Speaker 1: Lute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
Speaker 1: You're listening to SOFTWAB Radio Special Operations, Military Nails and
Speaker 1: straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome back to soft rep Radio. I am your host,
Speaker 2: Rad and I have a very cool conversation to have today.
Speaker 2: But before I get into who my guest is, I
Speaker 2: want to remind you to continue supporting our merch shop.
Speaker 2: Right soft rep dot com. Check out the merch store
Speaker 2: all the branded goods that are in there. There's coffee mugs.
Speaker 2: It's Christmas time. Pick something up, send it to a
Speaker 2: loved one and tell them Rad sent you right. Keep
Speaker 2: the fireplace. And then also, you know we have that
Speaker 2: book club. It's soft rep dot Com Forward slash book
Speaker 2: hyphen Club. We're really pushing it. Also, join our email
Speaker 2: list to get updates and all sorts of tips and
Speaker 2: tricks on you know, how to stay in the know
Speaker 2: with soft rep dot com. Now, someone reached out to
Speaker 2: me named Lily and she's like, Rad, we need to
Speaker 2: get Ben on and I have Ben Williams today from
Speaker 2: Exeon Technologies, Who's going to talk to us about autonomous
Speaker 2: drones the AI world. How you know he's using his
Speaker 2: company's capabilities to try to solve problems like finding people
Speaker 2: who are missing. For example, our friend Lily, that is
Speaker 2: a mutual acquaintance. She lived in Aqua Poco. She's very
Speaker 2: familiar with the area, and just recently, less than about
Speaker 2: a month ago from filming this in October time frame,
Speaker 2: they were hit with a Category four or five hurricane.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, so a serious problem with you know, a
Speaker 3: huge storm destroyed tons of infrastructure, you know, a place
Speaker 3: where there was a large tourist base and you know
Speaker 3: a lot of sort of varied kind of kind of
Speaker 3: buildings and just utter destruction. Lots of stuff destroyed, and
Speaker 3: a real problem for search and rescue crews that are
Speaker 3: going into an area where there was some regulation around
Speaker 3: you know, resiliency for natural disasters, but probably not as
Speaker 3: much as might be used to in the United States,
Speaker 3: for instance, or nor northern or western Europe, that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. So you're in an area where it's not
Speaker 3: you know, it's not a really really easy and established
Speaker 3: process for search and rescue and medical response, disaster response,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So you have a lot of folks going in.
Speaker 3: You have international workers, you have domestic and regional workers
Speaker 3: that are trying to come in and help, but the
Speaker 3: infrastructure not being in place, the tools not being standardized,
Speaker 3: so there's a lot of a lot of problems with
Speaker 3: being able to go in and help, even if the
Speaker 3: help is available, even if the money or the resources
Speaker 3: are available. It's hard to operate in those kind of worlds.
Speaker 3: And you know, of course that there's a lot of
Speaker 3: similarities to government defense scenarios where you are operating often
Speaker 3: in areas where you don't have the infrastructure. You have
Speaker 3: to bring stuff along with you. Similar even to some
Speaker 3: of the other commercial worlds that we operate in, which
Speaker 3: are like remote industrial scenarios where you can't depend on
Speaker 3: super high bandwidth communications, really well established GPS or COMMS networks,
Speaker 3: you know, dependable roads, all that sort of thing. You
Speaker 3: kind of have to be a little bit more flexible
Speaker 3: with the environments.
Speaker 2: So difficult with your company, right, and this is not
Speaker 2: your first time on Software Radio, so I feel like
Speaker 2: I have the relationship with you. Just to give you
Speaker 2: a little background to my listener who may not have
Speaker 2: saw our previous episode, you know your former Navy service warfare.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about your Navy background.
Speaker 3: Sure, so I was what's called a service warfare officer,
Speaker 3: which is an unrestricted line role. I was on a
Speaker 3: surface ship cruiser at Bunker Hill for my first tour,
Speaker 3: and this was just just post nine to eleven. So
Speaker 3: as part of the all the work that went into
Speaker 3: going into a Rock that time around, ran small boat teams,
Speaker 3: ran communications division, and a bunch of battle group stuff
Speaker 3: there as well. Then followed on with nuke school and
Speaker 3: running the a portion of the reactor plant on an
Speaker 3: aircraft carrier after that.
Speaker 2: So, no, kid, you were the guy. You were Scottie
Speaker 2: in the engines. You were like, giving her he's got everything.
Speaker 2: No kid, I mean, like, I know I've talked to you,
Speaker 2: but that's pretty cool to rethink about that. You are like,
Speaker 2: I'm giving her else it's got. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: not stern fall. You're like, sir, it's nuclear. It's it
Speaker 2: a core is that, yeah, as it flooded with water
Speaker 2: and all that to keep it all probably top secret class.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean that's that's part of the nuclei plant,
Speaker 3: is that you have water that sort of cools the reactor.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's actually an interesting parallel here is
Speaker 3: that when I was on on my second deployment with
Speaker 3: the aircraft carrier, we actually did a disaster response, I
Speaker 3: think it was for Hurricane Katrina, and so we were
Speaker 3: anchored not far off of the coast in the Gulf
Speaker 3: of Mexico, and all of the cooling water that comes
Speaker 3: into the plant to cool down the reactor and you know,
Speaker 3: keep all the equipment running kept getting clobbed with debris
Speaker 3: that was coming down the river from all the wreckage
Speaker 3: and the floods, and so we had to sort of
Speaker 3: continuously shut down parts of the those water intakes, clear
Speaker 3: the debris, and then restart those systems. And you know,
Speaker 3: for an aircraft carrier used to operating out in the
Speaker 3: middle of the ocean, you know, in thousands of feet
Speaker 3: of water, not usually a problem. And so it was
Speaker 3: a really interesting transition where we were flying you know,
Speaker 3: twenty four to seven flights helicopters into do resupply and
Speaker 3: you drop fresh water and food and you know, bring
Speaker 3: medics and all.
Speaker 2: That kind of stuff into the districts and the wars
Speaker 2: of like nar Orleans and everything where it was just
Speaker 2: like completely the levees broke. You know, that was a
Speaker 2: huge disaster, right and ye Yeah, that's crazy, and you
Speaker 2: were just right. You were involved in that, you know,
Speaker 2: a humanitarian effort from the Navy, right, and here we
Speaker 2: are talking about more humanitarian efforts. I mean you're autonomous, right,
Speaker 2: so you can literally back then, if you had autonomous
Speaker 2: capabilities like you do today. Now you can go into Acapulco,
Speaker 2: or you can map out the area right and try.
Speaker 3: To see Yeah, I mean so this is a great example, right,
Speaker 3: is like if you're going in fresh to a disaster zone,
Speaker 3: you might have the old map of the downtown or
Speaker 3: you know of a facility like a resort or something
Speaker 3: like that, Right, so you go, I know what it
Speaker 3: used to look like. But the only thing I know
Speaker 3: for sure is that it doesn't look like that now
Speaker 3: because you know, things have collapsed. There's roads that might
Speaker 3: not be passable. You don't know if any of the
Speaker 3: running water is still in play, or if it's still
Speaker 3: running but it's you know, contaminated water now, or is
Speaker 3: power still going in Are we able to receive any
Speaker 3: radio or telephone or you know, are there cell networks
Speaker 3: that are still in play or has power knocked all
Speaker 3: those out as well?
Speaker 2: Is the major pole still standing? You know that we
Speaker 2: need to look at that has everything on it, So
Speaker 2: you can just get in there and just look and say, okay,
Speaker 2: that's up. Well, then where's the plug unplugged that and
Speaker 2: try to figure the situation out.
Speaker 3: And so in these context like that, first sort of
Speaker 3: look at what the what the situation is on the
Speaker 3: ground is so important because that impacts all of your
Speaker 3: planning going forward. Right, you can't deploy fresh water or
Speaker 3: doctors or rescuers or anything unless you get some sense
Speaker 3: of what's going on. So in this context, if you
Speaker 3: have autonomous systems that you can just deploy and say,
Speaker 3: go map whatever you can find, give me the structural
Speaker 3: model from widar and the visual and infrared cameras that
Speaker 3: are on there, you can come back and you say,
Speaker 3: all right, my best guess is you know, Road X
Speaker 3: is clear enough that we can get rescue vehicles in,
Speaker 3: but there's a rubble where there used to be these
Speaker 3: three buildings. We're getting some heat signatures, so maybe there
Speaker 3: are survivors in this area. You know, focus your efforts
Speaker 3: in this area first, and then as a result of
Speaker 3: that you get a good sense for how to operate.
Speaker 2: How does the Mexican government, you know, risk you know,
Speaker 2: take like they invite you in come take care of this.
Speaker 2: Is this like something that well are they okay with
Speaker 2: flying drones in their hood?
Speaker 3: I mean it's a good question, right, Like every every
Speaker 3: place is different. So even within the US, it gets
Speaker 3: a little complicated because you have overlapping you know, fiefdoms
Speaker 3: in a sense. Right, you have each state that can
Speaker 3: basically get access to federal resources if they declare a
Speaker 3: disaster and then they get access to federal funding that
Speaker 3: sort of set aside for it. You have FEMA, right
Speaker 3: that is, will come in, but only if they're asked, right,
Speaker 3: They don't just sort of drop in no matter what.
Speaker 3: So local law enforcement, local disaster response has the first
Speaker 3: sort of coverage. And the further we get from the US,
Speaker 3: the more difficult it is to know that you're operating,
Speaker 3: you know, with the right folks. So, you know, Mexico,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of familiarity. We do a lot of
Speaker 3: joint work as a country with Mexico. Obviously it's you know,
Speaker 3: in neighborho south, so it's a little bit clearer there,
Speaker 3: but it's still a lot of figuring out how to
Speaker 3: coordinate successfully. Right, Plus there's a language theyer. You know,
Speaker 3: Spanish their primary language, English primary language here, lots of overlap,
Speaker 3: but still there's the challenges in how do you coordinate successfully?
Speaker 3: And so in a lot of cases, what you have
Speaker 3: is you get in there and then you get you know,
Speaker 3: equipment and money and resources in play, and then it's
Speaker 3: trying to figure out who does what first and coordinating it.
Speaker 3: So getting information is so much more more important than
Speaker 3: getting like material in the early steps of.
Speaker 2: That, right, it's almost like, you know, the cart before
Speaker 2: the horse. You know, everybody wants to go in with
Speaker 2: the brick and mortar, but it's like, what are you
Speaker 2: going in with brick and mortar for? Right, So it's
Speaker 2: like having all that stuff, but you't you might not
Speaker 2: need it all. You just need to get in there
Speaker 2: and maybe move the trees and there's the building that
Speaker 2: the trees have fallen in front of, versus rebuilding. I
Speaker 2: totally am all for, you know, using it in a healthy,
Speaker 2: you know, manageable way. I also know that what we're
Speaker 2: talking about can be possibly taken and you know, turned
Speaker 2: into opposite.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I've seen terminator now, right, even though I'm forty six,
Speaker 2: I saw it this year for the first of the
Speaker 2: Terminator one with my wife and my kids because I
Speaker 2: grew up in the eighties wanting Rambo more than Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 2: No offense, right, Okay, if either of them want to
Speaker 2: come on the show, let me know. But I finally
Speaker 2: saw a Terminator and I'm like, yeah, you know, you're
Speaker 2: only as good as the people who program them. Okay,
Speaker 2: John Conner, Right, So are you John? Are you creating
Speaker 2: sky neet? Are you not creating sky net?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: What is your role in the world here? Can we
Speaker 2: hear just straight from you because you're the COO, right.
Speaker 3: That's right? Yeah. So, I mean we've we've actually focused
Speaker 3: very explicitly on a mode of autonomy here that is
Speaker 3: focused on self contained elements. So we're not trying to
Speaker 3: sort of broadly network and deploy you know, a an
Speaker 3: entire sort of net of independent ais here. But these
Speaker 3: are these are dedicated individual units that are specifically focused
Speaker 3: on doing exploration or doing information gathering. So we are
Speaker 3: not in the business of, for instance, delivering kinetics. We
Speaker 3: don't do that work even with the d D. We
Speaker 3: focus on on information gathering and trying to remove people
Speaker 3: from difficult or dangerous environments. That's sort of our charter
Speaker 3: as a company, and so all of our work is
Speaker 3: focused around that same kind of thing. Whether it's uh,
Speaker 3: you know, civil defense, commercial, industrial, you know, search and rescue,
Speaker 3: all of these things revolve around the same basic idea,
Speaker 3: which is get as much information as quickly as possible,
Speaker 3: make sure that you have the right knowledge before you
Speaker 3: put people in harm's way.
Speaker 2: That's right, recon. I got a friend who's about twenty
Speaker 2: some years old. He's going through the academy at US
Speaker 2: Air Force for a pilot, and he's I was like,
Speaker 2: oh sweet, what are you gonna fly? He's like drones.
Speaker 2: I was like, of course, it's like, of course, not
Speaker 2: the A ten, you know, not they have thirty five,
Speaker 2: any of the configurations, but the drones okay. And I
Speaker 2: was like, of course, you know, in a flight suit,
Speaker 2: flight gloves, okay, sitting there with a big gulp, all right,
Speaker 2: he can literally take a leak. He can get up
Speaker 2: and go probably take a leak, and soone could take
Speaker 2: over the controls for him. You can't do that in
Speaker 2: a real aircraft. You know, all these things that you
Speaker 2: know are the smallest detail that matters on a mission.
Speaker 2: Whether you're doing recovery or you know, a defense of
Speaker 2: your nation, or whatever the case may be. With it,
Speaker 2: a pilot has to fly that it's right, right, and
Speaker 2: I call that snow piercer. That human element always has
Speaker 2: to be involved with the machine, right. And here we are.
Speaker 2: You're creating something autonomous that has human element where it's
Speaker 2: programmed right. And for my listener and correct me if
Speaker 2: I'm wrong. Autonomous is like a boomerang. I could send
Speaker 2: it out there with its coordinates, and then I could
Speaker 2: coordinate it to do its job, which is map for
Speaker 2: twenty four hours, and then it comes back home to
Speaker 2: me with all the information.
Speaker 3: In general, that's exactly right. So what we focus on
Speaker 3: is the implementation of what we call level four autonomy,
Speaker 3: which is you do not have to do the sort
Speaker 3: of minutia of mission planning. Instead, you give it a
Speaker 3: high level mission objective. You say, within this bounding box,
Speaker 3: explore whatever you can come back with the best information
Speaker 3: model you can find, and then you know it will
Speaker 3: decide its own safe fight corridors. It will avoid people
Speaker 3: and objects and wires and rebar and whatever, find its
Speaker 3: way back home. And then you get all this information
Speaker 3: to make better decisions.
Speaker 2: With my goodness, it's just going to be like a
Speaker 2: little hummingbird that's just like moving around all these little
Speaker 2: things around like, oh, rebar, I don't want that, gotta
Speaker 2: go over this. It's just going to be like at
Speaker 2: the same time mapping, Oh, the rebar is right there
Speaker 2: and exactly all the information right. And so there's there's
Speaker 2: there's some cool sensors out there that help find people
Speaker 2: that are like in minds that are collapsed and whatnot
Speaker 2: is I mean, I can only imagine setting it like
Speaker 2: a drone into a mine, you know, in this day
Speaker 2: and age, to be able to see if they could
Speaker 2: get through, you know, to see what's going on. I
Speaker 2: don't know, man, that's so crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we've been used. I'm not allowed to
Speaker 3: share the exact location, but we we participated in a
Speaker 3: mind collapse emergency reaction where we overnighted a system to
Speaker 3: another continent. We got on the phone for thirty minutes
Speaker 3: and just gave them quick training and then they went
Speaker 3: underground and they explored a whole section of the mine
Speaker 3: where a tunnel had collapsed down into the next level
Speaker 3: down and very dangerous environment. You know, they were they
Speaker 3: were worried about making any progress towards it. It would
Speaker 3: have taken probably a week or two sort of progress
Speaker 3: into the area that had collapsed. But with these kind
Speaker 3: of systems, they did one sort of test flight up
Speaker 3: to the area and then one exploration volume and within
Speaker 3: an hour they had a full model of the whole
Speaker 3: collapsed area. So they saved you know, probably a week
Speaker 3: or two of time trying to access that.
Speaker 2: Environment and also lives. You know, you're you're not risking
Speaker 2: someone happened to low crawl into there to try to
Speaker 2: like you're although there was nothing that could quite replace
Speaker 2: the human touch and feel of something, right, of course,
Speaker 2: but I think that you're ninety nine percent the next
Speaker 2: best bet.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah. And it makes people more effective too, right
Speaker 3: if they if they're going into an area, better to
Speaker 3: have at least a sense for what's going on, you know,
Speaker 3: know the areas that are definitely dangerous and almost definitely safe,
Speaker 3: so that you can kind of weigh the differences between everything.
Speaker 2: It's basically armor. Rightly, you have a night and shining
Speaker 2: armor who goes into battle and he still has all
Speaker 2: these open areas to be stabbed, but he feels like
Speaker 2: he's going to do it all okay, And so that's
Speaker 2: kind of what the drone gives its operator and its
Speaker 2: team is like, here's your armor on. Feel free to
Speaker 2: go ahead and be value and go ahead with the drone,
Speaker 2: and then you can follow in behind it, you know,
Speaker 2: to take care of him. D It's like it's armor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like mental armor, like an EOD robot for the
Speaker 2: robot guy. You know, he's like, hey, I got a robot.
Speaker 2: I'm going to look inside this room real quick. I mean, well,
Speaker 2: knowledge is safety in this context, right, And you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that robots are going to fight the wars,
Speaker 2: but I think the current president did say he's not
Speaker 2: afraid of a gunshot starting a war. It's a keystroke, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, you know he's like, that's ah, if everybody
Speaker 2: sit behind these keystrokes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and I mean that that is like, you know,
Speaker 3: in the grand scheme of robotics in sort of conflict
Speaker 3: like that is that is a critical element that you know,
Speaker 3: all of the countries in the world are going to
Speaker 3: have to really figure out how they want to interact there, right,
Speaker 3: because it's one layer removed. When you don't have people
Speaker 3: interacting directly, you reduce that sort of empathic response of like,
Speaker 3: this is a person right that I'm going against, versus
Speaker 3: I see a thing on a screen, and that's like
Speaker 3: layers removed from the impact.
Speaker 2: Like let's think about like I think it's World War one,
Speaker 2: World War two. You know, they had a quiet Christmas
Speaker 2: in the trenches because they all were like singing to
Speaker 2: each other because they all had moms and dads at
Speaker 2: some point in their life that love them and taught
Speaker 2: them how to love Christmas and love each other. And
Speaker 2: here they are fight each other. I don't see you know,
Speaker 2: T one thousand and T two thousand singing in harmony together.
Speaker 2: It's just going to be complete, like wasteland of like
Speaker 2: you know, until one is gone. And then you wanted
Speaker 2: me to build a perfect world, right, yeah, get them
Speaker 2: trying get them. You're like, wait, but I'm the creator.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you get my references, but I
Speaker 2: hope so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I watched both of those, Oh.
Speaker 2: Man, you know so true though it's like, hey, you
Speaker 2: made me right, yeah, to be the best, right, it's
Speaker 2: gonna have to get you out of the way now though,
Speaker 2: right right? Sorry, holy cal so with with Exian technologies,
Speaker 2: you know, is that something that you would Is there
Speaker 2: a consumer market for that, like a regular consumer versus
Speaker 2: just like such a we need it for search and rescue.
Speaker 2: Is there something that's going to be you know, applicable
Speaker 2: to the daily lives of us here is just regular
Speaker 2: civilians without it or with it?
Speaker 3: Probably not in the short run. I mean, our systems
Speaker 3: are more sort of industrial scale, industrial usage, right they're not.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can buy them, I guess in theory
Speaker 3: as a consumer, but most people don't have you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand dollars laying around to make those purchases.
Speaker 3: And so most of the time we are useful for
Speaker 3: industrial scale enterprises that see huge value from increased speed
Speaker 3: to decision making, removing people from dangerous environments, and being
Speaker 3: able to digitize the sort of physical industry. And so
Speaker 3: consumer side really isn't isn't an area we've put any
Speaker 3: time or effort into As a result of that, In theory,
Speaker 3: you probably could. I mean, you see folks like Skidio
Speaker 3: that gave that a run and then sort of gave
Speaker 3: it up recently. You know, they focused instead on purely
Speaker 3: enterprise and defense, and that probably is because there's not
Speaker 3: enough demand in the market. Plus paired with the fact
Speaker 3: that djip has just been building very high quality products.
Speaker 2: Which they have, which they have, and they have and
Speaker 2: they have, and they've been doing it for a while now,
Speaker 2: so they have like a little skin in the game.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm still waiting for this thing that
Speaker 2: was supposed to come out during the covid TikTok social
Speaker 2: media thing. It's like buy it now where you hook
Speaker 2: it onto your arm and then it follows you while
Speaker 2: you snowboard, right, any type of those like say you're
Speaker 2: rock climbing, right, and it's just like going to go
Speaker 2: up with you or repelling whatever whatever. It just is
Speaker 2: like a pet above you, following you. Right, Yep, I
Speaker 2: want one. Don't remember what it is, but you know,
Speaker 2: that's what I was thinking. Maybe there's something in the
Speaker 2: consumer market, you know, for that type of a thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, Holy County, it's a huge industry
Speaker 2: now that I think about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it is well, And I think what you're
Speaker 3: going to see is more and more of the physical
Speaker 3: industries adopting elements here, right, Like we got our start
Speaker 3: in the drone space, but we do ground robotics as well,
Speaker 3: and we see a large uptick in you know, factory
Speaker 3: floors and manufacturing and logistics and warehousing, all of these
Speaker 3: areas where you know there's a there's a viable business
Speaker 3: running there, but it's a physical business, right and it's
Speaker 3: hard to get digital information about even things that you own,
Speaker 3: like you're warehouses, still hard to digitize. And so as
Speaker 3: you get better and better at automating and making autonomous
Speaker 3: the systems that gather that data, all of a sudden
Speaker 3: it goes from being an expensive one off to something
Speaker 3: where you have a couple dozen robots gathering information all
Speaker 3: the time, and all of a sudden, you've got a full,
Speaker 3: up to date digital representation of your whole physical built environment.
Speaker 3: And that changes the game in terms of the decisions
Speaker 3: you can make, the tools you use, and even how
Speaker 3: you staff that place. Like it makes you so much
Speaker 3: more efficient. You probably don't have any less people, but
Speaker 3: they're much more productive as individuals.
Speaker 2: And maybe someone doesn't have to do that dangerous aspect
Speaker 2: of the situation anymore because you figured out a way
Speaker 2: to do it without it. But they're still like overseeing
Speaker 2: the project. They haven't lost their job. You know, you're
Speaker 2: just incorporating this into their their payroll, so that they
Speaker 2: feel like you're feeding them pizza. You feed your true
Speaker 2: they're going to fight for you. That kind of attitude.
Speaker 2: It's like you put a little bit into the staff's
Speaker 2: needs and they're gonna be like, hey man, why would
Speaker 2: I go anywhere else? This guy they supply us with
Speaker 2: the right tools. We have the information that comes to
Speaker 2: help us. The guys across the street are still like,
Speaker 2: you know, using a pic in an ass to do this.
Speaker 2: It's like, now, oh, I had a thought here. It
Speaker 2: was kind of kooky, but I don't I don't remember it.
Speaker 2: I thought I thinking about like what about like hold on,
Speaker 2: it's all about these drones because there's so many of them.
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't even know, bro, there's like photography,
Speaker 2: there's I got. I got guys that are like doing
Speaker 2: movies with drones, big, huge, dooty drones. Man, oh Ai,
Speaker 2: here's my question about AI to you. You know, podcasts
Speaker 2: and things like that are starting to go AI, and
Speaker 2: you know they're trying to say, hey, what if we
Speaker 2: had you know, somebody speak on modern terms, but they're
Speaker 2: from like, you know, the eighteen hundreds, and you get
Speaker 2: this like classy voice talking about like black Mount data. Right,
Speaker 2: You're like, okay, hey Bill, the kids telling about black
Speaker 2: Hawk down AI. It's all AI. I get. How entertaining
Speaker 2: that is?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: However, when does AI talking to AI only become just
Speaker 2: AI talking to AI and all information is just computer
Speaker 2: generated because it can't it's not getting any am I
Speaker 2: making sense?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're well, let me say, if I'm summarizing, correction,
Speaker 3: you're saying, at a certain point when you don't have
Speaker 3: humans in that conversation anymore and it's just two ais
Speaker 3: sort of talking to each other, then you may get
Speaker 3: further and further off the reservation where it becomes less
Speaker 3: relevant for people as consumers or parts.
Speaker 2: Corrects.
Speaker 3: Maybe right. Yeah, So it is a really good question,
Speaker 3: and that actually is one of the one of the
Speaker 3: underlying questions that a lot of the the new like
Speaker 3: LM sort of GPT style AI companies are really trying
Speaker 3: to tackle. Now, is you know, how do you how
Speaker 3: do you accelerate the process of training those machine learning
Speaker 3: models quickly and cost effectively without having to train it
Speaker 3: on real world data, which is by itself very imperfect,
Speaker 3: Like you know, all the all the chatbots that are
Speaker 3: trained on you know, Twitter data sets or you know,
Speaker 3: they end up just being like terrible humans, like equivalents, right,
Speaker 3: because they're taking the worst impulses of people on social
Speaker 3: media and going, so this is a person exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like create this image of what this
Speaker 2: is and then they go and pull all that data
Speaker 2: from what it's been fed, right, right, And if AI
Speaker 2: is only feeding AI, you know, and that human interaction
Speaker 2: starts to go because people do want to you know,
Speaker 2: use it and bring it in and you know, they
Speaker 2: can have you know, a major news outlet's probably use
Speaker 2: chat GPT to write articles, you know, and this AI
Speaker 2: is just mashing it all up. And if all AI
Speaker 2: is getting it, I just think that the interaction of
Speaker 2: the human element always has the snow piercer Have you
Speaker 2: ever seen that movie?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, well so, I mean I think the
Speaker 3: biggest worry in my view is where you have state
Speaker 3: independent actors like you know, sort of the equivalent of
Speaker 3: terror organizations. But folks that are that are saying, I
Speaker 3: don't care what the impacts are, I'm just trying to
Speaker 3: affect this negative outcome for a group. And you know,
Speaker 3: this was popularized in the last election where there was
Speaker 3: a lot of paid disinformation from North Korea, Russia, you
Speaker 3: know whatever, fill in the blank. But as you get
Speaker 3: to America. Yeah, and as you get further into that world,
Speaker 3: then the AI models accelerate the ability for what the
Speaker 3: Intelligence Committee would call an asymmetric threat. Right, it's a
Speaker 3: single individual that kind of large impact by driving these
Speaker 3: these sort of negative conversations, and so AI and especially
Speaker 3: LMS have a huge outsize impact there. And that that's
Speaker 3: what worries me the most is you know, there's no
Speaker 3: regulation for that, and there couldn't be because they are
Speaker 3: outside of that that sort of category. So then what
Speaker 3: happens with that? And unless we can figure out a
Speaker 3: way to sort of bypass that or to evaluate or
Speaker 3: you know, get in front of that, you know, we
Speaker 3: as citizens and individuals are in a bad place to
Speaker 3: kind of evaluate all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't even think this conversation that you and I
Speaker 2: are having is really happening. Yeah, you know, this is
Speaker 2: something that if you're listening right now to our show
Speaker 2: and you're hearing stuff that nobody's really talking about around
Speaker 2: the dinner table, okay, and because nobody's really thinking like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is happening, but it is yep, very much. So
Speaker 2: you're going to like conferences and you're seeing like you know, uh,
Speaker 2: vendors who are just probably just flourishing and trying to
Speaker 2: like say, by our thing, by our thing. You need
Speaker 2: this thing, you know, this little screw to go into
Speaker 2: all your AI stuff. You need this little bolt, you know,
Speaker 2: because it's space age stuff. Whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very wild.
Speaker 2: It is wild, it is and yeah, that's that's the
Speaker 2: consumer market show. Do you guys go to cees? Is
Speaker 2: that what you guys do? How do you may? I?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we will be a SEES this year.
Speaker 3: We are more in the sort of market specific survey
Speaker 3: and geospatial and mining sort of industrial shows where you
Speaker 3: have other vendors and customers that are looking for very
Speaker 3: specific sort of sets of solutions and in that world,
Speaker 3: you know, those are those are great conversations to have
Speaker 3: because it's often people who have very specific problems and
Speaker 3: we can listen to them and that's you know, the
Speaker 3: fundamental product building, right is like listen, learn understand what
Speaker 3: the what their existing process is, what's bad about it,
Speaker 3: and how we might be able to help them out.
Speaker 3: And so those conversations that having the sort of centralized
Speaker 3: is great. That's a big opportunity for us and helps
Speaker 3: us you know, guide product development and you know, hopefully
Speaker 3: we sell systems as a result of that as well.
Speaker 3: But it all is a link to better understanding of
Speaker 3: the problems people are facing in their in their operating scenario.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, Like maybe how can you come together
Speaker 2: to solve problems versus cause problems?
Speaker 3: That's right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of percent. No, I love that. I
Speaker 2: love your I'm sure you have think tanks and you're
Speaker 2: involved in all sorts of stuff that is just outside
Speaker 2: the box. Typically we try six sigma this bro Okay,
Speaker 2: it's like you better six sigma this autonomous drone man,
Speaker 2: it's like word with math, math with words. Let me
Speaker 2: figure this out. Blades, props, camera together, Yes, exactly right. Wow,
Speaker 2: that's really neat dude. Now, well, now, as a young
Speaker 2: man growing up before you went in the Navy, did
Speaker 2: you think you were going to be working in such
Speaker 2: futuristic stuff or were you like I'm going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, a full time.
Speaker 3: Navy Yeah, I mean I probably I I liked the categories.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I really thought I would be
Speaker 3: able to do them all for a bit. I probably
Speaker 3: was like, you know, in my rebellion phase, I probably
Speaker 3: was like, I want to go live in the woods
Speaker 3: and write angry poetry or something. But you know, then,
Speaker 3: you know, we all go through our own that. But
Speaker 3: you know, later on I was like, you know, really
Speaker 3: really dig on the idea of service. I was. I
Speaker 3: was a big fan of Robert Heinland, and he wrote
Speaker 3: a particular book called Starship Troopers, which was made into
Speaker 3: sort of this sort of odd ball, over the top movie,
Speaker 3: but he actually wrote that book around the concept of
Speaker 3: service and citizenship and you know, whether you deserve citizenship
Speaker 3: through birthright or through service, which is a really really
Speaker 3: interesting philosophical question and one that is incredibly contentious all
Speaker 3: over us included, and my my take on it was
Speaker 3: basically that you know, I, you know, white male, born
Speaker 3: in New England, and you know, at a time when
Speaker 3: I've got a lot going for me, so you know,
Speaker 3: I figured, you know, given that, and I should be
Speaker 3: doing service first and then thinking about what what can
Speaker 3: I do for me or for my family or whatever.
Speaker 3: So that was kind of my background for going the
Speaker 3: military in the first place. But you know, as a
Speaker 3: result of that, I had focused on like, let me
Speaker 3: learn and understand and you know, get a sense for
Speaker 3: how the country works. And like, I'm sure there's a
Speaker 3: lot wrong with it, but however we got here, it's
Speaker 3: not bad. Let me see how I can participate in
Speaker 3: improving it and making it better. So, you know, that
Speaker 3: was kind of my starting point, the fact that I
Speaker 3: get to work on all this cool stuff. Now, you know,
Speaker 3: full thumbs up, I'm a huge fan, love it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I keep, you know, trying to press and go after
Speaker 3: interesting projects and interesting categories, you know, trying to help
Speaker 3: people make things better. But yeah, and pretty.
Speaker 2: Much how many years you do in the navy, I did,
Speaker 2: like about.
Speaker 3: Six years I did. I did RTC, so I owed
Speaker 3: two tours. I did a little bit more than that.
Speaker 3: I went to new school and did that stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so and.
Speaker 2: Then the transition. Right, a lot of our listeners are
Speaker 2: veterans or are mb in and they're like, hey, you
Speaker 2: know the transition. We hear it all the time. How
Speaker 2: do I transition from military to civilian life? Well, you
Speaker 2: were a civilian and you transition to the militar terry.
Speaker 2: So first of all, you're successful at it, so you
Speaker 2: could do it again, and so what was it that
Speaker 2: made you transition into this field?
Speaker 3: May I Yeah, So I think the way that I
Speaker 3: kind of viewed coming out of the military was, you know,
Speaker 3: I had this sense that I wanted to have an
Speaker 3: impact and you know, drive the conversation and the technologies forward.
Speaker 3: But there were such huge gaps in my experience. Like
Speaker 3: you know, junior officer in the Navy, you learn a lot,
Speaker 3: you get to do a lot of things, but you
Speaker 3: can also fill a ship with what I didn't know
Speaker 3: and what I thought I knew and really didn't And
Speaker 3: you know, coming out of that, I didn't know anything
Speaker 3: about finance. You know, I knew operations, I knew you know,
Speaker 3: some form of leadership I had. I had to learn
Speaker 3: to lead people quickly and under duress. But you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't have any idea how the finances worked. I
Speaker 3: didn't have any idea about a lot of the sort
Speaker 3: of the business theory behind things that I sort of
Speaker 3: guessed at or had like sort of a street level
Speaker 3: knowledge of. And so going in and saying, Okay, maybe
Speaker 3: that's the next thing to do, is do business development, sales, finance,
Speaker 3: Just get how does it work? What's the underpinning there? Right?
Speaker 3: And then being able to apply leadership and management and
Speaker 3: operations experience to that then gives you a pretty good
Speaker 3: baseline for you know, learning the next thing, learning a
Speaker 3: new industry, learning a new jargon, you know, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And I think that honestly, I do a lot of
Speaker 3: mentorship for people transitioning out of the military. I've been
Speaker 3: a coach and mentor for over a decade doing that stuff,
Speaker 3: and by far the biggest problem people have is trying
Speaker 3: to describe how their experience in the military is relevant
Speaker 3: to different scenarios. And you know, the easiest you know
Speaker 3: trap people fall into, especially for like a guy that
Speaker 3: was a riflement or something, is like, well, what kind
Speaker 3: of yeah, like what kind of job am I going
Speaker 3: to have that's going to pay me to like carry
Speaker 3: a gun still? And you're like, sure, serve security or whatever, right,
Speaker 3: But like it's kind of missing the point because even
Speaker 3: as isn't even as a junior rifleman, ten percent of
Speaker 3: your job is like combat specific, right, Most of it
Speaker 3: is you know organization, you know, doing like small management maintenance,
Speaker 3: you know the in the Navy it's called you know,
Speaker 3: preventative maintenance systems like PMS. And like that is, you know,
Speaker 3: the day to day of every sale or junior or senior,
Speaker 3: and like most of that stuff translates to the civilian world,
Speaker 3: but you've got to learn how to break it down
Speaker 3: into little building blocks so that you're going out of
Speaker 3: a forty hour week, you know, three hours was shooting
Speaker 3: the rest of it relevant and so helping people to
Speaker 3: sort of break that stuff down has been a huge,
Speaker 3: huge piece of how I've been doing mentorship in that category.
Speaker 3: And you know, a lot of it helps people to
Speaker 3: sort of just transition into yours using different terminology, different phrases,
Speaker 3: you know, recognizing that all of the the three letter
Speaker 3: summaries you have for things don't apply. And it's probably
Speaker 3: going to get confusing because there's civilian or corporate jargon
Speaker 3: versions of those same.
Speaker 2: Three A PMS, yeah, exactly uses the PMS, and they're
Speaker 2: gonna be like, what God to hr You're like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to do cofeitive maintenance exaclutions. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: so you gotta I get that. I get that.
Speaker 3: So it's a really interesting that.
Speaker 2: Transition, yeah, to get there, you know, and if somebody
Speaker 2: is in the military and they're transitioning what's something that
Speaker 2: X and Technologies might be looking for out of them?
Speaker 2: You know, are you looking for all bachelor's masters guys?
Speaker 2: Is there somebody out there that could can the chef apply?
Speaker 2: Is there a you know position, you know, because he
Speaker 2: could translate?
Speaker 3: That's right. So we've got We've had a bunch of
Speaker 3: transitioning folks come across. We've had an Air Force pilot,
Speaker 3: we had a Navy seal, We've had I think a
Speaker 3: Marine Corps rifleman. We had a like an IT guy, so,
Speaker 3: you know, we it depends on the role you're hiring for,
Speaker 3: of course, Like we have some production technicians that don't
Speaker 3: require a college degree. We bring folks in and we
Speaker 3: help them sort of train up, and it's a fairly
Speaker 3: technical role. You don't need you know, a four your
Speaker 3: degree for it. And so a lot of times that
Speaker 3: structure from being in the military is great for coming
Speaker 3: in and doing especially operational things where you're like, all right,
Speaker 3: here's the process, and they go, got it. I can
Speaker 3: nail that, you know, day two, and then you begin
Speaker 3: to extract, like who are the ones that can think
Speaker 3: on their feet and can you know, operate with more
Speaker 3: vague guidance? And you know, high level objectives and then
Speaker 3: they self define their paths and you know, you start
Speaker 3: to figure out who can who can promote easily, and
Speaker 3: who you know is better served to go to another
Speaker 3: place or whatever. And you know we try and help
Speaker 3: people figure that out.
Speaker 2: That's awesome And I love the aspect of like, you know,
Speaker 2: bringing someone over who maybe worked let's say the ship's
Speaker 2: armory k where they have to check in the guns
Speaker 2: all day and all the equipment they have to check
Speaker 2: it out. You know, you're like, now, how am I
Speaker 2: going to transition this into life? It's like bro inventory
Speaker 2: man management number one, you know, like, you know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be cleaning at all. You could be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I know how to keep inventory a direct? How many
Speaker 2: businesses have inventory? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely all of them?
Speaker 2: You know, you know, you know so I mean there's
Speaker 2: always something out there, right, You just got to think
Speaker 2: outside how can I apply this to this? When people
Speaker 2: ask me, hey, rad, are you hiring at your airsoft shop?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I never say no. Yeah, I never
Speaker 2: say no to the fourteen the twelve year old who's
Speaker 2: asking can you hire me? I'm like, I won't say
Speaker 2: no because maybe that kid knows how to edit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Total.
Speaker 2: So if they send me a resume and it looks
Speaker 2: good and it's got something on there, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: we might reach out to you and say, hey, you
Speaker 2: want to do some side gigs or whatever or But
Speaker 2: if you apply to the job and you are applying
Speaker 2: to be a manager of a department store and you
Speaker 2: put down that you know you can snipe real well,
Speaker 2: you got it. You gotta you gotta, you gotta massage
Speaker 2: that for the person reading that resume. Okay, you got
Speaker 2: to say, oh, I can pay attention to detail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta hit exactly. You got to pull apart
Speaker 3: the common building blocks and say, you know, have I
Speaker 3: got all the exact experience? No, but all of the
Speaker 3: building blocks overlapped, and I can wear on the other twenty.
Speaker 2: P exactly exactly. And if you give me a shot,
Speaker 2: I'll show you I can do it on the job,
Speaker 2: no problem. Yeah exactly. So if you're a veteran out
Speaker 2: there and you're looking to transition, just just do it.
Speaker 2: Just get it, get going, just apply, apply yourself, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's okay to fail. That's where the word success
Speaker 2: comes from, right, So every time I go to the gym.
Speaker 2: I know I'm going to go in there and fail
Speaker 2: because I'm going to push myself to failure, so that
Speaker 2: hopefully the success of a longer heart rate or a
Speaker 2: better heart and no diabetes and you know all the
Speaker 2: other things come along with some weight, you know, nothing like.
Speaker 2: And also I've just been boxing, you know, that's really
Speaker 2: what I've really found to be a mental cleanser. And
Speaker 2: so not only am I, you know, throwing the gloves
Speaker 2: at the at the gym, I'm I'm clearing my head
Speaker 2: and I'm paying one hundred bucks a month to do this.
Speaker 2: Like where can you get a psychiatrist for that?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: The coach comes over, he's like yeah, rad three four
Speaker 2: three three four three. You're like, yes, coach, Yes, coach.
Speaker 2: It's just yes, coach, you know. And that kind of environment,
Speaker 2: you know, where there's like that camaraderie and everybody's in there.
Speaker 2: She'd be a better healthy you, is all I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say. You know, I'm not perfect. I can only
Speaker 2: strive for perfection, and this is what striving for perfection
Speaker 2: looks like. Okay, oh see, now I'm glad Lily introduced
Speaker 2: us again to talk about this cause you know, we're
Speaker 2: I really do care about Aca Poco and all the
Speaker 2: people there. I really want that to be, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of brought to the forefront, because nobody's really talking
Speaker 2: about how hard Mexico did get hit. And it is
Speaker 2: such a thing that you know, she's she's been already,
Speaker 2: you know, relating back and forth through emails with me
Speaker 2: so much. I just wanted to just embarrass her a
Speaker 2: little more, lily, throw her name out there again. So yes,
Speaker 2: just to make her smile when she watches this.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to know that folks like yourself, Ben are
Speaker 2: out there trying to do the right thing with these
Speaker 2: new modern technologies that you know are gonna just keep
Speaker 2: going and going and going and going. And you're the
Speaker 2: building blocks of this. You guys go to these conventions
Speaker 2: and see everything else that's going to be happening. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, holy cow, man, I can't wait for the
Speaker 2: movie you're gonna write Fingers crossed.
Speaker 3: I'll get that ghost right.
Speaker 2: And moving, Oh seriously, right, yeah, bro, Because the things
Speaker 2: that you're dealing with, I mean, you could bring that
Speaker 2: into a film. I don't know whether you're filming the
Speaker 2: movie with it or it's about what you're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: ar to life, dude. Let me okay, now, now I
Speaker 2: ask my folks that come on the show if they've
Speaker 2: had any type of an instance and your navy, Now,
Speaker 2: what kind of a ship were you on when you
Speaker 2: first went out or what have you ever had? Here's
Speaker 2: my question, have you ever had that? I'm going to
Speaker 2: Davy Jones's locker moment because of the mother Nature's like
Speaker 2: you're screwed today.
Speaker 3: We had. I had a few times where it was
Speaker 3: pretty dicey. I led small boat boarding teams doing VBSS
Speaker 3: all right. At the time it was called VBSS. I
Speaker 3: think it's called something different now, but it was a
Speaker 3: board search and seize yep, and so visit. One of
Speaker 3: the one of the ships we boarded was, I want
Speaker 3: to say it was a Russian flagged ship that had
Speaker 3: maybe been smuggling something. And the master on board was
Speaker 3: like a complete caricature, like you could not have created
Speaker 3: a more made from movie caricature of like a Russian captain.
Speaker 3: It was just like holding a half empty bottle.
Speaker 2: He was like, what do you want, just.
Speaker 3: Like like a Russian mobster who decided to capped in
Speaker 3: a ship like half empty bottle of vodkill, like waving
Speaker 3: a pistol around like we we really thought out of
Speaker 3: just you know, drunkenness, he was going to start shooting.
Speaker 3: And so we went and secured the ship. We got
Speaker 3: all the crew and they were they were totally fine.
Speaker 3: They were like, yeah, understood, you know what's going on here.
Speaker 3: So they were chilling down in the salon, but you know,
Speaker 3: we we were sort of having this face off with
Speaker 3: this guy. And it was me and the assistant boarding officer, who,
Speaker 3: you know, thank god, it was like a super experienced
Speaker 3: senior enlisted chief petty officer that you know, had a
Speaker 3: lot of experience here. And so me twenty two year old,
Speaker 3: you know, junior officer or twenty three I guess at
Speaker 3: the time, but you know, I was, I think, pretty
Speaker 3: decent at the job, but nowhere near the experience that
Speaker 3: you know, the senior list the chief had, and he
Speaker 3: he and I both sort of like we're able to
Speaker 3: talk this guy down. But it was a pretty wild experience.
Speaker 3: So I think that's probably the closest I've ever come
Speaker 3: to to someone like, you know, eyes eyes in my eyes,
Speaker 3: like something might go here.
Speaker 2: Holy yeah, yeah, now that is that is Yeah, you're
Speaker 2: just like and thank goodness for your senior listed chief.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, he talked the guy down like see chief, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know I wouldn't would.
Speaker 2: The officer respects the chief. Chief.
Speaker 3: I can't do anything about the chiefs, come.
Speaker 2: On anything without the chiefs. I'm just putting that out there.
Speaker 2: And I saw them back there with their mugs that
Speaker 2: are stained at the black top. Don't ever watch that mug.
Speaker 2: Never watched their mug.
Speaker 3: No sitting in the goat locker going.
Speaker 2: Damn right, that's right. It's the chiefs, every single one
Speaker 2: of me. Chiefs. Would you exit out of the navy
Speaker 2: ass you went in as an ensign? Is that how
Speaker 2: it starts out?
Speaker 3: I came in as an ensign, I left asobu tenants
Speaker 3: and three and then uh, you know, made my transition
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 2: So and have you almost ever thunk.
Speaker 3: We had? We were in some pretty heavy, heavy seas
Speaker 3: off of San Francisco actually where this is actually a
Speaker 3: terrible story. You know, we weren't really really in danger,
Speaker 3: but it was the worst I've ever felt at sea
Speaker 3: where it was a new moon, so no visual horizon,
Speaker 3: just total darkness, and we were going directly into pretty
Speaker 3: high seas it's like at twenty foot maybe twenty five
Speaker 3: foot swells, so like, and I was on a cruiser,
Speaker 3: so it was a small enough ship that you know,
Speaker 3: you go up over top of that wave and you
Speaker 3: crest and then the bottom drops out. And I was
Speaker 3: on the midwatch from ten ten pm to two am,
Speaker 3: and of course they'd serve Mongolian barbecue that night, so
Speaker 3: everyone was just throwing up NonStop. But you know, you're you,
Speaker 3: you go up, you ride the crest the wave, no
Speaker 3: visual horizon, You're just waiting for it, and then bottom
Speaker 3: drops out and you literally are in free fall for
Speaker 3: you know, one or two seconds. You know, then you
Speaker 3: slam hit the deck because it it was like a
Speaker 3: fifteen to twenty foot drop. And yeah, everyone just like
Speaker 3: hanging on and you know, the ships are built for that,
Speaker 3: so it's not like you're in real danger. But that
Speaker 3: felt pretty wild. And that was I've definitely never felt
Speaker 3: worse like seasick than I have at that time, and
Speaker 3: that was.
Speaker 2: Just that was a shitty respect for mother nature? Is
Speaker 2: that your you respect to see? Yeah, one hundred percent? Hunt, Yeah,
Speaker 2: holy coy. Yeah, I was talking to a salty dog
Speaker 2: to the day and I was interviewing him and he
Speaker 2: said that, you know, he was in a four day
Speaker 2: typhoon off the coast of Nam on a destroyer and
Speaker 2: he was about to go down. Yeah, but they lived,
Speaker 2: he said. Out of everybody on the crew, only three
Speaker 2: were eating. Yeah, I can say that. Yeah, that's goadly
Speaker 2: what we're talking about. You know, Holy cow, holy cow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Navy. You know, I decided on the Air Force.
Speaker 2: My dad was a Green Beret and former Navy himself. Right,
Speaker 2: But now that I think about the Navy today as
Speaker 2: a forty five year old, forty six year old dad,
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, that sounds just like, you know, like
Speaker 2: you know, you're playing with the ocean. Dude. It's like
Speaker 2: these ships seem so big when they're reported, but once
Speaker 2: you're out into the vastness of the ocean, you're just
Speaker 2: like a toothpick.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, it.
Speaker 2: Is. It is. It's amazing the technology to float on
Speaker 2: water and dive down with ballats on submarines, and just
Speaker 2: the Navy is bad ass. I'm just gonna say that
Speaker 2: right now. United States Navy and all you sailors are awesome. Okay.
Speaker 2: I just want to shout out to that Wow, that
Speaker 2: was right inside my heart. I feel it all too.
Speaker 2: Oh man, jeez, cause I only get to see what
Speaker 2: like Tom Hanks shows us on the movies, or like
Speaker 2: some kind of crazy like you know top ten, you
Speaker 2: know sea freight, who's crossing into the water. But bro
Speaker 2: if I can only imagine though. You know, you're a
Speaker 2: captain with your mug and you're just like, just send it, sir,
Speaker 2: five thousand men on board Roger. You'll see it. Turn
Speaker 2: into it. You'll see turn into it. Let's sir, just
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some stalthy guys there that are on the run
Speaker 3: the ships.
Speaker 2: There is there is. Did you ever have what they
Speaker 2: call a polywog moment?
Speaker 3: Yep? So I did the shell back ceremony when we
Speaker 3: crossed the equator and got my got my card and everything.
Speaker 3: So it was a it was an.
Speaker 2: Interesting baby that they had to kiss or is that
Speaker 2: what I heard? Is that what I hear you that?
Speaker 2: Or so I was? Or were you holding your coffee
Speaker 2: mug just like looking good boys?
Speaker 3: No, I got shell acted pretty well. It was I
Speaker 3: think you know are at that point when it was
Speaker 3: this must have been two thousand and two maybe, so
Speaker 3: it was after my first deployment, but like still just
Speaker 3: post nine to eleven. So I think at that point
Speaker 3: it was very much like they had started removing some
Speaker 3: of the worst parts of the ceremony, but it was
Speaker 3: still not very comfortable, and so it's still some some
Speaker 3: pain and discomfort involved, but it wasn't It wasn't probably
Speaker 3: what you know, you would have gone through in like
Speaker 3: the Vietnam era, where I think you really just got.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, yeah, that's what I've heard. That's why. That's
Speaker 2: where I heard the story from. Man. He's like, there
Speaker 2: was no weight management. Yeah, so they had the biggest
Speaker 2: guy get greased up on his belly and they all
Speaker 2: had to like kiss his belly with the grease from
Speaker 2: the the takeoff of the aircraft carrier, the stop put thing.
Speaker 2: Holy cow, dude, the navy man, that's why it's though,
Speaker 2: that's what it is. You know, I would probably have
Speaker 2: so much tattoos, Dude, I'd be like, I've been across
Speaker 2: the equator, I've returned home fifteen times. I have all
Speaker 2: these birds on me.
Speaker 3: Well, most most of the guys can.
Speaker 2: Did you get tatted up with anything?
Speaker 3: I didn't. I came from but I got usually a
Speaker 3: senior officer would intervene. But do you really think that's
Speaker 3: a good idea. I'm like yes, and they're like, no,
Speaker 3: I get back on the ship. No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be like my dad talking to me. Are
Speaker 2: you sure you want to do that? You sure about that?
Speaker 2: You're sure about that? No? Yeah, Well, listen, I've had
Speaker 2: you for almost just about an hour of our time,
Speaker 2: and you've been a really wonderful guest to come back,
Speaker 2: and I'm glad that we were able to talk about,
Speaker 2: you know, the positive services that you guys are providing
Speaker 2: to people who need it, like in Acopoco, right and
Speaker 2: in other warrant torn areas, and I'm sure you know,
Speaker 2: to wind it down, I want to know, do you
Speaker 2: feel that you'll use your stuff in the greater stuff
Speaker 2: that's going on, like over in Gaza. Is that something
Speaker 2: that's you know, it's a good question.
Speaker 3: I think there's still a lot of people figuring out
Speaker 3: how and where to use systems on the battlefield. In general,
Speaker 3: the US and Allies have been a little slower to
Speaker 3: use very AI driven stuff. It's been a lot of
Speaker 3: adoption on the Russian side, the Turkish side, Chinese side,
Speaker 3: and so I don't really know what the role is
Speaker 3: for like hours specifically, I think you're going to see
Speaker 3: a lot of AI driven technologies enter the battlefield shortly
Speaker 3: driven by a lot of the you know, the war
Speaker 3: innovation that's happening, especially around Ukraine Russia right now. I
Speaker 3: think you know, you're seeing shield AI and you're seeing ANDERIL,
Speaker 3: and you're seeing Skydio sort of playing in those worlds
Speaker 3: as well. From those are like a cheaper, cheaper system side,
Speaker 3: and I mean ANDERIL is using witering munitions and that
Speaker 3: sort of thing, like you know, actual basically drones with
Speaker 3: explosives on them. And so I think there's a lot
Speaker 3: of different categories that are going to start being utilized.
Speaker 3: I think where where you're going to see technologies like
Speaker 3: ours the most is on logistics and i SR and
Speaker 3: sort of getting a better sense for what's happening on
Speaker 3: the battlefield and you know, trying to make sure that
Speaker 3: we're not putting people into the most dangerous parts and
Speaker 3: you know, being more effective when we.
Speaker 2: And i SR correctly. It's international search and rescue right in.
Speaker 3: This case an example, so in this case it's intelligence
Speaker 3: surveillance reconnaissance and so it's the idea of trying to
Speaker 3: get a better sense of the battlefield from an intel perspective.
Speaker 2: All right, cool, I'm glad you corrected me. I can
Speaker 2: always be right. That's for you, Dad, who sits on
Speaker 2: the mantle right over there on the fireplace on every
Speaker 2: one of these shows, looking over my shoulder. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 2: that's right. Okay. Well, you know the best place to
Speaker 2: go and check out more about Xian Technologies is xian
Speaker 2: technologies dot com. You know, and if you want to
Speaker 2: learn more or try to put yourself out there and
Speaker 2: set a resume because you have what it takes to
Speaker 2: work with Ben and his crew, then do that and
Speaker 2: he'll let you know. And do you have anything you
Speaker 2: want to say in the last parting words before I
Speaker 2: close out the show.
Speaker 3: No, I appreciate the time here like you, like you
Speaker 3: alluded to before you know, it's it's a it's a
Speaker 3: huge shame about the the stuff that happened down in Acapoco,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately it won't be the last of you know,
Speaker 3: major disasters that happened. So you know, if you if
Speaker 3: you're if you are interested in want to help in
Speaker 3: those kind of scenarios, go for the aid organizations. They
Speaker 3: are going to be better at coordinating getting this stuff
Speaker 3: in in the right way, in the right order. With coordination,
Speaker 3: then you know, sort of a grassroots thing a lot
Speaker 3: of times. So you know, that would be my recommendation.
Speaker 3: Try and find the right the right orgs that are
Speaker 3: that are practiced at getting things in there, that.
Speaker 2: Are already ready to go, Like they've already grassrooted themselves,
Speaker 2: and they're just like they need you to supply the
Speaker 2: that extra manpower to them versus you trying to start
Speaker 2: from the ground up. You know, I get that. Hey, well,
Speaker 2: what a wonderful show. It's been a pleasure. I want
Speaker 2: to give a shout out to Lily for arranging everything.
Speaker 2: And I want to thank Ben Williams, former Navy officer,
Speaker 2: a surface warfare humanitarian and just a really nice, cool
Speaker 2: dude that just wants to talk about cool stuff like polywog. Okay,
Speaker 2: I just want to say thanks on behalf of brand Web,
Speaker 2: former Navy seal from the Navy. Give him a shout out.
Speaker 2: Go buy his book for the holidays, any of them.
Speaker 2: Go look up Brandon Webb and uh. I'm also on
Speaker 2: all the audioble for most of the books, so I'm
Speaker 2: the voice of Finn, go check out Chief Finn and
Speaker 2: uh I want to say the bookstore. Don't forget that
Speaker 2: we have soft Rep, dot Com, Forward Slash Book hyphen
Speaker 2: Club and the merch and On behalf of Ben Williams
Speaker 2: and Lily. This is rad say in peace.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Self Rep Radio