's affairs, the most wanted woman in Afghanistan, was not even picked up by the State Department, but rather had to jump in a shit canal and get guided by veterans and the 82nd airborne to even escape one of four female ministers in the whole country. So I think I see your point. Like, the whole thing is kind of being upended. And I don't know how that ends, but right now, it's the only place to go for anything involving truth. I think. Are these long form interviews.

Yeah. Well, I mean, even on top of that, look at what's happening.

Yeah.

The media is having to cover what we're talking about on this show because they can't pull what off. They cannot pull off what we're doing. How crazy is that?

It's crazy. And I think institutions, the same way, you know, institutions are, I can tell you during Pineapple Express, and I'm not alone in this, there are several volunteer groups that have told me similar things. I got calls from the chairman's office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a special advisor to Kamala Harris, several congressional leaders, all asking for Pineapple Express to get out their favored Afghan. Now, these are institutions within the United States government that are doing this. Calling the cell phone of a friggin, you know, retired SF dude like that's been a playwright for ten years. I'm not exactly, you know, your top pick for personnel recovery, but that's what was happening, you know? And I think there's. I think that's continuing to happen. I think if you look at Ukraine, if you look at Haiti, if you look at what happened in Gaza, anytime now, you see a non combatant evacuation or a mass personnel emergency. You see these veterans groups rushing into the fray. And there are these pre illuminated networks now that are getting all this shit done, and they're tied into these apparatuses on the ground. I've never seen anything like it, but I think it is here to stay.

You know, I think you're going to see now these networks, these bottom up networks doing amazing things to fill the gaps when nobody else is coming. And going back to your original question of what is, you know, what's that going to look like at a community level? What can individuals do? I can't speak to the very specifics, but what I can say is, I think you'll see those same networks rise up as long as the comms stay in place that you saw in Afghanistan, that you. You'll see these just really organic networks that are both formal and informal, working together at light speed to get stuff done. Why not connect them now?

Yep.

And introduce them to each other so that they know who's who, relationships are established, and the pre existing conditions are in place for if something goes down, you now have these eclectic groups that can light up and work the problem, because I think it's the best shot we got.

I think you're right. I think you're right. Let's move into. I mean, since we've given plenty of examples of people who realize nobody's coming to save them and making moves. I'm doing it. You're doing it. Sarah's doing it. Lots of other veterans are doing it. Let's move into your book. Nobody's coming to save you. Why did you write this book?

It was really what happened in Afghanistan. At one point, Monty, my wife, it was really, you know, everything was happening so fast. All my clients were gone. You know, our nonprofit play had just been shelved at this point because we're just. I'm just myopically focused on trying to answer the phone and try to help buddies that I knew, get out. And at some point, Monte just said. And she said, why are we doing this? You know? I mean, there was a point in my life in 2015 where I was standing in a closet holding a pistol, you know, when I came out of the army, that a very dark place in my life, in my transition. And I think for Monte, that's where she saw me heading back to when the country collapsed like that. And she's like, you know, just, why are you doing this? You know, it just makes no sense. And the only thing I could think to tell her was like, nobody's coming, babe. I mean, like, our kids are watching us right now. Like, our three boys are watching us to see what we're gonna do when our friends are calling us right now, you know?

And no. And for a while, I thought some, surely somebody's gonna step in from us, SoCom or somewhere, and there's no way we're gonna leave 30,000 commandos in the dirt. There's no way. It's just. They're just getting it together right now. But it turns out we did. And for me, it was just like this epiphany that I had always kind of felt was starting to happen. But it was the first time I saw at a collective institutional level, where the top down organizations that we had relied on for years simply did not perform. They just didn't show up. And so you had veterans and others stepping in, just doing the best they could, and they did okay. We did all right. Nothing near what the government could have done in that case. I mean, my buddy Duke said it was an Uncle Sam sized problem with veterans, time to solve it with their pension funds. We did move the needle, and it just stuck with me. I'm like, wow. You know? And where it took me back, Sean, the first time I ever heard the saying nobody was coming was we had just deployed to Afghanistan in zero four, and one of the.

We just got there, and one of the Blackwater Casas crashed on a mountain, a Kassen 212 way up in the hindu kush. And we were down in Kandahar. The crash happened up in Bamiyan, way up at like, 15,000ft. But one of the. I was the Ops end director, you know, the operations center director for an SF battalion. And so I kind of commanded, not commanded, but controlled and coordinated the actions of all the teams that would go in and go out. And one of the teams that had trained in high altitude rescue personnel recovery before coming over and had done a lot of work in that regard. And Mark was the team sergeant of that team. And as soon as he heard about the crash over the SAT radio, he came running. And he's like, we can get up there. We could get up there if we could get. He's like, they don't have much time. And at first, I kind of like, yeah, okay, you know, whatever. And he just stayed on me. Sir, nobody's coming. Like, we gotta go. We gotta get up there. Those guys, you know, they could still be alive.

And at some point, we did a bottom up con up and convinced the powers that be up in Bagram to let Mark's team go. And they did. And it took. But it took like, four days, I think, for them to finally get up there with all the bureaucracy and everything. And they finally got up on the side of the mountain, and everybody was dead at the top of the mountain. And they. But they. They stayed up there. They extracted the black box. They got every stuff, you know, mail, even off the plane. And they, you know, when they finally came back to the operations center, you know, Mark walked into my office and he laid down a couple of pictures. And I remember he just had tears in his eyes. And it was one of the soldiers halfway in his sleeping bag. Urine stains in the snow and a couple of cigarette butts, you know, and he just looked at me, you know, and he's since passed on. But I never forgot that, you know, because it was. I could have moved faster, I could have pushed harder. I could have done a lot more, you know, and he was.

He was crystal clear nobody was coming, that we needed to go. And I just promised myself, I'm like, that will not happen to me again, you know, in my lifetime. Like, if that. That will not happen again. And I've tried to, like, live that life, you know, where if it's clear that there's an institutional shortfall, if it's the right thing, you step in the arena anyway. But Afghanistan was the most glaring example of it for me, and it really set me forward to put this book out.

I love how you started the book with, is it the churn?

Yeah, the churn. The churn.

You were talking about building rapport at the very beginning of this interview. And what I remember about that chapter is you guys, your SF team embedding into a village, right, and fighting off bad guys night after night after night after night after night. And it sounded like the villagers had zero trust in you, right? And you were persistent. You and your team were persistent. Night after night, you protected that village against the bad guys. You led by example. You proved to them that you were there to fight alongside with them. And then eventually, one guy started to return fire with you guys. And I would like to kind of make that this is what's happening right now.

Yeah. Yeah.

In a different way. We are opening different conversations that have to do with national security.

Yeah.

And for whatever reason, a lot of people are afraid to speak up and talk about certain subjects today. But we continue to lead the way, and we continue to have these conversations over and over and over. And they get. Some of them get pretty dicey. We've gone halfway across the world to have them with a guy whose dad was assassinated in an interview.

Yeah.

And what I'm noticing is media is starting to pick this up. Other podcasts are starting to pick this up. The conversation's getting bigger and louder, and the information and the threat is being. It is being disseminated, and it's by being persistent, letting them know it's okay to do this. And I think that kind of goes hand in hand with the first chapter.

It does. And honestly, you talked about the churn. So, with special forces, and I think this is true with all special ops and even combat veterans in Afghanistan. But special forces, by doctrine, you know, they get dropped into low trust, at risk areas where there is a ton of conflict. Right. And that's, by definition, why they're there. And it's usually a strategically relevant area. Then that Green Beret team will go in, and they should work by, with and through the indigenous people in that area to build social capital or relationships, rapport, trust over time, and then ultimately, as you said, inspire those people to go up on rooftops and fight back. Right. To fight back from the inside out, the bottom up. And that is the nature of unconventional warfare. Like, that is the bread and butter of green berets. That's what they do. And there's a lot of, I think, a lot of confusion out there on the different special ops groups. But, like, at the heart of green Berets, that's what they've done since World War Two with the OSS teams working with partisans in Europe, is they would go in the Jedberg teams, and they would mobilize these partisans, build trust and then combat, advise them shoulder to shoulder against infrastructure and the things that we talked about earlier.

So I had the privilege, you know, when I went into Afghanistan, in the beginning, it was payback for my buddy cliff. Like a lot of Americans, it was walking the enemy down for ten years. But then halfway through the war, we. We realized we were losing. And we started doing this program called Village Stability, where we lived and operated in these villages, and we worked alongside tribes to do that and other afghan communities. And in doing that, Sean, it was, you know, I was one of the ones fortunate enough to be a program director for that. So I bounced between different villages, and I saw these different teams doing this work. And what really stuck out to me every time is they were going into these low trust areas. I mean, they just churn of conflict, and then they would establish trust and rapport at a local level, just using old school interpersonal skills. And then over time, they would build that social capital out until the collective would stand up on its own. And I was just blown away by that over the years. But then when I got back to the states in 2013 and started going through a transition, one of the things that really sent me off the edge in my transition was coming back to a country I didn't even recognize anymore.

So divided, so much just conflict with ourselves. Sebastian Younger says it in his book tribe. You know, most combat veterans are more than willing to die for their country. They just don't know how to live for it, because it's hard to know how to live for a country that's tearing itself apart along every imaginable line, from race to politics to religion. And that really put me into that spiral that I went to in my transition. It's like, what was the point of going over there and fighting to keep it over there when we're tearing each other apart here at home? And for me, I knew that there was, like, something I could offer to that, to that churn. I'd seen it my whole life, but it wasn't. It wasn't a lot of the cool guy stuff that you see special. It was interpersonal skills, storytelling, active listening, building trust building rapport when the reaction is you want to reach for your gun, you know? And that's what these NCO's taught me in special forces was how to do that. That. But every time I would try to talk about it or do it, I would just get stuck in my throat.

I had so much anxiety and survivors guilt from it. I couldn't get in front of people at all. I was petrified. I think you and I have talked about this like, it was really hard for me to get in front of people and share those lessons, even though I felt like I had a ton of content to do that. And ultimately, I ended up studying storytelling under this ex NFL player who had learned storytelling as an actor and a playwright. And he started teaching me, and then I started bringing that into talks that I would give from the stage. And ultimately, what I realized was, man, the churn is here. The churn. The same churn that was kicking our ass in Afghanistan. It's in this country, you know, we're more divided and disconnected than we've ever been. We're acting like tribes, you know, instead of out of many, come one. And so what I decided for me for the rest of my life was, I'm going to pour the rest of my years into building a methodology of interpersonal skill sets and rapport building and communication skills. And I'm going to teach that to leaders in corporate America and communities, nonprofits, wherever I can.

How to use storytelling, active listening, nonverbal communication to build relationships when it's hard, when people are scared, when they're angry, when nobody's coming. And I've been working on that for six years. I've been. I've rewritten this damn thing probably 15 times. But I. After pineapple and after we did the play last out and Gary Sinise picked it up, and people just kept asking, like, well, how did you do pineapple when you didn't have any money or authorities or resources? And how did you do a play that Gary Sinise produced when you're not even a trained actor or you've ever written a play? And the answer was old school. Interpersonal skills and relationships, building social capital, and surrounding myself with people who see the problem the way I see the problem and who are better than me, and then building that collective in such a way that we can take on any kind of ambiguity or wicked problem. And I just love it. And so that's. I thought, man, if I could put that in a book that's like, stories and best practices, where individuals like you who are. You're building this massive movement, and you are literally filling the gap, as you said, that media is not filling, that politics is not filling.

If I can pour into you supplemental information on, okay, here's how storytelling actually works on the brain. Here's how active listening actually works. If you ask questions that start with what and how, you have a much better chance of establishing reciprocity, you know, putting in tactics that really help people just make better connections in the moment. There's no ceiling for them. There's no limit to what they can do. And that's what this book is. It really is just chock full of best practices that I learned as a Green Beret. And believe it or not, that I learned as an actor.

Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's an actor.

Yeah. Because when we did so when we wrote the play last out, I'd never acted. I mean, it was like the ultimate midlife crisis, you know, I started studying acting at 50, and I snuck up to New York. I didn't tell anybody. My wife's the only one that knew. I studied under Larry Moss and Carl Burey. Really good coaches. But I told him, I said, I want to do a play about the war to help civilians and politicians feel it, like, in their gut, in their teloplexis. And I want veterans and gold star family members, when they watch that play, they say, that's me up there. That's my life at the same time. And those coaches said, well, Scott, you can't do that because the only thing you know how to do as a soldier is to take hard information and push it down. And as an actor, you have to take the armor off, and you have to have all those moments with the audience. You have to be completely exposed. So unless you're willing to do that, it's not possible. Give it to an actor that can do it. And I was like, well, what does it take to do that?

And they said, well, about a year. And so I started training in diaphragmatic breath work. And what I learned, though, Sean, what was astounding to me was that the theater community is really good at getting in front of a group of people they don't know and being super present and available on things that are very emotional and feeling it with the audience. So if you think about that, if you go into a negotiation or you have to get in front of your teenager that's been bullied, whatever, it's this, you've got to be there. You got to be present. You got to be available. You got to be intentional. That's the leaders we're missing right now. You know, we're missing those leaders that have been scuffed up and that are just real and there's no armor. They're just here. You know, I think that's why people are so drawn to the interviews that you've done and stuff. It's because it is. It's completely vulnerable. Like, you don't know what's going to happen next. And that is the ultimate definition of vulnerability, is when the leader steps into the arena and has no idea what's going to happen next but does it anyway.

And that's what acting is. But what they've done is they've developed a craft that allows them to prepare. Because what happens, we all do it. When you get in front of people and the stakes are high and there's no trust, you lock down. And so tension becomes what happens to our bodies. It's protecting itself. It's a 250,000 year response. The human operating system does it. But what we've learned is that the human operating system can actually. You can actually metabolize tension where you're fully present. And most of it's just diaphragmatic breath. It's literally breathing three to five diaphragmatic breaths before you walk into the engagement. And you go from a sympathetic state to a parasympathetic state. The acting community's known this for years, but guys like you and me, we were never taught that, but it would have been nice to know right before I walked. Now, some guys figured it out. But the point is, these are all replicable skills that if you give that to a corporate leader or someone who runs a nonprofit or just someone who's a teacher who has to get up in front of people in high stakes moments and make a connection, there's a way to do that where you really bring the science into it, and you're very skilled at it, and you own that room, and you make that connection, and you're relatable to that human across from you, and it doesn't cost you anything, right?

And I just think that's what the country needs. We need politicians who do that. We need teachers who do that. We need moms and dads who do that and who have these interpersonal skills. We've all got the coercive skills, like you said, there's plenty of that. But where are the skills about just making better human connections and being a better storyteller and being a better listener? Because that's actually where reciprocity happens. And we form collectives that can actually do the things you're talking about at a community level, coming together and demanding action, you know? And we need leaders who have those skill sets when nobody's coming. And I think that's how we get big shit done right, is getting back to the human operating system, back to our nature, getting out of these phones and into what allows us and allowed our grandfathers and grandmothers to connect. It's an old school set of skills, but it's completely atrophied, especially with COVID.

I mean, what is, you've built one hell of an extensive network. And so we live in a day and age where human interaction is damn near non existent. I mean, you see it every time you go to the store, you see it everywhere. You know, even when you're asking an employee of a store, hey, where's the. Where can I find the, I don't know, doorknobs, right?

I don't know. Yeah.

You know, and it's like human interaction is, like I said, it's damn near non existent. And so I understand the importance of a network. You understand the importance of a network? I think a lot of people, because of the way culture's gone, have no idea how important a network actually is. And if they do, I don't think that a lot of people even have step one in how to even start to create a network or even what kind of network they would want to create. And so what would step one be?

So that's a great question. And so let's just unpack it. The first thing that I have in my book is when we talk about the churn, right? There's. There's an old saying in special ops. It's a special ops imperative is know your operational environment, right? It's a first off imperative. And I think that's true today in the world that we live in. And this is the churn. And what I tell people is, first of all, you've got to understand the true enemy of what you're up against when you're trying to influence and get big shit done. The enemy is not the Republican or the Democrat in front of you. The enemy is not the mask or no mask person in front of you. Right. The enemy actually is a very unique, unprecedented, novel set of social conditions that we've never seen before in this country. And it's a set of social conditions that have actually caused us to evolve to a place where we're doing what you just said, where there's no human connection at all. It's straight up division. It's fear based. Most people are operating in what psychiatrist Ivan Tyrrell calls a trance state.

When we are in a persistent state of fear or anger, we go into a trance, right? And it happens all the time. It's just a state of hyper focus where I'm angry or I'm afraid, and the body takes over. And the body is focused on survival, right? And if you look at people all the time, they're in this trance like state where they're either they're focused on surviving, they're afraid, or they're angry. And they've been conditioned through these damn phones, through the 24/7 news cycle. Divisionists, politicians, and it's over and over and over, we're inundated with this. And over a period of time, the amygdala, the primitive brain, it doesn't know the difference between a saber toothed tiger and a contentious election, right? So our bodies haven't changed in a quarter million years. So we have this primal response of trance. And so most people are walking around in a trance state, man. And when that happens and you're afraid, what you do is you revert back to the most primal form of trust, which is your in group. The people that look like you, think like you, believe like you. And those people over there, they're dangerous, existential threat.

And we start treating each other, as younger says, with contempt that would normally be reserved for one's enemies, right? So you've got pervasive contempt, moral superiority, just everywhere in our society. And so it causes us to act in a tribal way, you know, rather than what we're actually preconditioned to do, which is connect and bridge, right? And what's defined this country for 200 years? Alexander de Tocqueville said it when he visited here in the 18 hundreds. He said, that country is individualism, rightly understood individuals, but who understand the value of community and connection, and we've lost it, right? So the first thing I tell people is to recognize that you're operating in a set of novel conditions where your first order of business is to recognize most folks around you are in some kind of trance state. And your first order of business is to bring their emotional temperature down to a level that they're even ready to listen to what you have to say. And we may not like it, but it's just our reality is, how do I get the person across from me ready to listen to me right now? How do I take the tone down to where they're in a parasympathetic state, their ears actually start functioning again, and they're listening, you know?

And that's hard, man. And I can remember going into places in Afghanistan where you. I'm sure you do, too, where you had to build a poor really fast. Oh, yeah, right. And you come in hard. I mean, you can do that, but what you're actually doing is creating a social insurgent. You know, they're already amped up, so you got to bring their emotional temperature down. And that's why, again, in. So the other piece that I would say to your question is not only do you need to understand the churn and that you're in these novel circumstances, but that you actually have something at your disposal which is the human operating system. This primal instrument that has been around for hundreds of thousands of years is actually well suited to bridge through that stuff. We're natural storytellers. We're actually predisposed for connection. We don't have fur, fangs or claws, right? But yet we form groups and teams better than anybody else. And we sit on top of the food chain of all mammals because we know how to team and we're wired for it, but we've atrophied all those skills. So what I'm saying is we need to understand how humans actually make connections, how we build relationships, what creates reciprocity, what makes another human want to do something for you?

Like what? The reason that I've built the networks that I've built is because I understand both the art and the science of connection, right? And I understand that the relationship's the most valuable asset you have in your inventory, not for the transaction, but for the friggin relationship. You know, you think about things you and I have done together in the last, what, four or five months? Every single one of those things has come from the relationship that we have and that we've built, and it's all built on a platform of trust, right? And I know that if you come to me with something or I come to you with something, it's, we're going to go. We're going to figure it out. We don't know the answers, but we'll figure it out. And honestly, that is the foundation for where we need to go as a civil society, as businesses, communities, is we got to reestablish social capital, and we got to get away from this bullshit of building a relationship for the transaction, which is what we've been conditioned to do, and get back to how actually humans operate, which is social capital. It's the oldest form of capital in the world, relationships, and put a premium on them, teach it to our kids, relearn it ourselves, become better storytellers, better listeners.

And the final thing I'll say is a very tactical thing where you said, like, that person's like, yeah, it's over there. Is like. Is to act. One of the things I teach in negotiations is the first rule in this environment is you have to make a human connection first before you ask for anything, before you show a slide, before you make a point, do I have a connection with you? Do you see me? Okay, all right, I got you now. All right, what's going on? Yeah. And then we go, right? Make a human connection. And we're not doing that anymore. We're just literally in our phones. We're not even connecting to one another. So the leaders that are conscious of connections and actually clock it and leverage human connection as an asset, they're going to be the most relevant people every time. They're the ones that are going to get the big shit done. And you look at some of these candidates out there right now in politics, no social capital. Yeah, and it's not good, man, because that's what we model our behavior off of, you know?

That's a good point.

Yeah. We model our behavior off that, and it's. We need leaders stepping into the breach who are responsible on demonstrating what human connection and rapport and relationships is supposed to look like. How do we treat each other? And the last thing I'll say about it, and I know I've riffed on it, is in this election, as a Green beret who has worked in a lot of insurgencies, and I've seen how it ends, just like you have. I am far more worried in this election about how we treat each other, discussing these issues than the issues themselves. Because the biggest threat we face is in how we deal with these issues. If we deal with these issues the way that we are and we keep on this path, shit, it's gonna be so easy for al Qaeda and ISIS and everybody else to just filet us.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like we're a remote outpost. You know, I tell people, like, imagine that you're on a hilltop and you're defending against an onslaught of the Taliban, right? And you and me are in a foxhole, and we're. And we're fighting this is onslaught, and they're starting to flank us now, and they're coming around our flank, and it's very clear that they're about to get the high ground on us. And so at that point, I just turned to you in my foxhole, and I just knocked the shit out of you, and then you knock the shit out of me. And then we just start knocking the shit out of each other while the Taliban are flanking us. That's what we're doing.

Yeah. Literally.

Literally. That's what we're doing. And so I think we got to shake off that trance.

I've never heard it put that way.

Metaphorically. I think it's exactly what's happening. And I travel all over the country, and I teach this in every industry imaginable, nonprofits. I speak on it, you know, with the play. We do talk backs after every play. So I spend a lot of time listening and watching what's happening in the human terrain. And I'm absolutely convinced that's what's happening. And a big reason is a lot of our leaders are what I call divisionists. You know, to have a civil society like America that is based on bridging across in groups and out groups. Right out of many come one, that kind of trust is not a normal trust in the mammal community. Right? Mammals, when we, no matter we group and we trust only the people in our group or our den or our pack or our clan or our tribe, that's who we trust. But we've built a society that we actually trust beyond race and religion and politics. And we, you know, it's pretty, pretty astounding, honestly. But it's not a natural thing. And it requires a level of leadership that is bridging in nature. You have to be stewards of that. You have to model that in what you do.

And to me, over the last several decades, what you've seen are leaders who actually are supposed to do that, but they've actually become like these divisionist leaders who foment division and basically foment the, create the reemergence of these in groups and out groups, these tribal groups, to advance a narrow agenda. And if you look around, you see it everywhere. You see it on both sides of the aisle. You see it in social media. You see it in 24/7 news. You see it in communities where these leaders are actually fomenting instability by advancing one group over another group. And it's the antithesis of what this country was founded on. You know, it's the worst form of leadership. It's tribal leadership, you know, and so we need leaders again. I look at what's happening in this country and guys like you and girls like Sarah and legend who are building these things, they're, and I'll show the football a little bit at the end of my book. I talk about in the early 19 hundreds, it was a really rough time in the country, bad time in the country. There was a lot of division, a lot of political haves and have nots.

You know, the agricultural communities were collapsing and everybody was going to the cities and the cities were failing in their infrastructure. Immigration was a massive problem. And the pundits were saying, america's on our last leg. It's the end of days. In fact, Robert Putnam, when he writes in his book the Upswing, he talks when he does the first chapter you think he's talking about right now sounds familiar. And he actually reveals that it's the early 19 hundreds. But here's the thing. A couple of drunks in Akron, Ohio, who had tried everything under the sun to get sober, Doctor Bob and Bill Wooden couldn't get sober at any of the institutions. So they said, all right, nobody's coming. Let's you and me have a meeting. And they called it Alcoholics Anonymous.

Wow.

And that meeting obviously spurned into years later, you know, millions and millions of people in recovery, including me. You know, I've been in AA for 24 years now, you know, as a result of that meeting of these two dudes. But it wasn't just AA. During that same period of, like, 1900 to 1910, Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club, the Elks Club, the Junior League, the NAACP, future Farmers of America. Pretty much every bridging trust, community based organization that you and I have ever known in our life started in that period. And it was all bottom up, all grassroots when nobody else was coming. And it ushered in the longest running period of social capital in american history. It went from 1900 to 1972. And then in 72, the downswing started again with Vietnam. And we've been on it ever since. But a lot of social scientists and myself included, I'm not a social scientist, but I agree with them. I think that we could be on the cusp of another upswing, that there is evidence of a large number of movements that are happening. And again, look at what you did with that petition. Right. We, we.

But it is exactly the kind of upswing that the country's going to need. And I think if. If precedent is our guide, what that did was it also put a tremendous pressure on, uh, politicians. You know, most of the reforms in the National Park Service against monopolies Theodore Roosevelt did during that period because of the pressure that was coming from the bottom up. So there's a lot of macro level precedent, Sean, for this. This isn't just little boy whistling in the dark. I mean, like, this stuff actually works. And what we. We just need to make sure, though, that we equip these. And I'm not talking about it. I'm talking about just good civic leadership. Right? I'm not talking about, like, armed uprisings or anything. I'm talking about just good civic leadership by community based leaders, business owners, nonprofit leaders who see nobody's coming. Okay, I'll do it. And they. And they. And plus, we've got the advent of this technology, the. So, you know, the phones, and it can. That's what made pineapple possible. It's what made the petition possible, was actually putting into play this technology to do that. And so I think there's still reason for hope.

I really do. But we can't be amateurish about it and we can't be casual about it. We've got to train ourselves. We've got to be great communicators. We've got to be able to build these networks you were talking about. And it can't be discovery learning. Like, it's got to be. You got to have game, and we don't have a lot of time.

I think that's the perfect way to end this. Sounds like we need to start something.

Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe it's already started and we just need to continue to illuminate it, call it out. And I think, again, platforms like the one you've built are going to be critical. And what I would say to you, and I would say to people who are going through this, most of the time, you're going to feel like you don't know what the fuck you're doing. And you're going to feel like that you're not the right person. And I know you and I have talked about this and I've had converse, and I've had these conversations with myself, with my wife. And I think it's part and parcel of what we're doing here. You're going to feel like you're an imposter or you're going to feel like you're not the right person. You're not going to be the one strutting in the end zone or spiking the football. It's going to feel clunky and ugly and hard and isolating at times, you know? But it's actually a metric to tell you you're right where you need to be.

We have had a lot of those.

Conversations and there'll be more.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Well, brother, I gotta say one thing. I think we need to. I think we need to have a panel in here with me, you, sarah, and hopefully legend. Although we would probably need. That could be tricky.

Yeah, would be good.

But I think that would go. I think it's important. I think it needs to happen. So let's set that up. But I do. I think that is the. I just feel like that's the perfect way to end it. It's a. Yeah, it is a. It's a glimmer of positivity and what could potentially come. And.

Well, I mean, you've given. You know, the hard part is you hear a lot of things because of what you expose and you wear that shit like, there's, like I've talked about, like, you just keep getting hit with it, and it's a lot. And I agree with you. I think there's so many reasons. But again, I look at. Look at the number of people who have actually taken hope from the way you've reverse engineered it into. Okay, now here's what we're going to do. Right? And to me, that's like a great shot across the bow of, like, wow, look at. Look at that. You know, like, that actually led to this. There are going to be more opportunities, I think, for you as you move forward and others to have calls to action. And even if it's just like, hey, you guys do this, like, you know, in your areas, like, kind of like we talked about today, we don't have all the answers on state and local solutions, but you do get after it. Like, start working it. I don't know. I just. I think that a lot of that is. It is a.

It is. I mean, it is a message of hope, but it's based on precedent. That's what I try to get across to people. Like, I don't just throw shit out there. Like, I've studied the hell out of this, and I saw it with our village stability operations in these places that had fucking no hope. I saw entire communities restored in months where they were farming again. They were managing livestock. Like, dispute resolution was. Was taken away from the taliban and put back in the hands of community leaders. And then green braze is, like, disappeared back into the woodland, you know? And I'm like, fuck, we can do that. Like, we can do that shit. Fuck it. I'd rather go out that way anyway.

Yeah.

You know, so we'll see what happens.

Well, Scott, nobody is coming to save you. It's out October 1. It's linked down in the description. Everybody go buy it. And Scott. And once again, man, I just. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being my friend.

Absolutely. Same here.

God bless you, brother. I love you.

I love you, too, bro. All right, the Rolling Stone music now podcast gets inside the biggest stories with Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt, movie director James Mangold. I'd want to turn Bob Dylan into a simple character with a simple thing to unlock that, then makes you go, ah, now I get him. First time I sat down with him, he said, what's this movie about, Jeff? It's about a guy who's choking to death in Minnesota and reinvents himself in a brand new place, becomes phenomenally successful, starts to joke to death again. And runs away and he smiles. He was like, I like that Rolling Stone music. Now, wherever you listen.