Speaker 1: Ah beat force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software A Gradio special operations,
Speaker 1: military news and straight talk with the guys and the
Speaker 1: community SOFTWAREP Radio on time on target. So basically, uh,
Speaker 1: probably a week and a half two weeks ago, we
Speaker 1: decided we're going to do this Q and A SOFTWAREP
Speaker 1: Radio Special Edition. And I really thought of it because
Speaker 1: it was like, this is my last show before I
Speaker 1: go away for a quick break for a week. And
Speaker 1: I figured we've got a few emails, bang amout. But
Speaker 1: to my surprise, to my pleasant surprise, we've got quite
Speaker 1: a bit of emails. Uh, we're not even be able
Speaker 1: to cover everything. Because beyond the emails, I got like
Speaker 1: d m s on Instagram and comments on Instagram with
Speaker 1: questions and it's just overwhelming, which is which is great.
Speaker 1: I mean I expected to get I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: ten to twelve emails, and we got way more than that.
Speaker 1: So with that, I guess we'll get right into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all good. Answer as many of them as as
Speaker 1: I can. Yeah, weekend, Yeah, we'll make this, make it work.
Speaker 1: There's and and it's quite a variety of stuff asked
Speaker 1: you by you guys, and between new listeners to the
Speaker 1: show and very loyal listeners to the show. UM so
Speaker 1: here it is, all right, this is the first one.
Speaker 1: This is from old pH two, who's been a listener
Speaker 1: for a very long time. I know him. Uh, asked
Speaker 1: Jack if he has anything on Red Sox, Red Cap
Speaker 1: or the Volunteer Freedom Corps in Hungary nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 1: He asks if it's similar to debt A in Berlin.
Speaker 1: I know this is a newer one. Probably didn't see
Speaker 1: this one yet. Um. And then he has some notes
Speaker 1: on it, but he's like, my question is below. I
Speaker 1: found the above info reading through the National Security Archive,
Speaker 1: wondered if this has any tie into the Glaudio Gladio
Speaker 1: audio it's Jack has researched. So that's a pretty specific one.
Speaker 1: Thanks Old p H two. Yeah, I went through that
Speaker 1: document he turned up, and it's very very interesting. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read through it in detail. Um, but I
Speaker 1: brushed through it before I came in this morning. UM.
Speaker 1: So this is like very I mean, like historians know this,
Speaker 1: but I don't think like it's widely known that after
Speaker 1: World War Two we parachuted people into hungry hungry, and
Speaker 1: I believe also Ukraine UM to basically foment insurgencies behind
Speaker 1: communist lines. UM, and as far as I know, those
Speaker 1: teams were all wiped out. It was sort of like
Speaker 1: how we tried to repeat the jed Berg model or
Speaker 1: oss model of parachuting people behind UM enemy lines into
Speaker 1: occupied France. UH, and it didn't work out in Hungary,
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, it also the French and then and then
Speaker 1: the CIA tried to do it in UH in Vietnam
Speaker 1: also early on in the war, and those efforts completely
Speaker 1: failed as well. So I don't think that they I
Speaker 1: don't think that program what he's referencing there, I don't
Speaker 1: think it has any direct ties to Glaudio. I mean,
Speaker 1: they weren't trying to establish stay behind networks. UH. They were,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to establish networks, but they were already
Speaker 1: in occupied enemy areas. UM. The tenth Special Forces Group
Speaker 1: had the same mission, except there's was called Fallen Rain
Speaker 1: Falling Rain UM, which would if the if the war
Speaker 1: went hot, if the Cold War went hot, they would
Speaker 1: have parachuted, uh, you know, behind Soviet lines and started
Speaker 1: to you know, create you know, guerilla forces and tie
Speaker 1: down the Soviets in their rear areas. The GLAUDIO is
Speaker 1: the it's the name of the Italian program to create
Speaker 1: stay behind networks UM, which is you know, Detachment A
Speaker 1: also would have been a stay behind network. Those were
Speaker 1: active duty American soldiers UM, tenth Group soldiers who would
Speaker 1: have acted as stay behind if the Soviets invaded Berlin,
Speaker 1: and they would have conducted acts of sabotage UM once
Speaker 1: they were behind Soviet lines. GLAUDIO was more of a
Speaker 1: NATO uh se I A program. Allegedly, those stay behind
Speaker 1: networks were trained by Tenth Group soldiers in Sardinia. I
Speaker 1: don't have any proof of that. I've never actually met
Speaker 1: any of those guys who participated in that training to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, and I have asked and looked, you know,
Speaker 1: snooped around, but I've never found any hard confirmation of that.
Speaker 1: But my point with that is just that Glaudio is
Speaker 1: the name of the Italian program, the program in Italy.
Speaker 1: Those programs existed all over Europe. Uh in in Switzerland
Speaker 1: and the UK and Germany, France, Belgium, uh in the
Speaker 1: Scandinavian countries and in some places, uh it got out
Speaker 1: of control. UH. You can go watch some UM. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a pretty good BBC documentary about glaudio that you
Speaker 1: can probably find on YouTube if you're interested in looking
Speaker 1: at that. Cool. Alright, so very specific question there. Um,
Speaker 1: I think I can answer this one. Actually, this from Zack, Hey,
Speaker 1: Jack and Ian, do you think you'll do any more
Speaker 1: inside the team room? Was the Rangers one was so
Speaker 1: dope and it's how I found you guys. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: I assume this is a mistake, he wrote, I fucking
Speaker 1: the show and keep up the good work. I assume
Speaker 1: as I love the show. Um, I'd like to funk
Speaker 1: the show. Uh. The answer to that is that I've
Speaker 1: heard from Brandon that we are going to do more
Speaker 1: inside the team room stuff. Apparently, I don't know when.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the plans are. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the next inside the team room would be. But
Speaker 1: he did say actually on his podcast The Power of
Speaker 1: Podcast Power Thought Podcast, that we're gonna be doing more
Speaker 1: in the future. I just I don't have any further info. Um,
Speaker 1: but I know he'd like to revive that type of thing.
Speaker 1: And it has been a while and we we really
Speaker 1: don't have any new material on the speck ops channel,
Speaker 1: but we're trying to do some new materials. So I
Speaker 1: haven't heard anything myself, but I don't see any reason
Speaker 1: why we wouldn't continue doing those you know here and there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Brandon's the CEO, so if he says we're doing
Speaker 1: him again, I assume we will at some point. Although
Speaker 1: to be fair, you know, we come up with a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas and and sometimes stuff gets um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we we forget about certain ideas. I guess
Speaker 1: it's just so much stuff. It's a very it's a
Speaker 1: pretty small company. Yeah, we can't do it all. We
Speaker 1: always you know, the yearly meeting. We come up with
Speaker 1: a lot of great ideas and some of them we
Speaker 1: end up going with, and some of them we just
Speaker 1: don't because we don't have the time or the resources.
Speaker 1: But I think we'll do more inside the teamers just
Speaker 1: don't know when. Um. And with that, i'll plug the
Speaker 1: spec ops channel sign up spec ops channel dot com.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I'll plug some of the other stuff throughout
Speaker 1: this show instead of reading plugs at the end. But
Speaker 1: that's a good one for that. So the spec ops channel,
Speaker 1: spec ops channel dot com. Um. All right, this is
Speaker 1: from Matt in Texas. How do you longtime reader here
Speaker 1: of Soft Rep now the News Rep and UH Jack Murphy,
Speaker 1: but have just recently begun listening to the podcasts. I
Speaker 1: appreciate the content. So I just saw a story where
Speaker 1: President Trump is considering designating some factions of Mexican drug
Speaker 1: cartels as f t O s. Would that action increase
Speaker 1: US involvement? And what would that look like for the
Speaker 1: U S Military and or three you letter government agencies.
Speaker 1: I I might be drawn a blank here. What does
Speaker 1: fos again? Foreign toirist organizations? Got it? And then he
Speaker 1: says I've read Murphy's Target Deck book two or three
Speaker 1: times and really enjoyed it. And while I don't expect
Speaker 1: a mercenary force to take apart violent drug cartels, I
Speaker 1: am shocked at the lack of action by the US
Speaker 1: considering our level of involvement overseas, while it appears we
Speaker 1: ignore what's happening next door in Mexico and some of
Speaker 1: Central America. Granted, Mexico is a sovereign nation. In some aspects,
Speaker 1: it's the Wild West. There's been a long history of
Speaker 1: cross border hunting, such as during the Apache Wars and
Speaker 1: the Poncho Villa era with the Mexican government begrudgingly allowing
Speaker 1: US sanction against common threats or US action against common threats.
Speaker 1: A follow up question would be what would escalate armed
Speaker 1: conflict in the region. Also, maybe for another podcast, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear Jack Murphy talk about his book Reflects
Speaker 1: the Fire without sounding too much like Alex Jones ha ha.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed the Deckcard series and that's from in Texas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, thanks for reading and sending your question. Uh,
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to see if some of those
Speaker 1: drug cartels were put on the f t O. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that they necessarily qualify in that we haven't
Speaker 1: really seen drug cartels targeting Americans with acts of terrorism,
Speaker 1: but they certainly conduct acts of terror against Mexicans. Although
Speaker 1: there's the Mexican people the trafficking that's done in that
Speaker 1: type of but that's drug trafficking and it's not international
Speaker 1: terrorism or the human trafficking you should say as well
Speaker 1: on the border. Yeah, there's some to some extent they're
Speaker 1: involved in drug trafficking and also petrol trafficking and uh,
Speaker 1: also they all kinds of like gray and black market
Speaker 1: economy stuff. Um, putting them on the FTO it wouldn't
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how big a difference it would make
Speaker 1: you of itself. UM, there are groups. There have been
Speaker 1: groups like m e K that were on the ft
Speaker 1: O and we worked with them, we had them, Jaysack
Speaker 1: trained them. Actually they're just go ahead and elaborate on
Speaker 1: on it. Uh seymour Hurst wrote an article about it.
Speaker 1: But it was actually UM, some guys from the unit
Speaker 1: from Delta that trained M e K guys out at
Speaker 1: the Nevada test site. UM, and they were on the
Speaker 1: FTO at that time. They have since been removed UM.
Speaker 1: So it's just an example of these weird relationships. Another
Speaker 1: one is UM with the p k K. They are
Speaker 1: on our FTO. However, we work with the offshoots of
Speaker 1: the PKK, the YPG and YPJ in Syria. So international
Speaker 1: politics makes for some strange bedfellows. One of the things
Speaker 1: that putting a group on the FTO would do is
Speaker 1: it would sanction them, So American businesses certainly would not
Speaker 1: be able to do any kind of you know, transaction
Speaker 1: with them. But these groups are already drug cartels. And
Speaker 1: I'm not like totally read up on like anti narcotics laws,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure American businesses are already prohibited from
Speaker 1: doing doing business with drug cartels, so I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how big a difference it would make in of itself.
Speaker 1: But what would cause an escalation in the conflict south
Speaker 1: of the border. I mean, it is already huge from
Speaker 1: a Mexican standpoint, and it is obviously quite detrimental to
Speaker 1: the United States as well. What would cause an escalation
Speaker 1: is something like what Papico Escobar did. Pablo Escobar got
Speaker 1: too big for his bridges. He was an international uh
Speaker 1: you know, drug trafficker, which is one thing, but then
Speaker 1: he started doing ship like assassinations. He had people, um,
Speaker 1: you know, taking over like judiciary buildings in Colombia. He
Speaker 1: blew up a an airliner too, if I recall correctly,
Speaker 1: was just to assassinate one person, blew up a fucking airliner.
Speaker 1: So now he was actually challenging the authority and the
Speaker 1: sovereignty um or you could say, the moral authority of
Speaker 1: the state. And when a drug or a drug cartel
Speaker 1: or international drug trafficking organization gets into that territory, now
Speaker 1: the hammer is gonna come down on them. So if
Speaker 1: the Mexican drug cartels started, say, conducting acts of terrorism
Speaker 1: inside the United States, let's say they, um, let's just
Speaker 1: say they did something like an I E. D. Strike
Speaker 1: against the federal judge in Texas. Okay, it is gonna
Speaker 1: that is gonna change the game. And I think the
Speaker 1: reason why that has never happened is because the Mexican
Speaker 1: drug cartels they are it's a form of capitalism, right,
Speaker 1: they want to keep international commerce going. So if they
Speaker 1: funk with the United States government too much, they escalate
Speaker 1: too much, they know the hammer is gonna come down. Now.
Speaker 1: They're also all kinds of we're already in Mexico to
Speaker 1: some extent um helping them with like various kinds of
Speaker 1: um intelligence sharing and things like this. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of different things we could look at if one
Speaker 1: were so inclined. But as far as like active you know,
Speaker 1: US soldiers jaysack guys or c I A paramilitary guys
Speaker 1: operating south of the border, that's not really happening. That's
Speaker 1: like a big no no. And the Mexican military is
Speaker 1: very sensitive about you know, neo colonialism. There's a history
Speaker 1: there between our two countries. Um. So yeah, if they
Speaker 1: started doing terror attacks in the United States, you would
Speaker 1: see things escalate. I think quite drastically, And that's what
Speaker 1: my he mentions my novel tar Target Deck. That's what
Speaker 1: it's about. It's UM. It's about things escalating UM. And
Speaker 1: actually in in the novel it's UM. A mayor of
Speaker 1: a town challenges the drug cartels and he's assassinated. UM.
Speaker 1: Just just before he was assassinated, he hired a private
Speaker 1: military company to come and run security in his town.
Speaker 1: He's like, these drug cartels, you know, but we have
Speaker 1: all these confiscated money from them. So he hires the
Speaker 1: protagonist of of my novel is this guy named DECKERD
Speaker 1: who's a former soft guy, to come down there and
Speaker 1: run private security. So he's assassinated and his daughter takes
Speaker 1: over his mayor and she gets kidnapped by the drug
Speaker 1: cartels and they're holding her captive. And that's where the
Speaker 1: that's the first that's like the prologue of the of
Speaker 1: the novel. That's where it starts right there. I was
Speaker 1: seeing if we Target Deck behind me, but no, just
Speaker 1: a gray matter splider. Yes, the Target Deck is a
Speaker 1: is a novel about what it would look like if
Speaker 1: a private military company was deployed against drug cartels UM
Speaker 1: down in southern Mexico. So go pick up Target Deck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's uh, you know, I'll frame it to
Speaker 1: you this way. It very much is about answering this
Speaker 1: gentleman's question. Um. But what the novel also does is
Speaker 1: it transposes a lot of my own experiences in Iraq
Speaker 1: and then the experiences of a lot of my friends
Speaker 1: and peers in Iraq when we were working time sensitive
Speaker 1: target missions with the Special Operations Task Force. And so
Speaker 1: I took that model and I, I, you know, imagine,
Speaker 1: and because the novel is a good place to imagine
Speaker 1: scenarios like this, what would that look like if that
Speaker 1: model that the you know, Stan McCrystal, Jay sock Hunter
Speaker 1: killer model, what if that was brought to Mexico? What
Speaker 1: would that look like? And so that's what that's what
Speaker 1: the novel is really about. Nice, Um, we'll pick it up.
Speaker 1: This is from Cheyenne Martin, who we we've known for
Speaker 1: a very long time. She actually just tweeted out about
Speaker 1: how she's been I think she wrote, um, listening to
Speaker 1: the podcasts for like six years. She was like, I
Speaker 1: was a freshman in high school, now I'm a sophomore
Speaker 1: in college. You know, it's tricks it's been a big
Speaker 1: influence of my life met people through the site. It's
Speaker 1: and it's just cool to see that. Um So here's
Speaker 1: Shayan's question. Hey y'all, it's been a while. Sorry, I've
Speaker 1: been m i a because of school. But here's my
Speaker 1: question about that school. Uh, Georgetown prides itself on teaching
Speaker 1: current issues. How they teach, though, is only statistics such
Speaker 1: as the Yazdi crisis, Curtis stan or Assyria. It's numbers
Speaker 1: and very broad political science theory. Students pride themselves on
Speaker 1: quote understanding the most current issues, yet it's all numbers.
Speaker 1: Many students say they want to do quote on the groundwork,
Speaker 1: but can only speak in data. Then when a professor
Speaker 1: like the one I went to Ukraine with father Death
Speaker 1: Boys speaks about the groundwork he does with victims in
Speaker 1: the Uzdi crisis any rock, people are shocked and horrified.
Speaker 1: They're confused because a sex slave sold fourteen times, that's
Speaker 1: not in the data. It can't be true. That's so
Speaker 1: uh constructive ist. Yes, I've heard students say and many
Speaker 1: things like this. I know learning data in terms are important,
Speaker 1: but my question is for people who want to work
Speaker 1: quote on the ground, like me, do you think it's
Speaker 1: harmful to always keep them in the dark about the
Speaker 1: practical applications and real stories about what's happening behind the statistics,
Speaker 1: and only expose them to the numbers. Thankfully, I have
Speaker 1: you all so I don't get lost only in the data.
Speaker 1: You'll are the best. Cheyenne. Yeah, well, I'm really happy
Speaker 1: for Cheyenne that she's, you know, in Georgetown. I know
Speaker 1: she would say a you know, one of the early
Speaker 1: fans of the website, and um costplayed his uh deck
Speaker 1: Art novel, right, I remember that on like Halloween or something,
Speaker 1: and and you know, she know, she's done quite well,
Speaker 1: and now she's studying you know, international affairs, which is terrific.
Speaker 1: Um It. Listening to her question and her experience in
Speaker 1: college is really funny because I had similar experiences where
Speaker 1: I would propose certain types of like papers, um like,
Speaker 1: one of my one of the proposals I made in
Speaker 1: a class was, why don't I look at the historical
Speaker 1: information we have about trans Saharan trade routes. There's a
Speaker 1: whole interesting history there, and then compare that overlay that
Speaker 1: with modern human trafficking and drug trafficking routes in the
Speaker 1: Sahara and let's see if they're the same routes, if
Speaker 1: they're using historical trade routes to smuggle illicit contraband, and
Speaker 1: the teaching assistant it was just like, where would you
Speaker 1: even get that data from? And this is it's just
Speaker 1: something a facet of academia that it's so stove piped
Speaker 1: and there's not cross disciplinary at all, and they are
Speaker 1: just not comfortable reaching outside of their you know, normal
Speaker 1: formal training. UM. The data is often out there, they
Speaker 1: just don't want to look at it, or they don't
Speaker 1: trust it because it's not written by UM, a history professor,
Speaker 1: or it's not written by a political science professor, or
Speaker 1: you know, some some other thing like that that they
Speaker 1: just don't want to go outside their little bubble. UM.
Speaker 1: It is detrimental. And the best kind of analysis is
Speaker 1: both qualitative and quantitative, because there are things that the
Speaker 1: numbers cannot tell you. It's very in vogue to UM
Speaker 1: do sort of statistical analysis and make like a little
Speaker 1: fucking bar graph and like this is what the data shows.
Speaker 1: And data is great, and data has done so much
Speaker 1: to illuminate UM some of these subjects for us, But
Speaker 1: they don't tell you everything. They don't necessary tell you
Speaker 1: the why why are people doing this? Um? A lot
Speaker 1: of things that happen in international politics are counterintuitive on
Speaker 1: their surface. They don't make sense, and you have to
Speaker 1: do uh uh interviews with people, and you have to
Speaker 1: talk to people, and then you can cross reference that
Speaker 1: with the data. That's the best kind of work is
Speaker 1: when you combine both data sets and you're able to
Speaker 1: you know, um, you know, flesh out a larger picture.
Speaker 1: UM So I think, yeah, just looking at the naked
Speaker 1: statistics and of themselves only tell you so much. And
Speaker 1: the people who are afraid to step outside those bounds
Speaker 1: they are, um, they're just trying to stay inside their
Speaker 1: comfort zone because that's their formal training. Yeah all right,
Speaker 1: well moving on to the next one here. This is
Speaker 1: from Adam Kay. Hey guys, thanks for all the hours
Speaker 1: of great guests, knowledge and entertainment. You know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna interrupt. This just hit reminded me, uh speaking a
Speaker 1: great guest. I saw that Pat McNamara just did Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan's podcast Studios. Pretty cool, that's awesome. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: to check that out. I was just shocked going through Instagram.
Speaker 1: I was like, holy ship, he's in Joe Rogan studio.
Speaker 1: It's so cool anyway, So I wanted to keep it
Speaker 1: as brief, keep it brief as requested by Ian. So, Jack,
Speaker 1: I know your book is coming out soon and is
Speaker 1: bound to be filled with some great stories and insights.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, what is one of the great stories
Speaker 1: that you wanted to include in print that you didn't.
Speaker 1: I'd be interested in hearing it since it won't be
Speaker 1: in the book and ultimately the decision for which it
Speaker 1: was left out. Uh, Ian, what's your next writing piece
Speaker 1: going to be on? Thanks my dudes, Adam Ka all right,
Speaker 1: I'll answer my question first then, um, because there's really
Speaker 1: more targeted towards you. Uh So, I'm actually, um pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprised if people want to read other pieces by me.
Speaker 1: I've I've only written one piece. I wrote a piece
Speaker 1: on the mind must use data and also quantitative information.
Speaker 1: I wrote one piece on the mind muscle connection and fitness,
Speaker 1: and it was just something that kind of came to me.
Speaker 1: I kind of knocked it out of the Starbucks, brought
Speaker 1: my laptop and uh and it ended up being longer
Speaker 1: than I expected it to be. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a writer, but I just I wanted to
Speaker 1: do it, and I got some good response. It also
Speaker 1: got plagiarized by some other website. Yeah, remember I told
Speaker 1: you about that, I think, and I had them take
Speaker 1: it down. They just copied and pasted my entire article
Speaker 1: and said it was written by another author. And then
Speaker 1: I looked at their the author's bio and it was
Speaker 1: like whatever his name is, uh has a knack for
Speaker 1: being you know, honorable and like a great person. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, they just copied pasted my whole I've had
Speaker 1: that happen. Uh the child did that to me. That
Speaker 1: spec Ops magazine has done that to not me but
Speaker 1: our other authors, and I've had to go and scold
Speaker 1: them before. Um. I don't remember the name of this website,
Speaker 1: but I did notice the location was in New York City,
Speaker 1: so I was like, man, I kind of want to
Speaker 1: go to their office, but uh, after I told them
Speaker 1: was plagiarized by me, they took it down, so you know,
Speaker 1: simple as that. But anyway, I actually do want to
Speaker 1: write another piece because I noticed that Scott Whittner at
Speaker 1: the load out room and my articles would be more
Speaker 1: appropriate for the load out room because you know, I
Speaker 1: I don't write about news or special operations stuff. I
Speaker 1: mean I have no background operations stuff and I'm not
Speaker 1: like a military nerd or any of that, to be
Speaker 1: completely honest. Uh. My my passion is really fitness and music,
Speaker 1: and I'd be more likely to write something in the fitness, um,
Speaker 1: you know, uh side of things. So I noticed that
Speaker 1: Scott Whittner in the private load out room group was
Speaker 1: saying that we're kind of lacking in some pieces and
Speaker 1: we need some new material. So I asked him if
Speaker 1: he wanted me to write anything. He was like, sure,
Speaker 1: go for it, So I might. Uh, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'd write about. But actually an idea of floating
Speaker 1: through my head was I want to write about the
Speaker 1: supplement z m A, which I've talked about before, because
Speaker 1: there's so many uses to it, and that it's like
Speaker 1: it's a sleep supplement even though it doesn't like knock out.
Speaker 1: It's just zinc magnesium B six um, you know, so
Speaker 1: it supplements you with zinc and magnesium, which I have
Speaker 1: all types of benefits. It's also a recovery supplement. You
Speaker 1: recover quicker from workouts. It's it's also a testosterone boosting supplement,
Speaker 1: and it was developed by Victor Conti, who was involved
Speaker 1: in in a lot of steroid stuff and went to
Speaker 1: jail for it. And you know, he's actually a very
Speaker 1: intelligent guy and has talked about the creation is e
Speaker 1: m A on Joe Rogan's podcast before. And it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be like sponsored content z m A has been. It's
Speaker 1: a formula that's been bought out by different brands, so
Speaker 1: like all different supplement companies produced EMA, but Victor Conti
Speaker 1: gets some of that money because he created the formula
Speaker 1: for z m A because it's a certain proportion of zinc, magnesium,
Speaker 1: vitamin B six. And the reason I find that interesting,
Speaker 1: by the way, is because there's everybody talks about creatine
Speaker 1: and protein powders and all this stuff, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of data on those supplements and they're like proven
Speaker 1: to work. Most supplements are complete go garbage, their bullshit.
Speaker 1: It's like a lot of fillers. And what I think
Speaker 1: is interesting is the studies that I've seen on z
Speaker 1: m A. There's like no empirical data that it works
Speaker 1: um and most people think it falls into the category
Speaker 1: of like this is a useless supplement. I could tell
Speaker 1: you from my own experience it is not a useless supplement.
Speaker 1: And I think just talking about it now like brings
Speaker 1: up why I'm passionate about it. I mean, for one,
Speaker 1: I could tell you I never remembered my dreams prior
Speaker 1: to taking the e m A. Suddenly once I started
Speaker 1: taking the z m A after like a few times,
Speaker 1: I was able to remember all of my dreams. And
Speaker 1: he's very vivid dreams. So yeah, I think that might
Speaker 1: be the next piece that I'm gonna write about um
Speaker 1: or or if something else comes to mind. But I
Speaker 1: love writing about fitness, you know. And I'm not like
Speaker 1: Alex Hongs, to be honest. We're like, you know, he's
Speaker 1: a guy who could bench some like insane amount and
Speaker 1: it's like super strong, dude. I'm really not. I'm not
Speaker 1: someone who's ever athletic. Fitness is something that I got
Speaker 1: into later on in life. But I'm passionate about so
Speaker 1: I I might write about that stuff in the future,
Speaker 1: and I'm really um I'm actually happy that that there
Speaker 1: are people out there who want to see more from
Speaker 1: me in that aspect. It's not really my wheelhouse. I'm
Speaker 1: a radio guy. I'm not a writer. Um, anyway, your
Speaker 1: question about a story that was left out of your book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a few stories. Um. You know, the book
Speaker 1: could have been twice the size, but I kind of
Speaker 1: limited it to the you know, the highlights. One story
Speaker 1: that I thought about putting in I didn't was from
Speaker 1: Basic Training because I figured, no one wants to hear
Speaker 1: a bunch of basic training stories in this book. Um,
Speaker 1: and everyone went the Basic training. Who gives a ship? Um.
Speaker 1: But I do have a really funny story from Basic Training,
Speaker 1: which is that there's a you know, for those who
Speaker 1: went there, they know what I'm talking about. But there's
Speaker 1: a thing called KP where you get assigned to kitchen duty.
Speaker 1: So you get pulled out of training and you get
Speaker 1: put into the chowel hall and you basically fucking you know,
Speaker 1: mop the floor and move trays around and it is
Speaker 1: a real waste of time, but you get put on that.
Speaker 1: And what the guys realized at some point was that
Speaker 1: we can start smuggling food out of the out of
Speaker 1: the back of the chow hole because you go out
Speaker 1: of the back of the chow hole and there's like
Speaker 1: a loading bay where trucks can pull up and all
Speaker 1: the garbage cans go out there. So what the guys
Speaker 1: started doing was they started raiding the desserts primarily and
Speaker 1: uh putting them at the bottom of a trash can
Speaker 1: and then putting a liner over it so no one
Speaker 1: can see what's you know, cachet down at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the trash can. And then at the end of
Speaker 1: the day that wheel the trash cans out behind the
Speaker 1: back of the bay where they belong. Then they'd come back,
Speaker 1: they'd get released and sent back to you know, our
Speaker 1: basic training company, and they would circle around back to
Speaker 1: where the bay is, recover the food, and then come back.
Speaker 1: So we started getting like cinnamon rolls and cakes and
Speaker 1: uh Choco tacos, which is notorious. The Choco tacos became
Speaker 1: a thing. You remember the the w w F pops.
Speaker 1: I love those as a kid, those are my things.
Speaker 1: Oh the push pops, No, they were they were um
Speaker 1: they were almost like those chip whip chip which sandwiches,
Speaker 1: but it had a wrestler on the ship. That was
Speaker 1: my favorite. But anyway, I do remember Chaco Top or
Speaker 1: Taco bell at Chaco to Chaco tacos are still around.
Speaker 1: I bought them the other day. Actually, Um, you and
Speaker 1: your daughter, Yeah, because I had to remind her about
Speaker 1: the glorious Choco tacos. So we we were smuggling food out.
Speaker 1: This went on for about a month, I think, and
Speaker 1: the guys were all really paranoid about putting the trash
Speaker 1: in the actual trash cans because the drill sergeants might
Speaker 1: see it. So, being a bunch of geniuses, what did
Speaker 1: we do? We started throwing all the trash in the
Speaker 1: crawl space. So if you go into the you know,
Speaker 1: the whole basic training Infantry platoon is in like just
Speaker 1: a big open bay, and then there's some bathrooms and
Speaker 1: then if there's like a panel and access panel in
Speaker 1: the bathroom that leads into the crawl space. And then
Speaker 1: one night the drill sergeant who was on staff duty
Speaker 1: went and did an inspection of our our bay and
Speaker 1: decided to check the crawl space and found trash like
Speaker 1: three ft high in there. It was like, what the
Speaker 1: fuck made us empty all the ship out of there.
Speaker 1: Um they called the entire company, not just our platoon,
Speaker 1: the entire company down below to where the concrete is.
Speaker 1: Um took all the trash and just spread it all
Speaker 1: over the place, and they smoked the ship out of
Speaker 1: us all night, just smoked the dog shit out of us. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were like trainees like like fucking basic trainees like
Speaker 1: getting up in arms and like standing up and then
Speaker 1: when we're supposed to be doing push ups, this is
Speaker 1: fucking bullshit. Drill sergeant like pick them up and slam
Speaker 1: them into the brick wall. Like it was like it
Speaker 1: was getting juicy. It was, it was getting it was
Speaker 1: getting spicy out there in basic training that day. Um,
Speaker 1: and I remember they just smoked us, Like my muscles
Speaker 1: felt like jolo By by the by the time dawn
Speaker 1: came and then our first sergeant came in and he, uh,
Speaker 1: he proceeded to take us out and do pt with
Speaker 1: us all morning, had us doing log runs and all
Speaker 1: kinds of ship I think the smoke session finally ended
Speaker 1: by about lunchtime. Um, but we're still in trouble. And uh,
Speaker 1: our drill sergeant came in in the morning. Drill sergeant Osby.
Speaker 1: He says, all right, privates, he was just like big
Speaker 1: black guy had a gold front tooth. He looks at us,
Speaker 1: He's like, who stole the motherfucking choco tacos? No, no one,
Speaker 1: No one was sucking laughing that day. Uh, guys, one
Speaker 1: of the private stands up. He was the son of
Speaker 1: a sergeant major in the range of Regiment. I won't,
Speaker 1: I won't, I won't name names. He was a good
Speaker 1: guy though, he's a really good guy. He just he
Speaker 1: fessed up to it and was like, I was the
Speaker 1: one who stole the chockout tacos. He wasn't like the
Speaker 1: only person by any means stealing ship from the show hall,
Speaker 1: but he stole a box of choco tacos. So he
Speaker 1: fucking manned up to it. Um. But we're still in trouble,
Speaker 1: and this goes on for like days, and like they're
Speaker 1: they're like looking at us like head hunting. We're downstairs
Speaker 1: cleaning our rifles. Are m sixteens after we came back
Speaker 1: from the range. Now, to preface this, every basic training
Speaker 1: platoon has one guy in it who's just like the
Speaker 1: uber ship bag, just the biggest piece of ship you
Speaker 1: can possibly imagine. We had ours. He Uh, he was
Speaker 1: the kind of guy who would sham out of everything.
Speaker 1: Whenever we ever had to do anything, he would find
Speaker 1: a way to sham out of it. He somehow shammed
Speaker 1: out of doing every single road march we ever did
Speaker 1: in basic training by like going on sit call or
Speaker 1: like hiding under his bunk, like he was just a
Speaker 1: fucking piece of ship and everyone knew it. So we're
Speaker 1: down there cleaning our rifles and um, one of the
Speaker 1: guys in our platoon I know the guy. I went
Speaker 1: to rip with him and then he he ended up
Speaker 1: going to SF also. Um. He stands up as drill
Speaker 1: Sergeant Osby comes by and says, drill sergeant, can I
Speaker 1: speak with you for a moment. There's like, alright, private,
Speaker 1: come with me. They go around the corner. This dude, this,
Speaker 1: this private in our platoon proceeded to blame the entire
Speaker 1: chow theft, the heist, blamed it all on the uber
Speaker 1: ship bag in our platoon said it was his fault
Speaker 1: that motherfucker was stealing all the chow. He instigated it.
Speaker 1: The drill sergeants kicked him out of the army, damn gone.
Speaker 1: And I think it was It was really like a
Speaker 1: wink and a nod, because like, the drill sergeants aren't
Speaker 1: so fucking dumb they don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 1: They had to know that the whole platoon was stealing chow.
Speaker 1: But they were also looking for an excuse to get
Speaker 1: rid of this guy because they knew he was a
Speaker 1: ship bag, so they used that excuse and and yet
Speaker 1: boom kicked right out of the army. Wow. So why
Speaker 1: was this not included in the book? Because I just
Speaker 1: feel like basic training stories are kind of passe, Like
Speaker 1: we actually had like a prohibition in range of Italian,
Speaker 1: like you're not allowed to tell basic training stories. Like
Speaker 1: no one wants to hear that ship. Maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: maybe the public could read that and get a laugh
Speaker 1: out of it, but I just felt like, no one
Speaker 1: wants to read a bunch of basic training and airborne
Speaker 1: school stories. Like if when you pick up my book,
Speaker 1: if you do and you read it, Um, there's like
Speaker 1: maybe seven eight nine pages about me growing up and
Speaker 1: here in New York. Um, then there's you know, we
Speaker 1: very quickly go through me joining the Army. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: like a story or two about going through the Ranger
Speaker 1: in Doctor Nation program. By page twenty, I'm in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: So like it moves right along. That's cool, Um, all right.
Speaker 1: Next one is from a very long time listener. Guy
Speaker 1: was really stuck with us. Um through a lot of
Speaker 1: like controversies that I feel like it has always had
Speaker 1: our back, and that's Tommy. I recently sent Tommy Flynn
Speaker 1: out a book UH signed by Brandon because he he
Speaker 1: wrote something into power thought. So this is a great
Speaker 1: one act longtime listener, first time emailer, maybe funk. I
Speaker 1: don't know at this point any who. I've become interested
Speaker 1: in the intelligence community and was wondering, what are some
Speaker 1: good books to read in regards to c I A,
Speaker 1: d i A. Military intelligence and other intel related agencies
Speaker 1: companies in regards to the global war and terror and
Speaker 1: even the early stages of modern terrorism from the eighties
Speaker 1: and Lebinon and will there be interviews with any people
Speaker 1: from this field of work in the near future. Ian
Speaker 1: Tool is going on tour soon, are you going? Thanks
Speaker 1: for all the hard work, guys, I appreciate it, respectfully, Tommy,
Speaker 1: Tommy Flynn. I did like to see tool. That would
Speaker 1: be cool. I'm not I'm not like a die hard fan,
Speaker 1: but they seem like they'd be a cool fantasy. So
Speaker 1: that's my answer to that. Yeah, so big question. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a tons of tons of books out there. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure which ones I would focus on. I mean
Speaker 1: there are some pretty big books, like histories of the
Speaker 1: CIA that have been written. UM. I believe one of
Speaker 1: them was a Legacy of Ashes, which the CIA was
Speaker 1: not too um happy with. Um. Oh, come, it's called
Speaker 1: the Legacy of Ashes. It's basically about the C. I
Speaker 1: a fucking up um stuff going on in Lebanon. Um.
Speaker 1: I would go back and look at maybe some of
Speaker 1: the old Bob Woodwards stuff. Um, Robert Bear Road with
Speaker 1: Robert Bart you've had him on here, but he's been
Speaker 1: on with us. Yeah, me, and you know, I've never
Speaker 1: interviewed I'm I'm positive of it. Dude. No, we interviewed
Speaker 1: him probably. I remember we both in the Serious studio
Speaker 1: and it was by phone. I'm gonna look up which
Speaker 1: episode this is while we keep talking Bob Bear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have, I'll find it right now. B A I
Speaker 1: E R b A E er see there you go.
Speaker 1: Because it was with John Gillum. Yep, this was UM
Speaker 1: episode one eighteen. I'll play back, and you were on
Speaker 1: this one. I remember. I don't remember this at all.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play some of it back. Let's go here,
Speaker 1: send you email. Yeah. No, it was a brand that's
Speaker 1: what a nice ye I knew, I wasn't totally out
Speaker 1: of my reality. But that's that's Bob Bear's voice. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yes, he has been on. It's just it's been
Speaker 1: a very very long time, so I forgot it was
Speaker 1: not you, but he was on episode one eighteen. He'd
Speaker 1: be great to get back on. Yeah, there's I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just such a broad question. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's stuff out there. I mean, and it's a very interesting,
Speaker 1: very complicated subject. Um. You know, if the American public
Speaker 1: really knew the full story of our involvement in Lebanon
Speaker 1: and some of the shady characters we jumped into bed with, um,
Speaker 1: it caused I think it would be controversial to this day. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, I'm sorry, I don't really have any specific
Speaker 1: you know, book recommendations off the top of my head
Speaker 1: on that. But look back episode one of Team I
Speaker 1: guess if you want to hear Bob air and and
Speaker 1: we should get him back on. That is a big guest.
Speaker 1: By the way, since he mentioned tool it is, you know,
Speaker 1: forever this whole thing of people anticipating their next album.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know about that. They've been
Speaker 1: saying that they're gonna put out a new album for
Speaker 1: I believe it's like it's like literally twenty years and
Speaker 1: like every year they're like, oh, it's coming, and it
Speaker 1: just never comes. And you know, like I think a
Speaker 1: perfect circle mainners other ben put out an album and
Speaker 1: people are just waiting away and it's just been the
Speaker 1: biggest tease. I mean, like it's kind of like guns
Speaker 1: in Roses Chinese democracy. But I think it's going on
Speaker 1: even longer at this point. So since you mentioned that,
Speaker 1: I figured I would bring that up. All right, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is from Tyler uh hay Ian and Jack thought
Speaker 1: I would submit a question for your Q and A
Speaker 1: Session podcast. You have had a couple of guests that
Speaker 1: cover military fitness and they generally talk about the actual
Speaker 1: physical training. And by the way, if you want to
Speaker 1: listen back to those most recent is uh Doug an
Speaker 1: do kitchen kitchen because there's a specific way to pronounce
Speaker 1: his dame, but Air Force PJ Doug and we had
Speaker 1: on um C J. Woodworth, whose a former marine, varied
Speaker 1: to the fitness side of things, so you can listen
Speaker 1: back to those. Um. I was wondering if Jack has
Speaker 1: any insight regarding the recovery portion of physical training people
Speaker 1: in special forces generally go through or maybe the recommended
Speaker 1: protocol from an expert. I would assume with the highly
Speaker 1: physical aspect of the job, recovery has to be more
Speaker 1: than just stretching and sleep. Too. Many people in special
Speaker 1: forces work with physical therapists, nutritionists, et cetera to keep
Speaker 1: their body healthy. Or is most of the recovery left
Speaker 1: up to the individual. Thanks for any insight, Tyler. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's kind of left up to the individual. Um.
Speaker 1: Although you know, soft units put out these there are
Speaker 1: these contracts that get bitted on. UM. Doug can actually
Speaker 1: explain that better than I can how that works and
Speaker 1: how it doesn't work. But they'll hire physical therapists and
Speaker 1: nutritionalists and stuff like that. UM. And then and then
Speaker 1: some of those contracts expire. Some of those programs go away.
Speaker 1: Like there's one I think it's called the thor Thor
Speaker 1: program or something like that, and the guys liked it
Speaker 1: quite a bit, but then the contract expired and all
Speaker 1: that went away. So I mean, it's always bouncing back
Speaker 1: and forth. UM. Some units do have physical therapists. UM.
Speaker 1: There are different things that they can do. And I'm
Speaker 1: not like a fitness guru or a physical therapist. So
Speaker 1: I'm really not qualified to like even uh pontificate on
Speaker 1: this subject. But I do know that they teach some
Speaker 1: sort of like remedial therapy things like with those like
Speaker 1: rollers where you can roll your back on, um, you
Speaker 1: know about like getting in the ice bath. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there's some other therapy technique where it's like if you
Speaker 1: have like a not in your muscle and sticking like
Speaker 1: a needle in it, acupuncture. No, it's not. It's not acupuncture.
Speaker 1: It's actually putting a needle into the muscle to break
Speaker 1: up that that. Um not. I mean that's kind of
Speaker 1: what acupuncture is though. No. No, acupuncture is like you're
Speaker 1: hitting the the fucking chakras or whatever it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you are putting needles in. Yes, but the needle
Speaker 1: is not supposed to actually have an effect on the
Speaker 1: muscle or anything like that. That's not the point I
Speaker 1: think it depends, to be honest, because I have done acupuncture,
Speaker 1: you know, and I know some people you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's pseudo science. Some people don't. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're describing sounds like acupuncture. No,
Speaker 1: it's like whether it like like a stitch, like a
Speaker 1: stitching machine, kind of like going into the muscle around
Speaker 1: the pension. Um. But again I'm not an expert on
Speaker 1: any of that. I mean i'd say, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: you need rest, and you need your rest more as
Speaker 1: you get older. You know, get a good eight hours
Speaker 1: of sleep. You want to eat a good meal after
Speaker 1: you exercise. I don't think that special operations itself necessarily,
Speaker 1: at least back in my day, didn't necessarily do or
Speaker 1: even care about the rest portion. It was just go,
Speaker 1: go go. All that stuff is important, I know. I think, um,
Speaker 1: yoga and it's spoken of before. I think helps a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Massage UM, like deep tissue massage. It's
Speaker 1: really good for you. Yeah, for sure. UM. And I've
Speaker 1: heard Brandon speak about this before and I do agree
Speaker 1: with it. Um. He's talked about how, you know, guys
Speaker 1: talk about you know, waking up very early and stuff,
Speaker 1: and Brandon has had the opposite philosophy where he and
Speaker 1: he talked about this from his military days, that sleep
Speaker 1: as a weapon, and you know, having a good amount
Speaker 1: of sleep is important. It really. I mean, I would say,
Speaker 1: you're more just in anything in life, You're gonna be
Speaker 1: a better asset if you have a good night's sleep,
Speaker 1: then if you're I mean that there's a reason sleep
Speaker 1: deprivation is used to kind of funk with your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like this whole like General mc
Speaker 1: crystal thing or no, it's it's Admiral mcbraven like up early,
Speaker 1: make your bed like okay, dude, Thanks, Um, thanks for
Speaker 1: the tips. All right. This one is from I believe
Speaker 1: it's pronounced Orge, but I always say that it could
Speaker 1: be George because my friend Um, the lead singer of
Speaker 1: former band Doomsday Morning, who I love ridiculously heavy Queens
Speaker 1: New York band, smells at j R J O R
Speaker 1: G E and he pronounces it George, So could be Jorge.
Speaker 1: Could be George. Uh and he's written us before, so
Speaker 1: Jorge torres Hey soft Rep been loving the show lately.
Speaker 1: My question is for Jack, what is your opinion on
Speaker 1: the seventy five Ranger Regiments new Military Intelligence Battalion. I
Speaker 1: think it makes a lot of sense to have it.
Speaker 1: When I got to range your battalion in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: it was really just you had your you know, three
Speaker 1: rifle companies, and you had a headquarters company where you
Speaker 1: could find you know, some staff guys who could find
Speaker 1: the sniper section, the mortar section, and then of course
Speaker 1: there's your normal like battalion staff. We didn't have any
Speaker 1: support structure like we we did everything so like rangers
Speaker 1: would set up there, all their stuff at the range.
Speaker 1: Rangers drove the bus to drive us out to the range.
Speaker 1: I mean, whatever had to be done, rangers did it. UM.
Speaker 1: As the war kicked off and we had to get
Speaker 1: more and more into modern special operations, modern counter terrorism,
Speaker 1: rangers would start getting tasked to do things like technical
Speaker 1: surveillance UM, stuff that we would not have done before.
Speaker 1: So it's very interesting to see how all of that
Speaker 1: kind of rapidly expanded, and by necessity, the range of
Speaker 1: regiments started creating support structures UM sort of like the
Speaker 1: way special Forces groups or Jaysack units have their support structures, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, support battalions and so on. And these units
Speaker 1: are also being expected, like the range of regiment, to
Speaker 1: gather their own intelligence. So we had a UM A
Speaker 1: reconnaissance element called r r D, and then we stood
Speaker 1: up UM battalion level reconnaissance attachments also, who could do
Speaker 1: you know, recon or scouting, you know, like you're going
Speaker 1: ahead of friendly lines to see what enemy positions are. UM.
Speaker 1: Became these sort of like long long inconnaissance missions. But
Speaker 1: what about the gathering of intelligence, be it technical intelligence,
Speaker 1: human intelligence, whatever, whatever it is that that unit needs
Speaker 1: to perform its mission. UM. So I think it makes
Speaker 1: sense to create those structures in house, UM, rather than
Speaker 1: maybe rely on conventional army military intelligence unit that's going
Speaker 1: to be stationed in some far away base and a
Speaker 1: bunch of people you know, you know nothing about and
Speaker 1: they don't know anything about you or your mission. Uh,
Speaker 1: it makes sense to create those kinds of support, you know,
Speaker 1: infrastructures inside the unit itself. So I think it's probably
Speaker 1: a positive development. All right, Well, thanks for that email.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all these emails. UM. This one's from an
Speaker 1: anonymous listener. Question for Jack did you did you experience
Speaker 1: any of the Iraqi energy sector while deployed in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine? Did you have knowledge of the energy broader
Speaker 1: economic policies within the region at the time. Uh? If so,
Speaker 1: what were your experiences? Also? Did you experience any other
Speaker 1: interesting me your economic development programs while in Iraq or Syria?
Speaker 1: I asked these questions as a part of a university
Speaker 1: research project on insurgencies and economics. I appreciate any and
Speaker 1: all insight, guys. Thanks, uh, No, I didn't and I
Speaker 1: may be ignorant to some of the things that were happening,
Speaker 1: you know, in the area of operations I was in,
Speaker 1: but I think the United States really dropped the ball
Speaker 1: when it came to economic projects and economic development and Iraq. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, if we were going to go into Iraq,
Speaker 1: invade that country and try to create some sort of
Speaker 1: democracy there, I mean, we should have had like a
Speaker 1: whole martial plan in place to like go in there
Speaker 1: and start developing their infrastructure, developing their economy, building up
Speaker 1: the institutions of government. And that would have been a
Speaker 1: long term project. But look, if this is what you
Speaker 1: want to do, you gotta do it right otherwise you
Speaker 1: do it half asked. And we all saw what happened there. Um.
Speaker 1: So I did not have really too much exposure to
Speaker 1: any kind of like oil infrastructure. UM. I know they
Speaker 1: were building like some underground oil pipelines or they were
Speaker 1: there were things that were in the process of being built,
Speaker 1: but I didn't really have any involvement in that. When
Speaker 1: I was in Syria in two fourteen. It was very
Speaker 1: interesting to see Um. There was oil infrastructure there. There
Speaker 1: was The first place I stayed in Syria was actually
Speaker 1: an abandoned UH Chinese owned oil company building. It was
Speaker 1: actually on top of a hill at this point of
Speaker 1: the base. The Curds called that base uh Karacco, I believe, um,
Speaker 1: but it was a Chinese oil company that had owned
Speaker 1: it previously. And if you travel around northern Syria that
Speaker 1: there were the area the Curds called Rejava, there's these
Speaker 1: like pump jacks all over the place. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: oil just kind of like bubbles up out of out
Speaker 1: of the ground in some places over there. And then
Speaker 1: I also saw the rail lines over there in Rejava,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because those rail lines were part of
Speaker 1: like a British colonial uh uh project and then it
Speaker 1: became an Iraqi project to build a rail line from
Speaker 1: the port of Bostra down in the Persian Gulf all
Speaker 1: the way through Iraq up into Syria and UH. And
Speaker 1: I believe those rail lines were supposed to go although
Speaker 1: clear into Europe. UM or was it was it British
Speaker 1: or was it a was a German? It might have
Speaker 1: been the Germans that initially built that rail line. But
Speaker 1: I wrote an article about this very subject. If you
Speaker 1: go and um and you look up on news rep
Speaker 1: there's an article I wrote called Riding the Iraqi Railroad.
Speaker 1: And I spoke with an American military officer who this
Speaker 1: is one economic and you know, uh, infrastructure development project
Speaker 1: that the Army did work on, but not where I was.
Speaker 1: This was further down south where um u s Army
Speaker 1: Railroads came in and started trying to get the Iraqi
Speaker 1: rail up on its feet, and they did some pretty
Speaker 1: phenomenal things to get it up and running again. And UM,
Speaker 1: it's a shame that more wasn't done. All right, Well
Speaker 1: that answers that as as far as at least your experience. Um.
Speaker 1: This one is from NED. How do Q? And a
Speaker 1: question the quote industry in the last fifteen years has
Speaker 1: exploded in response to ongoing conflicts, gear companies, weapon manufacturers,
Speaker 1: related tactical supplies. Since the number of soldiers seeing deployments
Speaker 1: is dwindling, how is the industry reacting what we see
Speaker 1: a fall and consolidation. Yeah, it's a good question. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends what you mean by tactical companies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I feel like there's no shortage of like the
Speaker 1: air soft type of guys who are into that same
Speaker 1: type of thing. But but that's not like the defense industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, when the War on Terror kicked off,
Speaker 1: there's like a plethora of companies just creating like tactical
Speaker 1: pests and molly gear and new kinds of slings, and
Speaker 1: you know, you go to the shot show and every
Speaker 1: year it's like a new kind of sling, a new
Speaker 1: kind of widget you can stick on the side of
Speaker 1: your gun. And only a small percentage of those guys
Speaker 1: are active duty or special operations. A lot of them
Speaker 1: are just gun enthusiasts or or air soft people, honestly,
Speaker 1: And maybe that's where as the actual combat deployments dwindle.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's where that industry is heading. It's more into
Speaker 1: air soft and more to gun enthusiasts who want quote
Speaker 1: unquote tactical gear. Um, dude, I can tell you this.
Speaker 1: Ever since the idea of a bump stock band, I'm
Speaker 1: on the because we're going to shot show, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: on so many lists of gun manufacturers, and every day
Speaker 1: it's like, get your bump stock before these are banned.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's been a big marketing UM tactic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you register for the Shot Show, f y I
Speaker 1: they sent you fucking tons of They sell your email
Speaker 1: address to everyone, and you just get shiploads of emails
Speaker 1: from every manufacturer under the sun. UM. But it certainly
Speaker 1: hasn't the whole idea of a bump stock band. It
Speaker 1: hasn't done anything but helped sell I mean, Obama was
Speaker 1: the best thing to happen for you know, gun enthusiasts
Speaker 1: and for for weapons manufacturers. Obama was awesome. He did
Speaker 1: so much for them. He should they They're like n
Speaker 1: Ray should give him an award. I remember when I
Speaker 1: was at the Shot Show one year and I was
Speaker 1: talking to different manufacturers and like big name gun companies
Speaker 1: and they were all back ordered by like six months
Speaker 1: or more. UM. I was sitting down having lunch with
Speaker 1: a UM, a sales rep for UH company that makes
Speaker 1: rifle scopes, one of the major companies, and he was like,
Speaker 1: we're back ordered like twenty five months. He's like, people
Speaker 1: are just panic buying everything. So, I mean, Obama was
Speaker 1: fucking awesome for the gun industry. And I think in
Speaker 1: New York, UM, where I live on Long Island, because
Speaker 1: at least you could still own some things on Long
Speaker 1: Island and upstate New York. Um. Once Cuomo passed that
Speaker 1: a R fifteen thing, people were, you know, going out
Speaker 1: of their mind to buy any ran but which apparently
Speaker 1: you might know this better than me, you still can,
Speaker 1: but it's modified, I believe. I'm not sure what the
Speaker 1: current laws are in in New York State, but I
Speaker 1: think didn't they pass some sort of magazine band high
Speaker 1: capacity magazines. That's what I think it is. But and
Speaker 1: I think you could still own an R fifteen. It's
Speaker 1: slightly different. I'm not a gun enthusiast. I don't know enough,
Speaker 1: but I just know that after Sandy Hook, we changed
Speaker 1: the gun laws and people were panicked buying everything. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't think the I mean, guns aren't
Speaker 1: going away. Tactical, the tactical industry, it's not going away.
Speaker 1: And when you go to shot show you can see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the unending appetite for that's that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, the firearms and all the associated gear. It's overwhelming.
Speaker 1: I mean it's overwhelming and it's bottomless. It's seeing Yeah. Alright, Um.
Speaker 1: This one is from marcario Hey in What's up. My
Speaker 1: name is Marcario. I'm twenty four years old and I've
Speaker 1: been listening to the show about two years now. I've
Speaker 1: been always really interested in enlisting in the military. I've
Speaker 1: been denied by every branch multiple times, and I'm now
Speaker 1: currently trying to get a suitability review for moral waivers
Speaker 1: for a couple of misdemeanors I've committed when aged out
Speaker 1: of the systems and turned eighteen. Over the years, I've
Speaker 1: become a wild land firefighter in southern California, but I
Speaker 1: know I can do more. Uh Ian was wondering if
Speaker 1: you or Jack know anything about the Navajo code talkers
Speaker 1: that fought in the Pacific. My great grandfather and his
Speaker 1: younger brother were both sent to the Pacific as Navajo
Speaker 1: code talkers and have received silver and gold medals. My
Speaker 1: grandfather's brother was wounded by on Iwajima and with the
Speaker 1: same platoon that rose the flag on the Sarabacchi. He's
Speaker 1: in one of the famous photos. So so that family
Speaker 1: history is some thing that always motivated me to serve. Shoot.
Speaker 1: I even consider the French foreign legion, but you guys
Speaker 1: have a good one. I mean, I'm I'm familiar with
Speaker 1: you know what the Navajo code talkers were. I mean
Speaker 1: they were you know, deployed to the Pacific because the
Speaker 1: Japanese could not understand their language, so it was useful
Speaker 1: for you know, essentially talking and cipher. Um. But I'm
Speaker 1: not like, uh, well read on the subject. So yeah.
Speaker 1: And and also him being denied multiple times by every
Speaker 1: branch that isn't very hopeful. Yeah, I mean I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do with that. I mean, maybe contact
Speaker 1: an attorney and see if somebody who specializes in that
Speaker 1: kind of thing you can walk you through it. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean that does kind of suck though. If you
Speaker 1: did some you know, misdemeanors in your past and and
Speaker 1: you've changed, people are entitled to you know, second chance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Um, all right, this is from this
Speaker 1: is actually from us Chris or a K. C. J.
Speaker 1: Ramone who's gonna be on very soon. He sent a
Speaker 1: couple of questions, it's so cool to me and then never, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it fails to you know, just be pretty
Speaker 1: awesome me that a former member or really one of
Speaker 1: the you know, last members of their moans before they
Speaker 1: retired as a listener of the show. Uh, and a
Speaker 1: marine and yeah, overall, great guy, I'm excited having back on.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time. So anyway, he writes, this
Speaker 1: won't be a popular one, but I'm not sure I've
Speaker 1: ever heard it asked, is it possible we are backing
Speaker 1: the wrong horse in the Middle East? Iran is by
Speaker 1: far the more modern country in that part of the world.
Speaker 1: Post nine eleven, there were demonstrations in the streets there
Speaker 1: in support of America, whereas the terrorists who pulled off
Speaker 1: nine eleven came from Saudi Arabia. I am not forgetting
Speaker 1: about the hostage situation in the seventies. I'm old enough
Speaker 1: to remember it. But many countries have committed such acts
Speaker 1: against us in the past. We are now friends with them,
Speaker 1: Uh that we were now friends with. If we're trying
Speaker 1: to make nice with North Korea because they are nuclear
Speaker 1: and for no other reason, why not try with Iran? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a very i think, astute question, and one that
Speaker 1: is not asked nearly enough. Um Iran is treated as
Speaker 1: a special case. Right, Something's got to be done about Iran.
Speaker 1: People freak out at the notion that we might negotiate
Speaker 1: with Iran. You can't negotiate with Iran? Why not, Like
Speaker 1: Ron Paul said, you know, one of the more coaching
Speaker 1: things he said during the presidential debate, He's like, we
Speaker 1: negotiated with the Soviet Union, Like why would we not
Speaker 1: negotiate with Iran? Like it doesn't make sense. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of boogeyman type stuff they always mentioned, including
Speaker 1: like Akmadinijad's his his uh stuff that he said about
Speaker 1: gay people and denial of the Holocaust. But he's not
Speaker 1: running the country. And the whole thing that Iran is
Speaker 1: not a rational actor, that's nonsense. They're they're a rational state. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't get to where they are, and you don't
Speaker 1: you know, you sure ship don't develop nuclear weapons, which
Speaker 1: is uh, which they haven't, but they've been attempting to
Speaker 1: until they stopped after the agreement. Um, you don't. You
Speaker 1: don't embark on scientific endeavors like that as an irrational
Speaker 1: you know, Islamic fundamentalist That doesn't really work. Like imagine
Speaker 1: Ice is trying to build a nuclear bomb from scratch,
Speaker 1: Like do you see that happening? You know, not really?
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, you're right, it's a boogeyman um when
Speaker 1: they're and not always, but in some ways, Iran could
Speaker 1: be a natural ally of the United States, and I
Speaker 1: think it would take work to get there. I think
Speaker 1: that there would have to be some change in the
Speaker 1: Iranian government for sure. UM. And I've actually lost a
Speaker 1: few friends for saying that alienated some people. UM. You
Speaker 1: can even look at statements made by uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the former director of Massad, the gon uh. He he
Speaker 1: said himself, Yeah, Iran is is a rational actor. They're
Speaker 1: a rational state. They're following their own self interests. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I mean from an Israeli perspective,
Speaker 1: it's it's more challenging because developed weapons they'll be used
Speaker 1: on that. Well, there's that, yes, um. But it's also
Speaker 1: Iran has spent decades and decades demonizing Israel, and that
Speaker 1: has been the government source of legitimacy. Is anytime things
Speaker 1: get rough for the for Iran, blame Israel, blame America. UM.
Speaker 1: So I don't think the government, the current government of
Speaker 1: Iran could ever reconcile with Israel. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: I don't think that's possible unless something's drastically change or
Speaker 1: to be to be fair, actually, the current government of Israel,
Speaker 1: the current Government of Israel, UH in particular net and Yeah,
Speaker 1: who's very hardline right when and he is basically torpedoed
Speaker 1: any chance at the two states solution makes things more difficult. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the other thing that I think uh c J was
Speaker 1: bringing up um in passing is well, we're negotiating with
Speaker 1: North Korea. Right, that's a good point. Now here's a
Speaker 1: larger point I believe is we are trying to counter
Speaker 1: right now the countries that are adversarial towards the United States,
Speaker 1: the big ones UH. First, China, huge, huge existential threat
Speaker 1: to the United States. Somewhere after that Russia. Okay, Russia's
Speaker 1: a fucking problem. Um, they're not going to become the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union again, They're not that big a problem, but
Speaker 1: still a problem. After somewhere after Russia, we got Iran,
Speaker 1: a regional power in the Middle East and a thorn
Speaker 1: in our side. In the Pacific, we got North Korea,
Speaker 1: another thorn in our side and and not a problem
Speaker 1: to be underestimated. And then somewhere after that we have
Speaker 1: international terrorism. So the problem here is we can't fight
Speaker 1: all of these threats at the same time. What we
Speaker 1: have to do is balance some of them. Against the others.
Speaker 1: So we have to find diplomatic or economic solutions to
Speaker 1: resolve some of these problems. Ally with some of these countries,
Speaker 1: maybe not like allies, like we're allied with the Brits. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not going to be that close, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: ally on some issues to counter some of the bigger threats.
Speaker 1: In other words, cooperate with Russia on some issues to
Speaker 1: counter China. Uh, maybe we're gonna work with Iran to
Speaker 1: counter Russia. Maybe we're gonna work with Russia to counter
Speaker 1: North Korea. I don't know how those how that would
Speaker 1: all shake out. That's all very complicated and strategic in UM.
Speaker 1: The devil is very much in the details and how
Speaker 1: those arrangements come about. But I mean, you can even
Speaker 1: see UM in situations with countries like Turkey where we
Speaker 1: are allied on some issues, working together on something, but
Speaker 1: we're also trying to undermine each other on other issues.
Speaker 1: And those sorts of weird relationships are pretty common in
Speaker 1: international politics and could be and are common in dealing
Speaker 1: with great powers as well. So I think trying to
Speaker 1: fight all of these mul dunes at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's just not gonna work. So we have to find
Speaker 1: ways to ally with them on some issues to counter
Speaker 1: other players on other issues. It seems like between the
Speaker 1: Obama um deal with the UH, the the Obama deal
Speaker 1: with they were on the nuclear deal and Trump repeatedly
Speaker 1: meeting with Kim Jong un, and let's be honest, praising
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un. It's a pretty big departure from the bushyears.
Speaker 1: If we don't negotiate with terrorists like period, end of story. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's what I was explaining the other day. I mean,
Speaker 1: any of our presidents could have met with the Kim
Speaker 1: family regime, but chose not to because we didn't want
Speaker 1: to give them legitimacy. UM. Trump is a different guy.
Speaker 1: He's looking for um to put a feather in his hat.
Speaker 1: He's looking to do things that other presidents weren't willing
Speaker 1: to do to see if he can um create a
Speaker 1: legacy for himself. UM. And so whether whether that was
Speaker 1: right or not for him to meet with Kim Jong
Speaker 1: on um is debatable. I do think President Trump made
Speaker 1: the right decisions and walking away in Hanoi, um because
Speaker 1: Kim was just gonna jerk him around the I will
Speaker 1: say what he's made the wrong decision on objectively, is
Speaker 1: just his rhetoric about Kim Jong un, especially saying that
Speaker 1: he believes Kim Jong un when he says, um otto
Speaker 1: warm beer, Uh, you know what went down and the
Speaker 1: way he was tortured and the way he came back.
Speaker 1: He's like he didn't have any knowledge of it, and
Speaker 1: I believe him. I take his word. That's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: It's pretty ridiculous. And Korea is not gonna you know,
Speaker 1: North Korea is not gonna de nuclear rise, Like it's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. Um. And I think maybe that's what
Speaker 1: Trump came to realize in Hanoi. Yeah. But and it's
Speaker 1: just also when he says my dear friend Kim jong un,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a very big departure. It's weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird. Um. This is from Rob Michigan Jack. It's
Speaker 1: been rumored for a while that the US has toyed
Speaker 1: with the idea of coming to some form of ceasefire
Speaker 1: with the Taliban, including having already sent a peace envoy
Speaker 1: to meet with the Taliban leadership. What would such a
Speaker 1: ceasefire look like in your opinion, How do you believe
Speaker 1: such an agreement would be viewed politically and strategically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another huge topic. UM. This is definitely something that we're
Speaker 1: trying to negotiate right now. UM goes back to what
Speaker 1: I said before. Trump is looking to put a feather
Speaker 1: in his hat um for re election in UM. And
Speaker 1: so you know, he was gonna pull the troops out
Speaker 1: of Syria, then we're gonna pull the troops out of
Speaker 1: South Korea. Then we're gonna or then we're gonna pull
Speaker 1: the troops out of Afghanistan. You can see he's like
Speaker 1: kind of feeling things out in different directions to see
Speaker 1: what's possible, what he may be able to do UM
Speaker 1: relatively quickly. UM and a ceasefire or some sort of
Speaker 1: negotiated settlement with the Taliban. I don't think anyone really
Speaker 1: knows how that's gonna shake out yet. UM. I think
Speaker 1: probably the intent of the idea behind it is that
Speaker 1: we de escalate the conflict with the Taliban and the
Speaker 1: quote unquote legitimate government of Afghanistan enters into some sort
Speaker 1: of power sharing agreement with the Taliban. You know what,
Speaker 1: and what does that look like? Maybe it's the Taliban
Speaker 1: has X number of seats in the government. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and nobody knows that yet. Um. But
Speaker 1: I think it would probably involve some form of power sharing. Um.
Speaker 1: But again, the devil is in the details, and who
Speaker 1: knows how that's gonna work out. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: going to be viewed favorably by the US military for sure, um,
Speaker 1: because we've spent so long fighting those guys. Uh, and
Speaker 1: those kind of compromises are just hard pills to swallow.
Speaker 1: The Taliban they are they are from what I've been told.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're pretty exhausted and tired, like they're ready
Speaker 1: for this to end. Um. But they're also on a
Speaker 1: push to get the best deal that they can right
Speaker 1: before we leave. So I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: remains to be seen. All right. Well, this is from
Speaker 1: EDWARDO heard the oblique reference to this on the recent episode.
Speaker 1: To bring it down to two questions. As a regular
Speaker 1: commuter on mass transit, what steps can I take to
Speaker 1: improve my survivability during a worst case scenario? And are
Speaker 1: there any companies selling ballistic inserts or shields that I
Speaker 1: can purchase for a messenger bag or backpack? Thanks and
Speaker 1: keep up the good work. I'm gonna answer question to
Speaker 1: first Great Club dot us. Go to the store and
Speaker 1: we have a custom made ballistic insert by cry Precision
Speaker 1: made for Create Club that you can now get separately
Speaker 1: on there if you go to the store tab on
Speaker 1: Create Club dot Us. So that's your best bet. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's really awesome. It's lightweight. Uh. That's probably one
Speaker 1: of our best products ever with Great Clubs. So you
Speaker 1: don't even have to subscribe. You can get it right
Speaker 1: through there. Question one. You know, it's funny. We've addressed
Speaker 1: this a bunch of times on the podcast with um
Speaker 1: with sorry, I'm looking right in front of me Quinn
Speaker 1: Emerson looking at there's drawing a blank here at hundred
Speaker 1: Deadly Skills poster. But I don't know if you have
Speaker 1: any further stuff you can get into with that, with
Speaker 1: how to keep yourself safe and well yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: just to keep it down to earth. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think you're gonna bust out like some Kung Fus
Speaker 1: stars and kill a suicide bomber. But um, I would
Speaker 1: I would look at taking a class in basic first
Speaker 1: aid and some basic like trauma medicine, UM, how to
Speaker 1: use a tourniquet, how to use bandages, UM, things like that,
Speaker 1: and carry a bleeder kit with you that has a tourniquet,
Speaker 1: the bandages, um, just that basic stuff that can save
Speaker 1: your life for save someone else's life and an emergency
Speaker 1: like that. When Quinn's been on the podcast, he's he's
Speaker 1: said a bunch of things about situational awareness, like, you know,
Speaker 1: when when you get somewhere, just in any scenario, look
Speaker 1: at where the nearest exits are, you know, stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and also look for, um, something that will stop a
Speaker 1: bowl at a brick wall, things like that. Just just
Speaker 1: be situationally aware of where these things are in case
Speaker 1: something we're to ever happen. Yeah, I think, uh no,
Speaker 1: that's true. Um. Something interesting thing that Pet McNamara said too,
Speaker 1: is like being being aware of situationally aware. When you
Speaker 1: look at somebody, what you're doing is depriving them of
Speaker 1: their greatest weapon immediately, which is surprised, right. So you
Speaker 1: see them and you're able to you know, size them
Speaker 1: up and what they're doing or what they're not doing.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I mean, I I have mixed
Speaker 1: feelings about it. I think, you know, all this stuff
Speaker 1: is really good, but at the same time, it does
Speaker 1: reach a point where I think we're like we're fantasizing
Speaker 1: about being like a Hollywood film, Like like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: fucking I know a lot of people like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna. I'm gonna, you know, draw my concealed carry
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven and shoot all bar in the head with
Speaker 1: a controlled pair, you know, and all this kind of ship.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it's funny. I remember when I
Speaker 1: worked at Tower Records. Um, there was this kid who
Speaker 1: worked with me, Tom, who later actually became a police officer.
Speaker 1: And a guy came in who was armed, uh and
Speaker 1: was gonna rob Tower Records. And my friend Tom, Yeah,
Speaker 1: my friend Tom brought him to the basement, brought him
Speaker 1: the safe, gave him what he wanted, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Like I said, Tom later became a cop. And I
Speaker 1: remember this other kid who worked at Tower Records set
Speaker 1: to him. He was like, man, it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: too bad whatever that I wasn't the guy on duty
Speaker 1: that night. He goes. Because my instinct is if someone
Speaker 1: points a gun to me, to just grab it from them.
Speaker 1: It's like all right, okay, bro, yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's like all for what to save the money from
Speaker 1: the Tower Records for what I mean, the money is
Speaker 1: probably ensured, right, I don't remember to assume. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no reason why you know, that guy should have
Speaker 1: died over over however much money was down there? I
Speaker 1: mean whatever? But or what about what about this quote
Speaker 1: on our mass pad, this famous General Madnis quote? Be polite,
Speaker 1: be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet. Man,
Speaker 1: it's like the memes, and that's why I bought this.
Speaker 1: I I like it. I like it too, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially for a professional soldier. I think it's important. But
Speaker 1: I mean the memes, man, the memes are killing me. Yea,
Speaker 1: I drank coffee stronger than you're feeling, Snowflake. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Like how much jerking off while looking in the mirror
Speaker 1: can we possibly do? Like? Come on, guys, all right?
Speaker 1: This one is from Stanton Sharp. Hello, I love your show.
Speaker 1: Please do an episode in Venezuela. Okay, I'll have to
Speaker 1: find somebody who knows Venezuela. Um, there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of fucking I feel like misinformation and disinformation about Venezuela.
Speaker 1: But maybe we can find somebody who actually specializes in
Speaker 1: that area and could speak to it. Yeah, well, we'll
Speaker 1: reach out if we do. Um. This one's from Thomas R. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: love the show. Been listening since Ian's first show, Thank
Speaker 1: you man. I feel like my first show I got
Speaker 1: flamed man because they hated you, Ian Grot. I was
Speaker 1: just thrown to the wolves. Though it wasn't like there
Speaker 1: was any you know, um like procedure of here's what
Speaker 1: you do. It was just Brandon was like, cool, you're
Speaker 1: you're on board, like to figure this out, and I
Speaker 1: was like, fuck, you know, I don't even know that
Speaker 1: much about this topic. So uh, you know, because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not like I became friends with you guys, but
Speaker 1: I'm not someone who is I never pretend to be
Speaker 1: like extremely knowledgeable about special operations so the military so
Speaker 1: very early and you just need that should be on
Speaker 1: your resume a bullet point extremely knowledgeable about special operations.
Speaker 1: So so early on, I got a bunch of the
Speaker 1: terminology and stuff like that wrong, and they were like,
Speaker 1: who is this guy? But I think I got They're
Speaker 1: called the unit. I think I got the hang of things,
Speaker 1: uh you know, after a while. But those early episodes
Speaker 1: were rough. I'll admit um alright. So he also writes,
Speaker 1: my question is for Jack, What in the hell is
Speaker 1: going on between Pakistan and India? Why is no one
Speaker 1: covering it either just because this goes on every ten
Speaker 1: years or so, Uh, Thomas are yeah, okay. So another
Speaker 1: very complicated topic involves the disputed region of Kashmir or
Speaker 1: Jammu and Kashmir, which, as I recall, all, the traces
Speaker 1: back to the partitioning of British India and I believe
Speaker 1: it was and the King of Kashmir uh declared himself
Speaker 1: to be part of India. And this caused a huge
Speaker 1: pissing contest with Pakistan because it was the this was
Speaker 1: before Bangladesh separated off from Pakistan. It was basically, you know,
Speaker 1: the British envisioned it as like Muslim India, right, So
Speaker 1: now it's a big pissing contest over this territory. And
Speaker 1: then by the nineteen fifties you get into the Sino
Speaker 1: Indian War um and the Chinese claims some territory, which
Speaker 1: some of it they still have, as I recall um.
Speaker 1: So then you have the U n coming in and
Speaker 1: establishing the line of control the l OC in Kashmir
Speaker 1: to try to separate India and Pakistan from going at
Speaker 1: it like a bunch of like a couple of junkyard dogs. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: India and Pakistan have long, long been in the game
Speaker 1: of sponsoring proxies to go and kill each other. So
Speaker 1: they'll they'll sponsor these like proxy terrorist forces to go
Speaker 1: and terrorize each other. And uh, this has been going
Speaker 1: on for a long time and it's very interesting. UM.
Speaker 1: If you read the books UM written by retired UM,
Speaker 1: retired Indian intelligence professionals. They a lot of them writing
Speaker 1: in English, UH, and so you can go and read
Speaker 1: their books and they're very fascinating to read. And just
Speaker 1: the like cat and mouse games that these intelligence services UM.
Speaker 1: The the the Indian services are called r A W
Speaker 1: and IB UM the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and
Speaker 1: Analysis Wing UM. And then of course the Pakistani's have
Speaker 1: UM I S I and these guys just go at it,
Speaker 1: like I said, like junkyard dogs. Like it's crazy. UM.
Speaker 1: And they're very good at waging proxy warfare against one another.
Speaker 1: And this Uh. In you had the Cargil conflict, right,
Speaker 1: There have been a number of conflicts over Kashmir and
Speaker 1: ongoing conflicts. It never really ends. But Cargill popped off
Speaker 1: and it was a high altitude battle up in the mountains. Um.
Speaker 1: There are Indian mountaineers that did like rope installations and
Speaker 1: they had soldiers like scaling up cliffs and stuff um
Speaker 1: to to maneuver do these bold maneuvers on Pakistani military positions. UM,
Speaker 1: it's very it's a really interesting conflict to study. And
Speaker 1: like two thirds of the force got they went hypoxic,
Speaker 1: they had altitude sickness. Like it's just a fascinating case study.
Speaker 1: Also because these are two nuclear powers entering into a
Speaker 1: straight up shooting war with one another, and this has
Speaker 1: never happened before, and no one knows what what's the
Speaker 1: what is this going to lead to? Like is it
Speaker 1: possible for two nuclear powers to be at war with
Speaker 1: each other without going nuclear, without launching nuclear weapons? And
Speaker 1: in this case it was the latest spat um involves
Speaker 1: one of the um uh j e m was the
Speaker 1: name of the group, and they did a suicide attack
Speaker 1: in Kashmir and killed a bunch of like Indian soldiers. UM,
Speaker 1: so the Indians retaliated, didn't airstrike inside Pakistan against this group.
Speaker 1: The Pakistani's retaliated UM and they blew up something um
Speaker 1: an installation on the Indian side. Of the border. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then the Indians fum, they had a pilot get shot
Speaker 1: down over Pakistani air base. The pilot, I guess he
Speaker 1: ejected and the Pakistani's captured him and I think they
Speaker 1: have since released him back to Indian custody. But so
Speaker 1: this is the latest tip for tat between India and Pakistan. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's just one of these, one of these you know,
Speaker 1: frozen conflicts around the world that doesn't seem to end
Speaker 1: and it and it is taking place just below the
Speaker 1: nuclear threshold, and I think probably I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: wants to see it go nuclear. Both sides are probably
Speaker 1: like carefully trying to calibrate their responses so that you know,
Speaker 1: we don't look like a bunch of pussies, like we'll retaliate,
Speaker 1: like if you want to fight us, we'll fight you.
Speaker 1: But they also don't want it to go above the
Speaker 1: nuclear threshold where someone's pressing the big red button. And
Speaker 1: the current President of of India, Moodi, has this um stronger,
Speaker 1: more robut you know, muscular foreign policy. UM. He's more
Speaker 1: of a sort of Indian nationalist and he definitely doesn't
Speaker 1: want to come across this looking weak. So in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: That's what's happening there, um and where it goes? Uh,
Speaker 1: who knows. It's it's not gonna end anytime soon though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see it's it's an ongoing thing and it sounds
Speaker 1: like people like to see more articles on that. Possibly, um,
Speaker 1: maybe someone in the future could write something about Uh.
Speaker 1: This one is from Tyler Browning, good Evening, Ian and Jack,
Speaker 1: And by the way, is the University of Kentucky. So
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's cool. We have just an audience from
Speaker 1: all over the place. I'm really excited for the upcoming
Speaker 1: Q and A episode. Some of my favorite content from
Speaker 1: you guys is your impromptu conversations. Yeah, this is very
Speaker 1: much that type of episode. Also, I really enjoyed the
Speaker 1: recent episode with Andrew Polski. I hope you all do
Speaker 1: more like that in the future. That was a good one.
Speaker 1: Reading Jack's recent article on nitro zeus made me realize
Speaker 1: the current coin asymmetrical warfare mission is only one aspect
Speaker 1: of the soft community, and that if we ever enter
Speaker 1: into open conflict with a near peer adversary, that there's
Speaker 1: a million different ways soft units could be utilized. I
Speaker 1: was wondering if Jack could Uh, explore what roles soft
Speaker 1: would play in a campaign against a peer like Russia
Speaker 1: or Iran or even China. I really enjoyed the article
Speaker 1: because it dove into the strategic level of soft. It's
Speaker 1: not always going to be a Rainbow six style d
Speaker 1: A mission. Thanks guys, keep up the great work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so another big question. But I think what what he
Speaker 1: hits at here is interesting is that when we stood
Speaker 1: up these units. UM. You know, when when Delta was
Speaker 1: stood up nineteen seventy seven, Backwidth started standing up the unit.
Speaker 1: It was it was fine. They went through their final validation,
Speaker 1: and I believe it was in nineteen eighty. It was
Speaker 1: just as the Iran hostage crisis was popping off. UM.
Speaker 1: Terrorism was an escalating threat in in nineteen seventies. The
Speaker 1: Pentagon was getting increasingly concerned with it. There are a
Speaker 1: number of things that happened, UM, that came on our
Speaker 1: radar that we were like, holy shit, UM, the holy
Speaker 1: ship moments were UM when G S G nine UM
Speaker 1: rated that UM jet liner down in Mangadishu. UM. I
Speaker 1: think were they were they Palestinian nationalists or were they
Speaker 1: Red Army faction that did that? I can't remember off hand,
Speaker 1: but g s G nine went down there and they
Speaker 1: successfully did an aircraft takedown. UM. Then you had the
Speaker 1: Israelis did the raid on Intebe and in Uganda, which
Speaker 1: is UM led by Yanni net and Yahoo, who was
Speaker 1: BB's brother. You know, Yanni was a legitimate Israeli hero
Speaker 1: UM for what he did and that is just an
Speaker 1: incredible mission to go and read about. But the Pentagon
Speaker 1: saw what what what the Israelis had done and in Debe,
Speaker 1: and they were like, we can't do that, like we
Speaker 1: don't have that capability. And so that was kind of
Speaker 1: like I think the last straw that led to the
Speaker 1: authorization UM to give back with what he wanted, which
Speaker 1: was to create this unit. But what had been happening
Speaker 1: in parallel behind the scenes, was that Beckwith was envisioning
Speaker 1: a unit that was modeled on the British sas that,
Speaker 1: unlike the Green Berets, unlike special forces that would act
Speaker 1: as trainers and advisors, a force that could do more
Speaker 1: technical missions, that could do more complicated tasks and actually
Speaker 1: be hands on. I think he as he said, they
Speaker 1: would be doers, not trainers. People who could wear disguises,
Speaker 1: who could pick locks, who could do all sorts of
Speaker 1: interesting clandestine things. Um and I always wanted to do
Speaker 1: a Foyer request and try to get Charlie Beckwith's um
Speaker 1: thesis paper that he wrote when he went to the
Speaker 1: War College, because he wrote it about this topic. But
Speaker 1: at the time, terrorism, yes, was an escalating threat. But
Speaker 1: we were standing up these capabilities not because anyone really
Speaker 1: gave a ship about a bunch of Arab terrorists, but
Speaker 1: rather because we were locked into a cold war that
Speaker 1: could go hot with the Soviet Union. If that war
Speaker 1: ever went hot with the Soviets and they came, you know,
Speaker 1: rushing through the folded gap and took over Germany and
Speaker 1: Berlin and everything else, and that that war cooked off,
Speaker 1: would there be American citizens and American soldiers held in
Speaker 1: pow camps behind enemy lines, which brings us to um.
Speaker 1: This scenario would be reminiscent of the Sunte raid right
Speaker 1: in Vietnam where and Backwidth's premise when he created the
Speaker 1: unit was that instead of training, selecting and training and
Speaker 1: then rehearsing for that operation like they did with Sunte,
Speaker 1: the selecting and training would already be done. You just
Speaker 1: do the rehearsals. You have all the men they're ready
Speaker 1: to go. You just rehearse for that specific mission and
Speaker 1: then execute it. So in the event that that war
Speaker 1: went hot with the Soviet Union, we would have a
Speaker 1: force ready to execute pow rescue missions. We would also
Speaker 1: have a force that could be prepared to infiltrate behind
Speaker 1: enemy lines and conduct acts of sabotage. Um and these
Speaker 1: are definitely the types of missions that um jaysack units
Speaker 1: could conduct. Um so counter terrorism and in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways is really sort of like the non classified
Speaker 1: mission that these units have. The more classified operation is
Speaker 1: the sort of stuff that they would do against pure
Speaker 1: or what what the the political science e term is
Speaker 1: pure adversaries or mere pure adversaries, right, And that nitro
Speaker 1: Zeus article I wrote talks a bit about that and
Speaker 1: about the the countering w m D mission that they
Speaker 1: could execute. But there are a whole slew of different
Speaker 1: tasks that units like this could execute if we really
Speaker 1: went into a no ship war with a serious adversary.
Speaker 1: Um and, uh So, I hope that answer begins to
Speaker 1: answer that question. Yeah, this is from anonymous ian. We
Speaker 1: hear a ton about Jack's background, but outside of serious
Speaker 1: what is yours? Uh? You want me to answer that
Speaker 1: first and then get to these other questions. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: give you a little break here because you've you've expanded
Speaker 1: on a lot of topics here, and I'll go deep
Speaker 1: into my background. Um, So I went to high school
Speaker 1: and you know guy in Long Island graduating high school.
Speaker 1: I honestly had like no interest in going to college.
Speaker 1: Was one of those things like my mom always wanted
Speaker 1: me to go to college because she didn't graduate college.
Speaker 1: Although she's been extremely successful, but it's been like a
Speaker 1: big thing for her. So I enrolled in Temple University
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, and I had no idea what the funk
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. So I think I enrolled for business.
Speaker 1: There was really no radio program. I didn't know you
Speaker 1: went to school in Philly for one year, so there
Speaker 1: was Ah. I enrolled for business and yeah, there wasn't
Speaker 1: really a radio program. They were trying to start a
Speaker 1: radio program, and I like got signed up, but it
Speaker 1: was just like the would have a meeting every two
Speaker 1: weeks about like launching this you know, radio station didn't exist,
Speaker 1: but it was like it was really nothing. Nothing really
Speaker 1: ever happened. So anyway, it was a good time. But uh,
Speaker 1: I kind of got over like living away from home,
Speaker 1: being away from my good friends back home. I also
Speaker 1: had no idea what the hell I wanted to do
Speaker 1: in college, and I was doing like my music on
Speaker 1: the side. Like for those who don't know, which is
Speaker 1: most of this audience, Like I've been involved in music,
Speaker 1: like particularly hip hop rapping, uh for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's been something I've been interested in, like pretty
Speaker 1: much my whole wife. I was listening to U Tang
Speaker 1: Clan in Tupac and all that stuff, like while those
Speaker 1: guys were still alive. Like I was very young at
Speaker 1: the time, but I've always been into hip hop, just
Speaker 1: like I've always been into metal, And I think I'm
Speaker 1: like a child of that whole rap metal era of
Speaker 1: like Corn Olympiscuit, Lincoln Park, all that stuff. Uh. Like
Speaker 1: that I was young when all that was birthed. Basically
Speaker 1: was in high school when that stuff came around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was probably like middle school because a few
Speaker 1: years younger. Did you have the red hat like Fred Durst?
Speaker 1: I probably haven't had many acts. I probably did at
Speaker 1: some point. I by the way, I saw that show
Speaker 1: that Limpiscuit did at the Troubador. My friend Frankie Palmary
Speaker 1: from him You're got to go there, which would have
Speaker 1: been really cool to see him in such a small venue.
Speaker 1: I would totally go to that. Um. But anyway, like
Speaker 1: I was into doing my music and I remember calling
Speaker 1: my mom and being like, I'm gonna move back home
Speaker 1: and I just want to kind of pursue my music.
Speaker 1: And my mom was like not having it. She was like,
Speaker 1: I've made a huge deal that I have to go
Speaker 1: to college. Um. So I was like, all right. I
Speaker 1: decided to go to Hopster because it was by my house,
Speaker 1: and luckily for me, this really wasn't why I went there.
Speaker 1: But Hofster had an amazing radio program, like became number
Speaker 1: one uh college radio station Princeton Review I think shortly
Speaker 1: after I left, maybe a year after I left. Also
Speaker 1: became the flagship station in the New York Islanders after
Speaker 1: I left. So like a lot of big things. But
Speaker 1: I decided to go to Hotster a while pursuing my
Speaker 1: music stuff, and a lot of the guys I wrapped
Speaker 1: with ended up becoming like really big to be honest, Um,
Speaker 1: yeah I was. I I hung out with Joe Grere,
Speaker 1: who later became a member of like Free Will, Free
Speaker 1: Will is like huge. Now if any of you guys
Speaker 1: are into that stuff, like tour around the world. They've
Speaker 1: done stuff with Sean Strange who's toured around the world. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd have a song you can even look it up
Speaker 1: called car Chase with Jaden Panesso from Sile or Silo
Speaker 1: was like huge Now. I was at their first show,
Speaker 1: which was a totally different line up opening for Comeback
Speaker 1: Hid and it was like maybe I don't know twenty
Speaker 1: something people there when they played, And now they're like
Speaker 1: playing everywhere. They're like on major labels. I remember the
Speaker 1: last time I saw them, like it was like sixteen
Speaker 1: year old girls in the audience knowing every single line
Speaker 1: to every single song. Holy sh it. Like yeah, And
Speaker 1: it makes me wish I like kept doing music for
Speaker 1: longer because I I don't know, I just the radio
Speaker 1: stuff kind of happened, which I'll get into. Um, but anyway,
Speaker 1: where am I going? Uh yeah, so oh. I was
Speaker 1: also working at Tower Records at the time, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: And here's how I really got into the radio thing.
Speaker 1: And this is just me being completely honest with you guys. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not to like boast about like I guess my
Speaker 1: natural abilities or anything. I remember at Tower Records all
Speaker 1: the time as I would make conversations with people or
Speaker 1: talk to customers, this would happen like on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: People would say you have a really good voice, like
Speaker 1: do you should do something in radio? Like everything you're
Speaker 1: pursuing radio and what happened all the time, And so
Speaker 1: I realized, like, maybe this isn't just like my my
Speaker 1: mom comp It's a little different at this point. So
Speaker 1: because Hofster had a radio program, I began to take
Speaker 1: it a lot more serious. I did their um metal program,
Speaker 1: Aggressive Edge UM and and I got these like really
Speaker 1: loyal listeners. I didn't expect it to be as big
Speaker 1: as it was for me because it was something I
Speaker 1: was just starting with. I remember this guy thick Neck
Speaker 1: who was that's what he went by, was a bouncer
Speaker 1: and he would call my show all the time, and
Speaker 1: I remember he wrote out like people at the station
Speaker 1: were kind of surprised. They were like, eating you're like
Speaker 1: fan mail that was sent to the station for you,
Speaker 1: And he wrote me this whole like handwritten thing about
Speaker 1: being a bouncer with pictures of him. It was kind
Speaker 1: of weird, But the same time, I was like cool
Speaker 1: that I maybe this is gonna become something because it
Speaker 1: was just something I was like doing on the side.
Speaker 1: And then I started doing their news program because I realized, like,
Speaker 1: you get to talk more the way we are rather
Speaker 1: than just introducing songs. And the thing with radio for
Speaker 1: me is that I don't I'm not gonna say the
Speaker 1: first time I was on air it was amazing or anything.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it wasn't great, but you kind of know.
Speaker 1: I think when you just have a natural ability at something,
Speaker 1: and there's people I see that do radio shows and
Speaker 1: people say, you know, it won't be good, and other
Speaker 1: people will say, like I've seen people filling for work
Speaker 1: out for instance, and even Ben's I've heard say, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this person is not good, but I think
Speaker 1: with time they could become good. And I sometimes I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: this person is never gonna be good. And and I
Speaker 1: don't say it to be pessimistic, it's just you kind
Speaker 1: of know when someone has that natural ability and they don't,
Speaker 1: Like I remember Buck Sexton filling in for wlcount is
Speaker 1: first time ever doing radio, Like now he's done, you know,
Speaker 1: probably thousands upon thousands of shows. I was there the
Speaker 1: first time he ever did a three hour radio show,
Speaker 1: and like, is he any Was he anywhere near as
Speaker 1: good as he is now? Absolutely not. But you were
Speaker 1: able to just see this guy has a natural ability
Speaker 1: and he's into it. Yeah to do this, so I
Speaker 1: really um decided to pursue it. I got a internship
Speaker 1: for Fangoria Radio, which was just starting out D Snyder
Speaker 1: hosting legendary Twist and Sister frontman Um and Debbie Rashan
Speaker 1: I and now was my first time it's serious and
Speaker 1: it was like holy sh it, like walking in there
Speaker 1: seeing d Snyder and was like'm gonna I'm gonna work
Speaker 1: with this guy. And uh, I don't think I was
Speaker 1: like a good intern. I think I'll be honest, like
Speaker 1: I think I had like an entitled attitude of like
Speaker 1: I just want to be on air, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: willing to do like the bitch work. And I learned
Speaker 1: I worked with the producer that show, Mike Costell, who
Speaker 1: we really quashed it first, but I realized like it
Speaker 1: was a good thing in the long run that I
Speaker 1: worked with a guy who wasn't going to take shipped
Speaker 1: from me, who was gonna push me to like to
Speaker 1: do a good job and have to do basically bitch
Speaker 1: work that I didn't want to do because that's just
Speaker 1: a part of life. And I definitely was in that
Speaker 1: category looking back of like entitled the Uh you know,
Speaker 1: I want to be doing like these major things before
Speaker 1: getting coffee for people and ship and you just have
Speaker 1: to do that in every aspect of life. Um. So
Speaker 1: here's a funny story. Uh we Tony Timpone who is
Speaker 1: the editor in chief of Fangoria Fanguorian magazine at the time,
Speaker 1: they wanted to do a theme song contest for and
Speaker 1: Tony Timpone, if you've ever seen him, is this really nerdy,
Speaker 1: great guy, um, who just loves horror movies. He is
Speaker 1: like the the quintessential nerd for horror movies. Uh, and
Speaker 1: like that that's what he loves. But and if you
Speaker 1: ever go to a Fanguori convention, he's wearing like a
Speaker 1: full on suit or a tuxedo and like just nerds
Speaker 1: out hardcore and and uh, I remember when Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 1: on the show, he only did a few interviews. It
Speaker 1: serious and the reason he did Fangoria. He said to
Speaker 1: Tony he was like, I remember going to credit conventions
Speaker 1: and handing you scripts like while I was working at Blockbusters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like before he was ever anybody. So, um, I
Speaker 1: bring this up because we had a theme song contest
Speaker 1: for Tony Timpone and people were going with like white
Speaker 1: and nerdy by weird Al Yankovic and you know, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And I remember the staff of Fangorian being like, Ian,
Speaker 1: you wrap, you should do a theme and I think
Speaker 1: they figured it was gonna be fucking terrible and they're
Speaker 1: gonna make fun of me. So I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go for this. I found my friend Sean Strange,
Speaker 1: who's produced for Necro producer Mr Hydes and like big
Speaker 1: names um, and I was like, dude, I want to
Speaker 1: do the most gangster sounding song for Tony Timpone. Make
Speaker 1: it like as thuggish as possible, which is like the
Speaker 1: complete opposite of what this guy is. And that's what
Speaker 1: I went for. I did like a total gangster rap
Speaker 1: type song for Tony Timpone and they ended up loving
Speaker 1: it and I won that contest. That's amazing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it was cool and I remember decent. I want to
Speaker 1: hear it now. Yeah, I could probably find it somewhere.
Speaker 1: Maybe I could find it and put it up. It
Speaker 1: was I definitely have it in a hard drive somewhere.
Speaker 1: Is it all about like bitches and photis of Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember I have like, uh you know, there were
Speaker 1: lines about him going to strip clubs. Uh. Oh. We
Speaker 1: had a contest called Horror Hunk, which we never got
Speaker 1: a winner of, and I remember I had a line
Speaker 1: in the song about that we never crowned a horror
Speaker 1: Hunk because Tonington Pone fucked them up. Like it was.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of really and it came to
Speaker 1: me really quickly. But I won that contest. Remember Dee
Speaker 1: Snyder taking me aside and being like, you're real skill
Speaker 1: for this man, Like that really meant a lot. It's
Speaker 1: really cool. So this internship went on forever and it
Speaker 1: was like a minimum wage paid internship and they never
Speaker 1: got rid of me, but they also never promoted me.
Speaker 1: So I was like, why am I still doing this?
Speaker 1: Like I I kind of want to leave and move on,
Speaker 1: but I was also still in college, so I stopped
Speaker 1: doing that internship. Um, and I remember I was wondering,
Speaker 1: like I didn't know what I wanted to do. Besides that,
Speaker 1: I was still working at Tower Records. Eventually Tower Records closed.
Speaker 1: I remember, Yeah, I was gonna say Tower Records around anymore?
Speaker 1: Are that? Yeah? Oh yeah they closed. I was there
Speaker 1: on like the last days of the Tower Records. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You could make like like a documentary like about en
Speaker 1: Ron over that. I bet there is a documentary on
Speaker 1: Tower Records. I haven't watched it yet. I want to.
Speaker 1: Um because it was it was such a cool like
Speaker 1: community of people. It wasn't just a music store like
Speaker 1: Digital just wiped it out. Yeah, yeah, it's it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Um So I was doing that. I remember I worked
Speaker 1: at a mall at like a gene clothing store for
Speaker 1: literally one day and I was like, funk this this
Speaker 1: is not for me. Um But I wasn't doing it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna say hot topic, it wasn't. It was like
Speaker 1: a hot topic type of store, but it wasn't hot topic.
Speaker 1: Um Or Spencer's gifts are one of those. It was
Speaker 1: like I think it was what Gene Country used to
Speaker 1: be and then it had a new name. Um So,
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing much in radio other but than behind
Speaker 1: the scenes stuff at the time. Somewhere in the mix
Speaker 1: of this, because this is all coming back to me
Speaker 1: while I was working at Hopster University and I was
Speaker 1: doing the news coverage John Mullen, who is the program
Speaker 1: director who's like the coolest guy in the world. John
Speaker 1: Mullen's like my biggest influence in radio. He's the guy
Speaker 1: who helped change Hot ninety seven in New York, legendary
Speaker 1: station from a dance station into a rap station. UM.
Speaker 1: During election night coverage, which they had me because the
Speaker 1: the um one of the debates was at Hofstra, they
Speaker 1: had me on CBS, which this is very funny and
Speaker 1: shows you how like unethical of the news is. They
Speaker 1: had me on There is a quote undecided voter. I
Speaker 1: was voting for John McCain. I mean in the camp
Speaker 1: of Ron Paul before the election that had me on
Speaker 1: there there. I remember John being like Ian say, you're
Speaker 1: an undecided voter, get on TV. Very cool. Um. But
Speaker 1: during the election night coverage, John Mullen was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have some people from Serious coming. I was working
Speaker 1: at Serious, but I never met Andrew. At the time.
Speaker 1: I was doing like Jamie Fox's channel. I was doing
Speaker 1: Mojo Nixon and he goes, yeah, we're gonna have some
Speaker 1: political commentators here. We're gonna have Alex Bennett and some
Speaker 1: some cow guy and I was like, Andrew will Cow
Speaker 1: and he was like, yeah, that's right. And I had
Speaker 1: listened to Andrew in um like my car on the
Speaker 1: way to classes. I remember I would like show up
Speaker 1: to class late because I was too UM. I was
Speaker 1: like two sucked into whatever Andrew was talking about. He
Speaker 1: really was like a big influence on me, and like
Speaker 1: was one of the first radio shows that I really
Speaker 1: heavily got into. So I got to meet him Election
Speaker 1: night when Nick Razuto was still a producer and Mike
Speaker 1: was also there, and I was like, man, this guy's
Speaker 1: really cool. I really hope to work with him at
Speaker 1: some point, and then I did. And then I remember
Speaker 1: being like I really hope to fill in for him
Speaker 1: at some point, and I remember the guy who was
Speaker 1: basically above us there. It was like, no, not a chance,
Speaker 1: and as you know, it ended up happening. I got
Speaker 1: to do it with you guys, and like so cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: So here fast forward. I mean, there's so many things
Speaker 1: I did in between, and I'm trying to like cover
Speaker 1: all of this, um because I think it's an interesting story,
Speaker 1: I guess for some of you guys, hopefully, UM, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think back here of of where I go, UM,
Speaker 1: of working with Andrew. I know there's something I want
Speaker 1: to cover here, and I'm like drawn a blank. There's
Speaker 1: so many different things out here we go. So I
Speaker 1: was doing um call screening for Andrew Slash, working the
Speaker 1: board for Andrew, while working on a bunch of other shows,
Speaker 1: and you know, I got to meet so many people
Speaker 1: at seriously, like the whole experience was great, but I
Speaker 1: was part time. I wasn't making a lot. I was
Speaker 1: living at my parents house. Um up until actually not
Speaker 1: that long ago, I was living at my parents house
Speaker 1: because like, you really couldn't afford working part time. It's serious.
Speaker 1: So it got very frustrating because I was there for years.
Speaker 1: I mean I started in radio at oh six, Like
Speaker 1: I've been doing this a really long time, and I
Speaker 1: was part time and serious for like an insane amount
Speaker 1: of years. I remember talking to HR and being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: when am I going to get promoted? Like I've been
Speaker 1: here part and They're like, it's not possible that you've
Speaker 1: been here part time for that long. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: to trust me. They're like, well, then you haven't pursued
Speaker 1: anything full time, Like no, trust me, I have for
Speaker 1: food full Like, when is this gonna happen? So I
Speaker 1: thought of um At a certain point leaving radio, I
Speaker 1: was thinking of just not doing it anymore, um because
Speaker 1: I was like, this is taking forever for something to happen.
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe I'll go back to school. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. Somewhere in there. I met
Speaker 1: Brandon Webb first, and then I met you you guys
Speaker 1: just launched soft Rep. Brandon was really on the show
Speaker 1: because he was promoting the Red Circle when he was
Speaker 1: on with Will Cow and we just ended up really
Speaker 1: liking each other. I mean, Brandon was the one I
Speaker 1: really got to know first. I thought he was just
Speaker 1: a really cool guy. And because nothing was happening in
Speaker 1: radio for me for a while, I wasn't. There was
Speaker 1: probably a good five years where he did absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: on air because I was out of college. You know.
Speaker 1: It was just like I need to do something on air.
Speaker 1: I need to have some type of on air um
Speaker 1: uh personality. So I decided, although I wasn't allowed to
Speaker 1: in like the infancy of podcasts, to launch a podcast,
Speaker 1: asked doing spotlight interviews kind of like we do using
Speaker 1: the serious XM studios, which that they highly would not
Speaker 1: want me to do like that. There was totally a
Speaker 1: no no, But dude, on the weekends, no one was there.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I gotta utilize this and do something.
Speaker 1: So I remember the first episode of my solo podcast,
Speaker 1: I was Brandon was like the first Navy C I
Speaker 1: ever met. I was like, man, he'd be cool to
Speaker 1: have on. Never read the Red Circle or anything, but
Speaker 1: I was like, this would be a cool interview. So
Speaker 1: I interviewed him and I did maybe a dozen or
Speaker 1: so episodes of that podcast. Um and you guys were
Speaker 1: doing software radio at the time with another host with
Speaker 1: Quinn Um. And after I think about a dozen episodes
Speaker 1: of that, I went on a quick trip to Atlantic
Speaker 1: City with my one of my best friends, Steve, and
Speaker 1: I remember we saw Motley Crewe. We also saw Third
Speaker 1: Eye Blind. We're just hanging out. There was a good time.
Speaker 1: I literally had about two hundred dollars in my bank
Speaker 1: account and I gamble pretty much all of it. And
Speaker 1: I remember, prior to seeing Motley Crew, which I was
Speaker 1: supposed to be like really excited for, it was the
Speaker 1: last show of their tour. It wasn't the last tour
Speaker 1: it was one of the last tours. I remember feeling
Speaker 1: really down because I was like, fuck, I have no
Speaker 1: money on me, I have no idea like what I
Speaker 1: want to do with my life, and maybe I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to do something else. And I when I went
Speaker 1: back home from that trip, I said to my mom,
Speaker 1: I was like, I hate to do this. It was
Speaker 1: a living at home at the time. I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to borrow some money for you because I, like I
Speaker 1: have no money. Ended up not borrowing money from her.
Speaker 1: I had a bank account with a decent amount of
Speaker 1: money that she just didn't want me to touch because
Speaker 1: I was living at home. She let me take some
Speaker 1: money out of that account. But I remember feeling like
Speaker 1: I never want to have to borrow money from my parents.
Speaker 1: I need to like get on my feet because I'm
Speaker 1: in my late twenties at this time, Like this is
Speaker 1: getting a little ridiculous here. Uh So I believe it
Speaker 1: or not. I never really talked about this. I thought
Speaker 1: of not only going to school, I thought of joining
Speaker 1: the military at one point because I was just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I want to do, and I
Speaker 1: don't like to mention it because it's almost like remember
Speaker 1: when Hillary Clinton was asked about this and she said
Speaker 1: she thought of joining the military. It's like who cares
Speaker 1: or Donald? I always felt like I was in the military. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't count unless you actually do it, Like there's
Speaker 1: no merit thinking of joining the military. But I did
Speaker 1: think of doing it. Um. And I basically gave myself
Speaker 1: a deadline. I was, I was. It was. This was
Speaker 1: in the summer, and I remember being like, by the
Speaker 1: end of the year, if nothing happens in radio, I
Speaker 1: am moving on to something else, Like I can't keep
Speaker 1: doing this forever grind, Yeah, making no money, Like what
Speaker 1: am I be? Like thirty something living at my parents house.
Speaker 1: Not gonna not gonna do that to myself. Um. So
Speaker 1: I think the real and the reason I'm repeating all
Speaker 1: of this is I think it's a cool story of
Speaker 1: like the power of thought, as we say, or even
Speaker 1: the what's that that documentary on Netflix that a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't like? Is it like the the the knowledge?
Speaker 1: The true? I don't know. Anyway, it's the whole thing
Speaker 1: of like willing something into your life. So I gave
Speaker 1: myself a deadline, as I said, And I remember that
Speaker 1: summer as I was driving to my friends concert, I
Speaker 1: got a text from Brandon and he was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: do you know someone? And I guess he asked it
Speaker 1: this way just to see how I would respond. Do
Speaker 1: you know someone who would want to produce our podcast
Speaker 1: and like be on air with us? And I was like, funk, man,
Speaker 1: I would want to do it? And he was like,
Speaker 1: I was hoping that's what you would say, And I
Speaker 1: think would Um what why why Brandon gravitated towards me?
Speaker 1: For one, he was new to this field, so only
Speaker 1: only no new a limited amount of guys with my ability.
Speaker 1: But I think beyond any on air ability I had.
Speaker 1: I think he liked the fact that I launched that
Speaker 1: podcast and I was just a go getter. I was
Speaker 1: doing things and just doing things on my own, even
Speaker 1: if no one gave me the opportunity to do so.
Speaker 1: And he knew I was gonna be a hard worker
Speaker 1: in that sense. And Bran and then asked, um, how
Speaker 1: much do you have to pay you to do this?
Speaker 1: And I remember being like, dude, I don't care. Even
Speaker 1: though I needed money at the time, it was like
Speaker 1: it wasn't about the money, it was about the opportunity.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like I got paid anything big in
Speaker 1: the beginning. I just wanted to do this and that's
Speaker 1: how that happened. And really shortly after that, a part
Speaker 1: time job opened up at Sirius XM for Senator Bill
Speaker 1: Bradley's show, which I had been working on for months,
Speaker 1: just as like a fill in to help them out,
Speaker 1: but I knew exactly how the show functioned. I had
Speaker 1: a good relationship with the senior producer, Dvora, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, all right, I'm already working part time on
Speaker 1: Andrew's show, and if I work part time on this show,
Speaker 1: is there a way the company can make this into
Speaker 1: a full time position. And Devora has like some leverage
Speaker 1: around there, and she wanted me to work on that show.
Speaker 1: We were able to make it happen, and this all
Speaker 1: happened within a period of like two months. And I
Speaker 1: remember this is like, to top it off, it was
Speaker 1: kind of funny. When they were ready to give me
Speaker 1: the full time job. I got a call from HR
Speaker 1: and they were like, hey, um, we know about like
Speaker 1: the soft up stuff that you're doing on the side.
Speaker 1: If we're to hire you full time, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to give that up. You can't do that anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it was like a no compete type of thing,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, I'm not gonna do that, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not agreeing to that right now, because I knew
Speaker 1: there was gonna be a future with this, And luckily
Speaker 1: one of the higher ups on the Patriot channel was like, no,
Speaker 1: it's cool. Ian could work on soft up. So all
Speaker 1: of this happened at once, and it's almost like the
Speaker 1: rest is history from there. Man, this thing really grew.
Speaker 1: Brandon a few years back hired me full time. I
Speaker 1: got to leave serious and do this, and I guess
Speaker 1: that's it, man. I mean there's more, but that's that's
Speaker 1: my background right there. To give a very long answer
Speaker 1: to this, it's pretty awesome the way it all came together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think the reason I wanted to repeat all
Speaker 1: that is because I think, no matter what you want
Speaker 1: to do, sometimes you have to give yourself a deadline
Speaker 1: of like, I am gonna make it happen by this point,
Speaker 1: and you really bust your ass and be laser focused
Speaker 1: on that one thing for however many months, and if
Speaker 1: it doesn't work out, you gotta move on. But you
Speaker 1: can't pursue the same thing forever, Um, but you have
Speaker 1: to give it your all, I think, and I think
Speaker 1: there is something to that of saying like I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go out on the weekends. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: do ship, which I didn't do until this happens for me,
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, I will move. And so that's
Speaker 1: really that's it. So so to answer your question about
Speaker 1: my background, that's my entire background, no military background. Ian's
Speaker 1: leaving out his five tours and nam Um. Alright, So
Speaker 1: anyway back to the other questions to give it a
Speaker 1: long response to that. This is the second question, which
Speaker 1: for Jack and this is all Um in the same email. Jack,
Speaker 1: we're in a time of draw downs and focusing on
Speaker 1: core function Do you think the soft community will ever
Speaker 1: truly get back to its core functions? Or will the
Speaker 1: advised Brigades take the place of the green berets so
Speaker 1: they can all become O D A S. And then
Speaker 1: the third question, why change the name on news Rep.
Speaker 1: I was deployed during the change and it seemed almost
Speaker 1: overnight to me. Thanks for all you guys do. I
Speaker 1: love the reporting and podcast until my cheap ass hits
Speaker 1: the paywall on news Rep UM. So the first question
Speaker 1: about getting back to like core competencies. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there's a movement to do that. There is always
Speaker 1: a movement to try to get SF back to the
Speaker 1: unconventional warfare mission. UM. But it's just a case of
Speaker 1: path dependency and just chasing the flavor of the month.
Speaker 1: I think is you know, these these conflicts keep popping
Speaker 1: off in the Middle East, and that's what we keep
Speaker 1: getting deployed to. UM special operations UH, to include SF
Speaker 1: has Am. We have a whole generation of guys who
Speaker 1: are raised on direct action and like that's the cool
Speaker 1: thing to go do, is direct action. UM. At the
Speaker 1: same time, these units are supposedly still training on their
Speaker 1: metal tasks on the mission Assent task list, which would
Speaker 1: include their core what are supposed to be their core missions. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's all going to be dictated by what's happening now.
Speaker 1: I don't think the military is going to get any
Speaker 1: better at anticipating what's coming over the horizon. UM. I
Speaker 1: think we're always going to be focused on chasing what
Speaker 1: the cool new thing is, UM, Chasing whatever we think
Speaker 1: is going to get congressional funding, and on any given day,
Speaker 1: um SF is making a lot of well intended UM
Speaker 1: movements towards getting back into unconventional warfare, whether or not
Speaker 1: any of that's gonna happen. I mean, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of it is kind of like pie in the
Speaker 1: Sky UM daydreaming. Unfortunately, and then the news reph Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well we talked about this before, but I mean what
Speaker 1: it comes down to is that we started off being
Speaker 1: a special operations website UM, and you know, special Operations
Speaker 1: Forces report. Over time, we got into reporting about all
Speaker 1: kinds of other things, not just special operations, but the
Speaker 1: military as a whole, UM, reporting about foreign affairs, national security,
Speaker 1: all sorts of different topics. So the soft Rep name
Speaker 1: became kind of not necessarily accurate towards to what we
Speaker 1: do UM. And also I noticed, you know, there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of confusion out there about what we were.
Speaker 1: I mean, some people thought that really thought that soft
Speaker 1: Rep was a US government like a dot gov website,
Speaker 1: that we were, that we were like the public affairs
Speaker 1: wing of Special Operations Command. I still get emails sometimes
Speaker 1: that say, UM, can you send me over your like
Speaker 1: point of contact for your public relations you know bureau
Speaker 1: or it's uh, yeah, it's weird and like we published
Speaker 1: something that's like maybe like negative or something about the military,
Speaker 1: and they'd get like people can flip out like oh
Speaker 1: my god, like why are you actually a branch of
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military is using four letter words like
Speaker 1: you can't do this? So it confused people. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's really what led to the name change, was we're
Speaker 1: trying to broaden our horizons and and better reflect what
Speaker 1: we've actually been doing. But we didn't change the name
Speaker 1: of the podcast because I still feel like of what
Speaker 1: we do on here is special Operations orient did Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought it was I wanted to keep
Speaker 1: the name Software Radio and I feel like we built
Speaker 1: an audience with this. I like the name, and you know,
Speaker 1: we don't it's rare. We'll do a show on finance,
Speaker 1: you know the way that the website you know, so
Speaker 1: absolutely Alright, another c J. Aremon question and you could
Speaker 1: ask us whatever, but he comes on a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: But c J Aremon here Ben Wadden's son. Should we
Speaker 1: send Rob O'Neill over to Pakistan to punch his card? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be a good question to ask, Uh, ask Rob
Speaker 1: when he's on next week. Yeah, I'll be on next
Speaker 1: week with Brandon. Uh. I just gotta confirm and make
Speaker 1: sure he's still good to go. All right, This is
Speaker 1: from Greg. I'll keep this short. I've been listening to
Speaker 1: the podcast since twenty twelve. Can't believe it's been this long.
Speaker 1: It's insane, man. Uh and have heard every episode. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a lot you've listened to as ramble quite a bit. However,
Speaker 1: I have never heard any discussion on the other two
Speaker 1: components of Army Special Operations are soft, which are psychological
Speaker 1: operations psy OPS and Civil Affairs c A. I would
Speaker 1: be very interested if Jack could shed some light on
Speaker 1: his experience, if any, working with psy ops or c A,
Speaker 1: and a brief overview of each of their missions. Getting
Speaker 1: a guest on from either branch would be excellent as well.
Speaker 1: Thanks Greg. Yeah, that's a great one. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I think the Civil Affairs and and Psychological Operations both
Speaker 1: bring some stuff to the table. Um. They can do
Speaker 1: things that complement other Special Operations units. They can have
Speaker 1: an important impact on the battle space, but those missions
Speaker 1: are sometimes more difficult to articulate. Um like I can
Speaker 1: explain to you what rangers do, and everyone understands it.
Speaker 1: But you start talking about like psychological operations, people think
Speaker 1: it's just like pamphlet drops. It's actually a lot more
Speaker 1: than that. UM. As far as like getting some of
Speaker 1: those guys on here, I've actually put out feelers several
Speaker 1: times to try to do that, and uh, I get
Speaker 1: put in touch with people and um, from psy ops
Speaker 1: and from civil affairs, and I get the most like
Speaker 1: wishy washy, you know, like limp wristed, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of responses like oh yeah, I'm your guy dog,
Speaker 1: and then like they never answer my emails. After that,
Speaker 1: it's like, well fuck. UM, So I've tried. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I struck out a couple of times trying to get
Speaker 1: ce A and psy OPS guys on. UM. If there
Speaker 1: are c A or psy OPS guys out there who
Speaker 1: want to come on and talk to us about what
Speaker 1: that job entails and what they do and so they
Speaker 1: can inform and educate the public, please contact us. All right. UM,
Speaker 1: this is a totally different question here. This is from
Speaker 1: Anthony from Virginia Beach. Hey, Jackney, and I've listened since
Speaker 1: the early days, quite some time before I joined the
Speaker 1: Navy in and started episode one once again. Pretty crazy
Speaker 1: thinking back how long ago that is. I'm writing in
Speaker 1: response to the recent Punisher cancelation. From things I've read
Speaker 1: is that the show staff for all of the Marvel
Speaker 1: and Netflix shows wanted shorter seasons to focus on the
Speaker 1: storylines they wrote. Netflix, on the other hand, wanted the
Speaker 1: longer seasons with episodes that were thirteen or so episodes,
Speaker 1: or I should say, I think you mean seasons with
Speaker 1: thirteen or so episodes. A theory I have about the
Speaker 1: subject is that with Disney launching its own streaming service,
Speaker 1: the shows may return to that, so Disney starts making
Speaker 1: money off the shows. Another issue that may have happened
Speaker 1: is that viewership wasn't what they hoped for all of
Speaker 1: the shows. Even though Netflix doesn't release that info, there
Speaker 1: are companies that have shown that each of the Marvel
Speaker 1: shows that went more than one season is lost viewers
Speaker 1: going into season two. From another podcast, I learned that
Speaker 1: Netflix usually has a lot of money wrapped up in
Speaker 1: all their shows compared to what they're getting back from viewers,
Speaker 1: so that could be another reason for the canceled For
Speaker 1: the cancelation of all four shows. Anyways, that's just my
Speaker 1: two cents based off of what I've heard and read.
Speaker 1: Love the shows, guys, and uh, I listened to every episode,
Speaker 1: so keep up the great work. I can't wait for
Speaker 1: Jack's book. I have it pre ordered. I have been
Speaker 1: waiting for a long time for Jack to right a memoir.
Speaker 1: Oh and what's up with the two mics, Binding and
Speaker 1: Lampy having such fascinating stories? So that's you know, not
Speaker 1: really a question, but they're both very fascinating. I mean
Speaker 1: I think that I think it's probably on target as
Speaker 1: far as what happened with Netflix and Marvel. And if
Speaker 1: you look at what d C Comics has done is
Speaker 1: they have started their own streaming service that you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to, and there's like, uh, they have like planned
Speaker 1: like already like five different five or six different like
Speaker 1: DC shows, um about like DC Superheroes, And I suspect
Speaker 1: that's what Marvel's gonna do. Yeah, that would be smart
Speaker 1: is And I mean they're big enough company that they
Speaker 1: can do it. I talked about in the last episode.
Speaker 1: When I worked for Fangoria, they were starting like Fangoria Records,
Speaker 1: Fangoria Radio, and then all of a sudden, it was
Speaker 1: just too much, you know, things become deluded, they downer
Speaker 1: the money to prop up all these things. But a
Speaker 1: company like DC or Marvel, they have the infrastructure to
Speaker 1: launch several, you know, parts of that huge brand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny to think about the movies kind of saved them,
Speaker 1: because like Marvel has been like on the brink of
Speaker 1: going out of business like a number of times, and
Speaker 1: I mean their comics sales are not like great by
Speaker 1: any means. I feel like there's been a resurgence though.
Speaker 1: I mean in the in the late nineties, it's the
Speaker 1: movies and the merchandise that they're making money off of.
Speaker 1: What about what about hot chicks dressing up in cosplay?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if they're making money
Speaker 1: off of that though, But but it's like a bigger interest, right,
Speaker 1: I Mean, there wasn't this big comic con in the
Speaker 1: late nineties early two th but but I mean, if
Speaker 1: you look at the numbers, it's like pretty clear that
Speaker 1: those people are not reading the comic books, Like they're
Speaker 1: not going out and buying the comics from reading them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, if we ever want a nerd out on
Speaker 1: comic books, which isn't my specialty at all, but you're
Speaker 1: into that stuff a lot of the audiences. But you
Speaker 1: get Rick Unger back in here, who is the CEO
Speaker 1: of Marvel. Yeah, we can do that, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I gotta get Alex Hollings on the show because we
Speaker 1: have to do our big pow wow about Batman versus Superman,
Speaker 1: about the movie controversy, controversy. But let me know and
Speaker 1: we'll do it. Okay, Well, we'll schedule it out. That'll
Speaker 1: be like another special type episode. Um, all right, Jack.
Speaker 1: Although you are partially correct, I took issue with you
Speaker 1: not wanting to conform to minor rules and regulations. This
Speaker 1: was mentioned in our earlier episode. Even though you believe
Speaker 1: cutting across the grass or not wearing the appropriate pt
Speaker 1: attires anal, it does add value to the overall discipline
Speaker 1: of the unit slash command. It may not make you
Speaker 1: shoot straight or run fast, but you cannot make exceptions
Speaker 1: for some and turn to blind eye to others when
Speaker 1: in the field of a different ballgame in garrison. We
Speaker 1: need to maintain to your point, there are dick heads abound.
Speaker 1: I once had a sergeant major chastise me for taking
Speaker 1: a boogie bait to the field just a little bit
Speaker 1: de bait bogey bait. Okay, just a little background about
Speaker 1: me and retired Marine gunnery sergeant and currently work as
Speaker 1: a legist uh logistics logistician. Am I saying that right?
Speaker 1: Uh for Submarine Command. I enjoy listening to your podcast
Speaker 1: and I always look forward to the next podcast. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work, semper five Danny L. Baker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what I what I think he's getting at there, um,
Speaker 1: And there's some truth to it, is that the all
Speaker 1: that like um Garrison type discipploint about, like having your
Speaker 1: uniform a certain way, UM, where you do Class A
Speaker 1: inspections and all of your medals have to be in
Speaker 1: a certain place, and the uniform has to be pressed
Speaker 1: a certain way, and has to be tucked into your
Speaker 1: boots a certain way, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: All these things. What you're trying to do is cultivate
Speaker 1: the values and a soldier that you hope will carry
Speaker 1: over to the battlefield. The discipline, the attention to detail,
Speaker 1: all these little things, um, that you're trying to you know,
Speaker 1: it's part of the coaching, teaching and mentoring of you know,
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old soldier to get him to you know,
Speaker 1: pay attention to these things. So I recognize his point. Um.
Speaker 1: The problem is when that becomes the focus, um over
Speaker 1: combat training and combat itself, where you will have you know,
Speaker 1: a certain notorious major and the ranger regiment who would
Speaker 1: stand there on the airfield, and when the helicopters land
Speaker 1: chastise rangers for not having their boots bloust coming off
Speaker 1: of a combat operation. It's like ship like that has
Speaker 1: just gotten completely out of control. Um. I mean, I
Speaker 1: could tell all kinds of war stories about that. But
Speaker 1: with the some of this stuff, even in garrison, it
Speaker 1: strikes me that a lot of it was came about.
Speaker 1: I mean, well some of it, like the salute saluting
Speaker 1: officers that goes straight back to the Roman times. I mean,
Speaker 1: these these are ancient traditions, and UM, I respect tradition,
Speaker 1: but I think some of the things where we're like
Speaker 1: yelling at soldiers about walking on the grass and all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, it's very much a type of
Speaker 1: discipline that came out of the conscript army that existed
Speaker 1: during World War Two and in years prior where we
Speaker 1: had a conscription and we were bringing in large masses
Speaker 1: of young men into the military and the discipline had
Speaker 1: to be hard for that reason. Um. But today, the
Speaker 1: kind of we have a volunteered military, the kind of
Speaker 1: kids we are we are pulling into the military are um.
Speaker 1: They're there have a high school education at least or
Speaker 1: a g D. Um So they're smarter than the soldier
Speaker 1: who is joining the military a hundred years ago. Um.
Speaker 1: They're these kids are gonna be savvier because they have
Speaker 1: access to information in a way that even my generation
Speaker 1: didn't have. Um. So I but I so, I think
Speaker 1: that there's a space for tradition. I think there's um
Speaker 1: there's a space for discipline and you know, marching soldiers
Speaker 1: around information, um and teaching them some of those things.
Speaker 1: But I think that putting the emphasis and the focus
Speaker 1: on those sorts of things doesn't really resonate with a
Speaker 1: bunch of young men who joined the military, especially they're
Speaker 1: joining the military to kick the enemy's ass um. So,
Speaker 1: I think that we could use a cultural shift in
Speaker 1: the military that refocuses and puts an emphasis on combat
Speaker 1: and on doing the job and on practical skills. Um. So.
Speaker 1: I mean it's I guess it's a question of finding
Speaker 1: that balance. But no, I'm not saying like we shouldn't
Speaker 1: salute anymore, um, or that we shouldn't stand at parade
Speaker 1: rest anymore, or that soldiers should not be corrected when
Speaker 1: they funk up um apps. Really that's not my my
Speaker 1: point there. All right, are you ready for the last email? Uh?
Speaker 1: And there is a little bit more controversial one, I hope.
Speaker 1: So we're two hours in. Yeah, I know, I, like
Speaker 1: I said, I expected this to be like a short podcast.
Speaker 1: I was like, we'll just do a quick thirty minute
Speaker 1: Q and A or something and wham bam, thank you ma'am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we end up going a full two hours um, which, Hey,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys listening and sending in your email.
Speaker 1: So this is the final one, A little bit more
Speaker 1: controversial one. Hi, Ian and Jack. I'm a long time
Speaker 1: listener and former team Remember I've heard every SOFTWAREP. Brady
Speaker 1: episode going back to the very first episode with former
Speaker 1: host Quinn. But this is my first time emailing you guys.
Speaker 1: Just wanted to give you additional insight on why I
Speaker 1: questioned soft reps breaking Instagram report on the Haiti uh situation.
Speaker 1: He's at DJ Josie what Wales? I questioned, Uh, was
Speaker 1: this really about Americans? With guns and Haiti or was
Speaker 1: this more about embarrassing Chris Osmond. The story is totally
Speaker 1: within soft reps wheelhouse, of course. The only reasons why
Speaker 1: I questioned the motive was one I am aware of
Speaker 1: the long standing feud with Chris and Brandon to soft
Speaker 1: Rep used Chris's first, middle and last name in the post,
Speaker 1: he writes L O L here, But I mean that's
Speaker 1: not not even out of the ordinary. Uh three. And
Speaker 1: the original post had pointed out that they were approximately
Speaker 1: a block away from the Central Bank. This could have
Speaker 1: been mistakenly taken as maybe they were casing the bank
Speaker 1: for a robbery. My immediate guest was they were on
Speaker 1: a private security contract and not up to anything nefarious.
Speaker 1: Knowing how some within the soft community of unfairly trashed
Speaker 1: soft Rep, I wanted to make sure you guys weren't
Speaker 1: sinking to that level. The work that you and Jack
Speaker 1: do is important and valuable. Some of the stories and
Speaker 1: people featured on the podcast would mostly go unnoticed if
Speaker 1: not for the podcast. Please continue to take the high
Speaker 1: road and keep up the good work. Tell Jack a
Speaker 1: k A cynical Jack, his military knowledge is amazing, and
Speaker 1: thank you for your service. Sincerely, Jeff L. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean thanks for listening for so long. I mean
Speaker 1: all the way back to UM episode one, and we
Speaker 1: had a few people right in who are longtime listeners.
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible. UM. Regarding the questions, I wrote a
Speaker 1: article about the whole thing with the deal with the
Speaker 1: Seals working as at former Seals working as security contractors
Speaker 1: down in Haiti. I wrote an article about it, and
Speaker 1: then we talked about it on the podcast. UM. The
Speaker 1: way I reported the names was the way they were
Speaker 1: reported by the Miami Herald, because I believe the reason
Speaker 1: why they reported it like that was because those names
Speaker 1: were taken straight out of their passports by the Haitian government,
Speaker 1: and that's how it was reported. UM. And what was
Speaker 1: the other question that he had about that? Um? Oh oh,
Speaker 1: basically that you reported and I think there's the same
Speaker 1: answer that that you're reported. They were approximately block away
Speaker 1: from the central bank, and this could have been mistakenly
Speaker 1: taken as maybe they were casing the bank. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that I don't know what to say about because
Speaker 1: that's what was reported. Well, yes, they were nearby the
Speaker 1: central bank, so I reported that, But I in the
Speaker 1: in that same article, and in the podcast we did,
Speaker 1: I was very very clear that they were contracting for
Speaker 1: the Central Bank. They were not they're doing anything criminal.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know how to be any more clear
Speaker 1: about that. Um So I can't. Really, it's not your
Speaker 1: fault if someone Yeah, yeah, I mean if you that's like,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to deliberately misconstrue what I wrote, then
Speaker 1: I suppose you can. But um, I can't rebut or
Speaker 1: defend something I did not write or say, so I
Speaker 1: don't really know how to address that. A lot of
Speaker 1: that was speculation, honestly of some of our listeners, some
Speaker 1: of our readers. I saw a lot of comments, but
Speaker 1: once we were not responsible for other people's comments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I was very clear in my reporting what they
Speaker 1: were there for. So dude, that wraps it up. Two
Speaker 1: hours of Q and A from you guys, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your questions. Do you think we should
Speaker 1: do this again in the future is pretty cool? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Down the line. Um, you know, as people have questions
Speaker 1: and mail them in, we can do a round up
Speaker 1: of all of them. Yeah, I did it. I mean,
Speaker 1: we will still answer your questions every few episodes. Software
Speaker 1: Up Dot Radio SOFTWA up dot com so much for
Speaker 1: this being a shorter episode. Uh, have a great weekend. Guys,
Speaker 1: you've been listening to Self Rep Radio. New episodes up
Speaker 1: every Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show on Instagram and
Speaker 1: Twitter at self Rep Radio.