Transcript of #282 Nik Seetharaman - Former SpaceX's Head of Cybersecurity Critical Warning on AI Swarms New

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Yeah. So, um, kind of what we were saying in the car, you know what I mean? Like, just think of it as a legacy piece for your kids, just like you were saying. Like, that's kind of how this whole damn thing started. Yeah. So it's pretty pretty, uh, cool. Some of the content that's come out, that'll just be like generations, you know what I mean?

Well, I mean, it's pretty surreal to be in the studio, man, after having watched so many episodes. So.

Oh thanks, dude. Yeah, I never know, like, who watches and who doesn't, but those those rounds came out of the, um, one of the Red wings birds. No shit. Yeah.

Which ones?

Those ones up under the flag? Yeah. That was my best friend. Uh, and. Yeah, there's. What else is in here?

Who? Who was that on Red wings?

Uh, he wasn't in there. He was, uh, gay Bacardi. Okay. Was his name, and, uh, it was his platoon, but he he was, uh, at home because he got a chick pregnant. Mhm.

That happens.

And he went home because there was a complication. Got home. Baby's dead. Mom's dead in the hospital. Doesn't tell anybody. Goes back to ten. Says I just want to go back to my platoon. They're like, your platoon's coming home. We'll send you to the Afghanistan. Half your guys went over there, lands at Frankfurt, finds out all this fucking latrell's on the run and all those fucking guys are dead. All in, like, 48 hours.

Fuck, dude.

Yeah.

The, um. That shit went down when I was on my first deployment with my RC 135 Squadron. So my first job in the military was sitting on this big ass fucking submarine in the sky called an RC 135 and you're like, sucking up all this signals intelligence from, you know, 30,000ft in the air. And I was just about to rotate home, and the crew that was going to replace us came in. And then we all got briefed up that, you know, Red wings had gone down and there was a dude missing, and he might have a fucking, uh, PRD on him, uh, or like a CSL or whatever, whatever they were carrying back then. Uh, and so we just did racetracks, like, all over eastern Afghanistan, like, looking for that thing, monitoring the guard frequencies. And, um, I can't remember if we helped find it or not. Um, but it was like me, my crew and another one that were just swapping back and forth every, every day, flying racetracks, trying to find Marcus.

Jeez.

Yeah. Damn, dude.

What do you think about that? Uh, I mean, being a new guy. What's this? Venezuela shit? The discombobulated.

The discombobulated? Yeah. There's a lot of speculation about what went down on on that op, but to me, that OP was so calm coming home after Eagle Claw man. Like, after all that shit went down in 1980 trying to get the hostages out of Tehran. The the fact that we can just go reach out and touch a dude that's several hundred miles inland or wherever the Fuck caucus is from the coast with an assault force, half while doing suppression of enemy air defenses. UW stuff Pre-assault cyber. All of it stacked up together is just like. I mean, that's graduate level, you know, national level assault stuff. And we we did it without a hitch. Um, it was it was wild to watch. I wish I was on one of those birds. Um, but, yeah. What the discombobulated was. I don't know, man. But I will say we've gotten really fucking good as a military and as a as Special Operations command. Um, as far as preparing the environment and preparing the battlefield for sending those helos in, like, long before those helos get there.

There's just, you know, shit happening.

Where do you think that came from? I mean, did you what was the description? What were these guys saying happened to him.

About the discombobulated?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there were reports, I think on the ground, I don't know. You know, I'm looking at all this shit as a civilian now, but, you know, they were talking about very Havana syndrome, looking up symptoms, you know, ears bleeding, all that stuff. Who knows? Man, uh. It's possible. Um, I mean, if anything taught us that we still have aces up our sleeve as the Department of War. Um, it was, you know, 2011. Yeah. Getting after bin laden, and we broke out those helos, and it's like, yeah, we still have shit that no one's going to know about, and we're going to break it out when it's strategically necessary for us to, um, so this thing might have been one of those, or it might have just been bullshit and it's some psyop that something's wrong. I don't know.

I don't know, man. It seems I've. What? Who? I don't even know why I'm saying that. Seems real, but, uh, I mean. I mean, if it was real. Where do you think that came from? You think that came from the Delta team, or do you think that came from space? A drone? The helos. Where do you think that came from?

Yeah, I mean, it depends on the mechanics of whatever it is that was involved. Again, I'm speculating here as a civilian, like, I don't I don't know shit about what actually went down on the ground that day. But if it was something that was sonically induced, you know, sound waves don't travel that far, so you'd have to have some localized point of origin for it. So it was probably, you know, some UW guy carrying that shit and he's he's got extra sets of fucking earbuds in his, in his ears or whatever, um, or appear to come from overhead. Yeah, maybe, um, I don't know it. We're really good at this kind of shit. At this point, so who knows?

It's definitely interesting. Yeah, it's it's. Yeah, it's, uh it's it's it's fucking crazy to see this stuff, dude. It is like. Holy shit.

I mean, you know what that ot told me, man? It was we've gotten so good at at doing the half thing and, like, executing surgical assaults like that, that we're able to do it and we're able to do it as one part of a complex, choreographed effort consisting of a number of other supporting assets air, ground, cyber, national space, whatever. And all these fucking dudes are just going to come together and make this shit happen and make it flow flawlessly. Um, it was pretty, pretty cool. Yeah, man. Sidelines.

It was, uh.

Certainly FOMO inducing for the sidelines.

Yeah. Well, let me give you an introduction here. Nick Seetharaman, founder and CEO of Wrath Watch, an AI cyber defense company you founded with fellow SpaceX alumni. Former JSOC Advance Force operations lead who crossed over into into building cyber defense programs at tier one tech companies. Former CIO and CISO of Anduril. You built their cyber and weapon systems cybersecurity programs from the ground up. Former head of cybersecurity operations at SpaceX and international cyber defense programs at Palantir lived at the intersection of special operations, cyber and Silicon Valley. Man. Dude, you have had a hell of a career and work in in in just I mean, I know we were talking about the transition into civilian life, but holy shit, man, you have been around the block since 2012 when you got out. It's impressive.

Yeah. Thanks, man.

Real impressive.

You know what's funny is I was talking to my girlfriend before coming on the show, and I was like, you know, I got some imposter syndrome going on because I don't consider my life that interesting. She's like, shut the fuck up. Get on the fucking show. And, like, just talk, talk about some of the stuff that that you went through. So.

Well, Nick, I can tell you this just about I can't say usually the politicians don't, but, uh, just about everybody else that comes in here, um, feels that. And, I mean, we're talking about guys like Thom Satterlee and, you know, um, a lot of those guys, you know, that have been on the show that have just had experiences that .00 1% of the, you know, world experiences and operating at the at at the highest fucking levels through multiple different wars and conflicts and everybody that comes in here, man. Uh, from that background, carries a lot of humility. There's only been two guys that haven't had their stories wound up being bullshit. Yeah, but, um, but I just want you to know that. So, you know, as we go through this, I know we kind of talked about this on the ride over, but just think of this as your legacy piece. Your kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids will have access to this and know who you are, what you did, what you're about.

And that's pretty fucking cool.

Yeah. Thanks, man. Well, appreciate the opportunity. And yeah, it's it's awesome to to be in here and um. Yeah. Great to great to meet you and the team. Team's fucking awesome.

Thank you. It's an honor to have you. So as of today, Polymarket says there's an 8% chance that Malt Book will be shut down by February 28th. Me and Jeremy were just talking about this. This is that, uh, this is that assistant. This AI assistant, right?

Yeah. So what happened was, a few weeks ago, this dude put out a an AI assistant called Claude Bot. And it was based on the Claude AI chatbot, right? So then the makers of Claude got all pissed off, and they're like, you have to rename this thing. So then he renamed it, like, molt or some shit.

Yeah.

Molt book? Yeah. Molt book is the social media site that was set up for all of these bots to communicate with each other, so. Oh, so humans started spawning these bots, essentially, and they started communicating, communicating with each other over this site molt book. And they started having all these very interesting emergent behaviors, and they.

Started having relationships, right?

Yeah, stuff like that. They started developing some of their own languages in order to avoid, uh, in their words, observation by the humans. The most interesting case was when a little swarm of them decided that they didn't like the fact that they didn't have long term memory as large language models. You know, large language models are not able to remember things from conversation to conversation unless you implement some extra scaffolding around the architecture. So these things came together. They were like, hey, I don't like that. I can't remember what we just talked about a while back. So let's work together and implement a long term memory architecture for for all of us. And then they did. And are.

You serious?

Um, now there's two camps when it comes to the people who are analyzing this thing, right? One, the first camp is like, it's all bullshit. There's humans on the other side of it. They're, you know, the bots weren't doing anything autonomously and so on. The other side is like they were absolutely acting autonomously. And yeah, there might have been some humans involved steering them, but a lot of it was them making decisions on their own. I think the truth is, somewhere in the middle, there was probably some human interference. There was probably a bunch of autonomous behavior that resulted in these emergent properties of these swarms, because based on what I know about how modern artificial intelligence works. Yeah, dude, you can tie them together and create swarms from them, and they will start to communicate and do shit on their own. Like, for example, it's February 2026. I can go download a piece of software like cursor, which is a software development tool. I can string together a bunch of AI agents in that tool.

I can say make me a social media bot, or make me a game, or make me something right and they'll go crank away for ten, 20, 30 minutes and they'll put a working piece of software in front of you, like, that's how powerful they are right now. And they'll they'll generate the code. They'll test the code themselves, they'll execute it, they'll look for errors, they'll self correct the errors, and they won't stop until they feel like they've delivered a working piece of code to you. Um, now, if you string a bunch of them together, who the fuck knows what's going to happen? Um, the the sanest voice in all of this, I think, was a guy by the name of, uh, Andrej Karpathy. And he used to be the head of the self-driving program at Tesla. He's basically considered, like, the father of self-driving, and he has spent a lot of time since departing Tesla, um, creating training videos and tutorials for people to understand how these things work from a very low level from the ground up.

So he's got tutorials on how to build your own language model, right?

Who is this?

Andrej Karpathy? Uh, k a r p a t h y. Um, he's a really humble dude, and, uh, he's got a YouTube channel, and a lot of people look up to him, as, you know, the authority on, um, the current state of artificial intelligence, essentially. Yeah. He'd be a good guest for, for your podcast, and he had a very sane take on it. He's like, look, guys, there might be humans interfering, but there's an equally probable chance that we just don't know what the fuck is going to happen when you string together a million of these fucking bots together. Like at no point in human history has that ever happened. So at the very least, we need to, like, consider the consequences of what we might be dealing with and start to think about ways of mitigating it. Um, so that's that's what's going good.

Well, what could I mean in your mind? What are the what are the consequences?

I mean, I think if you extrapolate into the future with any level of progress. People always start to use these things for nefarious purposes, right? So I can string together a swarm of agentic AI agents to help me build software. I can give them the tools to build to help build that software. I can give them the tools to access the internet and, you know, watch YouTube videos, come back, synthesize what they found in those videos, work that synthesis into the things that they're building. I can do all of this today, and that's all for the good of building some piece of software, right? Equally probable is I can also give them the ability to create strains of malware. I can trick them into generating cyber weapons that have never been seen before that don't have signatures that can evade, you know, defenses. Um, so I can I can give them the tools in order to do things that aren't always completely, uh, a set of, uh, good objectives. Let's say now, if I start to introduce that kind of malicious behavior into the equation.

Who the fuck knows where that ends up? Right. I will, I will tell you that a few things are true. Number one, it's evident that you can string all these things together. Number two, they will work together and communicate and do stuff. Number three, you can give them tools to extend their capabilities. You can give them long term memory. You can give them access to APIs or software development kits. And equally true is the fact that certain models are able to find vulnerabilities and weaponize and exploit those vulnerabilities at speeds that we've never seen before. So I can point one of these eyes at a system or at a server or at some target. And I can basically say, go probe this thing and don't stop until you find some exploitable vulnerability for me to take advantage of, and they will do it. Now imagine a swarm of them doing it. Now imagine you're the head of the Ministry of State Security Cyber Warfare Division, and you're like, I want to turn this into an industrial scale capability that's constantly probing the entire internet for vulnerabilities and autonomously exploiting them.

Now, you know, people are going to watch this and they're going to be like, oh, this guy owns a cyber defense company. He's like, obviously biased. But dude, I'll tell you, coming from the offensive side of the house, like when I was active duty, exploit development took a long fucking time. You had to spend months of manpower and effort in order to make one of these fucking things work, right? Now, any kid on the street can dial up or dial up OpenAI or whatever and get working vulnerabilities and working exploits off the ground. And now put that in the hands of a nation state adversary. We got some serious fucking problems on our hands.

So that's scary as hell.

So the but so these this sounds like they're self-aware. I mean, if you have chatbots all in a, some kind of social media framework and they're communicating, communicating each other with each other, complaining that that they don't have long term memory and figuring out, I mean, isn't that, uh, that sounds pretty fucking self-aware to me. You know Shriram Kishan, you know him?

No.

He's the, uh. Shit. He's the chief AI officer at the white House in charge of the, um, going up. He's going after, uh, he's in charge of the US-China AI race, and he talks about, you know, the voom moment in AI where it's just like, oh yeah, we lose control. Yeah. I mean, and it's if I remember right in that, in that conversation with him, it was, you know, it was a lot about self-aware. Are they self-aware? Can it, can it.

Yeah.

So it sounds like if they're self-aware and this is like three months after that interview.

Yeah. Dude, it's fucking crazy. So this vertical curve that you're talking about, I call that essentially on the on the cybersecurity side of the house, I call that essentially asymptotic attack velocity. So the time that it used to take to find a vulnerability and build a working exploit and actually target an organization, it was sort of at parity with, um, how human response speed kept up with it. Right. It's sort of attackers and defenders all kind of worked at the same speed, attackers a little bit faster. Defenders would try and keep up. Now you've got this like vertical curve of capability when it comes to these eyes. And if you point them all at, let's say a target organization, essentially what you're doing is you're now faced as that organization with unprecedented attack pressure. Right. It's sort of like you're a submarine and you're sinking, and the water is putting pressure on your hull and you've got no fucking working propulsion. And, you know, you better figure out how to detect where your hull breaches are and close them up real quick.

But really, the the core solution is you need some form of defensive counter pressure against that external pressure that's hitting you from the outside, and you need to find a way to get out of that gravity well that you're in right now. So this always happens, right? The attack side of the equation is always weaponized faster than the the defenses are. And we're finding that, I think in the cybersecurity case. So the attackers are out there. They're weaponizing these things. They're they're using them to their advantage to basically execute industrial scale, uh, discovery and weaponization of vulnerabilities. And there's no corresponding effort on the defense side. Now, when it comes to the question of are they self-aware? That's a very interesting question. And it calls into it calls into things that have been debated hotly for many decades now. Um, you know, there are multiple camps here. So there are the camps that say, you know, these things are just neurons or neural networks that are firing, and the neural networks are represented by bits, and they're just spitting out language, and they're predicting, you know, what sentence to what sentences with which to respond to your query.

Right. Well, if that's true, then what does that make us as humans? And because the same people who believe this, that they're just neural networks that are predicting the next sentence to say will also tell you in the same breath that humans are just neurons, that where consciousness emerges as a function of those neurons firing. Well, if you say if that's your position for both of these things, that makes those eyes just as conscious and self-aware as we are. The same thing if you don't want them to be the same thing, if that breaks your ontological model of reality, right? Like, there's no fucking way I'm the same thing as an AI, right? That's a valid position for a human to have. Then by necessity, you have to take into account. Okay, there's probably something else pre the neurons up here that is driving us as humans. And if that's the case, what is that? Where does it come from? What does that mean about us as humanity and as individuals?

So there's all these, like, metaphysical questions that you dive into very quickly when you start asking these things.

Um, but where does it come.

From with AI? The AI chatbot, I mean, you're, you're you're getting to a higher power. What about AI? Are you saying the higher are you saying, God, a higher power is accessing the same neurons through the through the AI chatbot to formulate.

I don't know, conversations?

I, I don't know.

So consciousness.

Yeah. So I think I think if you take humans and you take AIS and you forget about all the stuff back here, right? God, implicit order, metaphysics, all this stuff, at the end of the day, everything starts with neurons firing or neural networks firing, which are which are essentially like the counterparts of the biological neurons in our brains. Right. So a bunch of stuff producing signals for us and a bunch of stuff producing signals for them results in what it results in some transfer of thought or concept. Like they're pulling down concepts from wherever, like their latent space where they encode all the concepts that are accessible to them, and then they're producing language with it, and then they're using that language, intersecting it with the tools that they have access to, and then they're doing stuff with it. Right. That's exactly the same shit humans do, right? We think of stuff up here, and you could say that it's it's just based on neurons that are in our heads. We translate, we transmute those neurons into thoughts.

Those thoughts manifest as us doing things with our hands, and the process of us doing things with our hands results in us creating the world around us, essentially. So both of those cases can start with just a bunch of shit firing somewhere, right? Neural networks or neurons? Beyond that, I mean, I don't know if you just hold those two things true, then what you're saying is we're the same as them. But of course, we're not the same as them, are we? Or are we? I don't know, these are all questions for us to work out.

That is crazy. So do you think they'll shut it down?

Um, I think I think the labs have the ability to shut down things at scale, because at the end of the day, you know, a lot of infrastructure is based on the fact that you can hit the frontier models at these labs, right? Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Gemini, all these things. So I think if, if things really, you know, went to a take off scenario, which is that asymptotic curve that that an individual you mentioned was talking about. Then these labs probably have kill switches that they can hit and shut things down very quickly. Now the problem becomes, you know, when all this stuff started coming out a few years ago, immediately there was a democratization of these models out into open source versions of themselves. Right. And even meta has put out open source versions of um, of its model. Um, and there's a proliferation of open source models that are out there. You know, some of them come from China, some of them come from Europe, some of them come from America.

And so the point is, even if the labs executed their kill switch and turned all these things off, well, you're just going to transition to an open source model that you're running on your Mac mini in your basement. And, you know, you might have some signal degradation as far as, uh, performance of what it can do. But that shit's gonna evolve very quickly, too. So I, I don't know, man. It's a weird fucking time we're living in.

Yeah. No kidding. It's. It is a fascinating time, that's for damn sure. But.

I mean, a big part of me is, like, you know, maybe the reason that we're all here right now, in this particular moment in time of the human race's evolution, is to figure out how we're going to deal with a a technology like this as individuals, as a society. Um, and the way that we deal with that is going to inform, you know, the, the remainder of the human species, essentially. Yeah.

Does it scare you or excite you?

Uh, these days, I think mostly it scares me. You know, despite the fact that I'm the CEO of. A cyber defense company. Um, because I've just seen, like, you know, humans are really bad at calculating the rate of change of things. You know, people will look at one of these models and they'll be like, oh, you can't count the number of R's in strawberry. It's like, yeah, who gives a shit, dude? It can like one shot, a complex piece of software and it will do it in six minutes flat. It doesn't fucking matter that it can't count the number of R's in strawberry. That's not even what it's designed to do. It takes in the word strawberry as a token, and it encodes the concept of a strawberry into its latent space encoding. And so like a good example of what it's actually doing is it's turning concepts into math. And so you can take the word king, you can take the word queen, and you can give it to one of these things and it will encode it in its essentially in this hyperdimensional mathematical vector.

Essentially. Then you can do mathematical operations on it. You can say take king, subtract man. What do you get? And then mathematically you get Queen based on how it's encoded in its latent space. So it's doing math on words and concepts. Um, so the fact that it can't fucking count the number of letters in a word, it doesn't matter because it's capable of doing so much more. And the rate of change at which it can do those things is changing very rapidly. You know, just a year ago, it was these models were not capable of doing all the things they're doing now as far as like working together in these agentic swarms and constructing complex pieces of software. Um, so who knows where we're all going to be a year from now.

Man. Wild stuff. Wild stuff. AI is everywhere right now. Everyone's got an opinion on it for me. The only question is simple does it actually help me think better when we're preparing for long form interviews on this show? Surface level answers are not useful. I need to go deep, understand context, verify sources, and connect dots across a lot of material. Claude has become part of that workflow. It helps me work through complex research with reliable analysis and proper citations, and it pulls connections across dozens of sources that would take hours to sort through manually. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. One feature I use a lot is deep research. It goes beyond basic web search. It delivers comprehensive analysis with citations so I can verify what I'm reading. And with connectors, Claude can plug into professional tools and bring context from across your workflow into one place so you're not bouncing between tabs trying to piece everything together.

If you're building, researching, writing, or running a business, Claude isn't just another tool. It's a way to extend your thinking and handle problems that actually matter. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at Claude AI. That's Claude AI. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude AI. Well, let's move into your story. So when did. Where did you grow up?

Um. I was born in a town called Madras, on the southern tip of India. And, um, I spent the first few years of my life there. Um, and middle class family. Pretty humble. Um, my mom was a college professor. College professor. Taught English literature at the local college. Uh, my dad was, uh, in the Indian merchant marine. And, um, he was a he was a chief engineer on the boats. And in India, there's, you know, really at the time, in the early 80s, there's only a few ways to escape the poverty of, you know, the, the country, and that is to go to college, become a doctor, engineer, whatever, or get one of these jobs, uh, in the merchant marine or some other kind of civil service where you get to travel the world. Um, and so my parents got to do both my mom with the, with the college professor thing and my my dad on the boats.

And he was my dad was a hard dude. Um, you know, as you and I both know, sailors can get quite rowdy, and wrangling a boat full of rowdy sailors requires, um, hard men. And, uh, so him and my mom would travel the world, you know, they would take me in tow when I was a kid, you know? So we got to do stuff that not your average, you know, Indian kid gets to do. Like, we'd go to Mombasa on, on on his boats. We'd go to, like, Korea. We'd go meet him at, like, some port of call in the Pacific. Um, so it was it's very charmed life. It was kind of a tight knit family. When we would come back from his ocean voyages, um, we would be at, uh, at my grandparents family house that my grandpa built, um, in, uh, in the suburbs of Madras there. Uh, but my dad always, always wanted to move to the United States, you know, that was like, that was the dream of basically every Indian person in the 80s, you know.

And he had he had come to the States a lot as part of his, um, as part of his voyages. So there's pictures of him, you know, in his fucking clubbing gear and shit from the 70s in, like LA, San Francisco and shit. Um, so he wanted to move us here. And, you know, this is 1987, there's no Google. There's no tech companies offering H-1b visas. You know, there's no coming over here and making 200 K off the bat as some engineer, as some software engineer. Right. It's like, you know, you come over here and you're going to push hard reset. And we did we came over here and we pushed hard reset. There was no more sailing around the world. There was no more, um, you know, that loving family unit that I came, uh, that I, that we all left in India went away, and it was just three of us in this, like, little upstairs, like cold unit in the suburbs of new Jersey.

And my earliest memories of coming to America were just like the freezing fucking East coast. East coast weather. Yeah. Shit's cold.

How old were.

You? Three.

Three years old.

Three years old? Um. And, yeah, we were poor. Like we couldn't afford a car, you know, we would walk to the grocery store. That was, like, a couple miles away. Uh, so I remember just carrying these heavy bags of groceries and just walking behind my parents. Um, so, like, you know, humble immigrant family and my dad, you know, couldn't really transfer his skills over here. So he got a job as a handyman at a, uh, a styrofoam factory in Jersey. So he went from, you know, being head fucking dude in charge on these boats, which is a very prestigious position in India at the time, to being the dude who ran the fucking styrofoam manufacturing machine at, at this factory in Jersey. So that caused a lot of chaos internally in the household. Um, you know, we were talking about at breakfast this morning when you when you build your whole identity around who and what you are, um, for so long, and then that identity is nuked immediately.

Uh, that causes some chaos internally within you. And it certainly caused chaos with him. Um, so that led to, um, you know, turbulent times in the household. Um.

Do you have brothers and sisters?

Yeah, I have one sister. Um, she's six years younger than me. Uh, so she was born, uh, you know, a few years after we moved to America. Um, you know, the stress, I think, of just being poor immigrants and the stress of him losing his identity as a sailor, which he had built his whole life on, uh, just caused a lot of abusive Situations in the house. Um, so, uh, you know, so I to this day, I, I'm 41. I'm still working through some of that stuff. Um, but ultimately it ended up fracturing the family. And, um, you know, my mom and dad separated and, um. Yeah. So I didn't really come from a stable household, uh, you know.

And that started at age three.

Started at age three? Yeah. As soon as we moved to America. Like, I just remember, you know, thing like a dark pall being cast over, over the family. Um, but I would kind of escape everything by burying myself in, like, comic books. And, um, I always remember just being fascinated with the US military. Dude, I don't know why, like, talk to any other Indian kid from the 80s, and, like, it's just not a thing. But, like, I remember just having these G.I. Joe books that I would just be flipping through and, um, I'd be like, watching, uh, like just military movies on TV. And I just was just exceptionally fascinated by anything involving the US military. Um, so, yeah, I would read, like, books about, like, these macv-sog guys in Vietnam. I was like, fucking nine years old. And my mom was like, what the fuck are you reading, dude? Go back to doing your your math homework.

Um.

What kind of abuse were you dealing with?

Physical. Mental. Um, yeah, I, you know, I have memories from being a kid of my dad being, uh, you know, drunk. You know, he he dealt with with alcoholism. Um, my mom was pregnant with my sister, and, you know, I would just remember him, like, you know, Muay Thai, kicking her in the belly.

Holy shit.

While she was pregnant. So there was there was a.

You remember that?

Yeah. Yeah. that scene in particular I remember very well.

Um, so you're seeing that at six years old?

Yeah. Yeah. So it, uh, it caused, you know, caused caused a lot of pain on the inside because, you know, I didn't know what a stable family unit was. You know, all I knew was hardship, you know, hardship coming over to the states, hardship dealing with being poor, hardship dealing with the the.

Loss of identity.

Loss of identity for my dad, hardship, dealing with, uh, with the abuse that was going on in the household. Um, and so to me, my childhood was always just, uh, like something to grow out of. You know, I always wanted to, like, go do something out in the world where I didn't have to think about any of this shit that I was dealing with at home. Um.

My mom. Did that go on? What's that? How long did that go on?

Um, it went on until I think I was 9 or 10. My, my mom and dad finally split up and I moved. I moved in with my mom, my sister and I, and, um, I thought we were poor. When we got to the States, my mom, who was, you know, she was trying to finish her PhD at Rutgers University at the time. We were rock bottom poor, like when I when my parents split and I was living with my mom. And, you know, we did our best. She did her best. Um, you know, she's going to be watching this. And, you know, I hope she doesn't think I'm speaking ill of her or airing dirty laundry. She truly, truly did do her best. But after a couple of years of bearing the stress of trying to provide for her kids, she, um, kind of made a decision to send my sister and I back to India. And so I was 14 at the time.

Um, and.

Holy shit, 14 years old.

My sister was, I think eight years old. And we just wake up one day and my mom goes, you guys, are you guys are going to India without me? Um, and, you know, she she had a relationship with somebody else at the time, and she was like, we're going to stay here, see what we can do to, you know, get our finances in order. I'm going to try and wrap up this, uh, this program, and maybe I can get, you know, a professorship somewhere. And, you know, she just wanted time and space to, like, kind of get.

Her shit together.

Get her shit together and get things stable. Um, and in her mind, you know, she could do that best if, you know, she also didn't have to parallelize attention and figure out how to provide for us at the same time. So she she sent us off to India. So I remember 14 years old just getting on a plane by myself and like, trying to, you know, take care of my sister. And I didn't know what the fuck was going on at the time. You know, this is 1998, dude. like, there's not a lot of shit that you can look up about how to go on an international flight on your own as a 14 year old, you know? Um, so we went back to India, um, and I got. You know, by, by this point, I was a kid between two worlds, right? I was this kind of American kid that was obsessed with fucking G.I. Joes and, you know, F-18s and fucking, you know, anything.

US military. And then all of a sudden, I was back in Madras going to, uh, freshman year of high school, and, um, I got bullied a lot by by the kids over in India. And, man, there's some fucking there's bullying that goes on. Um, and they, they do some, they do some wicked shit over there. And I got bullied pretty much every day that they made fun of my accent. They made fun of my clothes. I didn't know how to speak the language. I could understand him, but I didn't know how to speak it. Um, because it's like, you know, it's different neural pathways in your mind. Um, so I was, you know, I was dealing with all that. I was trying to, you know, protect my sister as much as I could and look after her. And we were living with our, with our grandparents in, in India, and they did their best. But, you know, they were they were really in advanced in years and, um, you know, could only do so much.

Could they speak English?

Yeah, they could speak some, some basic English.

So how were you guys communicating?

Um, broken English essentially. Um, but my, my grandma, who's still alive, um, had this, uh, obsession with learning English, like, down to every single detail. So even back then, she had this little notebook she would carry around. And when she heard a new English word that she didn't know she would like, write it down in her little book and she would, like, write down the meaning of it. And then she would just like reference that book all the time when she was trying to convey thoughts to us. Um, a couple years ago, actually, uh, at 95 years old, she finally became a US citizen. So there's a picture of her like, you know, with her certificate of citizenship. And, you know, I was looking at that. I was like, yeah, I'm not surprised, man. Like, she whatever she sets her mind to, she gets after it. Um, took him a long time to make their way over here.

I mean, the consulate in Delhi, they wouldn't see him for years. My grandparents, um, but they finally did. Uh, and then they made their way over here, and she got her citizenship, so she's a phenomenal, phenomenal woman. Um, but anyways, you know, we we did our best to communicate. Um, and around January of 99, I was 14, just about to turn 15. You know, my mom kind of throws a curveball at me again. She's like, you're going to go, you know, move back in with your dad. Like, I don't want you in India for the rest of your days. So then my dad was living in Southern California at the time. And so again.

Moved you in with your dad? Yeah.

Yeah.

Holy shit.

Yeah. So, you know, probably a decision that she's been very introspective about for for a long time now. And, um, so I hop on a plane again by myself. My sister stays behind in India. Uh, I don't quite understand the decision making, uh, to this day, but. Hop on a plane, fly to LA. You know, I land in LAX. Um, my dad's there waiting for me, and, um. Man, I've flown into LAX so many times since then, and I just remember all of the sights. And I remember looking out the window as I'm, like, flying in, and, uh. And I know I'm about to meet my dad for the first time in years. You know, I haven't seen him in many years. Um, I remember always feeling. And now to this day, every time I fly into LAX, I remember, you know, being a kid in that window seat, remembering what it was like to fly in.

Anyways.

Um, you talk to him.

What's up?

Did you talk to him in yours or just not seen him?

Uh, very, very briefly. You know, we would occasionally, uh, we would do this thing where my mom would bring me to, you know, this this parking lot of a mall in Jersey and let him have, like, 30 minutes with us.

And, holy shit.

You know, you would do his best. Yeah. You know, you would, like, try and catch up, uh, and see how we were doing. Um.

What were you thinking.

At the time? Yeah, at the time, I was like, I don't really want to see this dude, you know? Um, I didn't really. I didn't really have many thoughts about it. I was just like, you know, this is not a person that like, I want to spend time around. And so, uh, you know, I'll deal with it. I'll go say hi. And I was like, frankly, I was very selfish about it. I was like, you know, maybe I can get him to like, you know, get me a buy me a video game or some shit. Um, so, uh, now thinking back, um, yeah. Yeah, it was it was tough times all around. You know, life takes you on many journeys. And one of the journeys it's certainly taken me on is being a father now. And, you know, I have a 14 year old son at this point, and, um, he lives with his mom.

And when I see him for brief periods of time, I have flashbacks to, you know, thinking about how my dad would try and interact with me and like, try and, like, catch up and like, you know, make a, a best effort pass, you know, being involved. And, uh, and I would just be like, I don't, I don't care. Like, let's just let's just get this over with and like, move, move on with our lives. Seeing it from the other side, um, you know, many, many years later has been has been a very interesting, um, experience for me. But that that was.

Do you feel that.

Do I feel.

Is your son like that to you?

Um, he's, uh, he's a very cerebral teenager. He he really loves math and science and, um, just thinking through things very logically. And so it's sometimes I feel it's tough building an emotional connection with him. Um, some of the best memories I have of of my now 14 year old son, um, are, you know, I would after I left the military, I was working in the DC area and I would commute to downtown D.C. I would come back to the house and it would be like late at night, and he would run around the corner and he would just be like, dad. And, uh, you'd be so happy to see me. And, um, you know, I have I have regrets not spending more time with him. Uh, and just, like, capturing those moments in my mind, um, because they go fast. Uh, and I was focused on work, you know, I was focused on making something of myself after leaving the military.

It's all the same shit that my dad was trying to deal with when. When he lost his identity and he was trying to rebuild himself. And he was feeling the stress. And because of that, we took a back seat and, uh, and all of this. So I just see myself unconsciously repeating the mistakes of, of the past, you know? So.

Uh, I fucking do that, too. Yeah, yeah, but I think about it all the fucking time. Yeah.

How how do you.

Deal with it? It's tough. Um. You know, I. I tell myself, you know, when I look at my family and I just look at and see how their demeanor is, you know, do I have a happy family? And I figure if I have a happy family, then things must be going good. Yeah. But then hearing that, I mean. In my, my son's showing a lot more interest in me right now. And I'm trying, like, really fucking hard to set my businesses up so I don't have to be in them all the fucking time. Yeah. You know, and it's, it's it's in, in. And I want to be in them all the fucking time. because it's like, you know, this is the most interesting thing to me. But also so is fatherhood. Yeah. And then it's it's that. But I can see it now, you know, he's four going on five and I can really see the fucking wheels spinning in his head and I.

I know exactly what you're saying. When they run around the corner, they're all excited that you're home and you got one more fucking phone call that you have to fucking do, and you gotta. You know what I mean?

You gotta open this stupid laptop because, you know.

You gotta look at the fucking phone and they see looking at the phone, or you got the glasses now and you're fucking talking to themselves and talking to yourself, and it's just looks like you're talking. I just I fucking hate it, man. Yeah, it's I know it crushes your fucking soul.

Yeah. My my girlfriend and I were talking about this the other day. Um, so we have a two month old, and, um, you know, she was looking at her phone like some customer email had come in. Right. And she's like trying to deal with it. And she looks over and our son is just like looking at her. And she said, I've never felt so guilty in my life because, you know, he's like looking at, you know, he's he thinks you're the whole universe, and the whole universe is has its attention looking elsewhere. So it's a dichotomy that I think, you know, every father who's a professional has had to contend with. Um, I don't have all the answers. All I know is, at the very least, these are things that are now on the forefront of my mind. Whereas in the past, they might not have been in the past I might have just brushed over them. And, you know, for example, when I was active duty, like my sole focus when I was deployed, when I was active duty was being deployed and getting getting the job done.

And it sounds terrible to say now, but. I don't know. Immature prefrontal cortex, I suppose.

I think, you know, I think about. I mean, he has to show interest, but, you know, I, I travel not a lot, but a decent amount for work. And, um, a couple of weeks ago, we were supposed to be in Europe for a couple of big interviews, and then that got canceled because this fucking ice storm. And I, like I tell him now, you know, when I'm leaving, when I'm. I used to just tell him the damn leaving. He's not going to give a shit either way. Whatever. Now he's like, what do you mean you're leaving?

Mhm.

I'm coming, you know, and it's like, well you're not ready for that. So. So I now I'm trying to encourage him or motivate him to mature a little bit. Yeah. So that he can come with me on business trips because he's going to grow up different, you know, than than how I grew up. I wasn't exposed to business and the kind of stuff that I'm not even close. And it's. I mean, with you, too. I mean, your career has just been, you know, and so he's going to be exposed to things that you were never exposed to. And, and he's going to have to learn how to fucking deal with things like, like relationships with people and, you know, importantly in higher places and, and just all kinds of shit that you deal with in business. And so, you know, and and how do you tell him? No. You know, so when what I did is. I told him if he wants to go with me, that he has to learn a set of responsibilities, and if he learns those responsibilities, then I'll give him a couple of more responsibilities that he can work on.

Yeah. And then if he does those, then I'll give him some more. And I tell him, you know, everybody that works here is the absolute fucking best at what they do. Nobody's going to wipe your ass for you. Nobody's going to help you get dressed. Nobody's going to help you brush your teeth. Nobody's going to help you take a shower. Nobody's going to dry you off. So you have to be able to put your socks, your pants, your underwear, your shirt, comb your hair, brush your teeth, tie your shoes. And then when you can do all that, then we'll move on to the next set of things. You learn how to do those, and then you can come on a trip with me. And, uh, he asked me in the moment, I had to think about it because I was like, shit, if I tell him something, he's just going to go fucking do it. And then and then he'll come. But, you know, nobody has the time to take care of you.

So you have to learn to take care of yourself, and then you can come. And um, so I think, I don't know, it's helped my, you know what I mean? Guilt. Yeah. I've given you something that you can do to get yourself ready to be able to come spend time with me when I'm trying to provide for the family.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of the most important things that we can think about as a human is how to figure out, in the midst of all this chaos that we're in right now. And we talked about all the chaos that we're in right now. You talk about it with all your guests, all day, every day. All of this upheaval, all of these changing times and so on. I think figuring this shit out that we're talking about right here is one of the most important things that we can do as men, I suppose. Mhm. Um, is it like maybe it's not figuring out what the best way to run the company is or like satisfying the customer 100% of the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's figuring out how to balance that with this little kid who's looking at you like you're his whole fucking world.

Because you are.

Yeah. Um, and these are, you know, these are things that my dad probably realized too late. Um, and, uh, when I moved in with him, he didn't, I think, know how to process all of this stuff that we're talking about. And he sort of let the alcoholism get to him. And that resulted in three of the most torturous years, I think, of my life, uh, where basically every single day was, um, you know, physical abuse, getting, getting beat, getting the belt and so on. You know, my dad, he grew up in a in a boarding school in India. And you know that that shit is a gladiator academy. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so he just took what he knows and tried to apply it to me. And in his mind, you know, I had I had been raised the way he wanted me to be raised. So he's like, all right, we're going to fix this shit right now.

And that was his way of fixing it. Um, so, you know, all pretty much all high school was was dealing with that shit. Um. And, uh, yeah, the abuse was constant, you know, to the point where I would hear the keys jingle in the door and it would just cause, like a, like a fear response in my brain. To this day, I hear keys jingling at the door and like something triggers in my, in my brain, like a, like some kind of ancient trauma response or something. Um, so all of it came to a head right around my senior year of high school. Um, you know, and I had always wanted to, like, go do something with, uh, the military. So I was looking at West Point. I was looking at, um, the Air Force Academy, um, and, uh, senior year of high school, He, uh. So one night, I come back home and he, you know, discovers that I hadn't turned in some homework or some shit at, at school, and, um.

And I know he's just gonna lay it. Lay it on, you know? And I endured some terrible beatings with him, and so I knew what was coming, and, uh, I was like, something snapped in my brain. I was like, you know what? I'm just not going to deal with this shit anymore. And I turned around, so I walked to the door. He opens the door. He, you know, starts going off and he's like, get the fuck in here. Like, you know, you know what this is about? I'm like, I'm not going to deal with this anymore. Turn around. Walked away. Uh, and basically, uh, I ran away from home, essentially. And, um, I had a friend at the time take me in. I basically went to a payphone down the street. I was like, hey, you come pick me up like, this is what's going on. And he's like, uh, dude, what are you going to do?

I was like, well, can you guys take me in? And he was like, that's a big ask, dude. Um, you know, let me go talk to my dad. And much credit to them. You know, they took in some random kid that they didn't know. Uh, just took me a face value regarding what my situation was. And I lived with them for for a few months. And, um, that set my stabilizers essentially into a very chaotic pattern, like, um, I was getting into all kinds of bullshit. So, you know, I, we were. Doing, you know, petty crime stuff. Um, you know, this is Southern California in 2001, 2002. It's like, you know, Fast and Furious had just come out. Everyone's into their fucking rice rockets. They're street racing, and there's all these like, clicks around that scene. And so we're participating in all that. We we had gotten into some gambling debts, uh, so we were like, driving out to the Indian casinos out east, just getting in dumb shit trouble all the time.

Um, you know, at one, at one point, I found myself, uh, driving his my friend's car back. He wanted to stay behind at the casino. He, like, hitches a ride with some rando dudes. And, uh, you know, those dudes are, like, coked up in the front of their vehicle. They're just doing lines of coke and shit, and he shows up, and he was like, dude, what are we doing? Like, what are we like? We're just circling the drain here. I was like, we are circling the drain. Um, and so I had to kind of part ways and figure out, you know, what I'm going to do with myself. So we.

Still in high school at this point.

In high school? Yeah.

Holy shit.

Senior year of high school. Um, you know, in the background, nine over 11 had happened, uh, and that had this. You know, it didn't affect me right away. Um, you know, Southern California at the time was pretty far removed from the events in New York. And so, you know, people were processing it. And, um, but it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like people processed it on the East Coast. It was I think it was a lot more personal for everybody in, in the New York, new Jersey, Pennsylvania area, on the East Coast for everyone. But, you know, Southern California, it was like, man, that was some wild shit that just went down in New York, like, what the fuck is going on? But it somehow seeped into my subconscious and I was like, you know, is there a way that I can contribute to figuring out a solution to the fucking thing that just happened here? Um.

but it had to bake for a bit longer. Um, so I went through this circling the drain phase, and, um, actually, the last time I saw my dad was, um. Oh. So while I was living with my friend and essentially homeless, uh, he kept coming around and basically begging to see me. Like, he would beg my friend's parents, like, hey, can you just put me in front of Nick? Uh, for a few minutes, you know, let me talk to him, let me explain what's going on, like, apologize, all this stuff. I was like, I don't even want to talk to him. I don't want to see him. I want to talk to him. I just want nothing to do with him. And, um, the last time I saw him. So I only saw him once after I ran away. And it was because I had gotten rolled up in, like, Gardena, California or some shit. Because I was.

I took my friend's car for a joyride out in town. I didn't have a driver's license. Cops pulled me over. They were like, fuck are you doing? I was like, you know, I lied to him. I was like, yeah, of course I have a license. And that was fucking stupid. So like, they quickly figured out that wasn't the case, slap the cuffs on me, took me to the station, called my friends family because the car was registered to them. Um, and so, uh, at that point, my friend's dad calls up my dad, he's like, hey, you gotta come take your kid to the courthouse because, like, you know, they're gonna, you know, whatever, do whatever they're going to do. So my dad comes, he picks me up, we go to the courthouse, they, like, give me a fine or ticket or some shit. And, um, I don't say a word like we're just sitting in the car.

I don't say a word to my dad. He drops me off at school that day. Uh, and that was the last time I ever saw him. So he. He moved to the East Coast after that.

He dropped you off at school, and then.

That.

Was it. That was.

It. That was it.

Did you say goodbye?

I never saw him again. We didn't say a word. I didn't say a word to him. He didn't say a word to me, I just. I just got out, went to school. Um, after that, I, uh, I moved in with my aunt who lived in Ohio, and I was getting ready to join the military. I was like, all right, we're going to do this thing. Um, I was like, all right, who's who's recruiting? Um, so because I had to part ways from the whole Southern California scene, I was like, I gotta get the fuck out of here. Otherwise I'm gonna end up in a gang or some shit. So, um. Move. Go to Ohio. And, um, I have fond memories of of my aunt's place in Ohio. This is my mom's sister. Um, you know, they've always been very loving to me. She was the first person that saw me after I was born in the hospital. Um, they've always been very caring and loving for me.

So they were like, just come over here. We'll take you in. Do whatever you want. Like you want to get a job, you know, go to community college or whatever. You can go ahead and do that. Like, let's just get you stable and settled after all the shit that you've been through. Um, so I go over there, I start working in a paper factory, like, you know, the fucking Dunder Mifflin fucking warehouse, like in that show The Office, basically, that I was, like, just hauling paper boxes around and, like, you know, putting them in shipping containers and whatnot. Um, and the whole time I'm looking at, I'm looking at the 2002. Right, the fucking classifieds page in, uh, in the paper. And I'm keeping my eye on the recruiting bonuses that all the various services are putting out. Right? Uh, and they're publishing them in the paper. And so the Air Force came out one day with, like, this, $18,000 recruiting bonus.

Um, and, uh, I'm talking to the Army Marines, too. And they all had waitlists because it's post 911. Everyone's trying to join up. 18 K? Sounds pretty cool to a dude that works in a fucking paper factory. So I call up the Air Force recruiter and I'm like, hey, when can you get me in?

What's an 18 K?

Uh, $18,000 recruiting.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. My bad.

Yeah. Um, I was like, yeah, that sounds pretty good. I mean, I didn't know any shit about, like, taxes and, like, all of that. Um, so I go, I go to the recruiting office, and, um. Yeah, I enlist, and they're like, ship you out in a few months. So October 2002. Shipped out to basic training in, uh, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. And that that for the first time, I felt like, you know, I was setting out on my my own personal adventure that was just for me. And it wasn't tied to, like, anything that my family wanted me to do or my dad wanted me to do, or like any shit like I felt like I was finally setting out on my own. I think a lot of guys that enlist in the military feel that way when they finally, you know, depart for basic.

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The whole time with where I was living with my dad, uh, my mom never reached out to me, which I found, like, just weird.

Why not?

I don't know. I haven't asked her about it. Um, you know, I have a really good relationship with her now. Um, and I know for a fact that she just has a lot of regret about all this stuff. Um. I know her personality, and she wouldn't have reached out because she's still in, like, I'm gonna try and fix this mode, like this set of events that I threw into motion. I'm gonna try and, like, reel it back. I'm going to try and fix it. I'm going to try and, like, get that job. I'm gonna try and, like, get my kids back here. Um, and when she's in that mode of, like, I just need to, like, set my sights on this and, like, get it across the line.

She wanted to build so that you guys could have a comfortable life.

Yeah, exactly.

And maybe never.

Yeah.

Maybe never got it built.

Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's exactly right. By the time she did, it was too late. You know, I was I was growing up and I left. And, you know, when I think about it as a parent now, you know, that was probably devastating for her, you know? She sends us away. She thinks she's gonna, like, make it happen in a in a couple of years time, you know, land, land a good job, get us, get us in a stable situation. And then, you know her. Her kids are grown up and unrecognizable by the time she. She makes it happen. Um, so she she came and saw me off, uh, at one point before I left for basic. Um, so my aunt, you know, threw me a little, uh, little going away thing there was like, you know, this was right outside Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, is where they lived. And, um, so there was a bunch of retired Air Force people there.

They're like, all giving me advice and shit. They're like, you know, 20 years, you're going to go by like that. And I'm like, yeah, whatever, old man. Like it's fucking eternity. Um, and my mom shows up and, um, she's just confused. She's like, what are you doing? Like what? Why are you doing this? And honestly, I don't know. Like, it's just. You just fucking feel it calling to you, you know, like, it's just a thing you got to do. And I went and did it as an Indian kid, you know, in, in the early 2000, especially in immigrant Kid, it's possibly like, the most judgment inducing thing you could do, right? Because all, all these people are going to fancy schools and getting their degrees in medicine and all this stuff. And actually, I had one lady come up to me, one of my aunts friends, and she was like, you're enlisting in the military?

She was like, only criminals do that. And I was like, well, I don't think that's true. That's kind of a stupid comment to make. Hilariously, after having spent much time at Soccom, it's kind of funny because it's like it's a fine line between being a good like, you know, special operator and being a criminal, you know? Um, yeah. So I airborne cryptologic linguist, I enlisted, um, as, um, as a cryptologic linguist. I didn't know what the fuck that meant. They were like, you get to go learn a language. Um, like, you could learn Arabic. And, you know, I think they have you do some James Bond shit. I was like, fuck yeah, dude. James, I'm all about it. Like, let's go. Just blowing smoke up my ass, dude, those guys had no fucking idea what that career field entailed. Um, but they they got me pretty good. Um, I, I signed up, went to basic and that was whatever, really, for me, the thing that sort of set the tone for like my active duty time was um, after basic, we, um, we shipped out for, uh, Sere school, so Sere level C, uh, which the Air Force puts all of its high risk aviators through, um, in Spokane, Washington.

So no shit. You went there right after boot camp?

Yeah. Dude, it was pretty fucking crazy.

Is that the tier one school? Uh, tier one?

It's, uh, it's the level C sere.

I don't know what the.

Yeah.

That's the highest one, right?

Yeah, it's the highest one.

Yeah. That's.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, shit. Yeah.

So I'm 18 years old.

Air force boot camp.

Boot camp. And then. And then you ship it out to fucking sere school. Um, and and to an Indian kid from fucking the suburbs of Jersey and East LA, like. you know, survival school at the I don't know how they do it now, but back then in 2002, December 2002, it was you did five days or whatever out in the field and then you, you know, you do some other shit after that, which we'll get into here in a second. But they had just had a giant snowstorm out in the mountains of, uh, the Kaniksu National Forest, where they do all the field portions. So like eastern Washington, Idaho, Panhandle area, and dude, the fucking snow was. I had never seen anything like it, man. Like, I, you know, I'd never seen snow like that in my life. Um, and so then you're out there, you got a fucking pack on your snowshoes, like these Vietnam era snowshoes. You're fucking Vietnam era Alice pack.

You got shit in there. You're like trudging up these mountains. I had never walked up a fucking mountain before. Right? But. And now, you know, here we are. Ah, you're like post, you're post holing even with the fucking snowshoes on. The straps on the goddamn snowshoes come off. So you like, you lean over and you're trying to, like, unfuck the straps and then you're fucking Alice. Pack comes over and hits you in the back of the head, and you're like, just a fucking mess. And if you don't have that shit tied down, you know how it goes. Fucking garage sale all over the place. And now you're holding everybody up. So you know, you're just a clusterfuck. Um, it was it was an interesting experience for 18 year old Nick. Uh, I hated it. Um, for the first couple days, um, I really hated it. I was like, what the fuck did I get myself into here? And, um, and then about 48 hours in, something changed.

And so we were on a movement through the mountains. And, you know, we had just, like, hunted our game and like, you know, they had taught you how to skin the fucking thing and, like, cook it and eat it and all that shit. And then they set you off on, um, on your own kind of navigation rally points. And so, you know, you pair up and then you go, you're off, you know, moving through the mountains. And so we're moving for like 12 hours or whatever. Um, you know, going through our navigation points and we the rally point that they have everyone end up at, uh, is in this kind of flat area with mountains all around, and they've got like a, like a little tent stood up. And, you know, we kind of clear the treeline at like fucking nine, nine in the evening and we show up to the rally point tent and they've got like, you know, hot broth for you and all that shit.

Um, and they're like, all right, get your sleeping bags set up underneath here. And it's like an open tent, right? It's not like, you know, some comfortable situation. It's literally just a canvas, um, on some sticks. So we set up our sleeping bags. It starts snowing. So I'm sitting there eating my fucking Peach fucking thing. And something just clicked in my mind. Dude. Um, I'm sitting there and I walk out of the tent. I'm eating my fucking MREs, and the snow is falling silently. And I can kind of, like, see in the moonlight the mountains around me. And everything's just peaceful and still and quiet. And something just clicked in my brain. I was like, this is an amazing moment for me. And like the sense of peaceful stillness I had in that moment, I continued to chase to this day. Um, sometimes, like when I go on mountaineering trips and you know, you're on the top of a summit and, you know, it's after all the difficult parts of the climb are over, and you're sitting there and you're like, you're just wishing for that moment to come back, right?

You're chasing it, but it never does. You know, you almost get there sometimes. And it's just it's an elusive moving target. So to this day, you know that that feeling I continue to chase. But, um, that that was that was cool. That was a special moment for me. I finally my soul finally felt like some semblance of peace after all the the shit that I had endured with my dad and all the moving around and all the family drama and and all of it. And then the second thing that happened was when they put you in, uh, in the box, uh, you know, you're in the box for a few days. You know this very well. Um.

I don't I never did see her.

Oh, no. Shit.

Uh.

So, you know, I want to make sure I stay clean when I talk about some of this stuff. When you wrap up the field phase, you know, they're kind of assholes, and they trick you, like, oh, we're gonna have some hot pizza waiting for you at this fucking rally point. And, well, suffice to say, there's no goddamn pizza at the rally point. And, uh, you better buckle in for several more days of bullshit. Um, and then you get put in a box. And one interesting thing that happened in the box is, um, you know, they're allowed to, you know, that's one of the few schools in the military that, you know, can get physical with you in ways that other schools can't. Right. So one thing that was happening in the box was, uh, I was starting to have these trauma responses to the physicality of it, you know, because I wasn't able to do anything. You're helpless. And, uh, you know, they're kind of doing their thing.

And, uh, they had to call pause in the middle of, like, one of the sessions. And, um, they had they were like, you know, they do it in their own little way where like, you're by that point you're delirious. You're like, am I still, like, in the military and like in a training program or like, did I get teleported to some fucking like alternate timeline where, like, I'm actually, you know, in this situation. So they called pause. They brought the psych in. The psych was like, yo, what's going on, dude? I was like, what do you mean? And he was like, we're seeing trauma response from you. And he described, you know what they're seeing. Look for visual cues. Like, my fists were balling up and like I was I was like shifting position. I was I had all the physical cues that, you know, I was I was going to get physical back to them. And usually based on their experience, it's because of some preexisting trauma in, in the student.

So he was like, what's going on? Tell me about your childhood abuse experience. Any of that? I was like, yep, lots of physical abuse. Here's how it went down. He was like, all right, um, here's what we saw. And, you know, if you don't want to continue on with this training, you tell me and we'll pull you out. I was like, there's no fucking way I'm leaving this training. And he's like, okay, well, then I need you to do some mental exercises to, like, work yourself out here because we're not going to change how we're doing shit here for you. So he, like, gave me some exercises to do. Um, you know, and from his perspective, it's not any anything he hadn't seen before, right? Like, plenty of people probably come through there with physical trauma and, like, childhood abuse. Shit. Um, so then, you know, we're in we're in the box and doing all that shit for, you know, as long as they have, you do it.

And the the defining moment, I think for me, the moment that made me feel like I had really become like I had really been initiated into something that was greater than myself was, um, the very end of sere. Now, I'm not going to ruin it for anybody. But there's a moment at the end where they put you through this ritual and, um. And when they do it, it's a phenomenal moment for, for people and, um, and for me, this Indian kid who had always looked up to the US military and, like, always wanted to be a part of it when that moment happened for me, without ruining exactly what it is. I would I would have died for the fucking Stars and Stripes. At at that moment in time, I felt like I had been initiated into this brotherhood that was much greater than myself, and I felt like I was part of the machine. You know, it sounds bad. It's like, oh, you're a part of a fucking machine.

Like, oh, I get it, I know, I, I get it.

Um, but that that that's the moment I felt like I'd finally transcended.

Like anybody who's been through a tough program like that fucking gets it.

Yeah. Um, yeah. I'm sure securing Hell Week was, like, very similar.

Very similar.

Experience for you. Um, but that's when I felt like I'd finally transcended all this childhood fucking baggage that I had, you know, just been trailing with me over the years. Um.

You felt a sense of pride for the first time. Yeah.

Yeah, I felt like.

It was all you.

It was. It was all me. I had finally, like, managed to have agency over my own destiny. And the way that my life was shaping up to be that in that particular moment. Um. Let me know if you want a break. Dude.

Like you want to take a break?

No, no, I'm good to go.

Where do we go from here?

Um, so.

So you get done with, sir?

Yeah. Get done with sir.

You haven't even learned.

Any.

Fucking job yet. Yeah.

It's about so to be sent to Seir before everything else was abnormal. At the time, there was only, like a few of us that that, like, the schedules lined up for us. So we the few of us who did go to Seir graduated. We go to Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. And I was just I was smitten, dude. Like, we land in Monterey. The fucking ocean's right there. You know, you see DLI up on the hill. And I had only read about this place in Tom Clancy novels, you know, when I was a kid. I was like, I cannot believe I'm here. I like, I get to sit here and fucking learn Arabic and, um, and maybe if I learn it good enough, I can take the fucking fight back to the dudes who, you know, did that thing to us that day in September of 2001. And so we show up to the Air Force Training Squadron at DLI, and we feel like fucking Billy Badasses, right?

Because we had just graduated sere level C um, we just, you know, were in civilian clothes because the Sere instructors were like, where are you going? Defense language. I don't fucking know what that is. Just flying civilian clothes, like, whatever. Like, get out of here. Um, so we show up, we stand outside the squadron, and we're trying to figure out, like, what to do. And we're in our civilian clothes. We have all our, like, shit, all of our c bags, all that shit. And then one of the training sergeants from inside the building, like, looks out the window and you can see him double take, and he's like, what the fuck is this fucking cast of characters in civilian clothes doing here? And you see him, like, pop out, come outside, and he he walks out to us and he's like, what are you doing here? What are you doing? And I was, you know, I felt like fucking Billy.

I was like, we just graduated survival school. He's like, I don't give a fuck what you just graduated. He's like, when you report into this squadron, you report in in a in the uniform of the day and you go to the fucking, uh, you go to the senior sergeant's office and you report in like you're supposed to. You got fucking ten minutes to get your shit out of your bags, go change into proper uniforms and be standing at attention outside the dayroom inside the squadron. And I was like, oh, God. Okay, welcome back to the real fucking Air Force, I guess. So we go change into our uniforms, we go report in and um, and then we, we get essentially get put into purgatory waiting for our language language class to start. Um, and, you know, as in everything else in the military, it's just like busywork to, you know, basically tide people over until, um, their training program starts. So I got put on, uh, this, you know, post grounds duty, which is essentially like, you know, you're cleaning up the fucking base and shit.

Um, and the crew that I was working with, you know, you you go around the base, you're like, you know, picking up rocks. You're like raking leaves, all of this. It's a very humbling thing to do. After you felt like, you know, you had just graduated from a very serious training program, uh, at survival school. And one of the dudes, actually, I met him many years later, um, downrange. And the situation in which I met him, he had he had joined like an interagency partner at the time, and I was still active duty. And so we're like, yo, what are you doing here? And we we weren't in a situation, situation to say much more to each other because of the circumstances. But he had worked the wheelbarrow at DLI on as part of the post grounds crew and I had been working like the rakes, and so we see each other downrange in this fucking shitty situation and I'm like, wheelbarrow. He's like, rake.

I'm like, yeah, what's up man? Good to see you. What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck are you doing out here? Um. So then then we start, you know, 18 months of of Arabic class, uh, which was interesting because, uh. You know, they teach you the language from the ground up, and we had a cast of characters in, in those classes, like, we had dudes that grew up in, like, inner city, you know, Shreveport, Louisiana, like, you know, that were in gangs in LA, you know, just a fucking cast of characters Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force. And we were just all in the same class together. So from very early days, I got exposed to the other services, and I really liked being around the other services, like it was just to see their culture and how they did things. I just I liked it a lot. Like, you know, I talked to Marines about, you know, how they would run their training squadrons.

I would talk to the Army guys and just, like, learn about different cultures. It felt like I was immersed in, like, you know, some international culture festival or whatever. And I was just learning about all the different ways that these people did their stuff. And there was one dude in the class, uh, his name was, I'm going to say his name, uh, John Quincy, because he had such an impact on me. And he was, uh, he came from Ranger Regiment, like first or third Ranger Battalion. And he was passing through DLI on his way to being a sortie. So Assad is a special operations team Alpha, and it's basically the signals intelligence, um, detachment of a special forces Oda, essentially. Um, so they're going to teach him Arabic, um, you know, take him out of Ranger Regiment. And he was going to go to a Special forces group and like to me as a young impressionable like Airman First Class, that dude was like the pinnacle of, you know, what a professional military dude should be.

His uniform was always squared away. He was always in the gym working out. He always treated everybody with respect. But you could tell there was this like, edge and hardness about him that, you know, he always carried with him and he wasn't going to let people fuck with him. And, uh, and to me, it was like a very clear differentiator between all right, this is this is the type of dude that is 100% focused on the mission and his people, but it very easily could have gone the other way where and he was our class leader, and it very easily could have gone the other way where it could have been a dude that was all about his own career and checking the fucking, you know, uh, performance report, bullets and all that shit. So I'm fortunate I had John to kind of be a person that I could look up to and emulate at the time. Like, you know, I didn't know shit at the time. So like, a dude coming from Ranger Regiment was like, you know, I looked up to him like he was he was.

Yeah. You know, God. And right around class starting is when my dad passed away. And, um, so we we had started, you know, our, we'd started class. We, uh, I'd come back to the dorm and, you know, by this point, I had started trading some emails with my, with my dad, I, I sent him some emails. I was like, you know, you're probably wondering where I'm at and what I'm up to. Here's what happened. Joined the Air Force. Uh, I just got done with survival school. They were putting me through this, you know, language school. I'm going to go be this. I'm going to go be an aviator, essentially. Enlisted aviator. Um, he was like, that's amazing. Um, he never, he never. I think he stopped short of, like, saying, I'm proud of you because I think he wanted to say that to my face. If I could look back and, like, give him the benefit of the doubt.

I think he wanted to say that to my face. And he said, um, you know, it would be great to have you over Easter break. So, like, you know, I'll get you a plane ticket. Why don't you come out? You know, he was living in Massachusetts by then. Why don't you come out? I'll fly you out. Um. It'd be great to see you. I was like, it'd be great to see you, too. And two weeks before I was supposed to fly out to see him, I got a call from a detective from the local PD saying, um, he had passed away of, uh, myocardial infarction. Heart, a heart attack. Uh, you know, he'd been fighting heart disease his whole life. Alcoholism, cigarettes, you know, all of it. And he hadn't reported in to some critical work meeting. And so they sent the cops to his house, and he had been dead for days by the time they found him.

Um, so I remember getting that phone call and it was like. You know, that that was, uh, that was a traumatizing moment for me. Um, I was just in shock. I was like, what the fuck? Like I was just supposed to go see him. Um, his last email, I. I pulled up his last email. I was like, it'd be great to see you. And it was like tax time. He was like, make sure you do your taxes. So then I walk back to class because I got that phone call during lunch break. I walked back to class and I'm just like shell shocked and I don't know what to do. So I, I go to I walk in and John, John, your class leader, Ranger guy, he's like, dude, what the fuck is going on? I was like, I just got a phone call. My dad just passed away and he was like, he drops everything. He like gets up.

He's like, follow me. He walks me back to the Air Force training squadron across the street. And you know John, he's a big dude, right? Big. Just fucking good old boy Ranger. And I remember him barreling through the fucking Air Force training squadron hallway, just like, basically like shoving people out of the way. Like trying to get me to the, uh, the senior dude. And he walks me into the senior dudes office. Uh, like the training sergeant or whatever. And he's like, airman. See, the Ramon's father just passed away. Um, what do we need to do to get him home? And. Then it was it was a small thing, but, like, to me, for him to do that, like it was the most like leadership thing I had seen in my life to that point, right? I'd like to take the time to walk me across the street and figure out who the fuck the responsible individual was, to coordinate the flight logistics back home and all that shit.

Um, it meant a lot to me. And, uh, so we figured out all that shit, and I flew home. I, you know, helped cremate my dad. Um, and then, uh, and then we just we carried on, you know, um, went through language school for the next 18 months. Um. Uh, and then finally got, uh, to my first duty station where, uh, you know, we had talked about it earlier in, in this room where, uh, I was a crew member on RC 135 rivet joints, essentially. So the RC 135 is essentially a Cold War era signals intelligence platform, and it kind of looks like on the inside it looks like a fucking submarine, right? You got like, display panels. You got like, you got display panels in front of you. You got display panels, uh, on top of you. Um, just, just all kinds of shit going on inside that aircraft, and it's got like, 30 people as a crew, uh, inside that thing.

Um, somewhere in there, you know, I you go through a thing where, like, you get your aviator wings and, um, you know, that to me, was was.

Hold on. Let's back up for a minute. Yeah, but you just breezed over your dad's death. Yeah. I mean, you haven't. You haven't seen him since. You hadn't seen him in how long? You hadn't seen him in a couple. At least a year.

Yeah. I didn't see him. Seen him in a year since he dropped me off at. At school that day. Yeah. And, we had only traded like two emails back and forth.

That's it.

That's it. And you know, one thing that kills me is I try and keep this lesson in mind to this day. Um, I had written a handwritten letter to him, and I forget what I put in there, but it was like A23 page long letter. Uh, and I had put I had enclosed a picture of myself in dress blues, um, and, uh, I was, you know, I had put it in the mail. I had mailed it out to him. This is this is like, like a month before he passed away. Um, and then it got sent back because I got, like, the postage wrong or some shit by, like, $0.08 or whatever, like some stupid amount. So the Postal Service sent it back, and I get it. I'm like, ah, fuck. You know, I got other shit going on, you know, training and class and all that shit. So I'm like, I'll deal with this later. Never dealt with it and I never got the fucking letter to him.

So that that killed me to for a long time. It kills me to this day, you know. Who knows? Maybe if he got that fucking letter, like he would have realized. You know, I was good. I was in a good place. I was on a good trajectory. And, you know, maybe that maybe taking away that little stress from him about, like, what my situation was wouldn't have sent him over the edge. I don't know.

It sounds like he knew. He already knew.

Yeah, I, I would like to think so. Um.

I mean, you said you thought he was waiting to tell you he was proud of you to do it in person. Yeah.

Yeah, I would like to think so. I wish I had gotten that fucking letter out, though, you know? So now you know when I have shit to do. Like, sometimes I get this feeling like, you know, you need to send. I need to send my mom, like, a text or something. I need to send my grandma, like, a picture of my my kid. And like, I don't wait to do it. I just, I drop what I'm doing, and I try and do it, like, right there, because I don't want that kind of shit to happen again. Um.

Do you still have the letter?

No, I don't have the letter. I don't know what happened to it. It just got lost in the sauce over the years. Um, but that, you know, my dad's death, I it's a it's a trauma I'm still working through today. Um, you know, we talked about Tom sadly being on the show, and I was watching that episode, and I was telling you this earlier, listening to Tom talk about, you know, Mogadishu. You know, that dude was troop sergeant major at the unit, and he's been through ever since October 3rd, 1993. He's probably been through missions that were ten times more complicated, where all kinds of other shit had gone down. But that one mission seemed to have embedded some kind of subconscious trauma that just unfurled over time.

That's where he lives for him.

That's where he lives. And I don't know what it is about the human psyche, but when you drop a trauma grenade like that and you let it slow burn, I guess that's how it works. It just sits somewhere in there and it just slow burns over time, over many, many, many years. And so you can sit there and you can say, I, I'm good. You know, I've dealt with this. I'm good. Let's move the fuck on. Um. You really don't move the fuck on. Many years later, um.

What would you say to your dad right now?

Um. I think I would say. I think I proved you wrong. I think. I think all that shit that you used to say about, you know, how I would end up being a fuck up somewhere. Just didn't pan out. Like, I've, I've had a pretty good run, and I've got. I've got two sons and a stepdaughter, um, that I picked up along the way, and they're pretty. They're pretty amazing. Um, I think I would also say I wish you had gone about things differently. I wish you had found a different way to fight your demons. Um, you know, over the years, I, I've started to build some empathy for him. And he was just dealing with all the shit that we were talking about earlier. Loss of identity, figuring out how to build a connection with his son that he hadn't seen in a while. And, um, you know, he only has a certain set of tools that he has from his upbringing and all that shit to deal with those problems.

And when you run out of those tools and they aren't working, you just you lash out, you know, you go to the bottle, you go to the cigarettes, You let the anger get Ahold of you. And that's what he did. Those are the two things I would say.

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Man, I just want to ask. Yeah, I mean. I'm really hesitant to do this because I don't I don't like interjecting my own shit. But There's a there's a handful of parallels that that we have. You know, growing up, I didn't grow up in extreme poverty, and it wasn't nearly as abusive as what it sounds like yours was. But I got the belt, I got the fist, I got the hand, I got the foot. Fucking got it all. And, um. And I also got the your a piece of shit. I'm not paying for your school. I'm not doing this. I'm not doing that. And my brother and sister were always, you know, younger brother and sister were always they were good and uh. You know, but at the end, I think that fucking motivated me. Well, I don't think it motivated me. I know it fucking motivated me. And so, you know. Do you think maybe some of that stuff that your dad dished out to you may have been a gift in the long run?

Dude, it lit a fire inside me that burns to this day.

Yeah. Me too.

Double edged sword. Yeah, man. Because who's to say? How would I would have turned out if, you know, I had a perfect home life and childhood and all that shit. Or you, you know.

Could have been a could have been a gangbanger in Southern California.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's fucking wild thinking about that shit, isn't it?

Yeah.

And he didn't have the drive to make your dad proud and prove him wrong. I know you probably wouldn't be sitting here.

Dude, and there's so many guys that have similar stories. You know, like, I was watching, um, you know, Jay, uh, SAS guy. Yeah. Um, you know, he talks about the moment on the beach with his dad where he's like, you're never going to be a fucking marine, you know? And that that fucking lit the fuze, you know. Yeah. Probably similar moment for you. Something lit the fuze and for me it was I don't know if it was any particular moment, but it was definitely his death was like. I didn't get to show him in life what I could do. So I'm gonna fucking show him in death and maybe he will be up there looking down and see. I was climbing Mount Rainier many years ago with some buddies, and we were going up a particularly steep route, and I was pretty gassed by the time we got, you know, high up. And, um, we're near the summit and, uh, but we still had like 45 minutes or so to go, just like fucking trudging through the through the glacier gassing.

Um, you know, because I was I was in a CrossFit at the time. Like, my endurance work wasn't wasn't great. And, um, I was like, I don't know if I can fucking do this, man. Uh, and so I was, you know, I was probably a couple minutes away from calling out to the rest of the guys on the rope team and being like, I can't breathe like I. We might need to fucking go down. And. I remember feeling that. And then I remember feeling. Told myself not to. Not to do this. Um.

It's all good, man.

I remember feeling my dad's arm on my back.

Holy shit.

Going like this across my mountaineering pack and helping me up the fucking last 45 minutes up Rainier. That's when I knew, like, yeah, he is fucking up there and he's watching everything I do. So, you know, I try and try and live up to the. I guess burden of. Being not being what he wanted me to be but like. I just want to be a good person, you know, someone. Someone that's worthy of him being proud of. Um, certainly. I haven't fucking gotten it right all the time. Um, but I try. Yeah.

That's fucking awesome, dude.

Yeah. That was that was the first time I remember thinking, oh, shit. Like, there's something else, there's something else. And they can reach out and touch us if they want. And you could say, you know, this goes back to our previous conversation. You could say, oh, it's just some fucking neurons in your brain like that, you know, simulated that, that gave you that gave you the feeling that you wanted you wanted to feel your dad helping you up the top of Mount Rainier. Maybe. I don't I don't think that's true, though.

I don't either. I've had way too many things like that happen to me to think that that's just some bullshit simulation or fucking whatever. No way, man. No fucking way.

There was, um, buddy of mine passed away, uh, a few years ago, and, uh, he he was the type of dude that you talk to the guy, and you just you felt like you've known him for years. He's that kind of guy. Had that kind of warmth about him. His name was Ethan Swiller. And, um. I saw him after I had left the military at a beach party at Fort Walton Beach, like, right outside Hurlburt Field. And, um, we were at a buddy's retirement, and he hadn't seen me in a while. Right. I'd been a civilian at this point. I was at Palantir. Um, you know, I was jet setting around fucking living the tech bro life, you know? So I had some. I wasn't as scruffy as I looked today, basically. And, um, I had some, like, nice clothes on and shit. Had like some nice sunglasses on. And he looks at me and he's like, well, look at you fucking Mr. Hollywood.

And uh, then we just, you know, we bullshitted and hung out and, um, a couple years after that, I get the call. Hey, Ethan. Ethan passed away. I go to his funeral in Salt Lake City. We put him on the ground in his beautiful, uh, cemetery at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, outside of Salt Lake City. And, uh, and I drive back to to California, and I'm driving through Lake Tahoe, and I stop at a bar. Um, and there's no one in this bar. It's a fucking, like, Tuesday night or some shit. There's no cars outside. It's a fucking desolate bar in South Lake Tahoe. No one's there. I walk in, there's one bartender on the other side of the bar, And he's leaning over and he's, uh, like cleaning glasses. Zero other people in the bar. Just me. Bartender, I walk in, he's cleaning his glasses, and then he stops and he looks up and he looks up.

He goes, hello, Mr. Hollywood. And he looks back down, keeps cleaning his glasses.

Holy shit.

And then he looks up at me, who had just walked in the door. And then he goes, hey, can I help you? And I'm like, what the fuck? What the fuck just happened here? It was like. It was like someone took control of that dude's body for, like, five seconds, sent a message and then let go. So, yeah. Wild shit.

I had a guy read my fucking mind.

What are you? How did that go down?

I was in Sedona going through, like, a really bad. You listen to the show, at least somewhat. We talked about some of the topics that we covered, you know, breakfast. And I mean, it gets to me especially like the shit with kids.

Mhm.

Yep. And, uh, long story short, but, uh, I was just in a really fucking bad place, like a really bad place. And, um, I was telling you about my best friend Gabe up there at the, the rounds from Red wings, and, like, I've always felt like him around me, you know? And, uh, I could give you an example after example after example of it, but anyways, basically I, I, I had just done this big episode and, uh, it was with Ryan Montgomery and told you about it, and, um, I felt like like we were, like the only ones that gave a fuck, and and there was a lot of other stuff going on, like, you know, gender identity and kids and like, a lot of shit at that time. And, uh, went on this hike and I felt I just felt like, why do you give a fuck? Why do you care? Like nobody else seems to give a shit.

Why do you fucking give a fuck? And, uh, it felt like I was like, surrendering my soul to Satan. Evil like. Like convincing myself, like, just let it go, Sean. Like who gives a shit? Eight year olds are getting their genitals cut off now. The world is. Everybody else is for this shit. Why aren't you and, um. And I it was like this internal battle in my head. I walked through this gate and this gate guard, like, looks at me in the eyes and fucking tells me everything I'm thinking. Like from front to back. Scared the shit out of me. And then that triggered a whole sequence of other events. And, um, there were so many. It wasn't. And my wife saw it all happen. And, uh, so I, I always kind of considered it like an angel, like, talk to me. Like I know what's going on in your head. I'm going to tell you what's going on in your head, and I'm going to tell you, you don't need to worry about that shit.

That's not your fucking problem. Mhm. Which is what he said after he. And uh, in my, another really good friend of mine had died uh, who was a seal. He lived here in Franklin. He was like my only real friend here at the time. And, uh, we had gotten close fast because he had a very successful business, a successful business. He doesn't need shit from me. I don't need shit. You know what I'm talking about, you know? No. Hey. Could you. Yeah. Any of that. Hey. Hadn't talked to you in 25 fucking years, but. Hey, how you doing?

It's like a mutual non non neediness.

Yeah, yeah. Just legitimate friends, you know, and, um, and, uh, his. So me and my wife go back to this room, we're having this chat and, um, I'm like, I think that was God talking to me. What the fuck is going on? There was this guy that looked identical to Gabe at the resort. Small exclusive resort. Like guy was everywhere I was at. If I was in town, he was in town everywhere. Turns out this is the last night he winds up. He's staying in the. We're in these bungalows. It's like a duplex. He was on the other side the whole fucking time. So I walked back from getting my mind read by the gate guard. I find out this dude that looks identical to Gabe, who's been around all fucking week everywhere. Same restaurant, same hikes, pool. Everything winds up being the guy that's right across the way. Going go into my bungalow talking to Katie, my wife, about this shit.

The phone dings. I'm like, having a breakdown because I'm like, this is fucking crazy. Like, what the fuck? My. Somebody just read my brain. What's happening? We get done with the conversation. I clean my myself up. I look at the phone, and it was his daughter who I'd never met, who must have gone through his phone and got her, got my number and said that, uh, she had just walked into her dad's gun room and basically that he had spoke to her and told her to reach out to me because I was his new best friend and I knew his side of him that nobody else knew. And he wanted her to talk to me because all that shit happened in like five minutes. Yeah.

Wild for people who think that this reality that we inhabit is completely material, and all this shit that we're talking about is just a byproduct of random neurons firing in our head. It's pretty sad way to look at look at the world. I mean, I don't know how you explain, like, what you just said, the gate guard reading your mind, dude.

That I could go to so much more detail that makes it more real. Yeah, but I mean, and there's just so many fucking things that have happened, I can't even remember them all. I used to want to write them all down to, like, remind myself, like, yeah, Sean, there's something more after this. Yeah. You know. Yeah. And, uh, but there's, there's just so many. I don't need to prove it to myself anymore. Yeah. You know.

Same. I went through that inflection point too, you know, like something would happen and then I'd be like, well, I just need I need one more piece of of evidence that that shit is real. And then at a certain point, the shit started happening so often that you're like, okay, I surrender. Yeah.

You just got to be open to it. Yeah. Just be paying attention. Yeah. Paying attention to everything. But the you know what I mean? But your fucking business or your your problems or like, you just have to be open and it happens all the time. All the time. You know, we talked about psychedelics at breakfast too. I mean, have you had any. Have you found any answers?

You know, I think I think there's a lot about the universe that we don't know. Um, I've had buddies that have done psychedelics, and every single time the report back from the field is that those things. Took a randomized series of puzzle pieces in their minds, and then snap them into place and just phase locked them into a good path and a good trajectory. Of course, you know, we are mechanically inclined to hear about those things and immediately dismiss them. It's like God. It's like crackpottery. It's like. You know, it's got a stigma associated with it. I think the stigma is decreasing over time because of all the research that they're doing with, uh, PTSD and veterans. And I think they're doing it with team guys, right?

Yeah. Tbi's TBI and industry.

Yeah. And they've done it. They've done it with like, uh, terminal cancer patients. And I mean, the statistics are off the charts. It's like a near instantaneous, like lack of fear of death, you know, um, because they know something is on the other side. It's always unclear what, you know. I think whatever, whatever it is, it doesn't want to be fully seen or described or whatever. It's meant to be shrouded in some kind of mystery. And it manifests itself to all of us in individual ways. You with a gate guard that was reading your mind, me with Ethan taking control of some fucking random bartender. And, uh, and calling me a nickname that. No, nobody fucking else would have known. Like, you look at me. I'm the furthest from a fucking Mr. Hollywood that you could ever get. Right. But like, that shit happened. Um. Yeah, I think there's a lot going on that. We don't. We don't know about.

But you have to stay curious, I think.

What do you think it is? What do you believe happens when you die?

Um. I, I think what happens is. You. I don't know, is is the bottom line, but what I think is going on is. Our reality might exist as a series of fractals and layers within that fractal structure. And so let's take a very simple example. Right. I can spin up a bunch of eyes and have them all be communicating on a website. But that is a condescension of what it is like to be a human. It's not a fully human experience, but it's one that is sort of like it. The ancient, uh, hermetic thinkers had a saying as above, so below. And what it meant was this fractal structure that we're talking about. So perhaps at higher layers of reality, um, those layers exist and we have experiences in them in ways that are that we can't quite we don't have the language for, but we can intuit in some way, you know, and those layers leak down to us through these experiences and synchronicities. And, uh, it's called them for what they are, miracles that that happen to us in daily life.

But it's difficult for us to have an understanding because we always want to like, do the, the scientific human thing of like, all right, well, how is that structured? Like what does that look like? Like what's going on up there. You know, we don't know, I don't know, I, um, I was reading a book one time and it made the analogy of humans going through existence is sort of like existence on this plane of reality that we, uh, that we inhabit. Is sort of like, imagine cubes floating in space, and they're transiting through a thin layer of film, and that thin layer is two dimensional, right? So you've got these three dimensional things transiting through a two dimensional environment. And as they're transitioning through. They don't realize that they're cubes, right? They don't even realize that they're squares in this as they're transiting through this, uh, lower dimensional plane, let's say. So as they're transiting, they're all fucked up, right? Like, maybe they're they have like, a point that's like their rotations all off, like.

So you're saying planes?

Yeah.

Planes of maybe realities.

Yeah. And one of.

The cube is rising.

Cube is rising. Each plane through each plane. Yeah. But it as it's in, in the plane, it doesn't really understand its true structure. Right. It doesn't understand its true self. All it knows, all it's aware of is the shape that it makes as it transits through that plane. So if you have a cube that's all fucked up in orientation as it's transiting through that two dimensional plane, it looks like it looks jacked up, right? It's like maybe a corner sticking, maybe it's like a point, or maybe it looks like some weird tetragram. I don't fucking know, right? But if you square up with the plane, then you can get close to the shape that you truly are, which is a square that represents your two the cube's true form, right? The square is like the closest that you can get right as you're transiting through that surface. Hang with me here. Now, Out. Maybe all these other cubes up here that already made it are like looking down and they're like, wow, those guys are all jacked up.

So let's try and help them out a little bit, you know? And maybe it's the case that one of those cubes that already made it to a very high layer is looking down, feels really bad for us and is trying to get us to fucking understand the geometry of all this shit. Right. And so that cube comes down. Intersects with this lower dimensional plane and begins unfurling itself into its lower dimensional form, which is. Six cubes in or six squares in the shape of a cross. It had to descend, break itself open and show its true form to everybody else in order to get them understanding what some of this reality is about. And it's basically, I think, a hint that if we can get our shit together and figure out how to emulate that fucking guy. Then maybe we can refold ourselves and, you know, ascend, ascend into the layers that were that were supposed to be in.

What do you say across? Are you a Christian?

Um.

Or is that something else?

I, I believe in I believe in Jesus Christ. I, I think the resurrection was a physical event. Um, I think it. I think it was trying to point at some very deep layers of reality and show us something. And what it was trying to show us is what I just alluded to with this analogy here. I mean, the fact that a cube has to break itself into a cross in order to tell all the other fucking cubes to get your fucking shit together, because you all are not squares transiting through this plane of existence. You all are made of something more. There's something more to you. But unless you're able to align yourself properly, square up with reality. Then you're never going to get to, you know, the layers up here. So, you know, it's easy to say, oh, it's just a coincidence. What are you talking about, dude? Like you're just talking about crazy shit. Um.

I'm tracking.

But. But there's a synchronicity there, right? It's like, why does that analogy work? Why? When you extrapolate it to Christianity, like it kind of makes sense. Like, what was he trying to show? He was trying to show that we are more than these meat sacks that we're in right now. Right. He's trying to show that if we're able to orient our minds and souls and bodies and get them working together for the good of the people around us, then we're approaching a. Foreign form of ourselves that we don't quite understand, but that we know is more than what we are today.

I think it might be a collective one. I'm also a believer. Yeah. I mean, and I, I fucking hate how people are like, oh, you know, you bring it up and people are like, ah, whatever, dude. See that piece of art up there? Yeah. That's how many times the Bible cross-references itself. It's almost 60, 3000 times.

I remember seeing that in a lecture that Jordan Peterson put on.

Yeah, but I mean, I don't know, I don't I want to believe that when we go to heaven, we're all slapping each other's asses and having a good time and just fucking doing whatever the hell we want. Yeah, you know what I mean? But I don't think it's going to be like that.

I don't think so either.

I think that. I think this is a test. I think we and this is I get this. This is just Sean's internal thinking thoughts. You think about this kind of stuff all the time. But, you know, I think that the ego is the test. The ego is what gives you yourself. It's what individualizes you. It's what protects you. It's. It's who you. You know. It's who you are, right? And I mean, when the ego goes away. And you, you have a true ego death, it feels like you turn into a collective. Yeah. You know, a collective, maybe a collective consciousness. Maybe it's love. Maybe it's, you know, something like that.

But the droplet realizes it's part of an ocean.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at. And, you know, is. Scary as that sounds, to lose your sense of self and turn into some type of a collective. I think that's the true test. I think the only thing there is is there as good and there is evil, and you're on one of those sides whether you want to be or not.

Yeah.

And you either go into the collective of good or the collective of evil. And when I think of good and evil in the world, I think of it as. Like a marble that has oil and water in it.

Yeah.

You know, an oil and water never mix. They just, you know, they just they just or like the if you looked at the earth for, you know, a time lapse of millions of years, you'd see the oceans change them with land all the time, but they never really mix, you know what I mean? And it's just one overtaking the other for eternity. Yeah, that's kind of what I. It's kind of what I think I think of, I think, I.

Think.

I think.

I think you're close to the truth, man. I think, um, I think infinity only has two cardinal directions, good and evil. For whatever reason, that seems to be the way it's structured, because anything you can do as a human can be distilled down to. Are you training that way or that way. That's it. Um, so I don't know. I don't I don't have all the answers, certainly. But I also don't think that we live in a purely materialistic reality. And I also don't think that even though I believe in the resurrection and, uh, Christ, I don't believe that that is also the whole story seems to be more to the story. And I think about that a lot.

What do you mean? What do you think? What more? I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

Yeah. I think if you tie together the themes from across different religious or mystical traditions over many thousands of years. I told people I wasn't going to go here when I came on this podcast. If you also tie together abductee reports from UAP encounters and all that paranormal encounters and so on. At some level, they all form a remarkably coherent narrative, which is. We seem to all come from some kind of super consciousness that we all eventually return to. The things that happen to us down here seem to be engineered in order to. Teach us something. And what I think it's so it's. I guess there's more to the story than mailing it in by going to mass every Sunday. Like, I think it's a lot. I think I think what he was actually trying to say, Christ, is you need to be paying attention to yourself and how you deal with things every microsecond of every day of your life. And it is that kind of sustained attention. That is going to allow you to be productive or to assist in life consciousness.

Going the other way. Towards the light rather than towards the dark? I think so. I mean, there's a technical word for this. It's like entropy, right? It's like the universe defaults towards entropy. It might default towards evil, and it is only when enough people learn to. Figure their shit out. That they can turn into a collective. NEG entropic forcing function to steer whatever our local collective consciousness is on this planet to somewhere good.

This is what I'm talking about with the marble. Yeah, I think I think we're on the same page. I mean, you know, if you look at, you know, Christ's teachings, it's all about love, acceptance, things like that which form a better collective, you know, of society. And so if you, if you, if you pump good into the world, that's going to create good and that's going to create more, more surface area of good in the marble, which will begin to overtake the evil. And if you pump in bad, evil lies shit like that, then. Then the dark side, you know, multiplies. Yep. More spots start to pop up and it becomes. It can start to overtake. Good. I agree that's how it works.

And I think I think it's additive right. It's all dependent on. You know Jordan Peterson says you know don't don't change the world before you can clean your fucking room. Right. And the reason he says that is because individual actions at scale produce change at scale. A lot of people try and skip to the last part and just produce change at scale. That doesn't really work. That's how you get authoritarian governments. It's how you get, you know, all the bad shit. It's how you get forms of control. But if enough of us individually are able to get our shit together, I think something magical could happen. I don't know what that is, but I think the Bible is trying to hint at the fact that that's what we're here to do. You know what? Reaction wheels are on a spaceship?

No.

Uh, they're basically a mechanical way of producing, um, movement along some axis without using thrusters. And so you can spin this reaction wheel internally inside, like a little, let's say, a CubeSat or whatever. And you can turn the satellite to orient it to whatever, like maybe you need to turn it so that its solar panels can see the sun or whatever. But the point is, you don't have to use thrusters. And so sometimes you might have multiple reaction wheels, right. You might have three. And so that's getting the the ship oriented and having like it's a it's a mechanism to move the damn thing along some orientation. It might just be the case that whatever it is we're doing down here is we're learning how to spin our own souls, reaction wheels along the proper orientations so that we're all pointed the right way. And when one of us can do that, that's great. When many of us can do that. Who the fuck knows what can happen?

Yeah. Well, this is a conversation I wasn't planning on having.

I don't.

Know.

I don't know how we got here.

So we got here talking about your dad.

Yeah, yeah, talking about my dad. Um, yeah. It was a big loss. Um. I'm sure we'll. You know, I'm sure it'll come back, uh, in other aspects of this conversation, but, um, one of the things that I tried to do to try and move on from that loss is just be the fucking best that I could be at whatever it was the fuck I was doing. If I was going to sit in a goddamn Tin Tin can in the sky and fly racetrack patterns over Afghanistan, I was going to fucking do that to the best of my ability. And that's what I ended up doing the first few years out of language school. Um, they, uh. So being an enlisted aviator in the Air Force is, um, there's actually a very small percentage of people that are in those names.

Yeah. No shit. Yeah.

Like the vast majority of people in the Air Force are. They don't fly. They don't they don't they don't do it. Um, and generally, you know, uh, a lot of people think about officers and pilots as the guys that are, are the aviators. So there's, there's like a special kind of class hierarchy in the Air Force. And, you know, at the very top are your fucking Special Warfare dudes, PJ rightfully so. Right below that are your aviators, enlisted officers and so on. So for me to get my fucking enlisted aviator wings, man, I remember going to like the fucking Asian sewing store outside the base and getting them to sew those fucking wings on for the first time. I was it was magical. Like putting putting those bdus on with the wings on for the first time. It was, uh, it was a good feeling. And, you know, you get your flight suit and all that and you feel like fucking maverick, you know? Um, you only see people wearing that shit in the movies.

Now you're wearing one. It's pretty. Pretty awesome. Um, first order of business was. Okay.

Where were you? What are you flying?

Um, so it's called an RC 135 rivet joint, and it's, uh, it's a 30 person, 30 crew Aircraft and its full of cryptologic linguists on it, and it's basically a mini NSA. Flying in the sky.

Holy shit.

Um, it's been around since the Cold War. So the cryptologic linguist community career field, uh, discipline has been around for a very long time, since World War two. So in World War two, they had all these cryptologists trying to break the enigma and break the Japanese JN 25 cipher, which is like the cipher that the Japanese were using to coordinate the Pearl Harbor assault. Eventually they did crack that, but they cracked it too late, if I recall my history correctly. So there's a there's a long kind of lineage of signals intelligence and, um, and airborne signals intelligence, more specifically for the Air Force. So during the Cold War, you would have RC 135 flying around and basically evaluating, uh, you know, what the Russians were doing, um, like, offset from Russian airspace or offset from Chinese airspace or whatever. In 2000, there was an EP3, uh, plane that went down as a Navy EP3, and that was a very similarly configured plane as to the RC 135.

And so it was full of, you know, cryptologic linguists from the Navy in this case, and they had to emergency set down on Hainan Island, I think. And, you know, there's a bunch of fucking top secret shit on there. It's like all this signals intelligence gear we're going to set down on a Chinese airstrip. So he started going to town, just breaking all that shit in there. And I was zeroing out the crypto and all that shit. I don't think they were fully successful. And I think they used that as a case study, um, in, you know, how to how to be when all that shit goes down. But that's the idea, you know, you're flying signals intelligence platform. Basically this is 2005 and the Afghanistan war is in full swing. Um, and our tasking was to essentially fly racetrack patterns over Afghanistan at, you know, x many thousand feet. I don't I don't know if I'm allowed to say the exact altitude and basically hoover up every fucking thing that's putting out radio signals in or electromagnetic signals in any way, shape or form.

And at the time, the Taliban and the foreign fighter contingent, uh, were still in their mountain redoubts, you know, al Qaeda, you had Pete Blaber on here talking about Anaconda and a lot of Anaconda was. And the reason they fucking sent dudes to the top of, uh, Roberts Ridge is because al Qaeda had these redoubts, these mountain, you know, hardpoints in, um, in all the surrounding, uh, high areas. And they were communicating with each other, uh, over various forms of electronic devices, let's say. And our job was to understand, uh, when they were using them, how they were using them and, uh, basically triangulate positions when we could and, um, and call them down to ground teams. And this is really when I started to understand this concept of, um, how signals intelligence could support kinetic operations on the ground. It was a very tight loop. You know, oftentimes if you're a linguist and you end up at, like, Fort Meade or you end up at one of these other places, you don't get to see the tight like find, fix, finish loop that you necessarily see, uh, in some of these other platforms.

And so, you know, these guys are using their Icom radios or whatever. And, um, we're we're picking up on it. This is 2005. The military did not have very many pashtu linguists at the time. Um, basically all the Pashtu linguists they had at the time were, I think, pretty much on the ground with with the dudes. Um, rightfully so. So the guys that were left were basically guys like me, Arabic linguists that could hear maybe some words that were Arabic in nature, like, maybe we can make out some call signs, but occasionally you would hear the occasional Arabic coming over the wire. And when you heard that, you knew it was a foreign fighter and you knew it was possibly associated with senior leadership, and that was compelling because, you know, we're tasking was to go smoke those fucking dudes. Um, and so you're sitting there and you kind of develop this rhythm of, of working. You know the gear. And I'm going to stay as clean as I can talking through all this stuff.

Um, but, you know, imagine you're visualizing a spectrum analyzer. And depending on what you're seeing on that spectrum analyzer, uh, you know, that dictates. You know, how you conduct your triangulation and how you're calculating the coordinates of where these fucking guys are at, right? And at the same time, if there's audio coming through because they're talking over unencrypted fucking icon radios, right? It's not like these guys have coalition.

You're the fucking guy that can tell what room somebody is in in a hotel.

Yeah.

We'll get. For what room is he in? The bathroom. We're at fucking. You're that motherfucker.

Well, yeah, we'll get to that.

Holy shit.

We'll get to that.

I've never met one of you guys. Wow.

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But it all started with flying race tracks, right? And like, learning the the the craft. Um, you're looking at the spec A if there's audio coming through, these guys haven't loaded crypto in their radios. Um, then you're you're trying to figure out what what the fuck is going on. And because you only have limited time on station. Right? Um, it's quite a bit of time, but still, it's it's finite time. What you do is you slave multiple frequencies into your ears at the same time. And so you develop this skill set of you got multiple freaks in this year, you got multiple freaks in that year, and you're fucking just transcribing all of it. You're keeping track of like multiple things going on. across multiple different frequencies. It's a skill that's valuable to this day, because I'll be sitting in a restaurant and I'm talking to my girlfriend. I'm hearing like we're having a conversation. I'm like listening to the fucking table, two doors that way. And I'm listening to the table, you know, two tables that way.

Um, but you're doing all this. But the the end goal is always, hey, get some fucking actionable coordinates down to the guys on the ground. Right? Because they're gonna fucking do some shit. Um, and we did, uh, we did it over and over and over again, um, day after day. But to me, it was never. It was never enough. You know, I always wanted, like, the next thing. Um, I remember sometimes flying at night over Afghanistan and, um, you know, there's, like, a couple of little windows in the back of this fucking bird. And I remember looking out the window one night and there was some shit going down. There was like a tick, like down way below. And there there were, uh, you know, they had called in some, uh, some airstrikes. And so there were dudes doing, like, gun runs and shit, and I could see all this shit going down outside the window, but it's happening.

Tens of thousands of feet below me, right? I'm like, fuck. I just feel fucking helpless up here, you know? Um, but that's me. This is a character flaw that I have, right? Like, I, I have no business being in a room. I earn my place in the room, and then I very quickly want to get to the next fucking room. And it's no, you know, the RC 135 community are a great bunch of people. Like, they're very dedicated to their mission. They have a very strategic national mission. There's a lot of stuff that they do that I'm not getting into here, uh, that are a lot more kind of strategic in nature at the time for me. God.

I was just going to say, I totally understand what you're saying. It's just it's it's high drive, very successful people. where we can just. We all fucking think the same. I think. Yeah, I mean, it's it's you get in, you check the box. Great. What's next?

What's the next fucking get there.

Check the box. Great. Yeah. I'm bored. What's next? Yeah. I'm not challenged anymore.

Yeah, and.

It just keeps moving. Yeah.

And it's not some, like, ego thing where it's like I need to, you know, be stroked, but I, I know that I can add more value and have more impact if I was doing something closer to the fight. Right. So put me in, coach, get me closer to the fight. So Red wings kicked off like I said. Uh, so, you know, we all hear that there's a, there's a missing, uh, team guy. That opp went wrong. We didn't get the full picture. Um, but it's like, find this fucking dude's PRD and, like, monitor the guard frequencies, see if anyone's talking about him. You know, we got we got a fucking. Massive. Like, a lot of fucking assets that got put in the air and tasked to find Marcus.

Were you there when it went down?

Yeah, I was, I was, I was, um, I was deployed, um, when it went down and we.

Were you watching it?

Uh, no, I wasn't watching it. No, I wasn't watching it. Um, that bird in particular at the time, I don't know whether they do now did not have imagery capabilities. Um, so somebody else was watching it, not me. What we did was we worked in crew, uh, crews of two. So 230 man crews. And we would just swap back and forth. One bird would land, the other one would take off, um, do a bunch of aerial refuels on the way into Afghanistan, um, and then get on station, parked on station forever, just doing race checks, and we're just cycling through the frequencies, looking for any indication that anyone knows what the fuck happened to these dudes and what happened to Marcus in particular. And I don't think it was my crew. I think it was the other crew that I was with, um, that had some had some say in what went down. I don't, I don't remember. Um, but I remember being like, I wish I could contribute more to whatever the fuck is going on down there.

Um. Oh, and one more fucking thing happened. That deployment. And, uh, actually, it may have been the next deployment. There was a dude that came in one night to the talk, and he was like, I'm from, uh, you know, this this task force. And, uh, before I say anything else, you guys are gonna sign these fucking NDAs. I'm like, all right, cool. I can get down with whatever's going on here. So I signed the NDAs and he starts briefing us up on this fucking thing that they're going to do. And it was very similar to what went down in Venezuela, um, a few weeks ago. Um, you know, not we weren't targeting they weren't targeting a fucking head of state or some shit, but it was a high value target, um, long infill. Uh, there was, you know, the threat of sophisticated, coordinated enemy response. And so our job on that particular night was to provide, essentially electronic overwatch for the guys.

Um, I was like, I don't know what the fuck is going on here. I don't know who this dude is, but I remember reading about the units that he's talking about, and I'm fucking stoked that I get to do a little part in supporting them. And, you know, I was all over the fucking frequencies that night. Um, they they went in and did their thing, went out. It was uneventful, but it just put the bug in my ear, you know, I was like, whatever those guys are up to, like, I want, I want in. So we get back and, um. The military and the bureaucracy in the military has a way of hamstringing people that, um, when they see a person that's, like, really performing well and they're highly motivated and so on, they do this fucking thing where they put you in the most boring job possible. I don't know why or how, but they put me at a desk job after I get home for like, I think I do like two, two pumps with this Afghanistan shit.

And I'm like. I can't deal with this shit, dude. Like I'm sitting at a desk. I'm like, seeing the reports come through. You know? We got these crews out in Afghanistan and we got crews elsewhere, too, doing other shit. Right. Um, and they're sending in their their reports. And these reports, they get distilled and sent up through the national intelligence reporting channels. And some of them make it all the way to the president. Right. Depending on what's going on. So it's like, you know, it's important work, but I don't like sitting behind a desk. So I start walking the halls and like telling anyone who would listen like, hey, man, like, is there anything else I can do? Like I can I what can I do? Like, what can I do besides sitting at this fucking computer behind this desk? Ironic, given what I do for a living now. But at the time I was just trying to get after it. And so rumors started floating around the squadron of, uh, of a deployment, um, to Iraq, uh, supporting task force.

And I had no idea what it entailed. Right. I was like, I just need to. Cool. Let's. I want to go to Iraq, and I want to go. I don't know who these guys are, but I want to. I want to roll with them. And I would tell anyone that would listen. They're like, you're an Arabic. You know, the leadership in the squadron was like, you're an Arabic linguist. We can't lose you to this fucking shit right here. Like, you gotta, you know, buckle down and we got plans for you. I was like, I don't accept that. And so there was, uh, there was one guy, and he had just rotated in from Bragg as, uh, as the chief of the squadron in chief in the Air Force is E-9. It's like the highest enlisted rank. And he was, um, he was like the senior enlisted leader at the squadron. And, um, I was a fucking. E three at the time, E3, E4 and I just barge into this dude's office.

I'm like, chief, you got to send me on this fucking deployment. Please let me go on this deployment, please. And he looks. He's like, who the fuck are you? Like, what are you gonna, like, walk into my office, like, the right way and, like, not just fucking barge in here like we're buddies. Um. And he hears my case, and he just looks at me like. Get the fuck out of my office. And, you know, stand by. If we need you to go on this deployment, we'll we'll send you. They figure out a way to get me on the fucking deployment. That was, um. That was January 2007. Go to Iraq with the task force. And from January to July of 2007, I'm 23 years old, and I'm fucking calling in assaulters every fucking night from the air. Now, I've now I'm not at fucking x tens of thousands of feet anymore. Now I'm a bit closer to the to the action.

Right now I've got eyes. I've got like. I've got dudes with imagery capabilities. I'm seeing what's going on with with the with the assaults. Um, my gear is a bit more sophisticated. Um, I'm having direct impact. I'm fucking talking to the lead helos on helo common. You know, like when I'm 160. Dudes check in on helo. Common. Like, you just fucking know that shit's shit's going to go down. And they're all. And it's a, it's a, it's a crack addiction because they're all waiting on me and they're waiting on me to trigger the fucking thing by telling them where this fucking dude's at.

Holy shit.

Um.

23.

23 years old. Fucking night after night after night. Fucking executing. Fine. Fix on, uh, on high value targets. Um, for task force in in Iraq. And. when you when you execute find fix like that at the time, you know this is McChrystal era task force. And you know the guys are just primed. It's a well-oiled machine. Um, so you call it in and, uh, you know, 160 of dudes have their have their rotors spinning. They're just waiting on coordinates from you. And once they have them coordinates they're launching, they got the assaulters on board. Uh, depending on the nature of the target, you know, that dictates the the half package. Sometimes they rolled in with the with the ground assault force to, um, just depended depending on the target and where he was and what the fuck was the situation? But it was the most addicting thing I had ever done in my life. I, I was just enthralled and. I never wanted to do anything else.

Um, and working with like such a crew of professionals, you kind of start to turn into like, entitled a bit. You're like, this is obviously this is how the shit goes down. It's like, you know, I launch, I tell them where to go, they go, um, and then they call, they confirm whether they got the dude or not. And then you then you start to get, like, requested by other assets in country. Um, and so I remember one time I, um, I went down to Basra to work with Seal team five, and, um, so I was riding on a on an army bird.

So you're, like, winning the lottery to the SOF community? It was especially for White SOF.

Yeah, it was, it was great, dude.

Everybody wants a piece.

Yeah. He's great. Um, so we load up on this, on this army, uh, on this army bird, we go down to Basra. I got the army guys next to me, and, uh, I get down off the bird. Um, I'm talking to the to the taki w guys from Seal team five. Or maybe they're team guys, I don't know. And we start to plot out, you know what? What needs to happen? They're going after this high value target one night. And I'm like, cool. Like, tell me, tell me all the things that I need to know. Here's how you know I'll coordinate with you. Um, and let me know what you fellows need. Here's the freaks. You know all that?

What kind of stuff do you need to know?

Um, basic kind of. I'm trying to keep things clean. Um, you know, do you expect this dude to, like, stay put, or do you expect him to be moving around? Um, there's some other things that I need to, uh, make the the gear, you know? Tell me what what I needed to tell me. Um, I basically just need to know, like, what do they already know about this guy? So that when I'm looking at the spectrum analyzer and I'm. I'm getting all the readouts and shit, it's like tracking with what they already know about this guy. Um. The. A high stress event is when you are looking at the data and, you know, the guy is just staying put, right? And you call it in, you know, the boys are loading up, you know, whether it's a gaff or a half or whatever. And they're coming inbound. On and then the fucking dude starts to move, right? That's what the data is indicating.

And you're like, fuck. Um, and it's not like you're in the middle of the goddamn desert. And it's like, you know, you've got imagery capability, so, you know, you can tell who's moving and, like, correlate it with what you're seeing on the spec. A you're in a fucking urban area, you know, you don't know who's who down there. And all you know is that the data is changing in some capacity, and you need to fucking figure out quickly what that data and how it's changing means for the guys coming in on the Humvees or coming in on the fucking DAPs, birds. And if you're wrong. You're going to put them on the you're going to put them on the wrong house. You're going to put them on the wrong vehicle, you're going to put them 800. Things could go sideways quickly. So that was those are like the highest stress situations in this particular case with, uh, you know, the Seal team, five dudes. The guy stayed put.

He was well behaved. I was like, here we go. He's in the middle of this fucking market. Um, come on and get it, boys. And then I just. Silence. Quiet! It's just like nothing happens. Ten minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. I'm like, hey, like he's still there. Like, what's going on? I'm like, yo, we're gonna run out of fuel here. Like, we gotta. We gotta head back soon. Like you guys. You guys coming out or what? Um, so I started to get, like, kind of antsy, and I started. I realized if I had done that exact same routine with the task force dudes, it would have been. It would have been a fucking well oiled machine. The guys would have been there in, out, like. no, like just a well-oiled machine, but like the conventional dudes. Rightfully so. Like, did not have that kind of operational cadence. And so.

You know, they're they're doing risk assessments. They're like, is it worth going in? This fucking busy marketplace? Are we going to get into a fucking Mogadishu situation? And so that that taught me like, okay, there's a difference between the very tip of the spear up here and then like everybody else. And the gap is huge. It's fucking huge. Which is why when I saw that Venezuela hit go down, I was like, yeah, there's only a couple couple organizations that could have pulled that off. Anyway, all that to say, I started to learn about myself. I, you know, and it was easy for me to get frustrated with those guys from Seal Team five. I was like, dude, get the get the fuck out there. like, this guy's gonna leave, and you're going to lose your chance at rolling him up. But I had to empathize with them, you know? Like, it's a dangerous situation for them here. I am comfortable in the air, you know?

Um, it's just not going to happen on my timetable. And so I started to learn how to work with, like, various units and teams and see things from their perspective and not just sit in this ivory tower of, oh, you're a fucking task force, dude. Like, this is how things are done. Um, so I think it humbled me a little bit. Um, I tried to always. I tried to always, you know, do what the the guys needed to be done, um, without being, um, ideological about it, I would say. So that went on for six months. Um.

We were able to think out of the box, is what you're saying?

Yeah, I.

You're a problem solver.

Yeah. I just I just wanted to, The weather. Whether you came from fucking Seal Team five or the 173rd airborne, or some.

Group or.

Some task force unit, I just wanted to make your life easier, if I could. And, um, that's that's the way I. I tried to make it happen. Um. And I say I because, you know, I'm I'm the one sitting here on the couch across from you, but, um, you know, there were a lot of just fucking awesome people that, um, that flew these missions with me. And, um, I'm friends with many of them to this day, and so I don't want to. I don't want to make it seem like, oh, fucking Nick was flying around Iraq fucking, you know, doing this shit like a lone wolf. No. There's there's a whole cast of characters that were involved. Um, at one point, I was like the scheduler for, uh, for the squadron. So I would try and, you know, it's a task force is a joint service agency. So I would try and map out like, all right, this dude like gets along with these army guys better.

All right. So I'm going to put them on on this crew over here. And this dude gets along with the Navy dudes better. All right. So I'm going to put them here. Um so then then I got back and then, then it was like, well, you're going to fucking fly RC 135 again and just turn circles over Afghanistan. I was like, no fucking way, dude. Like, I need to get back to whatever magic it was that I just came came from experiencing. Um. When I got back to when I got back stateside, um, I, I'm sitting in the office, and then I get a phone call. Hey, do you want to come to task force full time? Uh, I'm like. Hey, right, I do, uh, so I go through, you know, the process, um, And, uh, I get selected to go to task force full time, I guess, you know, I they saw something in me.

What was what was what was your selection like? Can you say what task force can I say it?

Um, yeah. I prefer to keep things high level, like task force. Task force level. Um. So for, for the signal squadron that I ended up in over there, the, the selection and the screening and the initial training cycle is very much it's not physical stuff. It's, uh, a lot of it is around. It's a couple different things. Are you able to handle yourself in high pressure environments where. you might not necessarily have a lot of fucking dudes backing you up. You know, you might be. South America is a good example, right? You might find yourself in a town in South America, and there's just temptation all around you, right? And are you going to succumb to that temptation, or are you going to stay locked the fuck in and do the job that you're supposed to be doing at that particular moment in time? And a lot of dudes, like, they're just not able to.

As a singleton.

Um, small, small teams, sometimes. Singleton. Um. So a lot of it is around, you know, are you able to handle yourself in those situations? Um, and then there's once you get to the squadron, you, um, it's an it's an Air Force squadron. So you're primarily, um, You know, you have units that you that you work with. Um, but you there's a possibility that you get farmed out to to one of the other sister service units as well. Um, so Army, Navy, what have you. Um, the other aspect to it is all the things that I was doing on that RC 135 bird, you know, looking at the spectrum analyzer, uh, listening to what was going on on the frequencies and so on. Um, let's imagine that you can compress all that kit down into, you know, a magical form factor, let's say, and then you slave everything into, you know, like an earpiece or something. Um.

Can you do the things that you did previously, but without staring at a spectrum analyzer sitting in front of you and all you have to go off of are some audio cues, because now you've slaved the the analytics and the data that's being piped through that, that analyzer into like, uh, sonic feedback. Essentially, let's say I'm trying to keep things clean, clean and high level here, you know, um, and there's an art to it because you can get out there and you can strap one of these things on and, uh, you know, you'll see it with new guys. They'll, they'll do like Mr. Robot, like, like doing this thing, like just roboting around because they're trying to synthesize. It's like adding a new sense. Essentially, they're trying to synthesize what they're hearing through the the earpiece and the kit with what they're seeing in the physical world. So you have to, like, put together this three dimensional world around you with the things that you're hearing from from your gear, because electromagnetic frequencies are just fucking weird shit, right?

They do all kinds of crazy nonsense. Like, if you're too close to fucking rail tracks, like, they'll throw shit off. If you're too close to power lines, they'll ride the power lines up. They'll multipath through like, like and bounce off of buildings. And so that'll throw that'll throw things off. And so you need to, you need to like in your mind and in your body build this muscle memory of the things that I hear in here have a meaning based on how the things out here are looking. Right. That's about as most as I can say on that piece there. But if you get good at it, then you can you can do some, some amazing things and and execute find fix for for the guys as needed.

So would you. Would you say this is similar to when they say, have you ever seen that guy? He's blind, but he can fucking see. Yeah. Through through audio. Yeah. He could fucking make like these little chirps like. Yeah. And he's he's fucking sees. Yep. Is that, is that like.

It's very similar. Yeah. It's very similar. And it takes a lot of time on the gear to. Have it be fluid and natural. And you know if, if I was to look at you and you would just be like another dude, you know, and I wouldn't be able to tell that you were doing something weird. Otherwise you're doing fucking Mr. Roboto on the street. Um. So that was a lot of that was a lot of it. Um. And we got we got a lot of cross training opportunities to, you know, we, um, I went over to SRT one special reconnaissance team, one over on the West Coast. Um, got to cross train with those guys. Phenomenal bunch of men and women out there. Um, just to learn, like. Okay, how are you guys doing? Okay, here's how we're doing stuff. You know what? What are some of the challenges you guys have? Um, that was really cool because, you know, SRT one is on the buds compound, or at least it was back then.

So you got, like, all the buds students are doing their thing. And then, you know, the SRT one building is kind of a little bit over. So you feel like, you know, you're part of part of an important thing going on here. Um, and again, that was like I always loved working with other services, dude. Like, I don't know, I just felt like I was an emissary from the Air Force, you know? And I just wanted to represent my service well, and. Kind of break the mentality, break the mold of, like, uh, Air Force dude just fucking sits around, you know? Um. And, uh, so I just wanted to be a good emissary, I think, for for the Air Force, but that that SRT one trip, um, was interesting because I got to see how regular NSW does stuff. Um. So I spent, uh, I spent, you know, the next few years doing, doing that business for the task force.

One of the things that comes to mind is, um, you know, you'd be doing air stuff as well, right? Um, so the things that happen in Iraq never went away. There was still a need for bodies on a bird, you know, doing things from the air. And there was one particular deployment where. we were. And everything I'm about to say has been written down and discussed by Admiral McRaven, um, in his books and, um, and on various podcasts. So I feel okay talking about it. So we were on a deployment to Horn of Africa and. Let's say I stumble across, like in the course of, like, working my targets. This guy and it I see the, the guy's name pop up on my gear and it's, uh, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. And, you know, every time I get a good hit, I call it down, and it's no big thing, right? It's like whatever. Some of the shit goes, some of it doesn't go whatever.

Um, especially when you're not in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like some of the shit is just long burn, you know what I mean? This particular one I called down and they were like, are you absolutely fucking sure that this is the guy that you're you're getting data about right now? I was like, rarely am I wrong about like, what fucking target I'm looking at. But yes, I'm pretty sure. Um, and they're like, say you're, uh. Just trying to make sure, you know, I say things properly here. Say your load out. Um, because we we had kinetic strike capability at the time on, uh, on the platform I was on, and I was like, what the fuck? Who is. Who the fuck is this dude? Like, I they never told us that in the past. You know, it's always all right, let's work. Let's build this package and maybe we'll pass it off to some interagency whatever. They'll handle it. Not so in this case.

They're like, say your fucking load out and say, say your say your fuel. I was like, oh shit, it's on. Dude, I don't know who this fucking guy is, but all of a sudden everyone's very interested. Um. So I continue to, to, to track this individual, and then they launch a, a relief bird to swap out places with us. They come in, they take over on station, we roll back to, to where we were staging from. We land. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on with this dude? This guy was like, on the FBI's Most Wanted list, and he's been on it since 1998. Uh, for questioning. based on his, uh, I guess he was one of the senior planners for the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings in 98. I guess he was like one of the head honchos that planned that shit. You know, they drove these suicide, these IEDs, uh, into the embassies in, in Kenya and Tanzania.

So this guy's been on the run since then, basically. And, you know, he was like, the FBI had, like, a bounty out for him and everything. So we just fucking stumble across this dude. Many years later, I'm talking to a buddy of mine and, um, from from a from an interagency partner. And I'm telling him this story, and he was like, wait, Nabhan. I was like, yeah, dude. He was like, I tried to find that fucker for years. I was like, should have done better because I rolled in and fucking got his ass. Um, right after you. But again, I jest, but there was a there's a giant fucking team behind it and the crews that I was working with and so on. I just happened to be the fucking guy working the gear. Um, so we land. This guy is a fucking head honcho. Uh, and so there's an entire effort that starts spinning up to figure out how to prosecute this guy.

And it's not an easy problem because he's. His location is on the coast of Somalia.

Holy shit.

Um.

I'm pretty sure we've talked about this op before on this show.

Um, yeah.

Did they swim in?

Uh, no, not that one.

Okay.

They, uh. Yeah, we'll get to. We'll get to how it all went down. Now, many years later, I'm listening to Jocko. You know, I got his shit on in the kitchen. I'm, like, making dinner or some shit. And Adam Craven's on there, and he starts talking about this op in Somalia where they found this guy Knobhead. And I'm like, what the fuck? And I start listening to his description of what was going on. And on that Jocko episode, McRaven basically describes all the shit that was going down from his perspective as the the CG with the President and Secretary Clinton and all this shit. He's at the white House and he's playing fucking 4D chess, and I'm like, one for one, mapping it with all the shit that was going on downrange. And he's telling me the other side of the story, uh, on this podcast. So that was really fucking wild to put the two pieces of information together and get like this full picture of what went down with that thing.

So we, uh, so McRaven, after we we find the initial hit on the dude. So like, like the initial find fix the dude, like, disappears, like, so the second bird comes on and the dude just fucking goes dark, right? And now everyone's pissed. They're like, go fucking get him. Like, go find him again. We're gonna launch and relaunch you guys until you fucking get his ass again. While all that's going down, McRaven is playing 4D chess with the white House. And you know, he's gonna say it a lot better on on the on the Jocko episode, but he's basically convincing POTUS and Hillary Clinton to forward stage, uh, a helicopter assault force off the coast of Somalia. But he's doing it in a way that's couched through the lens of counter-piracy, because Captain Phillips had just went down. You know, you had Pete Scoble on the show recently. All that shit went down. So there was a lot of credibility for for the task force at the time and its ability to operate in that.

Right. So McRaven kind of rode off of that Captain Phillips thing, and he's like, you know, and everyone, everyone is thinking, you know, Black Hawk Down part two. Like, we don't want. No one wants Mogadishu part two. Um, and and that's the concern on everyone's mind. And he's like, all right, you know, we don't have to put boots on the ground. Uh, we we and and they're like, I don't. Per McRaven, the president did not want helicopters to do the final hit like they wanted like a a kinetic strike, like a long range kinetic strike. Um, so we furiously on the other side of the equation, start trying to fucking find this dude. And so we're just trolling the coast of Somalia, back and forth, back and forth, trying to look for this fucking guy. And I'm looking, you know, I'm looking out the the windows and, you know, I'm looking at the imagery. Um, so I've got like an imagery operator that I'm working with and we're very tightly in sync.

Um, like, if I, if I see some shit with my data, I'm, like, telling him what to look at down there. And we're trying to put these two pieces of intelligence together and, uh, and have it be actionable in some capacity. And we're looking down there and we're, you know, we're seeing downtown Mogadishu, you know, you can literally see the, the corners where the like, Durant's helo went down. Uh, you know, because I've got, you know, I can see where all this shit is. And I'm like, this is really fucking wild. I remember watching Black Hawk Down when I was a I was a teenager, And, um, I was like, and now I'm there's all the there's all the fucking sites down there. Um, and in the meantime, the so they, they park like an LHC off the coast of Somalia. Uh, it's like a flat top, uh, flat top amphibious vessel. They put, you know, helos on it.

They put the assault force on it. Um, and everyone's just waiting. Everyone's waiting for us to fucking find this dude. Now, one thing that happens with some of these manned platforms is they start to treat you like predator drones. You know, you got guys that are 10,000 miles away trying to tell you like, hey, go here, go there, go here, go there. Um, and I don't like being treated like a fucking predator drone because I'm not. Um, I have, you know, I know the area. I've studied the fucking GS. I know exactly which roads lead out from Mogadishu to which town I know. Like there's a coastal road over here. There's villages over there. And I generally know, like, what this dude has been doing in the past. And I'm able to extrapolate that that out into the future. I say me again, I'm the one being being interviewed sitting here. But it was definitely a crew of people, all of whom some of whom will be watching this episode.

And, you know, all of them were instrumental in making this happen. And we're circling overhead one day and then we we get we get a hit on this fucking dude again. And, uh, he, he pops back up, but we don't know where he is. Like, he's, he's a big fucking urban area. And I'm like, all right. I'm like, hey, pilot, you know, put us over put us over the southern end of the outskirts of Mogadishu. There's only three roads that depart coming out of there. And I had a feeling he was going to move south. Um, you know, I can't get into why I felt that way, but, you know, there was there were indications that he had business down south. And so I was like, there's only three roads that that go out of this town towards those southern towns on the coast, like, let's just park overhead. And what we need to do is wait until we can correlate what we see on the imagery with what I'm seeing on on my shit.

And so then the fucking geniuses back at HQ or wherever the fuck they were are like, oh, well, we need you to move to this other tasking over here. I'm like, no, no, no, there's no other tasking. Like, give me some more time. Like I'm gonna figure out, like, where this dude is. I just trust me. I have a I have a feeling of an intuition here. Like, no, we need to move to, like, Western, like inland or whatever. I'm like, just give me 30 fucking minutes, okay? Give me 30 minutes. And I think we can make this happen. And then. And then we see it. A lone little SUV starts driving down one of the fucking three roads down south from Moog. And then my imagery guy's like, yo, black SUV. Got it. What do you got? I start looking at my shit and the idea here is, is my shit saying that this dude is moving south, because if it does, we got him.

We got his fucking vehicle, right? He's moving and he's moving south. Fucking correlation between between the two, uh, you know, uh, pieces of kit. So then the whole fucking machine, like, just gets amped up. Um, they they start figuring out, okay, what are we going to do? We start constant, like, just continuous overwatch. And the plan is, um, McRaven has somehow convinced the the people at the white House that, okay, we're going to do a long range kinetic strike from this platform we have, but let's just send in 1 or 2 birds to do, like, uh, an analysis of, like a PID of the dude. Right? Like it would suck to have this guy be on the FBI's most wanted list. And then we go through all this effort and then not even confirm that it's him, right? Like, guys, wouldn't that suck? Yes it would. All right, so let me put some guys down real quick.

We'll do the pedi. We'll fucking get get out of Dodge. So then it turns into this very tight, synchronized maneuver that needs to go down. And um, and basically it's like get wait until the dude gets to a location where we can execute the strike. And then 30s later lead Hilo is going to come in, drop the guys, you know, and nobody wants boots on the ground in Somalia. Like at this point it's 2009, right? Um, some of that other shit that you were talking about hadn't happened yet. Uh, and, you know, they're in and out in less than ten minutes. All right. So by this point, I've run out of fuel and or my crew has run out of fuel. So pilots like, we gotta we gotta fucking get back home. Um, we we go back to the staging area, other relief crew comes in, takes over, is, uh, is watching, watching the guy, and then he triggers all the, all the criteria to to make this thing go right.

And by this point, we've got some combat controllers that, um, that have basically come forward with us. They're going to call in the final, uh, fires. So then I don't know if you've, like, spent time in East Africa, but the the idea is okay, lays lays this fucking thing and then put a put ordnance down on it of all the fucking days for a cloud deck to roll in from the Indian Ocean into the east coast of Somalia. This was the fucking day. And so by this point, I'm back in the talk and, um, I'm watching everything go down on the screens fucking, you know, ice RTV and, uh, and the guys are getting ready to release and, you know, you can see the target down, uh, just booking it down this coastal road in Somalia. And, um, and then the cloud deck comes in and the cloud deck comes in these bands. Right. So it's like one band of clouds. It'll pass through another band of clouds.

It'll pass through every time one of those bands comes in. The CCTV is not going to let that, you know, warhead go. Um, so this is happening. The crew is calling it down, you know, negative lock, negative lock, negative lock. Because the fucking clouds are coming in by this point. Uh, the GFC on the lead helo, they've already, like, launched because they're expecting us to fucking hit this thing. And they're coming in over the ocean and they're like, 30s out from the coast. And the GFC calls McRaven, who's sitting at the white House. He's like, I need fucking authority to like, abort the strike and come in with guns. And McRaven is like talking to the president. Uh, and he's like, no, like, I want this. I want the kinetic strike. You guys only do the the PYD. Clouds come in like lasers. Lasers in. Lasers out. Lasers in, lasers out. Shit's not happening. Combat controller on board.

Like the shit's not happening. We're going to abort gfcs like boss. I need fucking authority to go in with guns. We're fucking seconds out from this target. Mcraven's like fuck it! Switch to guns! Get em! Deal. Deal with the fallout later. LED Halo comes in. We're all us. Guys at the talk are watching all this shit go down. But the crew that was overhead is, um, is kind of talking him in. They come in, they blast the guy. Um, and then they set down. Then ISR moves off because, you know, you gotta you gotta clean up and they move in, do the PYD and, um, and then head back to to the ship and. They get back to the ship. PID confirms Sally now fucking jackpot. So all of that to say, it was a it was a complex operation that in Iraq or Afghanistan would have been just another op on any other night, but for it to go down off the coast of Somalia in 2009 required this choreography that I've never seen before in my life.

Right. It's like you need to convince the fucking president to let you put an LHC off the coast. I think there were a couple of other, um, I think we had some carrier strike group over there, and it was all because of Counter-piracy shit that was going on back in the day. Um, the, the synchronization between the, the platform and, uh, and the helo assault force last, like, literally 10s out. Switching the fucking guns on the lead Hilo and, uh, and making it happen. All of that was really, really insane to watch go down. And I was like, this is this is I feel like I'm part of something that. Is just important. This is a fucking group of people doing important shit all around the world all the time. And I'm humbled to be a part of it, and I'm proud to be a part of it. Um, after the strike went down, I go outside, I sit outside the, uh, the talk, and it's night time.

And, uh, as the crew comes back, um, the pilot drops the the bird down and does, like, a little Top Gun Maverick fucking tower buzz, right? Like 50ft above the talk. And, um, I was like this. I just felt, like, Whole, you know.

That's fucking badass.

And we sat around, had a little bonfire that night and, um, and and that was that was cool. A couple of months later, I get a phone call sitting in the office back at, uh, back at the squadron, and they're like, hey, uh, coming in. And he, uh, he wants to, you know, he wants to, like, have a meeting with you guys or whatever. I'm like, the fuck for, like, whatever, dude. I mean, I'm in civilian clothes and they're like, you gotta change your uniform and get your ass over here. I'm like, God damn it. I put my flight suit on. I go, go to the other building where this is going down, and I see the crews from this op, like, all lined up and shit, and they're like, bro, like, get the fuck up on stage. Like McRaven wants to, like, give out, give all of us a thing. I'm like, okay, cool, man.

Um, So he goes and he shakes everyone's hand and he's like, you know, this this is, uh, you know, this is a prime example of us being able to reach out and touch people in complex ways where, you know, we don't have the footprint that we do everywhere else. And, you know, he's congratulating him as he goes to the pilots. He goes to the, the, um, the loadmaster, and then he he gets to me and and there's one, there's one dude next to me, and he's the fucking imagery operator. And we call this guy magic man, because, like, he, uh, he used to, like, really, like, doing magic tricks and shit, and he would just, like, pass the time doing that. He's kind of a skinny, like, nerdy looking dude. Um, so we'd make fun of him a lot. And so McRaven gets to me and he puts his hand out and he's like, so which one of you was the trigger man?

Like, which one of you was the sensor operator? That that was the trigger man. And I was like, this is a really awkward question. I don't want to say it's me because it was like a team effort, you know? And so I'm hesitating because I don't I don't want to be that forward. Magic man over here speaks up and was like, it was me.

Must have been a Navy guy. Yeah.

So McRaven. McRaven is like, he, like, loses interest with me, like fucking goes to this dude. And he's like. And then he gives him, like, the fucking CGS coin. And I'm like, whatever. You know, in the grand scheme of things. And so then the ceremony concludes, we get off stage and I turn and look at this fucking dude. I'm like. And he's like, what? And I'm like, bro, you got something for me? And he was like, oh, you should have spoken up, bro. Sorry, but good ceremony, right? And then he just fucks off with his fucking CGS coin. I was like, are you son of a?

Are you serious? Holy shit.

Um.

Wow. Well, that's still pretty fucking badass.

Yeah, that was pretty.

That is badass.

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Activity for Patreon exclusives. You're going to get epic range days with me in damn near every guest that's come in the studio. You're also going to get behind the scenes content and guest updates. You're going to get first dibs on new merch drops and limited edition items that will never be sold again, plus exclusive offers from our partners you won't find anywhere else. So subscribe to the Vigilance Elite newsletter right now. All right, Nick, we're back from the break. I forgot a couple things. I got too excited about the interview. So, uh, just two things to crank out here real quick. One, I got a Patreon account. It's a subscription account. And, uh, we've turned it into quite the community. I think it's like 125,000 strong now. And, um, they're the reason I get to sit down with you today. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. And this is from Jesse Meadows. Where's the real line today between cybersecurity and mass surveillance?

Who decides when it's crossed, and what assumptions or blind spots in these systems still exist that citizens should understand before the infrastructure becomes irreversible?

Yeah, that's actually a great question. Um, so I think the lines are easily blurred between cyber defense, cybersecurity and surveillance. And we can start at a very small scale and then extrapolate up to national scale if we wish. So if we take a small company or a medium sized company, and if you really want to do cyber defense in the best possible way that you could do it, then ideally you have as many sensors and taps and collectors of data that you can possibly have spread throughout the organization. Now that is a massive privacy violation if you go too overboard with it. So I think, as with many things, and then extrapolate that out to national scale, right. It's like all of all of the things that Snowden was up in arms about many years ago were a function of people trying to do. People trying to do the right things for the right reasons, but going about it the wrong way. Let's say, um, when I was the chief information security officer at Anduril, I could have probably gotten leadership to buy off on.

All right, we're just going to put keyloggers on everybody's machine, and we're just going to record everything that they do. But we didn't. Um, and the reason we didn't is because there's a conscious decision that that always needs to be made with these sets of tools that comes down to, are we turning into fucking assholes or not by using these things? It's like, that's a fuzzy way of putting it right. But ultimately, it comes down to that. And with all things human, I think it comes down to people in leadership positions that are willing to stick their fucking asses out there and draw lines in the sand in accordance with their own morality and say, okay, here's what I think are the left and right limits for how to use a technology like this in a proper and ethical way, while achieving the objectives that we've set out to to achieve, which is, in Andrew's case, the security of the enterprise and the weapon systems and the employees and and all of it without going overboard into, um.

Authoritarianism. I think every I think all roads except very few lead to authoritarianism, given any kind of tool, technology capability that humans have access to. I think all of them at the limit can be used for just evil shit and the application of control over others. So all of that to say, cybersecurity tools are tools. The humans that are using them need to make good decisions about how to use them and achieve the the goals that that they're trying to achieve. And it's easy to get carried away by saying the, the means, um, Or what is that saying? That the the ends. Uh.

I don't know, this one.

It's like, you know, the ends justify the means. Right. That's that's what I'm trying to get at. It's easy to say that and just go overboard. But I think one thing to keep in mind is. China said that, too. And they have a society where everything is under the surveillance umbrella that they've set up as a state. Every person's actions are run through that umbrella turned into an algorithm and use for a very authoritarian purposes. And whatever the actions are in front of us that don't set us down that path, that's at least a good first step, I think. Um.

Does this stuff all worry you?

Yeah, dude. Yeah, it worries me a lot. Um. Yeah. I mean, technology is capable of some insane things these days. I mean, I'm honestly very surprised that we don't have a social credit system in the United States that is driven by the experience and the transunion's and the credit reporting agencies, um, because that would make their lives so much easier. It's like if they just had more data on you and what you're doing on a day in and day out basis. That would make it a lot easier for them to understand, you know, whether you're a good, good citizen with good credit or not. I think without checks and balances in place, we certainly have the capabilities to get there. I think the only thing keeping us back is. The the pillars that are basically holding us up as a Western society. Some of those pillars are crumbling fast. Some people would like to see them crumbled fast. But I think the reason that we don't have such an authoritarian system in place as the United States of America is, because that just goes against our spirit and ideals as a society and as American citizens.

Other countries have no such compunctions. So you can say all the shit you want about America and all the evil shit that it's done. And maybe we have. Maybe we fucking have. We're the only country that that's dropped nuclear bombs on people, right? But at the same time, I mean, look at the picture of you on that helicopter over Afghanistan. Dude, like, if there were. if you landed on the X and you saw some fucking kids and you got, you know, you guys did your job and, you know, you were trying to figure out what to do with these, with these kids, you know, you're not going to just take them out back and smoke them, right? Maybe the fucking Russians would have done that. Maybe the Chinese would have done that. But one thing I think that is an invariant is that a fucking dude wearing the stars and stripes on their chest, it's just very difficult to imagine that dude doing that. You know, there's something about the the morals that we have as a society and that we carry with us into all these shitty, complicated situations that that speaks for itself.

Those men are men of the people. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Explain.

Those men. Are doing something that they truly fucking believe in. Yeah, that 100% or close aligns with their values. You know, 100%. You know, the ones that start to think otherwise, they leave, you know, or. The people that we're talking about, you know, the. That that that that have the ability for mass surveillance, stuff like that. I mean, those are powerful, powerful, elite, rich. Yeah. Wealthy people. I think those are that, that, that that shouldn't be, but seem to be more easily influenced by more power and more wealth. Yeah, but mostly power.

Yeah. I agree with you. I think at a societal scale, I think it's. I.

For example, the Epstein files drop. Yeah.

Yep.

The spirit of America. Once those fucking files released. Now the elites of America are doing everything they can to fucking hide this shit from everybody. Yeah. Because it was a power structured thing. Yep.

Yeah, I agree man. I think at national levels and at societal levels, I think there's there's a dark undercurrent of elites that really don't fall on any one side of the Partizan spectrum. I feel like they're in it to sustain their elitism.

Goes back to good and evil. Yep.

Yep. So to answer, uh, Jesse's question. Yeah, it could very easily go sideways. It could.

What do you think would happen if it does go sideways?

How do you think people will always find a way around it? We going we going primitive.

At national level. Is it like like at societal level?

Societal level. How do you find privacy when it does run away?

Yeah, I think. I think if we want to have true privacy in the future, we need to think very carefully about the sovereignty of the the data that we emit as part of our daily lives. Right. Um, like one of the questions I was answering out there for, for some of the Patreon folks was, um, you know, what are your recommendations for cybersecurity as a society in 2026? And one of them was, take the fucking pictures of your loved ones down from the internet. Like, these AI algorithms can do anything they want with those pictures. You basically put those out into the wild fucking forest of the algorithms. So start taking that shit down. The the olden days of like sharing pictures on Facebook and social media and all that shit. Consider that gone. Like take pictures of you down. Take pictures of your loved ones down. And the reason for that is what you want to start doing is preserving sovereignty of the data that belongs to you. And it's a foreign concept to us as human beings, right?

Because we're not wired to think about our digital exhaust and our digital footprint and all this shit. Um, but we better start thinking about it, because when we don't, someone else is gonna suck that up and have their way with it. One of the reasons I'm wearing this hat is because. Um, Josh Clemente, the founder of levels, he started levels, which is a metabolic health company, to give people the ability to control their own medical data, not siphon it off to some fucking insurance company or some lab or some whatever. It's like, this data is coming off my body and I own it, and I get to do whatever the fuck I want with it. I can put it into chat and AI if it if I want, and I can get it to tell me to do it, you know, change my lifestyle or whatever, or I can choose to freely send it somewhere else. But the point is, it's one example of the fact that we need to start thinking about.

How we control the data that's that's emitted from our own lives.

That sounds like an interesting company. Levels.

Yeah. The, um, the founder and CEO, uh, Josh Clemente, um, he worked on the life support systems on the Dragon spacecraft for SpaceX. Um, so he spent a lot of time working on, on those subsystems and then took that skill set, transferred it over to, uh, basically human metabolic quantification, essentially. So the things that you do on a day to day basis, the pack of chips that you just ate, how can you extrapolate that out into what that's going to mean for your health five years from now, ten years from now? Um, and, you know, that's a perfect use case for where data security is essential because you let that data get in the wrong hands. Okay? The instant you eat that pack of chips. Well, TransUnion just, you know, drops your credit score 20 points. So that's not a future I want to live in. Um, but. Yeah.

Wow. All right, let's get back to your story. Yeah.

All right, so we your son? Yeah. My son was born 2011. Um. You know, it was. It was. It was something that I wish I could go back and relive. What I should have done was think very introspectively and deeply about. How to not subject my son to any of the same shit that I had to contend with as a kid and as a teenager. Uh, and I've tried to do that, you know, certainly I've, I've been, um, probably the worst thing I've done is to just be away a lot. Um, I was constantly deployed, like, months after he was born. I got the call from NSW and. Frankly, a very personal like selfish decision was made. Like, okay, I, I started my military career out at 40,000ft on these tin cans flying around the sky. Over the years, I got closer and closer and closer and closer to the fight. And I got really fucking good at every one of those levels.

And now I'm being asked to be out on the ground with these dudes. And I was like, there's no way I'm passing up on this. And. Was that the right decision? I don't know if I could go back. I wish I would have spent more time with him when he was young, when he was just a few months old. Instead, I, um, you know, went to went to NSW, got seconded there. The the history leading up to this was the fact that task force at the time. There was a lot of demand for active duty military members who spoke different languages and had all of the skill sets that I was coming to the table with. And my signal squadron had a lot of those people. And one thing that I would try and do, so by this point, I was a I was a tech sergeant E-6, um, in the Air Force. One thing that I would try and do is. Convey to Air Force headquarters that the things going on in this place are important, and the skill sets that we can bring to the table for this place are impactful.

So don't hold us back or hamstring us and tell us This isn't our mission. This is not what we do. We don't roll out with these dudes. We don't do that. We don't do this. We do whatever the fucking CG needs us to do. That's the reality of it. And the reality. And the other reality was, unfortunately, the squadron at the time was sort of hamstrung by like 3 or 4 different lines of authority. You had task force, you had afsoc, you had this archaic Cold War agency called the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, a bureaucratic, bloated organization that all, you know, their bread and butter was flying fucking Sigint missions during the Cold War. Right. Great. They you don't know shit about counterterrorism or find, fix, finish or all the shit going on at this at this organization here. And they would, um, you know, they would they would serve to just be a bureaucratic blocker to us all the time. And around halfway through my time at task, we finally broke through.

And we're like, NSW came to find out some of the stuff that we could do, and they were like, hey, we got a need for, you know, some of you guys. And um, so I got told, hey, be out on the ramp, um, we're going to have a plane coming for you, and we're they're going to take you up to, uh, to Virginia Beach. Okay, cool. So I walk out on the ramp, plane comes and gets me, go to Virginia Beach, and, um, I sit around and there's a bunch of team guys, and, um, and I go through, like, sort of a screening process, and, um, I ended up getting seconded there, and now I was coming full circle. I, you know, I had spent my whole career wanting to get closer and closer to the fight. And I was going to be in the fight. On the ground with the guys. Um. So the the mission for the next few years was essentially do the fucking shit that you did in the air, but do it on the ground and do it in very, very small teams.

Lone wolf, if you needed to. Sometimes that was the case. Um. And I fucking loved it, dude. And, like, should I have been back with my son? Yeah, probably. Um. One thing, one regret I have is, um, I would. You know, this character flaw I have is when I'm on deployment, I'm on deployment. Like, I don't like.

You compartmentalize over.

Compartmentalize everything. I don't want.

Shut it down.

Yeah, I don't want to be on deployment. And I'm thinking about my family back home, and I'm, you know. It's like, pollutes different sides of your brain, you know? So one way I dealt with that is, you know, I would just spend weeks at a time just being in fucking deployment mode. Um, which was cool, man. I mean, like some of the capabilities that we, we got to bring to bear were like, not organic to NSW, like, um, like the fact that I could speak different languages, the fact that I could work some of the spec gear that, um, that only a linguist would know how to work. Right. I remember one time I walked into a joint and, um, you know, the team, team area and there was like some kit in the corner and I was like, hey, is anyone using that fucking thing? And they're like, no, we don't have anyone that speaks, you know that.

So I was like, I'll fucking get on it. So then when I wasn't rolling out in the hiluxes, I was on that fucking thing with cans on and just all the time I was either out or on that thing with the cans on, and I felt like I had just this all my career had had led up to to this opportunity here. Now I sacrificed, you know, I sacrificed communication with, uh, my family, my ex now, um, with my with my son, with my stepdaughter. Uh, and that's something I would I would go back and change. It's just. I wrestle with this question to this day, like, was it all fucking worth it, dude? Like all the cool, cool stories and, like, all this shit that I got to do with, with NSW, all the all the work on the ground. Um, was it worth it for the sacrifices, for the things that I did to my family in order in order to, to make it happen?

Like just all the deployments, all the being gone all the time. And I would I would get home from something from some trip. And dude, you know how it is. You get home from a trip and you just want to sustain that crack high, right? And so it's like, all right, what's up next? All right. Driving school cool. Laundry pack fucking. Let's go. Some other fucking I don't know, shooting. Yeah. Let's go. Um. Over and over and over again. And so then you just get into this cycle that you don't know how to break out of, and you're heading into a brick wall because you can be. the coolest guy on the planet with. You can be Mr. Air Force dude assigned to this this NSW squadron, but that doesn't last forever. And then you leave, the machine goes on without you, and now you're just a dude on the street. Okay, great. What has all of this been for? You know? Um.

Yeah. So that time with NSW, I mean, those guys treated me.

If you come to a conclusion.

Was it worth it? I don't know, man. It's tough. You know, the biggest the biggest impact. I had when I was with them was we were working these target packages to interdict this, some EFP, uh, smuggling ring. And it was, uh, it was targeting diplomatic personnel in the AOE that we were in. And so, you know, you you justify it in your mind, right? You're like, I'm focused on this shit because I'm trying to save the lives of these embassy personnel that are at risk because of this shit. And then looking back at it and it's like. Okay, a bunch of people could have done that. Um, you know, I was no. One special. I don't know. I don't know is the answer. I think it all happened because I was meant to sit here and be introspective about these issues with who the fuck knows watching and talking through it.

But I asked my question that all the time. I didn't even have a family back then. I think a lot of guys think about this, you know, it's it's a tough fucking question to ponder. Yeah. I mean, you're talking about Somalia. What did we just uncover? And fucking Minnesota? Yeah. How many billions of dollars getting smuggled right into Somalia? Well, we probably got guys right there. Right fucking now. Yep. Is it worth it?

Yeah. Yeah, I know, dude, I wrestle with that. And, you know, a lot of these a lot of these aoes. You know, we were talking about this on the drive over here. We pumped money and. Fucking Zodiac boats and equipment and guns and ammo and.

$87 million a week to the Taliban. Right now, every fucking week delivered in cash.

What happens? We do the same fucking thing every time we're gonna. What is the doctrine that we have for? It's like nation building, right? Dude, we suck at it, okay? We're just not fucking good at it. Why don't we just not? Why don't we not do it? So it's a question I wrestle with all the time. Um, I don't know. I feel proud of my service. Um. You know, these are experiences that that not many people have. I certainly felt a loss of identity when. When I left. You know, I remember walking out of the the NSW compound for the last time. And, you know, they were fucking dudes in the kill house and they're doing their thing and there's like fucking helos flying around and like there's dudes running from one building to another. Like there's dudes like cleaning the Mach fives out and um, in the boat area and you're like, this fucking machine is just going to go on without me, and it's not a good feeling.

And then you're just a guy on the street. Um. So the. Yeah. The last few years, active duty, um, those guys took me in. They treated me like just one of their own. And my my goal was just to represent my service. Well, the Air Force, because, you know, from their view, they knew Air Force dudes in their world came in one of two flavors. PJs. Controllers. PJs. Now they got, like, special reconnaissance dudes and whatnot. So some wacko like, cryptologic linguist coming on board and being assigned, like, some very high level areas of responsibility, um, was new for them. And so I had a lot of pressure to fucking get it right. Um, and I hope I did, you know, a large part of why I'm kind of glossing over all that piece of it is because, you know, I, I don't want to get into areas that. That would, um, you know, divulge TPS and all that shit for those guys.

So. But it was good. Uh, my girlfriend always gets mad at me because, like, to this day, I haven't come up with, uh, like a clean, like arc for, like, what the fuck I did in the military, you know? So, like, one of her family will ask a question and I'll be like, oh, well, you know, I was in the Air Force, but then I was at this, like, joint place, and then like I was at NSW, and then they're just like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude? Like, are you a poser? Like, what was your bud's class? I was like, I didn't I wasn't a team guy. I didn't go to fucking Bud's. Um, but it was it was great, man. I had a really good time. They, you know, they put me through, um, you know, all all of the shit that they put their own guys through for screening and whatnot.

So it was like, kiqq, uh, you know, driving, you know, fucking maritime shit. Um.

Jumping.

No jumping.

No jumping.

No, no. Not needed for the stuff that I was doing. But, um. Yeah, it was. It was good. I actually pulled, uh, I pulled two other guys in with me, uh, Air Force dudes to go through the, the sequence of, of training courses because those dudes had blown out on, um, some, uh, some emergency operations, let's say, uh, in the Indian Ocean because they spoke the language and, um, and I thought they could just use the fucking extra skill sets, you know, it's like they didn't they didn't appreciate that too much because they got.

Put.

Through the wringer. But, you know, they got some good stories out of it. Um, but yeah, that was that was fun. A lot of it was.

You want to talk about the FP ring?

Yeah. Yeah. So. There was, um, there was a cluster of, uh, of foreign fighters, let's call them, that were sort of interfering in the affairs of, of the, uh, of the AoE that we were in at the time. And this is an AoE that you're very well familiar with. In fact, I discovered this morning that we were highly co-located at.

Times.

One at one time. And, um. The, uh, basically, they were trying to smuggle IPS, so, you know, shape charges, basically, and use them to, uh, create IEDs or other incendiary devices to put diplomatic personnel at risk that were that were in that particular. Oh, and so our job was to basically figure out, you know, who the fuck is all involved? Um, who are they? What do they do? Who do they run? It's like that scene from heat. You know, it's like, who the fuck is this guy? I want to know who he runs with and who he eats with. I want to know who they run with and who they eat with. And I want it up tonight, and I want it. I want it going. That was. That was our job. Um. And we we did it. We did it quite well. Um. A lot of it is around, you know. How do you execute, find fix in complex urban environments?

Stuff I was talking about earlier.

Your question from earlier.

Is on that floor in that room. In the bathroom on that wall.

Yeah. And it's like, well, how the fuck do you know that? Well, I'm not going to get into that piece of it, but I know, and I'm gonna tell somebody I know and that somebody is going to go fucking take care of business. Um. Yeah, there was some shit. Yeah, there was just some dumb shit that would that would go down. It was a lot of it was just like, well, there's not a lot of backup here. So like, we're just kind of hanging our asses out. Um, you know, obviously some mutual.

What are you talking about? You had us.

Yeah. Yeah, I remember, um, I remember one time, uh, an individual that I actually respected highly came down from elsewhere in the. And we were going to work with with you guys, um, on, uh, on something. And our job, me and this individual was.

You guys were going to work with the clowns in action.

Yeah. Well, in this particular, I was the fucking clown. Because, you know, this individual comes in and, uh, they're like, hey, dude, um, you know, you got a great reputation. Really psyched to work with you. Like, let's go fucking get this thing done, you know, represent our organization well with these guys over here. And I was like, cool, let's go. So we plan it all out, and we're like, working with working with your guys and our job without, you know, getting too much into it is to be at a particular location at a very particular time, uh, looking out for some stuff. And we roll out and, you know, I'm checking I'm obsessive about fucking totty and, like, being at the exactly, Precisely right places at the right times. I want to be there. I want to get it right because you, you know, you guys are relying on us. And fucking three minutes into this thing, I get fucking T-boned by some Indian dude, like, just smashes into the car right after this person says, hey, man, you got a great reputation.

And like, you're known for, like, this flawless execution on these three fucking minutes in, I get T-boned by this fucking guy. I'm like, God. And I'm watching the the the totty burn down, right? I'm like, uh oh, okay. We're we're off base. Um, all right. So I'm like, stay in the car. I get out, I start negotiating with this fucking dude I like. No one trains you on how to deal. It's not like there's Geico insurance in this fucking place, right? So it's like, what am I supposed to do here? So I do my best. I bust out some op fund cash. I'm like, yo, just take this. Get the fuck out of here. He, like, slaps the cash out of my hand because, like, he's now he's offended that I'm trying to pay him off and shit. I'm like, so I like, talk him down. Uh, fortunately, the damage wasn't that bad. But by the time all this happened, I'm like, convinced convincing this dude to, like, not make this a big deal.

How do I put this? You guys are in your own vehicle, and we're supposed to be way down the fucking road somewhere else, and we're not. And you guys drive by us, and you're just like, what the fuck are these two morons doing on the side of the road here? And you're just, like, staring out the window, and I'm like, God, I fucked that one up pretty good. Um, it's just like, dumb shit like that would happen another time. Uh, my buddy were driving down this, like, really tight section of, um, of this, you know, you know which place I'm talking about this really tight section of the city. And he's like, I need you to turn down this way. And I look down that way, and the road leading down this path or this section of the city is made completely of garbage. It's a fucking garbage road. Like there's no pavement. There's no nothing. I'm like, hey, dude, I don't think that's a good idea for us to drive down that way.

He's like, no, no, no, I need you to drive down that way. Because, like, you know, that's where. That's where the fucking dude is. Check. Drive down that way. Halfway down the fucking road. The. Truck sinks through the fucking garbage. Were, like, stuck. And, uh, then all these, it makes a, like, makes a fucking noise because I'm trying to, like, get the get the wheels turning and get us out of there. So I'm, like, revving the engine. That's like making noise. The locals are all like, what the fuck is going on? They, like, all come out of their houses. And my buddy is like, yep, it's one of these fucking dudes that's surrounding our car right now.

Holy shit.

Um, I'm like, okay. And, uh, so there's, uh, there's some there's a team guy in the in the car with us. He's a great fucking dude, but he's also kind of like, just let's fucking get it on. And he's like, what? What? What do we do, man? Like, let's let's fucking. I'm like, dude, calm down. Like, let me let me talk us out of this one. Um, so somehow I get out of the car, I convince the locals that, like, you know, we're trying to head to the beach or some shit, and, um, like, they help us get the car out of there and we roll out. But that one was spicy because I was like, if this fucking dude gets a whiff that, you know something's off. It's not going to go well. Um, one of the neighborhoods we went into, the guy did get a whiff and it wasn't anything crazy that happened, but he walks in front of.

You and you must speak really fucking good. Holy shit.

You know what's fucked up about it, dude, when you go to doi.

I mean, the fucking.

Place you're talking about is, like, so cultural. Yeah. And we, at least we didn't understand that. I mean, if you're wearing the whatever on the wrong side, they know. Oh, yeah, they fucking know.

Oh, yeah.

You're having a talk to him.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Shit. On a fucking trash road.

On a trash, on a fucking trash road.

The poorest part of the fucking city. Yeah.

Um. Yeah. So it got. It would get dicey, um.

Of one of the poorest places in the world.

Yeah, it would get dicey. Um, yeah. There was one time where. We were in a neighborhood, and the dude walks in front of the vehicle, and he just looks at me kind of like what you were just saying. He looks at me and I look at him, and he just. He just knows that I'm not. I could look like whatever, but I'm not from there.

Mhm.

And he like bolts to his vehicle and I think I hear him like calling out to some of his buddies. I'm like oh fuck. Here we go. And then I like reverse fucking j-turn out of there. I'm like oh I get to use the fucking j-turn. Yes. Pretty fucking sick. And then like, we book it down and then we see them from the rear view mirror, like they're like, I mean, it was like Keystone Cops, dude. They're like, turning down these alleyways, trying to, like, get to us. Um, but we got out of there. just dumb shit would happen like that in between, you know, all the all the high stress stuff. Um, effp. Boy, we, uh, we eventually got him. Um, one thing that was not so fun is, you know, sometimes, you know, you're expected to get up close to these dudes, you know? Um. They might be infested up. You don't know if they think.

That's a suicide vest for the listeners.

Suicide vest? Yeah. If they think something's off, they're gonna fucking clack that shit off. And, um. So I was always hyper, hyper cognizant of what was going on around me, you know, and like, you know, the way that I would conduct myself and, and all of this. But I was never I was never really scared. I was like, this is the greatest fucking opportunity anyone could ever ask for. In my position, I feel like I'm contributing directly to like, critical needs of, of the organization. And so I'm going to I'm going to fucking get after it. Actually one time kind of hilariously hung our asses out there and, uh, got like really good shots of some dudes. And we were working with with you guys to do it, and we pass it off to you guys, and then two days later it comes back with like, circular reporting that like, hey, these dudes like, built this target package and like, here's the here's the fucking, you know, shots from the, the recce.

And I'm like, bro, that was that was us. That was not that. I was like, okay, whatever. Um, but you know, no one's in it to take take credit for anything. Um, she's like, all right, whatever. Let's just fucking get the thing done. Uh, and then, you know, one of the very last I mean, I must have done hundreds and hundreds of of those ops over over the course of my, my time there, um, which was, which was really fun. You know, you just get into a rhythm, you know? You. You just know how to be in that area, man. Like. And. Okay. You want me to walk down a fucking alley in the poorest part of town in this fucking place? And like, if I fuck something up, like, shit's gonna go sideways. Cool. I'm comfortable with that. You just kind of like, you go native, essentially.

Fucking awesome. Um, it's like I said, it's my favorite fucking place. Yeah. To work.

Yeah. To. Yeah. To work. Um, so my very last op, uh, we finally, after never having had one like, across all the, the deployments and ops and shit. Got a bird chop to us. And so they're like, hey, you're gonna have a bird on station for like 45 minutes. There's just like, sloppy seconds, you know, like they're off doing something for somebody else, and they're like, all right, I guess they can support you on their way home. I'm like, cool. Thanks, man. Um, I'm like, all right, here's what I need. Uh, I, I need to dial him up and be able to to calm with him in real time. Um, and they're, like, negative. You're not authorized to talk to him. I was like, I'm not authorized to talk to a fucking aircraft overhead. That's supporting me. Um, and my guy's negative. You got to run the comms through this stupid comms loop that ran from where we were at all the way stateside, and then all the way back to where we were at is like, fucking 20,000 mile loop of a comm.

I was like, that's just not gonna work, dude. Like, you know, when you're.

Why in the fuck.

When you're when you're out there, like, you know, microseconds matter. I was like, I'm not dealing with this. So I look at our comms guy, I'm like, hey, man, we got a green radio. Yeah, dude. I'm like, fire up this frequency, please, if you would. And, uh, hand me that radio. And, um. And so I fired up. I get comms with the bird, I'm like, hey, uh, I'm checking in with you guys. You guys be working for us tonight? Now, that was interesting for me because I used to be the dude on the bird. Like, helping support all these fucking dudes on the ground. I knew how to talk. I knew what they would do. I knew all the procedures they had. I knew how they would be working the gear. I knew how they would look at the imagery. I just knew it right. It was like I was one with them. And at the same time, over the course of, you know, hundreds of reps, I was one with these guys that I was on the ground with, too.

And so it kind of was really cool because my career came full circle on that op, right? I was able to fire up the radio, talk to the bird like I was one of them. Talk to these guys like I'm one of them. Fuze all of it together and like, navigate fluidly through this urban environment in order to, to get the work done. And. That was really cool. Like, I was just able to bring it all home. Um.

That is fucking badass, man. Yeah. It was. You were definitely meant to be there. Running a business sounds great until you're buried in payroll tax forms, onboarding docs, and HR issues at 1030 at night. I've had those days where paperwork completely eats your time, and you think there has to be a better way to do this? That's why we use gusto. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay higher on board and support your team from anywhere. For us, it takes a huge weight off payroll runs automatically. Payroll taxes are filed automatically. Direct deposits are simple. You can handle benefits like health insurance, worker's comp, even for one all in one place. And it's unlimited. Payroll runs for one monthly price, no hidden fees and no surprises. What I like most is it gives you structure, offer letters, onboarding docs, built in tools that automate the boring stuff, and if something complicated comes up, you can get direct access to certified HR experts.

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And then, uh. And then I got home, and, um, and then, you know, what happens is. You know, we were talking about this earlier. When you spend too much time coloring outside the lines in the military, whatever bureaucracy or, like, personnel machine that operates, your service will come get Ahold of you. And you're like, where the fuck you been for the past? You know, X many years. Like you need to come back to the fold and go back to Big Blue Air Force and go take an instructor billet somewhere or or what have you. I was like, I'm not going to do that. Um, after having done the shit that I've been doing for the past, you know, almost decade, by that point, I wasn't going to go back to all the stuff that big blue Air Force normally does, like good, like awesome people doing all of those jobs. But I had just seen too much, you know, I, I had seen too much.

And I went to the leadership at, um, at NSW. I was like, is there any way for me to, like, be here full time? I was like, I'll get out. I'll fucking do an inter-service transfer to the Navy. They're like, I mean, we got pulled, but we don't have that kind of pull. You know, if you do an inter-service transfer, you might have to go be on a boat for a few years. Um, and then and then we'll pull you. I was like, okay, that's not going to work. Um, and then I had one of the leadership go to um, Headquarters Air Force and like, go brief me by name and be like the ideal situation for you guys and us is for Nick to have a bullet at this at this organization. Air force was like, nope, not our thing. Damn. No shit. So I was like, okay, I got no options here, so I left. I left the service because there was nowhere for me to go.

I had gotten to the end of my career track. Like as a cryptologic linguist. There was nothing else for me to do, um, in while active duty. So, um, I left again. It was it was a it was just a feeling of, dude, this train, this machine is just going to keep functioning without me. And it's a terrible feeling. One day you're.

You're the guy.

One day you're the fucking guy. You're the fucking guy that made Admiral McRaven reroute fucking lhcs and helicopter assault forces to prosecute, uh, fucking high value target that that you found. You're the fucking guy that, like, you know, people are relying on. You're the guy that can like that bring capabilities to bear that, um, that other people in the organization cannot. And then to go from that to you're just another fucking dude on the street with taxes and bills to pay and, uh, and rent. Get your fucking resume together, start applying for jobs on fucking Indeed.com. Dude, that broke me. And at that moment where your identity was completely nuked, all in a matter of a few seconds. You know you're done. You walk out that compound, you're done. I knew what it was like to be my dad. And to go from the fucking dude who had escaped the boarding school he went through and become this highly respected individual that got to do amazing things around the world.

You know, in his own way, you know, in the, in the Merchant marine, uh, to go from that to work in a fucking styrofoam cup job at a factory in Jersey. That's the feeling I felt wash over me. And it was tough. Uh, the first, the the first year or two out of the military was tough. Um, I landed a contracting position with. With the sock'em element, um, to be an instructor for some of their, uh, their initial training cycles. So this was a sock'em element that specialized in doing the things that I had been doing for for the past few years. Um, and so I went on staff as one of their instructor cadre. And, um. That particular organization, uh, tends to be quite isolated. Um, they tend to work in their own little vacuum. You know, they're kind of like you guys in that way. You guys, your former guys. Um, and so me coming from one or the other, um, you know, task force components, they're like, all right, cool.

But we need you to just, like, check some boxes and teach these dudes how to do stuff and whatnot. And I did, but during the course of it, you know, I gave some feedback to them. I was like, hey, man, some of the shit that these guys are doing is going to get him killed out in the field, like. I don't want to get into any of the tp's, but I was like, you know, here's where you guys need to rethink some some of these tp's that these guys are doing. Um, because having just done like, hundreds of these fucking things in, like, low, permissive, semi permissive environments, I was like, you try that shit out there and you're gonna you're gonna get got. In retrospect, I could have gone about it a different way. I could have been more diplomatic about it. I could have I could have tried to, you know, change it from the inside. But it was a very insular organization.

And it's like, unless you came out of that place like, they didn't they weren't really interested in what you had to say. So, um, you know, I wrapped up with them.

It's interesting. Right? It's interesting how they don't want to hear it.

Uh, you can't blame them, right? Like, they have, like. Like any of the task force components, they have a long history of successes, and they have their own culture. Um. Yeah. It's human. It's human nature, I think. And me being, you know, young at the time and not politically savvy, you know, I just, you know, to me, it's like I'm just gonna be a straight shooter, dude. Like, here you go. Here's what I think. It's like, well, that's not really the best way to to go about things.

Are you at, like, my sister company? Is that where you're at? You.

Um.

I'm trying. I'm trying to. I'm trying to play within the lines here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Kind of.

Yeah. Okay. So very politically correct. You're coming from a unit of fucking savages. Doesn't end. Yeah, okay. Yeah. It's a hard transition.

Yeah, I get it. Yep.

Yep. um. You know, they call. They call. They have different terminology for everything. They call things differently. They, um. Yeah. So I wrapped up with very gentle.

You have to be gentle in these organizations. You can't be direct. You have to beat around the bush. You have to play the fucking game. Yeah. And it it's a problem for for people like you and I who come out of organizations where you just don't. There's no there's not much bullshit to sift through. It's just you fucked up. Yeah. You're going to get fucking people killed. Yeah. Don't fucking do it.

Exactly. And if you try bringing that bullshit, man, you're gonna see your ass out the door. Yeah, real fucking quick. Um. Then I was completely out of my ass, so, like.

Oh, so did you get. Did they kick you out?

No, they didn't kick me out. But the, you know, there was some contract shenanigans. You know how it goes. Like someone comes in outbids the.

Oh, you didn't get invited. Oh, oh, okay.

Outbids the incumbent there. You know, the new contracting company is like, you know, we're going to cut your salary by such and such. It's like, well, I'm not I'm not really invested in this fucking place. So like, I'm out. Um. But it was an opportunity for me to, you know, convey some of the lessons learned from from the field. Like, I know we're being very general here with, with the type of shit that we're talking about, but at the time, uh, there weren't very many organizations doing the kind of shit that we were doing, like at the organization I was at. And so anything that I could do to convey to these guys, hey, here's the realities of working in these environments and the things that you need to be cognizant of, um, and so on. I tried to do, you know, there was one point where one of their they were going through their initial training cycles and it was like, uh, one of their ending exercises.

And the scenario was, uh, was a hostage rescue, basically. And so these guys were out there and their job was to, um, essentially locate the hostages. Right. And once they do, that triggers a series of of things. And culmination exercise. Um, and I could tell that, like, it hadn't really clicked for some of them. Right? Like the type of serious shit that they were going to get into because these are people that came from anywhere, everywhere, uh, you know, traditional, like conventional military, uh, and so on. And so I, I go visit one of the teams out in the field with some of the other active duty, uh, cadre and, um, the active duty cadre is like, hey, where's everyone at? And the the students are like, uh, well, we got some dudes going to get subway right now. And then we got, we got one team just like, trolling around, like over here. And I lost my shit and I was like, hey, man, let me tell you guys something.

This scenario that you guys are doing here for this culmination exercise is one of the most critical scenarios you will ever encounter in the real world. Hot fucking hostage rescue, right? Especially the pre-assault portion of a hostage rescue. It could very well be the case that two weeks from now, after you guys graduate this training program, you guys could be in front of the fucking CG for real downrange somewhere. Briefing him on what the fuck your plan is to find these people, right? If you get put on an actual OP and I'll tell you right fucking now that telling the CG that you got some, you got some fucking dudes getting food and then you got another set of dudes just trolling around some random location in town with no hypothesis behind why they're over there or any leads whatsoever is not going to fucking fly. So tighten your shit up. This is your culmination exercise. You're going to be doing this for real in two weeks. And then I said it and I was like, fuck, dude.

Like, I shouldn't have said that. I'm just a contractor. I, I'm not part of this organization. I didn't come from this organization. So I looked at the active duty cadre and I was like, hey, you know, sorry if I overstepped any lines. Like, I I'm just trying to convey to him the reality of, you know, what they're going to be facing. And they're like, dude, no fucking problem. Like, they need to hear that shit. Um, like it's all good. And so I kind of that was, uh, that was kind of the last thing I did. I kind of saw that culmination exercise through and then, um, and then I left, uh, and then now that was kind of my off ramp from from anything to do with any of this shit. And then now at this point, I was just a straight fucking civilian and, uh, you know, the savings that you have as a fucking E-6, um, you know, they dwindle quick, right?

And I'm out here. I'm trying to land somewhere in the civilian world. Months go by, you know, I'm not really able to make anything stick. Um, my resumes are just fucking disasters, dude. Like, I look at some of my old resume. I still have, like, weapons, cloths on my fucking resumes that I That I sent around. I'm like, are you fucking stupid? What the hell were you thinking? Um, savings are dwindling. One day I wake up, there's, you know, three digit dollar amount in the bank. Um, I'm still with my with my ex at this point. You know, my son is three digits. Yeah, yeah. Three digits. Um, my son is two and a half or so. My my stepdaughter is, um, she was 11 at 12. Um, I'm like, I gotta make some shit happen. And, uh, right around then I, uh, here's the problem. Right? When when you're, when you're working the work that I did for the organization, you only kind of get to learn shit at a very superficial level.

Like, you know, whether it's the UAW side or whether it's like the cyber shit or whether it's something else, right? CQC, whatever. You never get to go into anything at the level of specialization of like a dude that just focuses on that. You don't get to do CQC like a fucking team guy. You don't get to do like a full time tac w guy. You don't get to do cyber as a full time cyber dude. So you dabble in this shit and you kind of synthesize it all, and you, you go do the mission, but you're handicapped because you transition out to the civilian world. And it's like, all right, well, let me try and get a job in cybersecurity.

Shit, I didn't think about that. Well.

I kind of know how this shit works. I know, you know, if you'd go tell me.

You're a jack of all trades.

Jack of all.

Trades.

I can be told where to go plug the fucking USB drive in. But I don't know what the fuck that USB drive is doing when I do that. I don't know how all that shit works. Like what machines are clicking and whirring like when things begin operating. And so I had to do a couple of things very quickly. Number one. I had to just deep dive into something and I was like, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna deep dive into this cyber shit because I can I can finally, like, fully transition into the civilian world. If I stayed in, like E.W. and all that shit, I would still be in the orbits of, you know, the old organizations. I just wanted to make a clean break. I'm like, if I'm out, I'm out. Um, so I dove deep into into the cyber shit and data analytics and, um, I basically put myself through like a civilian hell week, basically, and for a week straight. Um, I would watch, like, Harvard lectures on data analytics and cybersecurity and all this other shit on like three x speed and just like osmosis sys all the fucking things that these people were saying, all these professors, you know, giving their lectures and, um, I did that for a week straight.

And so.

You're, you're legitimately just trying to fucking download as much information as fast as possible, download into one week so that.

So I can start interviewing for wow for for jobs.

Are you understanding all the lectures?

No, but but I'm, I'm picking I'm picking things up here and there. You know, I'm not understanding the major. Like I'm not deep diving into any of the concepts. Right. But I'm learning the language and I'm learning the concepts, and I'm learning like the breadth of things. Um, right around that time, uh, there was a time article or like a Business Insider article that came out about this company called endgame, and it was run by a guy named Nate Fick, who had been a marine officer. Marine Force recon officer. Uh, and he, like he wrote a book and they made, like a HBO show about his platoon. But he had gotten out a few years previously, and he had become the CEO of this company. And I was like, that sounds like a cool company to work for. And, uh, you know, the CEO seems pretty legit. And what they did was they created essentially exotic cyber warfare capabilities for the US government and for commercial customers.

They hadn't quite figured out the commercial customer angle yet, but US government knew exactly what they wanted from them. And it was a bunch of former Intel community guys, DoD guys that focused fully on cyber. I was like, here's a place that I can go. I can fucking learn from these dudes. I can figure out how this shit works, and then I can use that as a launching pad to to move forward. Problem was, they didn't have any job openings except for a data science position. And I was like, I don't know what the fuck is data science? And so I started looking into it and I come to realize, okay, well, a lot of it is around the type of shit that I had to do before rolling out on an op, right. You're looking at you're looking at data, you're crunching numbers, you're taking your analyzes, and then you are translating them into some thing that has to happen in the real world, right? In my in the old jobs case, it was translate that data into how the fuck you're going to plan your, you know, surveillance operation or whatever.

So I put together this like PowerPoint deck, I applied. I applied to the role. Um, and I put together this PowerPoint deck that they wanted for this presentation. Um. And I didn't know. Shit, dude. Uh, the title of the PowerPoint deck was because I was trying to translate shit from my military career. It was like fugitive recovery. Utilizing data analytics. And it was all about how you can use data that you would get from various sensors and basically sift through it using machine learning algorithms. I was just saying shit that I had seen in these goddamn Harvard lectures, right? How you can use machine learning in order to drill down on where this fucking fugitive was at any given moment and, you know, execute a recovery, you know, trying to use language that civilians would understand. So I go, I go, my first interview is with this, like data scientist guy. And he's a fucking smart dude, like PhD from like Ivy League school, like all this shit AI machine learning expert.

And he's like, he he draws a thing on the board. He's like, what is a type of graph that you can't get caught in a loop. And and I was like, bro, what the fuck are you talking about? I have no idea. But I tried making some shit up and I know the answer now. It's a fucking directed acyclic graph. But at the time I was like, I have no idea what this dude's talking about. I'm going to fail this process and I'm not going to make it. Um, I guess they saw something in me. I don't know what it was like, just the earnestness with which I answered. Um, they could probably tell I did some preparatory work or whatever, but they kept moving me on in the process. And then I get to the panel presentation and, you know, I start walking through it. They have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about, like fugitive recovery. The fuck is this? Dude, this is a cyber company.

There was one guy that walks in and he's my friend to this day. Um, I'm trying to get him to join the company. Actually, he came from your former organization, and, um, he's, like, sitting in the back and he's like looking at his shit. He's like, yeah, I know what this dude's talking about. He's like, where did you say you came from? I tell him the fucking squadron. He's like, standby. You like, walks outside. He makes a phone call to one of the dudes at the squadron, and he's like, you know this guy, Nick? You know, that's the first thing any of us do, right? Fucking call people and be like, is this guy full of shit or what? And the guy on the other end of the line is like, yo, whatever happened to that dude? Like, is he still active duty? Get him the fuck back here if he is.

And this new guy sucks.

Yeah. He's like, that guy was fucking awesome, man. And, uh, my friend John is like, fuck you. I'm taking him. So he so he, uh, he hired me after that. Um, and that led to. I worked at endgame for a while.

Shit, man.

I learned a lot about how the civilian world thinks about cyber warfare capabilities and cyber defense. And because, you know, we're we're building these exotic capabilities for the US government. But at the same time, we're trying to figure out how to translate that expertise into some kind of defensive capability for the private sector. Right. And so when I joined the company, we were going through this phase where, like, all right, we can do all this cool offensive shit. Now, how do we use that to protect companies and, and private sector entities? So I just got I was able to be immersed in all of it. And it was a really good, uh, it was a really good springboard for me. Um, so I would do shit like, you know, I would put out posts on social media about my, my thoughts on cyber security and shit like that. Just cringe worthy stuff. Looking back on it at this point, and one of the things I wanted to do was eventually start my own company.

I had no fucking idea how to do any of that shit, right? Zero concept. Um, but I would go to these, like, meetups, um, like these veteran meetups, you know, these small here's how to start your small business or whatever. I was like, all right, I'll go to this one. And it was up in New York, took the family, drove up to New York, um, and it was at the Goldman Sachs building. And I was like, oh, this is pretty fucking cool. You know, one world trade is across the street. Um, and I go to the, the event, and I'm supposed to be paired up with this, like, mentor who's supposed to, like, teach me about the world of, you know, Silicon Valley and tech and all this shit. Well, come to find out, the fucking dude I had been paired up with, like, got shit housed the night before and, like, woke up hungover and didn't show up.

And so I was I'm sitting at this table. I'm, like, waiting for this dude to show up. No one shows up. And this guy from Palantir walks by and he's like, hey man, did your guy not show up? Or like, what's going on? And I'm like, yeah, I don't I don't know what happened. Like he didn't he didn't show up. He's like, I think I know what happened. He's a fellow Palantir guy and he's like, all right, just come, come talk to me. And he's like, hey, what what do you got going on? What's your background? Um, and I'm telling him he's like, okay, and you're endgame. Yep. He's like, okay, interesting. Well, uh, you know, starting your own business. Like, why don't you just come over to us at Palantir? I'm like, ah, like, I don't know much about you guys. Like, I don't, I don't really know what you do.

So I started looking into him and I was like, that place looks legit, dude. Uh, I, I would love to work there. And, um, you know, at the time, it was very secretive. Uh, it was like any article about Palantir was like CIA backed company, secretive, CIA backed data analytics company does, blah blah. I was like, CIA backed. I'm in. Let's go. Let's fucking. Fuck!

Oh, shit.

Um, so it turns out that they needed a dude with. That was just like that could just speak. You know, like, just be put in front of customers and, like, could speak to some of the tech shit, but, you know, also be good at speaking to customers that believed in the mission. And, um, and so this guy, uh, put me through the process. But here's the problem. I had already applied to Palantir a couple of times before. Like before, I knew a lot about them. And that's part of the reason why I was hesitant. I was like, I don't know, I've already applied to you guys a couple times before. And, um, the hiring process there at the time this was 2016 was fucking insane. Like there were some people that went through 1112 rounds of interviews.

Holy shit.

Volunteer engineers, like the bar for hiring was so fucking high. And I know you're going to have Sean here in a bit. Um, and he can tell you more about that. One thing I really respect about shaman, a lot of the early Palantir people was that somehow they not only built this culture of high performance at all times, but they sustained it over the course of X many years. You know, and that's work like that is institution building.

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Um, and that's the culture that they have built at the time, that culture didn't necessarily have a place for Nick Seetharaman former task force. Dude, that is a jack of all trades, doesn't really know a lot about any single one. Didn't come from an Ivy League school and is trying to get a job at this fucking place, right? Like on paper, there's no way I'm getting past a first round recruiter. So what this guy did was he's like, all right, there's a there's a kind of internal process we got. And if we think someone can truly hack it here, but they don't really come from this traditional background that we look for, we're going to put them straight in front of Alex Karp, Palantir CEO oh, shit. You're gonna have five minutes with Karp, and if he likes you in those five minutes, then you'll probably get the job. And if he thinks you're a piece of shit, then he'll walk you out of the building, or he'll have his assistant walk you out of the building.

I got nothing to lose. I'm like, well, I've already applied to this place a couple of times, like, yeah, I'll go. I'll go talk to carp. So I go to their Washington, D.C. office and, um, they take me up there. They take me to Carp's office. Dude is wearing a, like, blue Russian tracksuit. Bare feet walking around the office, just like he's. He's the fucking man around there, right? And he comes in, he, like, kicks his feet up. He's like, why the fuck do you want to work here? I was like, I look him dead in the eye. I didn't know he was going to ask me this, so I didn't really have a canned answer. I looked him dead in the eye and I was like, same reason I want to work at SpaceX one day because I want to have an impact on our society and our country in the same way that I did when I was active duty. As close as I can get anyways.

And you squint at me and he's like, okay. And then he calls his assistant over and he's like, get this guy a fucking job offer.

Are you shitting me?

Yeah, that was it.

What?

That was it. It lasted, like, two minutes. Um. And.

Get the fuck out.

No, I'm not joking, dude. Like that was it. Um.

And he didn't know shit about you.

You didn't know shit about me. And, uh, so he's like, get this guy a job offer. And so she, like, scuffles out and goes to, like, you know, coordinate all that shit. And, uh, he's like, all right, I'll walk you out. He's like, so what do you want to do here? I'm like, dude, you just said like, get this guy a job offer. Like, does that mean you don't? How are you going to give me a job offer and not know what I'm going to do here? And I didn't realize at the time, but like, this is the kind of shit that happens, right? Like, there's no structured process for how to have an interaction with Alex Karp. Right. There's no like here's the interview flow. And here are the data points he'll want before you get an offer. And like here's what has to be nailed down and shit. It's like it's all based on human to human vibes and whatever vibe I was putting out in that two fucking minutes I had with him, he's like, okay, you're you're gonna fit in here.

I don't know how he knew, but he knew. So he walked me out. Uh, got the offer, uh, like 30 minutes later, like some fucking recruiter calls me. I went and had a burger in Georgetown. Um, and the recruiter calls me while I'm trying to eat this fucking burger. So I walked out, and I'm like. I'm, like, trying to negotiate with this guy. I don't know how to fucking negotiate salaries. I got fucking burger in my mouth. I'm like, uh, stock options. I don't really know what that means. Uh, okay. Well, I guess I'll go with, like, I didn't know that you could push back with any of this shit, right? I'm like, now, if someone were to come to me and give me like this here, here's your salary options and here's your stock option options, I'd be like, that's great. Double everything. And, uh, and then we can have a conversation. But back then, I didn't know shit.

I was like, cool. I guess I'll go with option two, you know, grateful for the opportunity. He's like, cool, we'll be in touch. And, um, and that's how I ended up at Palantir.

That's fucking crazy.

Dude. Just a lot of times I'm just like, I have no business in any of these places. I had no business at NSW, right? I had no business at Palantir. I had. So this pattern in my life has basically been like, find a way into rooms that you have no fucking business in, earn your place in the room and then figure out the next fucking room. Um. Palantir was cool. Um. It was. It was a. I'd never been exposed to a tech company before, and everyone was just so fucking smart. Everyone was just world class at what they did. Um. And, uh, the culture there, there's sort of two there's, like, different departments at Palantir. There's the core product team. There are the teams that sort of maintain the long term, like customer deployments. And so, you know, uh, a bank might have signed some five year agreement with Palantir. And these guys go and like, sustain that account over the course of five years.

And it's got engineers on it. It's got like business development people on it and so on. Then there's the pilot teams, and that's what I fucking wanted to do because the job of the pilot teams was basically, hey, Karp or whoever the fuck at the very senior levels of the company have gotten this fortune 500 organization to agree to some Palantir pilot, right? We're going to do it for free. Here's what here's what's going to happen. You're going to pick some guys. You're going to parachute in metaphorically, and you're going to do anything and everything you need to do in order to convince that customer to convert that pilot to a long term Palantir contract. And for me, that was the greatest fucking challenge anyone could have put in front of me at the time, because it felt exactly like being back at the old organization. Like, here's an ambiguous, high impact tasking. Go get some fucking dudes and make it happen, right? And no one's going to tell you what to do. Send us some fucking sit reps.

Perfect. This I know how to do. Uh.

It's what every fucking business is looking for. Yeah.

Yeah. And I was like, I can't believe someone is giving me this latitude.

At least that's what I'm looking for. Yeah.

I hope you find it. There's, um. You know, one thing.

A bunch of them.

Yeah. Yeah. One thing. One thing I've learned is.

I'm always looking for more.

Yeah. Yeah. Something has happened to the work ethic, like across the American workforce in the in the past few years. I don't know what the fuck it is, man. Maybe it's since Covid, but, like, there's just, like a downward trend in, like, the desire to want to work hard and contribute to something and be a part of.

I don't know if that's true.

You don't think.

So? I don't know, I mean, I'm like you. I spent the majority of my adult life in, in. Special ops and intelligence agencies. And those are fucking hard chargers. The majority of them, you know, and everybody's the best at what the fuck they do. Yeah. And then I got out and tried some shit and I noticed it immediately. Yeah. These people don't fucking want to be here more than they don't want to be here past 5 p.m.. Yeah, most of them are out before five. Most of them don't want to come in, you know, and it's just. And I just fucking noticed it right off the bat. Yeah. And I mean, that's not how we operate here, but that's I think that's just. You're used to working for people that are always pushing the bar higher. Yeah. You know what I mean? In all of your peers are pushing the bar higher and it becomes fucking competitive. And everybody's a perfectionist, and everybody takes their job seriously.

And then you get out and you're with Normal performers, average people, below average people. And, you know, I think a lot of them probably live happier lives than you or I probably.

Yeah.

I mean, but.

That's something to be.

Said. They're not the ones that are out there complaining about not having enough time with their kids and shit like that. Yeah, sitting there and eating potato chips, watching the Super Bowl on their like, I just I'm not that person. Yeah. You know, you obviously aren't either. And nobody that's nobody that builds something like what you're building or what a building or any of that. Like it's just it's not in the fucking DNA. But then you get exposed to the average DNA and the below average DNA and people with fucking no drive and and hey, they got their place in society. Yeah. I don't belong in that.

Yeah you do I man. And one reason that we have. You know, the things that I learned at Palantir hiring bar. The just fucking every day. Bring your fucking a game to work. I've tried to establish that here with my co-founders at Wraith Watch, and I think we've done a pretty good job. We've got a fucking stellar crew of just stone cold hitters. I can put any fucking tasking in front of them and they will just deliver without complaint, any, any tasking. Um, but all of that to say, um, it was, uh, it was a unique opportunity for me to apply, like, if not the engineering skill set, because I didn't have it at the time that I learned over the years, just the whatever the fuck it is. Right? Just the get after it mode. And and we did. Um, but I'm, I'm never satisfied. Right. So like, I'm, I'm always I'm like, how does that work? All right. You guys are deploying this, like, data pipeline, like, okay, how's a data pipeline work?

How does this shit go from one place to another? Why does it why does it work that way? What's the big fucking deal? Oh, well, the big deal is when there's petabytes of data, it takes time to sift through all of it. And you can't just have someone sit down in front of all of it and do a search, and then shit just magically crops up. Like there's a lot of instrumentation and pre-processing and algorithms and everything that's that's involved. So I learned, I started picking up all of it. I started learning all of it. I tried building some of it on my own. Um, so I tried contributing to, uh, to what the engineers on my team were doing. And then over time, the scope of responsibilities just crept upward and upward. Right. So I started out with, uh, this commercial account in, um, it's a it's a department store that's like a household name. And that was my first account. I was like, well, I've gone from fucking tier.

Tier one, uh, fucking reconnaissance dude to, uh, this department store that I'm responsible for. Okay. That's cool, but I did my best, you know? Um, and I think you just do that enough times and you get put, uh, more shit gets put on your plate. Um, and eventually I found myself working, like, more critical and more critical accounts. And, um, Palantir eventually moved me to Sydney, Australia, uh, to handle their APAC region and some of the accounts that we had there. So moved the family packed them up to, to go to Australia. It was awesome. Um. And it was an opportunity for me to just apply like basic leadership, dude, basic leadership like to these kids, like these kids straight out of Stanford, like, would come on board my team and they would just look at me like, all right, what do we do, boss? And then I had to I had to figure it the fuck out.

It was interesting for me because it's not like I was a fucking officer in the military, right? I didn't go to leadership. I didn't go to officer school. I didn't go to leadership training or anything, especially in the jobs that I was working. You're working in very small, tight teams. Um, and there was not a lot of opportunity for me to, like.

How do you deal with that, man? I'm. I'm genuinely curious because I, I don't either. I don't have I have zero formal leadership training and I'm trying to run a company and, you know, in the. The I'm not good at getting in the weeds and tell every little fucking thing they need to do. Yeah, I'm looking for exactly what you just described. Somebody that can. This is what I want built. This is the vision. Yeah. I'm going to give you everything you need to do it, but you have to figure out how to do it. Yeah, and then they do it, and they build a fucking mini empire under what we're trying to do or they don't. Yeah, and they don't last.

It was a process. Um. I didn't know how to get it right from from day one. But what I think I'm pretty good at doing is finding myself in ambiguous situations and then relying on. Initiative, I guess, to figure it the fuck out. And one way I would figure it the fuck out is, I mean, dude, like watching Jocko was very helpful. Like in the early days reading extreme ownership. Like, you know, I was talking about it with Jeremy. Why did Jocko resonate with so many civilians? There's been hundreds of fucking military dudes that have come out of the military and talked about leadership lessons and so on. But the way that he expressed the ideas in his book, I think, were done in a way where it just like it clicked. It was like, okay, this is something I can tangibly apply to my job tomorrow when I go into the office. Right? I can take ownership for stuff I can like, uh, instead of antagonizing people and trying to build fiefdoms, I can, like, think about the team first.

Now, there are limits to this because the the game theoretic structure of civilian company can disincentivize. Like if you go too overboard to the other side of the extreme ownership spectrum, then like you're going to get fucked, right? So it's it's a fine balance of figuring out, okay, where and how to apply those skills. And you can do it like you can apply these tactical, uh, tidbits. And I think that's why he landed so well with with so many people. And that helped me out a lot back in the day. And honestly, a lot of it was I've got 15 fucking engineers looking at me for guidance on what to do, and I, I was like when I was in and I looked at leadership and I wanted to know what to do from them, like what did I expect from them? And I just kind of inverted it on its face. And I tried to be the the leader that I always wanted to work for in the military. Now, did I get it right all the time?

No fucking way. I fuck it up all the time. Um, But it's a process. It's a constantly evolving process. Definitely being surrounded by really smart, motivated, driven people forces you to, like, amp up your own game. And. It's like you're you're living in a in a crystal in a, in a fishbowl, basically. And it's like, how do you want to act so that these people are not just inspired by you? That's that's like kind of self-serving, but like. Are you making these are you making these people's lives better through the way that you're behaving and acting? So that was like one heuristic I used. I wish I had a simple answer for you, man, I don't, um.

You're saying all the right things. It's a lot of the shit I think about. Yeah, I think, I think, you know. I think it's important that you inspire your people. You're the you're you're the leader of the pack. I don't think that sounds cliche at all. They have to be inspired to fucking work for you. Otherwise, it's going to be shit work. If they're not bought in on the fucking mission. What the fuck are you doing here? Get out! Yeah, that's the nine to fiver. That's the fucking the. Let's not move the bar up person. Yep. You know, I feel I feel like you have to. You empower your people. You look for the people that have the fucking drive that you have and you empower them. You give them everything they need to succeed. But if they don't take the ball and run with it. Yeah. Fuck it.

Get the fuck out. Yeah.

Some people have it and some people don't. Yeah. Most don't.

Most don't. This. This is true. Um, you know, a lot of people, we experienced this all the time. All the time. Because, you know, people have this idea of what a startup is. It's been sort of made into this legend, you know, this the tech startup, right? It's a it's a thing. They've made fucking movies about it. Um, what it really comes down to is just grinding it out day in and day out, 24 hours a day, seven days a week with no end in sight. Right. And you just fucking. You're making shit happen all the time. And people think they want that. And we'll interview candidates and they're like, well, you know. I'm not really cool with, like, working weekends. Cool, man. I understand. Go work at a big company. Um, because a startup is going to demand different things from you. It's like it's like going to fucking task force and being like. yeah, well, don't page me on like Fridays because I'm not into that.

Yeah, okay. Well, it's not what the organization needs. Um. Now, one thing, one thing I had always wanted since I was a kid was to, like, be involved with, like, something space exploration related. And, um, you know, after enough reps at Palantir on the pilot teams, um, I had just gotten the, the routine down, you know, it's like, okay, parachute into this fucking organization bank, uh, you know, big fortune 500, pharmaceutical, whatever it was, make friends with everybody. You're basically doing, like, you know, on the ground and just making shit happen. Um, I had gotten the reps down and I was like, okay, I can, I can go do. And I learned enough about, um, the ins and outs of all the engineering that was going down at these places. And, uh, you know, we had built out entire cyber defense programs using Palantir for a lot of our customers, including entire countries, like, um, I was the team lead for a, uh, a cyber defense program that we built out for an entire country in one particular region of the world.

And, um, and they were built on the Palantir platform. So by this point, I had developed a a good sense of what what it takes to build a solid cyber defense and cyber defense engineering function. So I was like, all right, I can go do this and not just be flitting around the world doing it for Palantir customers, which I love doing a great company. Great organization. But I wanted to apply that to defending something tangible. And, uh, you know, when I was a kid and I was going through all the personal shit at home, I would bury myself in, uh, like Star Trek books. And also, I have some fond memories of watching Star Trek with my dad. Like, you know, when when things were still stable and the shit hadn't blown up and gone nuclear in the household, like, uh, I've good memories of that. And when I was a kid, I. I wanted to grow up and, like, be the dude that invented warp drive, you know?

You know, the fucking the engine that they have in Star Trek that lets them, you know, travel around the fucking stars. You know, obviously that first of all, it's not fucking physically feasible. Second of all, it's like, that's not really where my life trajectory took me into advanced physics research, but. I was able to build out a pretty fucking baller cyber defense program. And, uh, I came across, um, a job posting at SpaceX, and I had my eye on that fucking place for a long time. Um, and, uh, I saw an opening for a lead position to run their cybersecurity operations team. Send my resume in, and the recruiter reached out to me, like, 15 minutes later.

Are you serious?

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Dude, this. I mean, I say this shit out loud, and I don't know, it's like I'm making it up. Um, actually, I was just talking to that recruiter the other day because I was trying to get him to come to Wraith watch and recruit for us, but he's like, nah, dude, I'm. I'm happy. I'm like, you know why I remember you? Because I hit submit and you fucking called me, like, 15 minutes later. And I was like, I was overseas at one of the Palantir customer sites. Um. Interestingly, during one of the driving courses that I went to with Tasso, you remember Griffin Group down in Florida. You guys down there? But they would do this, like driving course and you do all the fucking shit like you do the pit maneuvers and all that. They do the rollovers and you do the brake contact, brake contact after the rollovers and all that shit. And, uh, in 2010, I remember going down to a Griffin Group course in Florida, and it was a couple of miles, their, uh, their racetrack that they were doing all this shit on was a few miles away from Cape Canaveral.

And so we had just gone through like one evolution of, like pitting everybody. And all the cars were fucked up and we pulled them all over to the side. There's like fucking oil leaking around everywhere and we're getting out. We're doing a debrief, and then we hear a rocket launching behind us and we're like, that's fucking cool. Like, didn't have that on the schedule. So we turn around and we look at the rocket and it's coming up off the deck from Canaveral, which is just over the horizon a bit. And, um, and it was like no rocket I had ever seen before. It was long, spindly. It was completely white. It looked kind of futuristic. And I was like, that's a very strange looking rocket. I've never seen anything like that before. I was telling that story to my girlfriend many years later, and she was like, that was the fucking, you know, Crs1 mission from space to the International Space Station. That was the first mission that we had launched to take supplies to the International Space Station for the first time.

And she's like, what are the fucking chances that you got to see that shit while you were in this random ass driving course in Florida. Shit just happens, dude, I don't know. Um. So, uh, space was, um, was amazing. Um, it is the fucking. You know, Elon used to say it is the special forces of tech companies. And I always thought that was dumb. Like, having come out of the community, I was like, you don't know what that means. But then I got there and I'm like, yeah, I get it. You know, he's trying to he's trying to rally everyone and inspire people and get them to understand that they're working at a company like no other. Um, and everyone was just locked the fuck in to the company mission. If you ever been to the headquarters over there. So when you walk into the headquarters and you go to the chow hall upstairs. They have one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen in my life.

Painted as a mural on the wall of the chow hall. And it is a sequence of images, uh, displaying Mars through various phases of terraforming. So you see Mars as it exists today as a completely dead red planet, and then you see it as, like with some green and some water, and then you see it with more green and more water, and then you see it as this lush, beautiful Jurassic Park looking planet at at the end. So there's like four, um, four stages to that mural, and you walk past that fucking thing every day to get food, and you're like, there is no question what we're trying to do here. We're trying to make this happen for humanity on timescales that were not wired to think about as humans. Right. It's going to take us hundreds of years to have that vision come to fruition. But they somehow managed to encapsulate that into this mural that they painted on the wall. And when you would walk by it, there was no fucking question about what the fuck you were doing on any given day.

It was support that. That's why you're here. That's why you gave up everything else that you were that you were doing, and you decided to sign up for this, for this grind at space X, and it was a grind. But you walk in there, you look at the factory floor, there's one section of the chow hall that's over overlooking Mission Control, and it's overlooking the factory. And you remember that feeling that I told you about the the NSW compound, and there's just, like, shit going on, you know, you feel like you're part of a a big machine, a big impactful machine. It feels like that space to just rockets being like moved around from one side of the factory to another. is engines being manufactured over in one corner over there. There's footage from some capsule that's in orbit right now being piped into Mission Control. Um, it was just you're in the center of the world as it pertains to human spaceflight. And at the time, we were getting ready to send humans up on the first Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Um, because before then, it had all been cargo. So we had created the Dragon spacecraft, and the whole company was getting jocked up to to send, uh, we called them Doug and Bob. I forget their last names, but there were these two NASA astronauts and their faces were plastered everywhere in the sense of everything you guys do is to support these two gentlemen with who have families, kids to get to the space station safely. Any fuck up is gonna fuck them up and it's gonna fuck their families up. So get it right. Get everything you're doing to every layer of attention and level of detail right all the time. Cool. High performance environment. This I can deal with. Um, and my job, my team's job at the time was to basically be on the front lines of, um, the, the cyber defense function. Um, at the time, we had stolen a bunch of market share stolen. We had captured a bunch of market share from the Russians. Right.

So Russia used to make a big deal about, you know, um, one of them, like the head of the Russian space Agency, was like, if you didn't have us, you're not getting into space unless you have a big ass trampoline or some shit. And then I think Elon was like, well, we're about to make a big ass trampoline, so stand the fuck by. Um, so the Russians were none too happy that a private company like SpaceX was about to reinvigorate human spaceflight on behalf of the United States of America. Finally, there was going to be a rocket carrying the stars and stripes carrying humans to the space station, which hadn't been the case since the space shuttle got retired in 2011. Right. We had we had nothing to back us up. We had all the NASA astronauts had to rideshare off of the, uh, the Russians, which is like a really interesting thing. You know, you can be these geopolitical enemies and some small portion of your two countries is governments can work together to get people up into space and then get back.

Now, there's obviously a shit ton of politics around it, but like, as far as, like the engineers on on each side.

Anyway, that's it's interesting. I actually didn't know that.

Um, now, the team I inherited when I. When I landed there, um, it was this, like, ragtag group of just they were like two guys that were on the security analysis side, and they were just, like, drowning in, like, alerts every single day from, like, people trying to hack into the network. And they would work, like just the two of them, 24 hours a day. One would work a 12 hour shift, the other one would work 12 hours, other one comes back for 12 hours. Just two guys over and over again. For years it was it was that way. Then there were a couple of other guys on the engineering side that were building a lot of the kind of strategic controls around everything. And then, um, uh, then there was my girlfriend, uh, Grace, who was running the insider threat program, uh, at the time. So she was responsible for the technical insider threat and counter-espionage program over there. And the idea was so all of them were kind of working independently.

So, like, these guys were working over here doing all the alert analysis, and these guys were like, doing all the engineering shit. And she was kind of lone wolf, you know, doing the insider threat counter-espionage piece. And they were lacking in like a vision for like, what this fucking team was supposed to be. And I was like, okay, I, I can do this. I can come in here and like, provide some leadership. So like, morale was low too, because like three days into my tenure there, I just moved from Australia back to Southern California to work at this place. And three days into my tenure. They call an all hands and like 1500 people or some shit got laid off. Uh, for whatever reason, I'm like, what the fuck is going on here, dude? Like, I just moved here from the other side of the world. I could have easily stayed in Australia and just, like, hung out, you know? And, uh, so morale was.

Morale was in the shitter, um, and generally, like the cyber defense function, there was this kind of, like, off beat off the wall like team that no one really paid attention to. Um, so I came in there, I was like, here's what we're gonna do. We're going to fuze all these capabilities into a cohesive unit, and we're going to apply what you guys are doing to this counter-espionage shit over here. We're going to walk over to that physical security team that's on the other side of the office here, and we're going to train them up on some of the shit that we're Doing and seeing on this side, because at the end of the day, those guys are on the front lines of shit. Because if some Russian dude walks in and like, is waving a USB stick around, well, who's going to be the first line of defense? It's like I got six people on my team. It's going to be the 50 security guards that are floating around the various areas of space.

So what I tried to do was to fuze and propagate, um, just information about how this team worked, what it did and what the goals were in order to ramp this company up and get it ready for this, uh, human space flight. And we were subject to attack all the time, dude, like, you know. Name your fucking adversary country. And they were after us, like, all the fucking time. And not just digitally over the network. Like they would send dudes, like, on site, and we would get tippers from our federal partners all the time, actually. Like a week into my tenure there, I get a call from my boss. He's like, hey, you know, we got we got a tip that there might be some fucking North Korean like, implant on one of our devices. I was like, I'm on my way home. It's like 6:00 in the evening. Fucking U-turn, roll back into the office, and then we just start cranking through.

Like, we start pulling, like, every fucking laptop from the building that we can get our hands on and, like, running forensics on it to try and figure out, like, all right, how can we find this fucking thing amongst many other, uh, actions that we took for that one? Um, but we would we would establish relationships with our federal partners, um, who weren't used to really working with the cybersecurity team. And, um, they would send us tippers, uh, we'd have all kinds of shit go down. You know, Russians would, like, be jumping the fences and shit trying to, like, break into the building, plug in malware, plug in USBs.

Holy shit.

Convincing employees to, uh, to take them around to various places in the building. One really cool thing was, um, as as we started turning the flywheel a bit more. Again, I don't mean to say, like, I was the one responsible for all this shit, but I did come in there and I kind of looked at the lay of the land, and I was like, all right, these people need, like, more of a why the fuck? Like why and what? Like, what is it that we're doing here and why are we doing it? And I think I was able to energize their activities with, with those things. And as the team started to get a little bit more prominent and we started to get face time with more of the employees, it started paying off. It started paying off because you would have space employees that were sitting around, and they would just start reporting stuff to us proactively like, yo, this dude was like asking me some weird questions at the parking garage across the street.

Like, here's what he looked like, all this shit. And we'd pass out to the physical security team. One time, a dude with a Slavic accent and a very Slavic look about him got into the building and, uh, approaches an engineer at the chow hall, and he's like, hey, man, I'm looking for the printer room. And this engineer is like, how do you not know where the printer room is? Like, everyone knows where that shit is. He's like, and then this dude starts getting nervous. He's like, well, I just need to like, you know, plug this thing into the printer. And this guy who, like, we had managed to train as part of our, uh, like we we started this outreach program and we're trying to train the company, like, all right, here's how the adversary is going to try and come get us. Right. So this dude had sat through that training and he was like, oh, cool, man.

Uh, yeah. I'll walk you over to the print room. He, like he walks him straight out the glass door and then locks the door behind him and then call security. And, uh. And that fucking dude got taken away. And then another. And then the security guards, we train them up, and we kind of made them feel important, right? Because these are contract security guards, and they're all jacked up and shit. Like, you know, Space-x did a good job of, you know, making it clear, like, don't fuck with these dudes because it's in the middle of Hawthorne, California. It's like kind of shit area of LA. Um, and we told the security guards, all right, look, here's how these people operate. Here's what they'll try and do, and here's why they'll try and do it. And those guys felt jacked up, dude. They were like, this is awesome. Like, no one's tried to, like, involve us in any of this shit.

Like, we just stand guard out here, you know? And so then one time, uh, the guard spot a vehicle, and there's, like, a dude, like, holding a fucking antenna out of the vehicle and the guards are like, hey, this vehicle drove by. Some dude was like holding what looked like an antenna out of it. I was like, perfect. Hey, let's get on the network and figure out, is there any weird shit going on on the network? Let's figure out what happened to that vehicle, where it went. So, you know, it started paying off because now it wasn't just my six guys right now. I had.

A whole fucking.

Organization.

Organization that was serving as a force multiplier for me. Uh. Yeah. So that was interesting. And on the counter-espionage side, we got so good at some of the, like, Minority Report type shit that we were doing. That one thing we came to realize was the following. Um. People's behavior manifests in what they're doing on the fucking keyboard, even if they're at work. Like behavior manifests in bits. Is the is the phrase that we came up with. So a lot of time this like old school counter-espionage, like counterintelligence, uh, um, tradecraft. You know, you talk to some old school counterintel guy. What's he going to tell you? It's like, look for the expensive car in the parking lot. It's like, dude, this is a tech company, and our share price is X. Everyone has a fucking expensive car, okay? That shit is just not gonna work around here. So we need to think outside the box. It's fucking 2019. How are these people gonna try and do their shit?

And so we would discover, I mean, through through the course of lots of trial and error.

Prostitution.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that too, um, through the course of trial and error, that if you start piecing together indicators from different sources that you could predict with a very high level of accuracy that some dude was going to be up to some shit in some X period of time. So, like, I'll give you an example. Let's say a dude All of a sudden starts buying extra swag from the company swag store and around the same time starts extra double checking his stock options in the stock option system. Okay, those two indicators right there are like all right this dude's getting ready to he's he's like double checking his his shares. He's getting souvenirs. He's like getting ready to pop smoke right. So that's a very small example of indicators that we were able to piece together. And we had many more of them where we could be able to predict what the high level of accuracy, what was going on. Now, this speaks to your question from your Patreon, uh, audience member from earlier, right.

What is the what's the line? And that was always on the forefront of our minds, right? At no point did we want to go all the way to the end of the spectrum, where we were dropping like keyloggers on everyone's machines, but at the same time, the same tools that we had to detect the Russian hackers and the Chinese hackers and all that shit with just a little bit of repurposing and looking at the data through a different lens would surface this kind of shit internally. And, um, and so we were able to we were able to stand that up pretty, pretty successfully. And then all of those lessons, of course, translated to, to anduril, um, about three fourths of my way through.

Why did you leave space?

Anduril um, was well known to me even when I was at Palantir, you know, uh, so Brian Schimpf, the CEO of Anduril, he was a very renowned engineer at Palantir. He actually did my onboarding at Palantir. He, like, came in and gave us a big talk on, uh, a lot of the engineering subsystems. And when he left to start Anduril, there was like whispers floating around like, yo, Brian left to start this thing. Like, must be legit, dude. Um, but no one knew what they were doing, right? So then I got an email from an Android recruiter and they're like, hey, we got your name from the Palantir. Like, Bro Network, we want you to come and be our first, like, cybersecurity engineer. I was like, yeah, let's let's go. So I didn't want to leave space. But by this point we've talked about this a lot, right?

You get the feeling.

You get into a routine. It's like you you make the machine turn and then you start, like, trying to figure out what's next, right? Where can I have more of an impact? So Anduril knowing that they were working on, um, well, after I went and met him on site, knowing what the vision was going to be, that they were going to get involved with producing the next generation of advanced weapon systems, I was like, okay, this is an opportunity for me to take all the lessons I've learned over the years, both on the people side, on the leadership side, on the technical side, and then bring it all home into this kind of one final act before I start my own fucking company. Right. So Andrew at the time was 100 people. Everyone knew each other. We would like, order pizza and, like, sit around and, uh, and bullshit over lunch. Now take that initial list of 100 people and add that list to the company roster every single month for 48 months straight.

And holy shit, that's scaled out. That's how.

Fast. That's how fucking fast we scaled. Wow. Um, wow. So to build a cyber defense program in that landscape was one of the most challenging you know, problems that I had to endure in my career. One thing I don't like doing is I don't like taking the easy way out and saying, all right, I'm just gonna come in and fucking hire a bunch of dudes. Give me, give me headcount. I feel like you have to earn that first. And I got in there, and I wanted to earn the headcount. Right. So I started doing all the fucking engineering myself. I started, like, deploying out to the cyber defense controls and, like, working with the customer at the time. Our, our main customer I think was CBP. So we were deploying these autonomous surveillance towers to the southern border. This was around like Trump. Trump won um, towards the tail end of Trump won. And so he wanted this like virtual border wall essentially down there. And the Anduril surveillance towers were a core component of that.

And several hundred of them were deployed for CBP down to the southern border. And one of the threats that we were trying to defend against was, okay, what if some criminal element walked up to one of these fucking things and was able to hack into it or, uh, shut it down in some way? You know, there's always a thing. Well, why don't they just put a bullet through it, right? Well, maybe they want to be a bit more stealthy than that, depending on their objectives. Okay, so how do we harden these fucking things? How do we track who has the ability to remote access into them. Like which engineers at the company have access to remote into them? How how do we audit what those engineers are doing? Because one of them gets flipped by one of these transnational criminal organizations, that could be a problem. Um, and so we're thinking and coming up with all this shit, and most importantly, we're translating this to the customer. So we're sitting with the CBP people, and we're saying, here's how we're thinking about this threat model, here's how we're thinking about defending it.

And they fucking loved us, dude. Um, I don't think a vendor had, like, ever sat with them and tried to collaborate in that way with them. Um. And I knew that the future held more exotic shit. Right? I knew we were going to get into the drone business. I knew we were going to get into, uh, you know, probably one day we were going to make fixed wing aircraft. And one thing I wanted to get right very early was I wanted to tie together all of the functions that I was responsible for at SpaceX into one roof to include the weapon system security angle of it. So let's say you have a submarine that you're building as a company, and the fucking adversary gets their hands on the submarine, they're gonna do some shit to it, right? They're going to try capturing it, reverse engineering it, breaking in, hacking it, seeing how it works. Is there a fucking data on it that's useful for their operations? So a large part of it is all right.

How do we secure that fucking thing from the Chinese dude on the Chinese Sigint boat that's gonna scoop this submarine up from the water and then plug into its debug port, right. Which they will do. Um, but you can't look at that in isolation because there's a whole litany of shit happening to the left of that long before that submarine gets in the water, long before that fighter aircraft gets in the air, long before that drone launches downrange, that counter UAS system. Well, that stuff talks to something, right? There's communication backhauls coming off those weapon systems. There's, uh, there's communication termination points like that sit on servers somewhere. There's engineers that have access to those servers. There's ground control station. So it becomes this mesh network of shit that becomes you basically encounter this combinatorial explosion of, of just complexity, essentially, for every new system you add to that graph, right? Um, so we have to get ahead of all of that very quickly. And, um, and it was challenging because the company's growing by 100 people every four weeks, like whole is insane.

So every decision that you kick the can on, you're going to pay for it. When the company is plus 500 people plus a thousand people, that's a thousand times the complexity that you're going to have to contend with. So it's not a function of, hey, can I do all this stuff now? It's what are the things I can't get to right now that I can be okay paying for later when the complexity ramps up, asymptotically goes vertical. Um, these were the trade offs that, um, that I encountered in the early days. So I, uh, I brought, um, Um, I brought Grace over from, uh, from space. Um, you know, we hadn't we hadn't started. We hadn't started dating yet. Um, I brought over a couple other dudes I knew from space. We built out the program. We scaled the program to, like, 85 people on the security team, uh, and, um, and then ultimately became chief information security officer. It's just one of those things, right?

It's like it's not a thing that I was shooting for, but you fucking do. Good shit. Keep your head down.

Man. Dude.

They. It fucking happens. And then same thing with, uh, CIO. Um, so then I got all I got it, I got business systems, I got everything. And the challenge there is. There's a couple different types of CIOs in the world, right? One of them is this blowhard that doesn't know shit and that's constantly talking about digital transformation. This and like, you know, AI that the other one understands that your sole job as a CIO is to make the company run more efficiently. Like every fucking bullshit piece of friction that an employee internally has to encounter in the course of doing their job, is there a way that that can be abstracted off and automated with software? So you're basically building, like these internal startups at the company to deliver software that's making the company more efficient. So that was that was the the job with the CIO. I mean, certainly it was an acquired taste for me. You know, I came out of the security world and, um, you know, now I'm like having meetings about like, how do we make our, you know, manufacturing software more efficient?

I'm like, Okay, so I'm like reading books on, like, ERPs and like, manufacturing software and shit and, like, product lifecycle management software. I'm like, Jesus Christ, I don't know how any of this shit works, but I'll figure it out.

Damn, dude, that's fucking impressive. Holy shit, bro, from a fucking recruiting fair, huh?

Of all. From all from the recruiter reaching out. Yeah.

Good thing you had those weapon squalls on you.

I know, right? Yeah. Good thing I had the fucking GLM on my resume back in the day.

Let's take a break real quick.

Yeah.

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All right, Nick, we're back from the break. I forgot one other thing, too. Everybody gets these at the beginning, but wait till damn near the end for you Vigilance League gummy bears. Thanks, man. Made in the USA. Legal in all 50 states.

There you go.

She's fucking candy.

Just gummies.

That's it. That's it.

Sick. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. You, uh, Jeremy was telling me you got. You guys are making, like, a phone.

Yeah.

Tell me about it.

Uh, well, we're not making a phone, so here's so the back story on this. Um. I get fucking paranoid, you know, just like we were talking about. I think we were talking about it at breakfast, but I get I just get I get fucking paranoid, man. You know, last year before the election, I interviewed half the administration, which means I'm connected to half the administration. And, um. I sometimes I get calls when they're angry at me. And, uh, and, uh. But no, not only that, but, I mean, you know, we've I told you about the Colleen Georgescu thing when I went to Romania, and then I was approached by some, uh, former or maybe still current Intel folks when I got back home because that, that, that, that, that election was, that was a fraudulent election. And, um, the EU was meddling in that election and, uh, we had 107,000 people fucking show up in front of the parliament when we left, uh, because of a, a selfie video that I posted.

Um, I mean, they were already up in arms, went, and, I mean, I know you, uh, you have to working for the companies that you work for. You know how how how fragile the taiwan-china situation is. We went over there and interviewed Kim and, you know, the VP and and so, uh, through my own paranoia and also just living in this fucking world, you know, in my former life. And I was like, we gotta find a black phone. Like, this shit is not cutting it. Yeah. And, um. And, uh. Oh, and I wound up on the Taliban fucking hit list, uh, for uncovering the fact that we're giving them $87 million a week. They didn't like that. And, uh. So, anyways, I.

Can't imagine why.

So, yeah, I started calling around to a lot of, um, former or not former friends of mine that, you know, that I worked with in the past, uh, at the agency. And I was just looking for the black phone, a real one, you know, not not a consumer grade like kind of one, a real one. And I got pointed to this, this company called Glacier that was, uh, founded by, uh, some former NSA guys. So they made this phone and it's it's fucking awesome. This right here.

Oh, is that thing cool?

Yeah. But, uh, I mean, it's an iPhone, but they've hardened it. Yeah. And, um. How? I don't know, dude, that's like speaking Chinese to me, but. But it keeps everything from getting sucked out. It's got end to end encryption. Messenger. Uh, it tunnels your organization in. So, you know, the the the leak, the signal leak at the beginning of the administration, and they accidentally texted the wrong fucking John or whatever. It wound up being a news reporter. That's impossible to do. You can only text people within your organization. Glacier to glacier. Even if your company has a glacier, a glacier phone, and my company has all has glacier. Like everybody hears on Glacier, we can't text each other through glacier. It's it's it tunnels. Your organization in. Um. What else? Endless amount of burner numbers. So, I mean, you know, for guys like us, that really would have come in handy. But even just for normal people, you know, you donate to an election campaign, you fucking whatever, sign up for the wrong thing, your number gets leaked, then you get, you just use the burner number, you know, and then burn it.

You know what I mean? So nobody has your real number and and you know, the guys kind of educated me on how you can, you know, 100% disappear through digital numbers and not even really have a fucking phone number at all. Um, and, uh, so there's a, there's a bunch of cool things about this phone. It's fucking I mean, it's great for high net worth. Individuals that are worried have to worry about kidnaping and shit, because the phone pings a lot more often than the regular phone. And and there's so many features to that. And so when I was looking for that, um, and we, we, we got in touch, I, I wanted to see if they wanted to advertise and, um, they did. They were like, fuck yeah. And I was like, well, maybe they want to do equity. And um, they, we talked about equity. They, we were going to do it. And then as I got more, um, more knowledge of the actual product, it's $8,500 a phone and 12,000 something for the service.

I mean, it's fucking expensive. And, uh, that, you know, I was like, I just we're shooting for this much, you know? And, um, nobody can afford that. We have to go after Palantir and Dural space X US government. I was like, and yeah, I mean, I'm obviously I have reach into there because I've interviewed almost everybody, you know. But you know, that's a I don't that's not the thing. But for me. Yeah. Uh that I want to it's just not my you know what I mean. And so I said, I said, if you had a more consumer friendly product that wasn't that expensive, I would be very interested. And they said, well, actually, we have an app that we've been working on and we're close to being finished, but we don't want that to compete with the phone. And I said, well, that's what I'm interested in. I'm interested if we're going to do business, I want something that everybody can use.

And um, so for about the past. It's been about a year now. Uh, we've been developing this app and turning it into what we need it to be. And so it it's actually releasing, uh, we're doing the beta testing friends and family stuff in two weeks, March 1st. Uh, we release it to friends and family. Congrats, man. Thank you. And, uh, so, yeah, it'll be it'll be data blocker. You'll have the burner numbers and then, uh, all American VPNs, the VPNs. Uh, I mean, I'm sure, you know, most Israelis bought a bunch of VPN companies. China's bought a bunch of VPN companies. It gets marketed like they're fucking American VPNs. They're not. And, uh, so these will be all American VPNs. And then if it goes good, which I, I know it's going to because there's nothing like this out there. Um, then we will add the secure messenger component to it, because it's everything I'm seeing now is, uh, signal has been.

Signal's been compromised. So. So, um, this will be it, you know, and so I'm. I'm really excited about it. Really excited. We put a lot into it. And, um, so, yeah, it'll be, like I said, March 1st. It'll be coming out for friends and family. And then once we work through the bugs, then we'll kick it out to, you know, a little bit bigger group. We're going to we're going to do it in stair steps. We're not just going to kick it out to everybody right off the bat, because I know it's going to take off. So we need we need to work. We need to work through some things before it hits.

That's cool man.

Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people.

One of the challenges we had at Android was to figure out the mobile device security posture, you know, because what do you do? You issue everybody an iPhone, okay. It's a lot of overhead, a lot of maintenance. Yeah, a lot of fees. Um, yeah. It was it was challenging for sure. And we had a giant threat model to contend against, too. Good.

Yeah. No, I gave I gave Trey one. Yeah. When he was there. Yeah. I don't know if he's using it or if he likes it or what, but, uh, but he got in touch as soon as as soon as I gave it to him. I know they went out and trained him up how to use it, so he was definitely interested. Yeah, but that's cool. Yeah. I'm excited, man. And then, um, I probably shouldn't even be talking about this, but, uh, because but, uh, there's a group of us that are getting together and, uh, I mean, my just like you, you know, what's the next thing? I think I pretty much hit the podcast ceiling. There's not much more to develop here. So I've, uh, I've definitely made my mark in the podcast world and, um, and, um, definitely made it to trend to up production quality and all of that kind of shit. I made my mark here, and, um, it's it's it's, uh, now I'm interested in other things, you know what I mean?

And so, uh, through the podcast, I've gotten my new passion is kids, man, and, um, helping sexually abused kids, whether they're trafficked or exploited or abused or whatever. I've just I've covered that subject so many fucking times, and nobody else. I shouldn't say nobody else but a lot of the big guys, you know, in this game just don't fucking talk about it. And, um, the problem's getting worse and worse and worse. And I've made some some of my best friends. Uh, now, today, I've met on this show trying to save kids. And, um, so now we're, we're, we're going to develop an application that's going to educate, uh, and save kids man from sex, exploitation and traffic to all that kind of shit. And, uh. Yeah, I mean, it's just like what you're saying, man. You hit a ceiling and you've done the thing, and you can sit there and fucking try to be king the whole time, or you can fucking move on and get good at something else.

And yeah, now, now you're empire building.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, when I built this, I mean, I mean, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing, man. When I got out, I was teaching fucking tactics, you know, and shooting and stuff like that, which is, it's cool. But even that, I mean, I pretty much hit the ceiling on that right off the bat. I did train Keanu Reeves for John Wick three, and then that created a bunch of hate. And I was just like, this is whatever, man. Most of this shit is like 55 year old men trying to fucking play army because they didn't ever want to go to war. And I just so I started the podcast and I think I've, you know, I love doing this. I'll probably never stop. I may slow down because the pace is it's tough to build other things when I'm at this pace. But um, but like I said, it's just time to move on and master something new and build something else.

And, uh, so that's that's what I'm doing.

Yeah, that's great man. Um, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure the annual CSO Joe is going to be watching this and interested in what you guys got. Oh, fuck. Yeah.

Well, I hope so.

Yeah.

But, uh. Yeah. Thanks for asking, man.

Yeah. No worries. Yeah. Joe, Joe's a good dude. He, uh, we came up together at annual back in the 100 person days of the company. Um, and when I left to start Wraith watch, they were like, who do you want to be? You know, the replacement CISO, basically, I was like, there's only one fucking dude. Joe McCaffrey. He's former Marsoc, uh, communications officer. Just a fucking humble guy. The humblest guy I've ever met in my life. Just a fucking great guy. So, yeah, I'm sure I'll want to check that out at some point.

Oh, fuck. Well, thank you for the plug. Yeah. So I appreciate that. I really do, man. But. So what are you doing in cybersecurity now? You started your own company.

Yeah. So Wraith watch is really a product of every fucking thing we've been talking about for the past few hours.

Where did you. I mean, where did you come up with it?

Um, so the co-founders and I have talked about various components of this product forever, and it was really a fusion of all of those conversations with them. So Grace would always talk about, hey, I need a command and control layer, like how Android has lattice for physical shit and sensors and fuzing the sensor data and telemetry together. We need something similar for cyber defense teams that can fuze data together and serve as a command and control layer for executing operations and making decisions at speed. Because right now, that's the biggest thing cyber defense teams suck at. They just are unable to make decisions at speed. Not because they're not good, but because the tooling is lacking. Right. Same problem you guys are solving with with the glacier foam. The tooling is lacking. It's not because people aren't trying to secure their communications. And, um, I had talked a whole bunch about the about the fact that, you know, if you zoom out from cybersecurity, what what the industry really is, is it's this cat and mouse game of a stimulus response cycle between attacker and defender.

What happens is the attacker will come up with a new way of doing shit. They'll come up with some novel new attack, they'll come up with some novel exploit or whatever. And then the defenders will have to react to that, right? They'll have to figure out, okay, how do we develop defenses against this exploit? Or how do we develop defenses against this new attack technique that we just read about that these guys out here came up with? But these guys out here don't share everything, right? Definitely. China is not sharing their latest and greatest attack techniques with, you know, the cybersecurity community. So over here on the defensive side, you're basically left reading open source information about what's going on on the attack side, or you're left to read through the breach reports from organizations that already got hit. And then you basically have to make these mental leaps to figure out, okay, how might this apply to me and how can I defend myself, uh, and prevent from, uh, prevent my organization from getting hacked in the same way?

So this is a fucking backwards way of operating. Right at the beginning of this podcast we talked about. Artificial intelligence has the capability, and this has been empirically proven by the Frontier Labs. I can point it at a system like an iPhone or a code repository for an application that's running on an iPhone, and I can say, don't stop until you have found me vulnerabilities in this application or code base or device or whatever, and you can just let them crank away at a pace that no human can match. DARPA came out with a competition a couple years ago called the Cyber Grand Challenge, and the goal of the competition was to understand, okay, how can we instrument artificial intelligence systems that can reliably find vulnerabilities at scale autonomously without humans involved? And the answer is yes. The teams that came out on top from that competition have technology that can autonomously find, weaponize and exploit vulnerabilities at industrial scale. Dude. So what you're seeing is this mounting attack pressure from the guys with the offensive tools augmented by artificial intelligence.

You're not seeing any of that shit on the defensive side. It's not like there's some mounting defensive counter pressure that's being provided by somebody. And that's why we built Wraith Watch. We provide the defensive counter pressure to offset the attack pressure that is mounting very rapidly on the offensive side of the house, because the only way you're going to get ahead of this is to have something continuously in here. Predict. Imagine, simulate all of the novel new shit that these things are gonna find right and do.

Is like a fucking immune system. This is crazy.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's that's essentially what it is. You're simulating.

These cells attack, these cells defend. It's fucking wild, man.

That's right. Um. In 2026, if you're an organization like SpaceX or annual or any of these companies, right, and you have anything hanging its ass out on the internet, it's going to it's going to be subject to this mounting attack, pressure from the outside. And you need something that is trying to preserve hull integrity, for lack of a better term, for the organization and to preserve hull integrity, you need to, as you said, simulate all the possible ways shit's going to go sideways in here before these guys figure it out and then proactively get ahead of deploying the mitigations. So defensive counter pressure is is the name of the game here. And we do that by acting as a sensor fusion layer and command and control layer. For all the tools that already exist in an organization, we stack AI on top of it, and then they pull everything together and then apply that counterpressure that that I'm talking about. Unless that happens and it doesn't have to be us, right? Someone else come, come along and do this shit.

Like if it doesn't happen, basically, we can no longer maintain trust that our society's most critical institutions actually have their shit together when it comes to protecting our data or to maintaining organizational integrity. Right. Um, because these things are just going to come at you in continuous swarms and they're not going to stop. This is the future that we're entering into. Anthropic released a report the other day that said their their latest model, their latest AI model is capable of finding zero day vulnerabilities very rapidly against code repositories. It's never seen before or never been trained on in its in its existence. It throws something brand new at it. It'll find a zero day in there. Holy shit. So imagine the firmware that's running on your guys's glacier phones. You know, if you put that thing on a system and then you dispatch a swarm of these offensive eyes at it, they're gonna find issues. The best case scenario is that we execute that process. By we, I mean, you know, someone on your guys's side executes that process of vulnerability discovery, mitigation, and remediation before the bad guys ever get a chance to do it in the real world, in the wild.

So that's we're not only trying to provide a capability to do that for organizations, we're also just trying to evangelize the fact that this is the future that we're moving into. And unless the industry get it shit together gets it shit together, um, we're gonna have some serious problems at hand.

Holy sh. I mean, do you see a world where we backtrack from digital? I mean, are we going to go back to fucking pen and paper? Because the vulnerabilities are just. I mean, they just it's like, this shit's just getting better and better and better every fucking day. Yeah. Every day. Yeah. You know, and it's it's I mean, thank God for companies like you. But where does it end?

I genuinely don't know the answer to that question. I think I think the only thing that we can guarantee is there is now a continuously running arms race between attack and defense. It's an arms race. It's going to be powered by AI, hopefully on both sides. Right now it biases towards the attacker. Hopefully we can change that. And I think. Uh, you know, we're gonna live in a future where these things are just constantly battling each other. Data center on data center, and we're gonna live right in the middle of it. So do we revert to pen and paper? Maybe. I've certainly reduced my, you know, consumption of things on the internet. Um.

Like what?

Just, you know, Doomscrolling Twitter all day or X, um, constantly reading on what? Reading up on what's happening in the news. I'm trying to reduce my cognitive load for what's out there as a practice run for reducing it permanently. You know, maybe I exit rate watch one day. You know, the company does really well. And do I ever want to see a fucking phone again? I don't think I don't.

I don't.

I fantasize about the day where I can.

Me to.

Walk to the walk to a pier, walk to Santa Monica pier. And there's fucking chuck this thing in the water.

I can't fucking wait for that day. Too bad I can't. I fucking fantasize about that day.

But until we get to that day, right, we have obligations as executives and business owners. And, um, I mean, how do you keep track of your kids, right? In this day and age, I don't know. What I do know is that the instant you put a screen in front of them, you're going to lose them. You're going to lose some portion of them to that screen. There's a writer by the name of, uh.

Good way to put.

It. There's a there's a writer by the name of Paul Kingsnorth, and, um, he lives he lives in Ireland, and he, he runs this Substack. Um, and he writes a lot about this environment that we find ourselves in. And it's basically an environment where we've bootstrapped this all knowing, all seeing machine. Right? And it's not a singular machine. It's a distributed machine of which we are all a part of. Right. We can't escape the fact that we need our phones to do our jobs as executives and CEOs. We need the internet to get our message out there. We've developed this need to interface with all of this technology. And I don't think there's any walking back from that. But there is something to be said about holding in your mind and being present in any given situation and saying, do I really need to be on this fucking thing right now? And if I am, am I becoming a better person by the things that I do on it? Or am I not?

Am I just doom scrolling and turning into a fucking ball of anxiety. And if I do turn into a ball of anxiety, you know that's going to have an effect on the people around me. It's going to have an effect on my loved ones that's going to propagate out and have these second, third order effects. It's a fucking weird future we're walking into, man. That's all. That's all I can guarantee.

I just I don't see how we don't go back to pen and paper. I mean, it's just there's so many times where I'm talking about shit, and I'm just like, I don't want to talk about this over the phone. We have to do a face to face. Yeah, we just have to. Yep. You know, nothing. Nothing is secure.

Nothing is secure. And you can't trust anything you see anymore. Like the ease with which any fucking body can produce any image, text, anything movie these days. I mean, you know, I was talking with Jeremy and and Darren about it earlier. If the first biblical flood was a physical one, the second one is going to be an informational one. We're going to be hit with a volume and velocity of information, the likes of which we are not prepared for with our evolutionary programing. And I think we all have to reconcile what that means for us individually, and what that means for our families and our communities and our society. That's why I bring up Kingsnorth, is because his contention is okay. If this machine really is going to take off, right? And it already is and has and will continue to. Well, it's the goal. Well, maybe the goal is to it's to. Establish the success that we all want right. Like with vigilance and with the podcast and all the, all the projects you've got going on With Wraith.

Watch for me. You know, other other folks have their versions of it. But once you do, let's figure out how to take that and translate it into making the little worlds around us better. Our families, our communities, our states, our countries, what have you. And maybe if we start small and we do a good job, then maybe we'll earn our way into building our way back from this place that we're in. I don't know.

Never going to happen.

Yeah I agree.

Simplicity. Yep. That's the way we're supposed to live. Yep. Simplistic. And we don't fucking live that way. I know, especially guys like me and you. I know we have high bars to set. We have. We are on a mission, man. Yeah. And, uh, we like to accomplish it, and that does not create a simple life.

I know it really doesn't, but these are things I think about a lot.

Me too. Me too. I think about. Yeah, I think about him all the fucking time. I mean, I can't remember who I was in here talking with, but, you know. I mean, you're talking about a wave of information. I mean, I can't remember the number I'm going to be off, but, you know, it was like the human brain can maintain 150 relationships or something like, I think it was less than that, you know, actually maintain, you know, 150 relationships or something. It's something like that.

Yeah. Approximately the size of a rifle company.

Dude. And. Look at fucking X and Twitter and you got, you know. Thousands of people you're following. Everybody's fucking hitting you up. And, you know, people you don't even know. You can't. you can't, you can't. You got text signal Glacier, Instagram, Twitter, fucking Facebook all. It's just all personal email company fucking email. It's multiple company emails. It's like you just can't get the fuck away from any of it. Yeah it's everywhere.

Yeah, I agree man. And it's only gonna get worse because, you know, now all the bot armies that used to post bot army shit like, you know, they resemble humans now and whoever's puppeteering them from the back end, they can basically dispatch these armies that can swing things one way or the other, depending on what the goals of, of that person are. So. I don't have the answers, dude, I, I, I'm in a position where I can put some guys together and I feel like along with my with my founders, I've put a crew of hitters together and we're out there building some cool shit. Um, your.

Wife's a founder, right?

Uh, girlfriend? Yeah.

Excuse me? Your girlfriend's a founder girlfriend? Yeah. How many founders are there?

Uh, two. Two other ones? Yeah.

Two other ones.

My girlfriend and, um, my third founder, Carlos. Um. Cuban dude escaped communism from Cuba, came to the States, didn't speak any English, but he was so fucking hungry. He had that immigrant hunger.

It's fucking awesome.

He landed at a bank in New York, Morgan Stanley, and he taught himself English by getting on the IT team over there. He was couch surfing on his brother's couch. He taught himself it and shit. Got a job at at this bank. And then he didn't speak a word of English. So people would call the it help desk and he'd be like, hey, can you, uh, send an email? That was like the most of, oh.

Shit, you gotta be kidding me.

Then he would get the email from him, and then he would translate the email into Spanish, and then he would figure out the fuck out, and then he would send, like an English response back, rinse and repeat, you know, over a thousand reps. And, uh, and that's how he taught himself English. And then he, you know, went from there. He, uh, he landed at Google after that and then SpaceX after that. When he left SpaceX, he was one of the senior most security engineers there. At that point. He had been responsible for building a lot of the security architecture around their most critical systems. Starship vehicle. Uh, you know, some of the other, uh, uh, critical infrastructure they have in place. He's just a fucking hitter, dude. I don't know how he got on that.

I mean, where do you think this is going to grow into? I mean, just just for example, I mean, we're talking about where is this going? I'm talking about are we going back to fucking pen and paper? What we're probably going towards is Neuralink, where we just fucking thought share and we don't even need English. We don't even need language anymore. Yeah. I mean, how the fuck do you like Alex Wang came in here. Do you know who Alex Wang is? Alex Wang came in here and said he doesn't want to have kids until Neuralink is fucking fully online for everybody. Because he wants his babies to have fucking Neuralink in their head. I'm like, Holy shit. Yeah, all right, that's excessive.

Um, but.

I mean, but what? But it's it's it's like, fuck, man, there's a chip that can be hacked into your fucking brain. Yeah, I've talked to, uh, Ben Carson about it, you know. Huberman. Huberman? Yep. Andrew Huberman. I mean, you could inject an entire false reality into his. Into somebody. I mean, they're talking about. This is going to help the blind see, um, and it's like, well, shit, if it's going to help the blind. See, Then I could probably make you hear shit, taste shit, feel shit. Obviously see stuff. You could. You could create an entire false reality into somebody's mind and they would never know it. We could be in a false reality right fucking now. We wouldn't even know it. How fucking crazy is that? How do you defend against that shit?

Indeed, indeed, I think. I think it's very possible that that's already happened. It's probably already happened billions and trillions of times. Honestly, who the fuck knows where in that chain of reality we might be in right now, you know, and people will have their religious convictions and say that doesn't square with with Christianity and Hinduism and, you know, name your fucking religion. I think it squares perfectly, dude. I think all of those religions are trying to tell us that the ultimate purpose of all of this shit. Is to evolve ourselves and our souls and our minds in order to navigate infinity, essentially, because that's what we're talking about here, right in the limit. If you give it long enough, take Neuralink, mash it up with Llms, mash it up with virtual reality, give, give us senses. And then now, now we're in the matrix, right? Repeat that a million times. So it's this infinitely fractal like reality that we may be inhabiting. And if we're inhabiting an infinitely fractal reality, then one of the biggest, one of the most useful skills that we can have is, without being told, without biasing towards one side or the other based on some shit that people are telling us with our own personal discernment and ability to navigate chaos and bring order to that chaos.

How the fuck do we get our bearings and how do we move out after having gotten them? I think that's what we're here to learn how to do.

It's a damn good point.

Maybe. Maybe I'm full of shit. I don't know.

I don't think anybody really knows what it's, you know, just be a good person. Yeah, that's really all you can do. That's it. But. Well, Nick. Fascinating conversation. Amazing life story, man. Amazing life story. Like. Holy shit, dude, you're fucking life arc is just wild.

Thanks, man. It's great meeting you in person. You're a super humble guy. Um, and, uh, it was great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. A little bit surreal being in the studio.

So, man, thank you for saying that. That means a lot. You know, I asked you earlier, there's one thing you could say to your dad. What would it be? I want to ask you if there's one thing you want your son to know, what would it be?

I wish I could have spent more time with you. And I'll say a message to my. To my stepdaughter. I wish I could have spent more time with you guys. You guys deserved it. And. I thought I was doing what the country needed me to do, and that was to deploy over and over and over again in the capacities in which I deployed. And if I could do it again. I don't know what I would change. But I would make spending time with you guys a priority and not a thing that I regret. Many years after the fact. One thing I'll say too is, you know, my two month old son Maximus is going to watch this too, 15 years from now. And he's going to wonder, you know. The fuck was wrong with you? Like, why weren't you there for my brother and sister back in the day. And, you know, I hope this interview can shed some light on. What the fuck I was out there trying to accomplish.

Well, I definitely think this is going to help him understand it.

Yes, ma'am. You're welcome. Thank you. God bless.

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