“I’d Die For It Today” - Ex Navy SEALs Reveal Truth About Osama Bin Laden & Future of War

No, I've never said that on camera. Really? Mhm. Do you remember where you were when we heard that Osama bin Laden was caught? Conducted an operation. He was killed. Killed Osama bin Laden May 2nd, 2011. And then we hear the story that the bodies being dumped in the middle of the ocean. And if you do that, you end up making him a martyr even more and growing his following even more. Like look what he sacrificed for the cause. Was it ever a point where it was so close that if this thing happens and this triggers this, we could be in a World War II overnight? Potentially. potentially. I want to believe that our military is already ready for the 2045 war, not the 2025 war. What new threats are we going to have 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now? We've seen it. Terminator. When I heard that, I'm like, it's a little weird. I'm I'm questioning it. And I'll be honest when we were on the ramp getting ready to go. He solved it. However he does, whatever he does, he called and literally stopped us on the ramp. Who would love to be on those phone calls just to hear what he says? He'd break the internet. I hate when people badmouth the president. There is something special about fighting for America and our freedom. How was it for you with your father? He was a seal. So, was he gone all the time and you still had a relationship with him? Gone. But it still made you want to be a seal. That's the only thing you know. What is it with this occupation that makes it so difficult to keep your marriage intact? You can take that one unless you're a mini in town long enough to get in a fight, then go out of town, forget about it. MySpace ruined DJ's life. My space ruined this. What happened to me, dude? The way you're talking. Did you ever think you would make it? I feel sweet. Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever saw. It's right here. You are a one of one. My son's right there. I don't think I said this before. [Music] All right, listen. We're getting started. We started off with uh you know when you're around military guys, they're typically [ __ ] talkers, jokes, prank, the whole nine. But anyways, today we have a special treat um uh podcast DJ Shipley and Cole Facular. So, and and you're not brothers, just to make that clear, right? kind of as far as we know. As far as we know. Might as well be. Might as well be. Right. Grew up in the same area. I mean, separated a couple miles from each other's high school. Joined a Navy at the same time. How How long have you guys known each other? Since what age? I met him when I was 18. Yeah. 22. Yeah. So, since 18. Yeah. But you guys didn't know each other like And you grew up two miles apart? Yeah. About 20 or so. I mean, we we met in Buds and we, weirdly enough, had a very mirroring career the entire time. Like, were you guys typically stationed at the same place or No, same team, same command, same everything. So, that's the part that's like Seal Team 10, 17 years, like same hat, same watch, like best bests. I mean, obviously buds is one thing, but best of buds as well. friends. Yeah. And in business together, roommates, been each other's best man multiple times now, thanks to Cole. He's been mine twice. I, you know, I had to try a couple out, but you kind of got it down now. You feel pretty confident about this one. Yeah, she's actually outlasted both of them combined. Really? So, what is it with that? By the way, you know, my friend was uh when I was in the army, I wanted to go uh I interviewed at 18 Delta to be an 18 Delta at Fifth Group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and I wanted to go to Sears and go to DLI because I spoke five languages. So, they said, "You're going to go to, you know, Fort or that's where the DI was back in the days, you know, uh they called it uh what was it called? The planet or something like that, right? I think it was in Carmel." And uh so the orders come back, I decide to get out. He gets the orders. He leaves. He ends up becoming uh uh Delta for 12 years. Loves it, the project, operations, all this stuff. I don't talk to him for many years. I thought something happened to him. Finally, we link up. He tells me what's going on. I said, "Let's meet up." We go to Madrid. We meet at Eláico, soccer match between Messi and Ronaldo. And I think at the time when I met him, he was on his third marriage. What is it with this occupation that makes it so difficult to keep your marriage intact? You can take that one unless you want me to send it. I barely squeak by. Uh I mean I I think the schedule's super challenging. Um normally you're gone at least 300 days a year over probably. Um we're terrible at communicating. Great at bottling everything up. In town long enough to get in a fight, then go out of town, forget about it. Um in town long enough to get into a fight with your wife and then you leave. Yeah. Yeah. So you never settle anything. Um, you just kind of rinse and repeat. And, um, I think this, again, the schedule, our entire time in the military was all war. So, you're losing friends, that kind of stress. You're a single mom, working mom. Um, and you kind of travel like a rockstar. So, you you travel like a rockstar while they're behind. Well, I mean, when 20 of us that look like us walk into a bar, it attracts some attention. Okay. So, do cuz when I went through the recruiting, the guy said to me, he says, "Go interview three guys before even think about doing this." I said, "Okay, no problem." So, I go in, first guy says, "Uh, you want to get married and have kids?" I said, "Yeah, absolutely." He says, "This is not the career for you." I said, "Why not?" He says, "Because this is your wife, your career. You're going to be gone. You're going to be traveling. going to be the go to the second guy. Do you want to get married and have kids? I do. Well, this is you're not going to be able to do well. So, they're scaring you away from being getting married, building a family. Is that also what you guys went through orientation wise where some of the guys are telling you about getting married or they're saying, "No, support it. Get married. It's fine. It's going to work out." No. I mean, there were definitely rock stars and you look back at some of the guys, they've been married 20 plus years. DJ Paty Hitten over 15. Like, you've been married 20 plus years. 15. 15 years. So, I mean, there are definitely guys that have solid families. It's like I don't I don't know how they did it. Um, but then there's kind of the reverse where they get divorced a lot. But the support family family definitely say came first, but I think the hard hard part for us was switching it off. Um, that's why we kind of talk about dials and switches. The work required you to be 100% on all the time and everything else took second. How'd you make it work? 15 years. I didn't. I married a unicorn. That's the only reason I was an idealist. You know, I grew up in the SEAL teams. My dad was a SEAL. The only male influence I had my entire life were Navy Seals. And most of them were divorced. And that was just the culture. This thing comes first. You come home, drop off a bag of dirty laundry, grab new clothes, and leave again. And that's exactly what I did. I just I got really fortunate because my wife was already married to a seal. Unfortunately, he was killed. So, she'd been through the entire gambit already. And I think that was a lot of my hesitation is I didn't want to stop doing that job. Training so hard. It's so long. It's so arduous. You don't ever want to leave it. It's like, you know, you're playing professional sports. I don't want to take any time away. I don't. As soon as I leave, I can't give you any bandwidth right now because it's not going to help me overseas. You have to start compartmentalizing. And that just builds up a resentment time and time again. And when you come home, you're so stressed out. I mean, two-hand texting, you're in the group chat. I've got to get ready for this trip. you're missing ballet recital and anniversaries and birthdays because none of it truly matters at that point because you're trying to lay a foundation and unfortunately you realize you're never going to have that foundation you want. You just keep adding layer after layer after layer and you never build in time for them. So that's why we do talk about dials. You know if you're brand new, brand new guy gets on a team and you have no external commitments, no wife, no family, no picket fence, no Labrador. I can roll that dial all the way to a 10 and I can be that Kobe Bryant. I can live this one thing at a 100% until I do have a rock solid foundation. Then I add in a girlfriend that turns in a fiance, but I have to operate on dials. And for us, we just rolled that whole thing over and never backed it off. Now we just started stacking stuff on top of it. And it's really hard to it's really hard to split your time and focus. And a lot of them, they're just not meant to do it. Guys, they're high school sweethearts. You've never been apart for two weeks before. Now you're gone for nine months. How do you do that? I mean, it's that you love that job so much, you literally just wall it off. You don't even think about I never thought about it. You just compartmentalize it. Both of us are our our firstborns, we both left on separate deployments three weeks after they were born and both of those deployments that we were on were probably our worst. So we came back to a five-month-old and just super kind of torn up from the deployment too and not easy. How was it for you with your father if he was a SEAL? So was he gone all the time and you still had a relationship with him? all the time gone. He's still your hero though. I mean up until a certain point he was. I mean when he graduated Buds I my mom was nine months pregnant with me. So his entire time in the SEAL teams I was with him but he's just gone. I mean I think he did like 13 13 deployments. Each one six months long and there's no break in between. Six month work up home for a while gone gone gone. And then all the training trips in between. Everyone's a two or three week trip. You're home for two days geared up. Send it again. send it again. From the day you were born till you were, you know, uh, 13, how often would you see him? If you went combined total less than 3 months out of the year, less than 3 months out of the year, you see him, but it still made you want to be a SEAL. That's the only thing, you know, and when you come home, you have him, you see all the guys, and you know, you've seen a movie Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen. That was my childhood. That is exactly what I grew up with. And I loved it. Who was Charlie Sheen? Uh I mean he was one of the officers but I mean just not everybody everybody that was in that movie that represented what the '90s Navy Seals were like drinking, partying, training, deploying just over and over and over again. And it became infectious. Like I mean to us I mean I'd walk right past the Rolling Stones or some highle athlete just to get near a commando. Like they just have such a polarizing presence you just can't get away from it. So when you grow up with it your whole life, that's the only thing you want to emulate. I just want to look like that. I want the tattoos. I want to look like that. I want to be able to perform like that. And that's just what you chase. Your your wife, her first husband passed away. He didn't make it. So was she part of a family, military family growing up? How did she marry two seals? Her dad was a seal. Oh, so that Okay. So that makes a lot of sense. So then you know you know what it reminds me of? You ever seen the movie with Mark Wahlberg where he's it's him and Jennifer Anderson. I think he's a rockstar. And maybe the movie is called Rockstar. What's the Is it called Rockstar? It is. And then they have the two buses and the other wives are training her on what it is to be married to a rock. Do you remember that whole scene? You're like, "Look, here's what's going to happen. This is normal. This is what it's like. Sometimes you're going to wake up, it's going to be weird." And then there's this one scene where they wake up in the hotel. What do we do last night? I don't know what happened last is it almost a little bit of that where you have to know who you're marrying to know what comes with the territory like some of these things that come with the territory. I think yeah because a lot of the guys you know Cole married one of his high school sweethearts too. She's never been exposed to it. So when you get in around those people they knew you when you were in high school. They knew you when you were 21 years old. Now you leave for four or five years you rekindle that marriage and you are a completely different person. your mannerisms, the way the way you carry yourself, the people you associate with. Everything else is different and they don't know how it happened. And then a lot of them, they don't see it until it's too late. Like now we are married. It's like this is not the guy he was in high school. He can't be. You can't be because of the job you have. You have to elevate and you have to transform. You can't be that same guy and do that job at 100%. There's no way. It takes too much. That is wild. So what advice do you guys give when guys are coming to you? What do you tell them? Do you say get married? Do you say don't get married? What do you tell? Don't get married. Don't get married. Don't get married. You tell them don't get married. I tell them don't get married until you've done at least four years optimally. You've done eight years. Four of those completely single. Just isolating, polishing your craft. Now you find her. You test her out. Meaning you make her do a couple deployments as your fiance. That way if it doesn't work, there's no divorce. There's no strain on the for doesn't work. How do you check if it doesn't? Cuz I remember in the army like if you're in the army there was a u uh uh stories you would hear where guy would go come back nine months later he finds out his wife's with somebody and hey the the you leave the broom outside. There was this whole uh uh I don't know if you remember these different things. I don't want to kind of give some of the stuff away. And guy would come out one day this guy I won't say his name but I clear clearly remember this. You go to the hotel he walks in and he sees it. He's devastated. He's going through suicide watch. He's not talking about it for 30 days. How do you test it out when you're gone for that long? What do you do? Do you have a friend come and check him out? Do you say to the club owner? Was she at the nightclub? How do you How do you How do you check them out? MySpace. MySpace ruined DJ's life. My Space This is What happened to me, dude? What happened with MySpace? Same thing. I was dating my high school girlfriend. Went over to Iraq. You know, I'm 19 years old. We're stormtrooping through Baghdad doing the whole thing. And I didn't even have an email account at the time. I mean, I set up a Hotmail in 2005 when we were over in Iraq. And then MySpace popped up, made a little profile. Nobody knows what it is. The social media is not even a thing yet. You type in different names. I type my sister's name, it pops up. Type in random people's names, they pop up. I type my girlfriend's name. Hit enter. It pops up. She's got a profile. I'm like, "Oh, this is cool." It's got a little bio. Like, "This is my name. I'm crazy in love with my boyfriend. His name's Brian." I'm like, "But my name ain't Brian." Like looking around like, "What is that? You're joking." No. the whole thing. She'd been dating a guy living in my house the entire time I was Stop it. Oh, no. Really? So, what do you do? Call him. Better pack your [ __ ] and get out of my house right now. Never talk to you again. But it's the same thing like they'll start complaining about the deployment cycle being gone. You're not making enough time for me. I can't. I don't have Wi-Fi. And then it just becomes a huge burden, a huge mental taxation. It's like, is this improving my performance overseas? No. Well, I got to get rid of you. Get away. or you marry a unicorn like my wife who's just an absolute gangster. She gets it and I can count the times on one hand. That's tough to marry somebody like your wife whose father was like it's like marry, you know, a guy uh uh uh I'll never forget my wife. We're getting married. I take her to meet different uh uh wives to shape the mindset of do you know who you're really marrying? And the per best person that she sat down with was uh our pastor's wife. Okay. And she goes and spends time with him and she says, "Are you ready to share your husband with the world?" And she says, "What do you mean?" She says, "Well, look, I run my husband runs a church with 20,000 members. Guess what? Everybody wants to talk to him all the time. Call this person died, funeral, this, this, that, wedding, this. Are you ready? Because that's what's happening with you." He says, "Well, yeah. I guess I'm okay with that." So, let me tell you my 10 affirmations. And she starts kind of going through the affirmations. And then, you know, sometimes your husband's going to come home. You're not in a mood to do anything. If you ask for it, you got to find a way to make the time to please her. All these things that she's going through. She comes back. I said, "So, how did it go?" Well, she said this, she said that. I said, "This is a rockstar wife. This is great, right? It's like shaping the mindset of it, right?" She had it. But it's tough to find somebody like that. It is. And you really saw in the old school guard, you know, I say the wives really cut their teeth during GWAT during the early days. No support, brand new in the war. We didn't know what was going on. Deployment cycles just kept increasing over and over. So you've got this batch of, you know, a couple hundred wives that are really, really bought in and then you get this new generation starts to spill in and they've never seen it before. It's really nice to be able to bounce it off the old. So you check in as a brand new guy and you got your platoon chief with seven deployments and he's got his wife who's done nine total. She's like, "This is what it is. He's never going to tell you what it's really like. This is what it is. You are on your own the entire time." Did you ever meet Brian? I I didn't meet Brian, but I I did. Uh yeah, we'll have to talk about that off camera. Yeah, I played a little prank on Brian. You did play a prank on Brian. Okay. I think it's somehow with Brian. Well, listen. Thank you MySpace for the recon and the private investigative work you did. But uh uh so question since I wasn't expecting us to start off with a topic. I had three topics to start off with. We're going into marriage right off the bat. But question with this. So you're doing your job. Okay. And while you're doing your job, you know, you hear the phrase signal versus noise, right? Focus on the job, focus on signal, noise. What's going on with the family? What's going on with the wife? What's going on with the kids? I'm gone nine months. What happened here? What are they doing over there? What are you doing with to be a seal and and to do what you guys do? How do you stay locked in to not allow the noise to rattle you? Because in that moment, while you're supposed to stay focused, you're thinking about something else. How do you mentally get yourself in a state where you stay focused on the mission? You block out the noise. It doesn't matter. You are 100% committed and locked in. But how do you block out the noise? You don't communicate. Like you don't um intimately open up. Like the emotions are are second to the family. Everything else is that what they tell you to shape your mindset that way or is that like a cultural thing? Is that what it takes? Is that the part of the job? I think it it it's 100% what it takes because if you're not on your game, it like the results could be you die, you you drop something and and somebody else gets killed for it. Um the repercussions and results of not being locked in and showing up 100% on your game are deadly and like there's no question about it. And the emotion of the patriotism and what you're doing and what you're fighting for um just it outweighed it. There there was nothing. Now let me ask you, were you like that in high school like were you an athlete in high school? Did you play sports? Yeah. Yeah, I was an athlete in high school. Um and yeah, I was definitely in compartmentalization um on on the noise to be hyper competitive and perform at a super high level. It took discipline and dedication um and wherever you wanted to take it and I wanted to take it as far as I could. I guess my question becomes my question is do they recruit guys who are already like that or do you come in and after you make it through but the training everything that they have then you become this person. Which one is it? Is it finding the person and identifying and said this guy has what it takes or is it no we're going to shape your mindset into this? I think I think you find that person just the initial process. It's so hard to get in the buds. It's so hard to make it through that selection. You're already a little bit selfish anyway. You have to be in order to just prepare to go to Buds. You really have to live in isolation. And then it's not really a team sport. I know it is, but going through selection, it's individual performance. You have to be able to perform the entire way. And anything that is a distraction, you just naturally block it out. You just have to. You roll an ankle, you get this, you get an injury, you just override and just keep going. And you do that. It becomes your routine. If you don't like the way things are going, you just block it out. If you have you ever been on a mission where one of your peers maybe was getting distracted and allowing the noise to get to them, how did the team handle it when someone went there becomes a big issue. They remove you. Like it's very common if guys are going through a if guys are going through divorce. It's so common. I mean, the SEAL teams are well over 100%. I mean, they have been my whole time. Over 100% divorce rate. If it becomes nasty to where you can't make a deployment, you can't make trips, like you're in court custody battles, they just remove you. They remove you. Yep. They'll remove you, put you on the sidelines for two years, clean up your divorce, figure it all out, and then come back. Wow. They'll put you in a training slot or How common is that? Pretty common. So, sometimes if they put a guy in training slot, it's not a favor. It's not a promotion. They're putting you there because you're going through something like, "Look, go handle your stuff in personal life. Then when you're ready, come back to it as well." Yeah. I mean, you put in so much time and energy to get to the organization. You're so critical to its overall performance. Right now, if you're not at 100%, they have to pull you out and put in somebody else. So, how do you view that? Let's just say I go through that and I'm put there for me to come back and there's four of you and I'm the fifth one coming in. Are you guys a little bit worried whether I've changed or not or I'm still I still have some of the old tendencies or no? You you allow me to show up and represent and show you guys that I have changed. How how does that work? Yeah, you definitely get a chance to come back and uh perform. Um I think everyone's pretty open at that. It happens all the time. Um but they're watching you. You got to earn your seat there every day. And there are mistakes you cannot come back from. And at such a high level, either you'll get kicked out or they'll they'll set you out and and let you be 100% when you come back. You can't be 98%. It's the exact same thing in with injuries. We have guys with some colossal injuries. They just they override it. And you ever been at like a bull riding show? You ever seen the guys get taped up? Taping their shoulders in place. You'd be surprised. You see a a special operations, you know, team room. The injuries these guys are able to just push through. KT tape all over their body. Cortisone injections, just everything to get through because they don't want to get pulled off. And eventually those injuries stack up so bad. You can't hide it anymore. I mean, we're doing some brutal physical activities and you cannot keep up. you got to get surgery. And they don't want to like they don't want to jump off that train. And sometimes you have to push them off the train. Go get surgery. Do six months of rehab and come back here. I can't have you at 45% right now. I can't. You got to go the whole way. Go get surgery. I was one of those guys. He's been that guy. Like you have to get surgery right now. Okay. Due to an injury, due to whatever that happened, due to on a mission you so slowing somebody down. So that would be another. But that part to me makes sense though, right? It's like sports. Hey, you you're not given your best right now. Go do the surgery. I don't want to do the Tommy John surgery or look, you got to do it. You're going to sit down a season or Achilles, whatever that happens. I can see that part, but the the the noise versus signal, there is not a formula. Like, is there a formula or you just something you do? Like, if if you were to talk to right now 100 corporate executives that are money managers who are have a billion dollars under management, they're going on the road all the time. They're traveling here, traveling, they're going meeting with this client, meeting with that client, and they have the wife and the kids and all that stuff and say, "Hey, man, guys, I'd love for you to give me a formula on how to stay locked in. I want to find a way to get locked in. I'm a performer. I work my ass up, but I got a wife and two kids. How do I stay locked in so when I go into that meeting to negotiate a deal and roll over that money, I'm going to get it." What would you say to me? Dials, not switches. Dials, not switches every time. So, switching meaning, you know, I joined a Navy at 17 years old. Cole, 18, 19 years old. I just flick that switch. Navy Seal. It's the only thing I care about. Now, you start stacking on all the other stuff and you can't give it equal bandwidth. And that's where the resentment comes in. So, I imagine a literal switchboard. I've got my family dial. I've got my uh or I've got my my operational, my my passion, my profession, whatever that is. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I'm powering down the family dial all the way. I'm not thinking about you when I'm driving in. Not thinking about picking up kids off the bus. None of that matters to me right now. All I'm thinking about is my next two hours. As soon as I complete those two hours, I reoperate my dials. recalibrate whatever I have to fully focus on. I think it's a mindset, too. They definitely will pull it out of you. Um, and if you ultimately don't perform, you won't be around there. Um, but yeah, the dials and switches for sure. Being able to dial down family, that'll work up 100%. I think too, it's a sacrifice wherever your goals are, where you wherever you want to go. If you're good just being a big fish in a small pond, cool. If you want to get out of that pond and become a small fish in a bigger pond at a higher level, the sacrifice, you may have to leave the work 100% on and then honestly be able to turn that back off, but realize you're sacrificing time to reach your goals. You got two daughters, but you got three boys, right? With your boys, are any one of them super athletic where they're playing like sports where they could go to the next level? They're, you know, young. They're 12, nine, and six. Um, the two older ones are super passionate about soccer. Uh, the oldest one is getting ready to start travel soccer, and I'm all about supporting them wherever they want to take it, however far they want to. I grew up swimming on a competitive club team year round, and I I had aspirations to to take it to the Olympics. Um, I got burned out and I I just want to support my kids. If they want to take it all the way, I'm happy to go over with them the sacrifice and what it'll take to get there. Uh but ultimately, it's on them. And I just don't want to push them and burn them out. Do do you would you support if they come and say, "Dad, I want to I want to go I want to be a Navy Seal." Would you support that or you would that be like, "Oh my god, I'm so proud. My kids want to become Navy Seals." Or no, whatever they want to do, they do. I' I'd 100% support them. Uh I want them to be happy with whatever they choose, but if they wanted to do that, I'd support it. But I give them a very honest conversation of what they're getting into. Got it. Get married right off the bat. You know, marry your high school sweetheart. You know, make sure you befriend a guy named Brian. Stay off MySpace. Maybe use, you know, TikTok instead. It's so funny when you're going through this stuff. When you're in it, it's so uh uh uh interesting watching how everybody handles it. With business, you know, you're coming up, you size everybody up. be like, "Dude, I thought that guy had it." But I thought he he's more mentally tough than that's such an interest. No way in the world I thought it that whole competitive side where you don't know. Sometimes it just takes time to see how they're going to handle themselves. You know the movie Fury where the new guy comes in and then Brad Pitt, whoever he's playing, and the guy starts peeing and says, you know, you remember that scene where it's like, "Hey, you lock it up like get in get in place." And he was panicking. He was worried. Sometimes you're never going to know until you're in that situation to see if they got it or not. But you talk about communication. So yesterday we get word and I want to get your thoughts on this. Yesterday's story comes out. Rob, if you want to pull this up, the whole signal gate, whatever they want to call it, right? The signal chat with Pete Hex said, you know, Pentagon Inspector General opens investigation into exit. Signal chat scandal. The White House said this week that the case has been closed on the signal scandal. The Pentagon's inspector general opened it back up. And then uh Rob, is this the one where six people got fired yesterday? Can you go? That's a separate article. That's this one right here. Trump fired six national security staffers after meeting with the far-right activist Laura Loomer. This is who the Guardian Trump ally presented with the opposition research against a number of officials that said she followed their disloyalty. Can you go a little bit lower, Rob, to see who it was? Fired six national security teams. Okay. The firing encompassed four staffers who were fired overnight after the meeting and two who were removed over the weekend. created extraordinary situation. Uh Loomer appeared to have more influence than the national security advisor Mike Waltz. Okay, so now this is what they're going through with communication. Mike Waltz is creating a group chat on Signal where they're communicating about a decision that's being made and then accidentally the individual that gets added to the chat, Rob, is somebody from Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic. From the Atlantic, he gets into it accidentally. He's in it. Some are saying, you know, the way that it happened, it is what it is for you guys. You're out there. How are you communicating yourself? What apps were you using when you're communicating? What apps are being used today? And maybe what different angle do you guys have here that maybe we're not looking at the fact that everybody in there is a human. We use signal, we use silent circle, we had all the same thing. And people do get people have the same name. And as soon as I first saw that, we were on the gym talking about him. That looks like you're a normal person scrolling down on the phone and you click one wrong name and you don't realize there's two John Davises in your phone. That's what it looked like to me. Nobody sanity checked it and you start communicating. I mean, we've launched out really detailed stuff on signal chats. I mean, business stuff. I mean, all kinds of stuff. Things happen. I mean, there definitely been some checks and balances. Some needs to be sanity checking that, but that's that's real world. That's what they do. That's what everybody does. You have a you have a group chat. you have a signal thread and I'm sure you're on them too that if that thing gets leaked and the photos that you share with your whole buddies something you don't want out there it's the same thing it's just on a huge public scale now that seems very normal to me that someone messed up a signal group chat at that level well no you know you shouldn't have it at that level but at the end of the day people are human they're brand new into that job they haven't done that I mean he doesn't have any experience doing that before like how many people are in that I don't I I don't think it was malicious by any of those guys. I don't most certainly don't think anybody would add a reporter into a signal chat and start talking about business knowingly. No, for sure not knowingly. To me, it's it's more uh you know, one, how it happened. Two, do I trust signal? Three, if a mistake like that happens that could lead to something with the enemy finding out before we're doing something, that's massively problematic, right? And what should the punishments for something like this happen? Like if that happened in Buds, is there is there a high level of not Buds? If that happens, you're sealed. You're you're on you're out there, you're talking to each other, you accidentally add somebody else that gets leaked to the market. One, did it ever happen? And two, if it does, how do they handle that? I can't remember a time for it actually happening. Like a like an actual thing, you know, business being leaked out to anybody. Nothing pre always post. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing pre always post. Yeah. nothing uh previously before something happened, but definitely after. What did you guys do? Like when you're being added to a group chat, like was there, especially nowadays, would they train you to say anytime you're being added to this, first look at this and look at that and look at this? Because like right now, emails for us. Guys sends an email. One of our guys respond. This literally happened two weeks ago. That person wired $100,000 to somebody that was fraud. This just happened to us. We just lost 100. We're never going to get this $100,000 back. This happened two weeks ago. Why? Here's the email. It looks like a legit email. Change the password. They log in. Boom. Boom. Boom. 100K out. Two or three weeks ago. This happened to us. Right? So, these types of things happen and you train. When you're getting an email, when somebody says this, actually check the email. Do you guys get trained on that or no? It's pure common sense. They leave it to you. You get trained on it. Yeah, you get trained on it. And there's definitely been some occurrences where uh human error or malicious will happen and then pretty quick fix uh on the IP catches. Fired or not fired? Well, depending on what it is, you definitely get fired. So, in a situation like this, somebody's getting fired. Yeah. I mean, something like that, heads are going to roll. So, Mike Waltz, what you're saying is Mike Waltz's favorite song on repeat right now is I'm Only Hum. He's listening to that hoping he doesn't get fired. But at that level, he might get fired. I I'll date myself. It was probably 2011, 2012. It was either Silent Circle or Signal when it was first coming out. And it was literally everybody sitting inside the team room. Everybody because you can't bring your phones upstairs. Everybody get downstairs. We're all going to download Signal. That's going to be our new unclass or you know uncclass chat for the whole group. So if we have to pass anything, movements, you know, training trips, whatever, we'll put it out on Signal. That way we get in real time. It's not just a an Apple text communication. These guys have Android and Apple, all the other stuff. So, yeah. I mean, we transitioned over to Signal for a lot of the stuff, but I mean, yeah, I mean, you have IT guys making sure everybody's above board, but I mean, there's always issues with it. Who owns Signal? Who owns the backside? All that kind of stuff. It's Do you trust it? Do you guys trust it? I trust it for stuff that me and him are doing. I wouldn't trust it at that level. So, what do they use now at that level? I'll be honest, I would have thought there was some proprietary thing that Elon Musk has come up with now by now or something. The fact we're just downloading something off a a regular app store on that level kind of surprised me if I'm being honest. I agree with you, bro. I actually agree with you. But I also know a bunch of guys who were in the beltway, senators, congressmen, that's how they normally communicate. Yeah. They just have, you know, an unclass chat. Me and Cole are texting back and forth and we just do everything on signal. That way it's it's secure. So even you guys when you guys don't text each other, you signal on everything. We normally text, but we all I'd probably have 50 Signal chats from trainings we do, you know, SWAT teams we're going to go train. Everything's on a signal chat. So, out of all of them, you trust Signal more than some of the other guys, Telegram, WhatsApp. Definitely more than WhatsApp. No. Got it. So, Signal is at the top for you. Okay. So, for some people that don't know, what tours have you guys been on they can share with that? You said earlier Baghdad, but what what other tours have you been on? What places have you guys served? kind of all over Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Middle East. Yeah. East Africa. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I got a list of topics. One of the ones that really, you know, up till today I have a hard time with is the following. I want to see what you guys going to be saying about this. So, do you remember where you were when we heard that Osama bin Laden was caught, you know, uh he was killed. I think it was uh if I'm not mistaken, Robert O'Neal is is the story that we always hear about. We've all seen the podcast. We've seen the stories. May 2nd, 2011. Uh, and then we hear the story that the body is being dumped in the middle of the ocean. Do you guys remember where you were at when that story was released? Yep. Yes. Okay. So, what do you think about when we are told that Osama bin Laden's body is dumped in the middle of the ocean at northern Arabian Sea? Did you guys at all sit there and say, "Uh, it's kind of weird." Or did you just say, "No, this is kind okay. Makes sense. At first glance, you would think it is weird. And then you think about the reality. Are we going to bring his body back to the US and do a John Dillinger where he post up photos of him? They're not going to do that. And if you do that, you end up making him a martyr even more and growing his following even more. Like look what he sacrificed for the cause. Don't do that. Like do you want a tombstone in the US? Do you want some some new mecca where all the other crazies kind of go to pay homage to him? I don't I don't think that benefits anybody. So, I think putting him in the ocean is exactly what they should have done. From my understanding, too, um based off of the religion, um they have to be buried within 24 hours. So, that was kind of from my understanding a respectful way to, you know, kind of honor his religion. Not saying they're honoring him, but just honoring and respecting the religion. But yeah, not not having a grave, but since he was he was moved out to that ship, burial at sea. So, you know, when I when I heard that, I'm like, it's a little weird. I'm I'm questioning it. So, I said, guys, why don't we do this? How many time can you pull up Chad GBT? Right. How many times in the history of US have we dumped a body of the enemy in the middle of the ocean? Okay. How many times in the history of the US have we dumped a body an enemy's body in the middle of the ocean? In the ocean. Okay. So, it's got to be 50 times, 25 times, maybe 18 times, maybe twice. No, only once. And it's only Osama bin Laden. And we've had a lot of other bodies. Now, then I sat there and I said, "Okay, let's have some fun with this one here." Okay. In our family, we love the movie Transformers. It's a great movie. Okay. And can you type in the Transformers where Megatron gets dumped in the middle of the ocean? Okay. Which which uh it's in 2007. Okay. where in 2007 film Transformers Megatron's body along with the remains of other Decepticons was dumped into the Laurentian Abyss, a deep sea trench in an attempt to keep them dormant and prevent them from being revived. That's 2007, right? And then four years later, in May of 2011, we're dumping Osama bin Laden's body in the middle of the ocean, something we've never done before. makes the average guy who kind of wants to question some of the stuff and say, "Yeah, yeah, it's a little strange because they could have buried the body in different places, but to do something like this, and we've killed a lot of different people in the history of America, but we've never done this before. Is there something that happened with the body? Is there something that we don't know? The timing of it a little bit weird." I mean, if they were inspired by it, at least what I could say is whoever came up with the idea to put this story out there, I give them credit because they have good taste in movies. At least they like Transformers. You got to respect that part of it, right? But, uh, for me, I'm still skeptical about this, right? When, you know, you guys were in the you're in this world, you guys talk to each other. Uh, and and based on what you're saying, you're saying it was a faith-based thing that they dumped it because that respect out of 24 hours. And you're saying it was a way for them to not give any more martyr bringing him back here. But what do you think about this comparison the four years apart? I'm sure you've seen Transformers one when Megatron's being dumped and we all watch Transformers one of course for the movie. Definitely not for Megan Fox, but it was a very good movie. But what do you think about this? Coincidence? Coincidence? Nothing tying it. Nothing. Nothing. Zero. Zero. So you think his body's gone? He's dead. He's good. Do you guys have a relationship with Albert O'Neal? Like are you guys friends or you guys pals? He was my team leader. He was your team leader. Okay. Were you guys involved in this or No, you were not on that mission at all. I was not. Okay. Got it. I I was You were You were there? What was that like? I'll say my role I I really didn't do much. Um I was there. There was four of you. No, there I won't get into the specifics. Um, but I wasn't in in the assault team, but I I was part of the team. So, did you see a dead body? Mhm. Oh, so you did see a dead body? Was it in pieces? No. Okay, but it's dead. Mhm. Do you want to say anything else? No. The way you're talking is like so Yeah. But so now I've never said that on camera. Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because uh what what's the I mean Robert's been very open about the whole story when you know he goes through the whole thing and what happened. What is the process when that happens? What is the process? Is it you take the body, you ship it back, you take it with you. What what is the process at that time? If it's not like an explosion, a bomb explosion where it's the bodies all over the place, you're not going to go pick up body parts. When it's something that you see a shot, boom, done, what's the proper procedure there? Leave them. Yeah, leave them. I mean, they wanted to bring them back for DNA test and confirmation. I mean, we used to take DNA swabs back in the day, depending on who it was, depending on what they look like, but I've never personally taken anybody off. I've never seen it. Rob, how far is it from the place he was killed to where he was dumped in the middle of the ocean? Can you find out? Like, how far is that distance? You wonder how many US Navy sailors we've buried at sea. 2596 kilometers. That is a good question. Can you check that, Rob? So, how many Navy Seals have we dumped? How many sailors? How many sailors? Yep. Have been killed overseas. We buried them at sea because you can't get them back. Can't fly them off. Before there were helicopters, before you could do all that. Yeah, but that was on land and then they dumped him in the middle of the ocean, that doesn't make you not a Well, look, I mean, if there's some if you're there and you saw him dead, you know. Yeah. So, no matter what we're saying, you know. Mhm. Oh, I mean, if there's a question whether or not we actually killed him, there shouldn't be a question about that. Okay. Yeah, there should be a question. But if there's a question about whether we still have the body or we dumped them, that could be a question cuz you weren't there for that. No, wasn't there? Yeah. I mean, I hope he's not in Area 51 with all the aliens hanging out with Biggy and Tupac. Yeah, just hanging out. He's in Vegas somewhere. That's a whole different conversation right there. Okay, so let let me transition to the next story here. So, what is this East Coast, West Coast Navy Seal? you know, the the you know, the West Coast seals are soft and the East Coast seals are, you know, tougher and, you know, like the Biggie, the Tupac, the whole thing. That's Is that is that a real thing? The East Coast, West Coast Seals, it's a good camaraderie rivalry. Yeah. We were talking about earlier, you know, just being able to [ __ ] and have thick skin and not take stuff personal. Um, I definitely would say that they're are amazing West Coast team guys. Um, some are just a little little sense a little thinner skin. So, you can't you can't joke with them how you would with the East Coast guy. Um, it's a much tighter knit on the East Coast because they're not so spread out in San Diego. And so, it's like you see each other kind of 247 really. Same neighborhoods, same same kids school and uh he's [ __ ] dog. Yeah. I mean, like on the East Coast there's nothing to do. Like in San Diego, you can do anywhere. You can mountain bike, you can go to Red Rocks, you can do Vegas, you can SC, you can do whatever you want to in Virginia Beach outside of being a Navy Seal. There's not a whole lot of extracurricular things to do and that means you just spend more team time. In my opinion, every time we go to the West Coast, like, "Hey, everybody want to grab a beer?" They're gone. They live so far outside because it's so expensive. Virginia Beach, I mean, everybody's within 15 miles of each other. Every place you go to get your haircut, there's four or five guys in there. Every place you go to eat, you look around, you just know everybody. So, it feels like you're in one big family. And I know a bunch of West Coast guys. We have guys that worked with us now that have transitioned over to the East Coast. They say the same thing. They're like, "Man, everywhere you go, the boys are here. There's nowhere else to go." It's like, you really you really feel like you're part of the team on the East Coast because there's nothing to distract you from it. Which isn't a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing. Yeah. I I just typed up uh who are the uh most well-known West Coast SEALs, right? You got what? Seal 135 and 7 that pops up. Uh Chris Kyle, who is no longer with us, I had his wife on a podcast. as we had a great conversation together. Jaco Willink is a west coast guy. He's done very well for himself in business. He started on the east coast, did he? So he started So OG is east coast, then he went to West Coast. Metal lifestyle. He was an enlisted guy on the east coast. Did you guys ever serve together? He served with my dad. He served with your dad. Wow. Yeah. What was that like? The stories your pops would say about him. I mean, he was a new guy back in the day. Oh, okay. I mean, which is ironic for me because most of the guys we went through training, most of the instructors I knew. Like I grew up with them. Like I remember when they were new guys and now I'm, you know, now I'm getting my I'm getting pushed in on the beach with these dudes and I've known him my whole life. Who was an instructor that maybe the rest of us would know? Nobody. Oh, okay. Got it. So, it's not like some of the bigger podcasters or business guys today. Okay. Got it. Then it says David Gogggins. Okay. See, he's a West Coast guy. Okay. He's done well for himself. He's podcaster speaking. I see Rob O'Neal who was He's a West Coast guy. You're talking [ __ ] about your guy. I don't think he was a West Coast guy. He was at team two team six. It says here, Seal Team Six. It says West Coast. All evens are on the East Coast. All evens are on the East Coast. Odds are on the West. Okay. So then guess what? Chad GBT got it wrong. Exactly. So this thing just like that. That's it, buddy. We can't trust this thing. Wrong. Okay. All right. So we got we got Marcus Latrell. Is he a West Coast guy or is he east coast guy? Hawaii guy, then West Coast, now he's living in Texas. What would you So Hawaii? Do you Is Hawaii considered West Coast, right? It's a nice place. That's about as far west coast as you can go. That's about as far as you can go, brother. You got Hawaiian t-shirts, magnified mustaches. So I see this last one here. Mickey Mansour. Mansour. Mikey Monsour. Mikey Mansour. He's So who are the East Coast guys? Nobody. Every Nobody knows anybody on the East Coast really. I don't know. You know anybody? Famous East Coast guys. Who? Who are the famous East Coast guys? Now I'm just kind of curious. I mean, I'd say Rob O'Neal. Oh, by the way, the first one that comes out, this is funny. Can you type in East Coast guys and see what comes up? First one comes up is DJ Shipley. Oh, yeah. Okay. The sec second one comes up is Cole Fan. So, you pre-loaded that. So, did you tap in East Coast? I did. But it's so funny. I tapped in West Coast and he came up. Rob O'Neal came up as a number six on my West Coast. Number four on my West Coast. Marino. So, I see uh Matt Bisonetti. Yep. Uh Mark Owen, Eddie Gallagher, which I think we've done something with Eddie in the past before. Eddie was a West Coast guy. Eddie was a West Coast guy. Yeah, he actually trains with us now. He's a great dude. Oh, wow. Very cool. Yeah, Eddie's he really enjoyed my time with him. Start of a guy. So, so it's more of a fun part. It's not a It's not nothing uh uh uh uh uh just purely for shits and giggles. You guys talk this [ __ ] to each It's the exact same training, the same workup cycle, same dude sitting around the same team room tables. It's just Yeah. Like east coast, west coast rap, just something to make fun of. Let me ask you this. So, you know, the you hear some of the stuff that comes up where and this is within every space. Happens to me all the time. Guys make videos about, hey, let me tell you what Patrick did and how he made his money and what he does. It's a very normal thing. The moment you get more eyeballs, you're going to get guys that are going to be targeting and saying things about you. How how competitive is it where sometimes you know the combative side well let me tell you he doesn't really have the stories like I did he didn't serve like I did and this guy didn't like that cuz we see that and we don't know that. How much of that happens in your world? Hey what's going on guys? DJ Shipley and Cole Factor from GBRS Group. Want to talk to you real quick about my neck. Retired Navy Seals entrepreneurs and co-founders of GBRS Group. Cover everything from flat range shooting mental health mental resiliency physical education. Anything you guys really want to drop into, search us on the connect, find us on there and love to connect with you guys. Look forward to hearing from you. Appreciate you guys. We'll talk soon. We don't really get into it. Exactly. We don't play that game, but it happens a lot, especially now with veterans. It seems like a lot of veterans just attack each other all day long, and we just, you know, kind of made a silent oath that we were just never going to do that. Like, we're never going to hold anybody's head under water. We're just trying to make everybody better than we are. And we say it quite a bit like if we're holding baseline, if we're holding the minimum standard and you're all better than us, we're on a super team. Yeah. I mean, if if we're comparing who did what or you know, who's got the bigger dick. Sorry, probably have to edit that. Um I mean that you just got to like but yeah, what we're doing now it's like it it means a lot to us and you know affecting people's lives and pass on the knowledge. It's like to [ __ ] talk what what we did or didn't do or someone else did 10 years ago doesn't define any of us. Yeah. I wonder how united um how united because you know when when I was part of this one insurance company nearly half the company they were Mormons and they were so united. It was so amazing watching how united they were. And sometimes in a Christian community you would see kind of Christians kind of take shots at each other and obvious of course Mormons are an element of being Christians but non-denominational. You would see Mormons they were like this. And one day, this is when I realized these guys have issues. Uh, in a both positive way and a crazy way. One day, guy comes out. This lady says, "The best movie of all time just came out. The guy's going to win an Oscar." I said, "Really? This guy's going to win an Oscar. He's going to he's going to win an Oscar. Who is this guy? This movie came out called Napoleon Dynamite." I'm like, Napoleon Dynamite? Yeah. This may be the greatest movie I've ever seen in my life. She's saying this to me, and I'm a movie guy. So I said, "Listen, you better have credibility with movies. I'm going to go watch this movie. I go watch this movie. It's the worst movie I've seen in my life." And I'm like, I'm so I come that back the next I said, "Can I ask you what was unique about this movie? This movie was horrible. What was so special about it?" Oh, he's what are you talking about? He's going to win an Oscar. Later on that afternoon, somebody told me, "The main actor is a Mormon." I'm like, "Oh, okay. I got it. So you guys are supporting each other. I I can respect that." You know, hey, this is the movie. This is that. So, is that the vibe in the Seals? Is that kind of how it is with Seals where everybody kind of backs each other up and defends each other? I'll tell you what, when you're in, it most certainly feels like that to a certain extent. You know, the brotherhood is real for a little bit and I feel like it es and flows. Some some years it is so strong, my god, it feels like you can get through anything. And in some days it really feels like it's unraveling. And I don't know if that's a cultural thing, if that's an age thing, a maturity thing, I think you saw the best of the teams at the height of the GW. And then, you know, I don't want to say around the Obama administration, but kind of towards the tail end of the war, we start talking about pulling out, you really saw a cultural change and some guys just really weren't on board with it. Interesting. So, uh, uh, recruiting when you guys were in, who was president when you were in? Bush. Bush. Bush when you went in and then Bush Obama. Bush. Obama. Trump. Bush, Obama, Trump. So when when did you when did you TS? When did you get out? Uh 2019. 2019. So Bush, Obama, Trump. Was there a in I was in E4. So for us it was just I'm a regular enlisted guy, you know. I was in when you some guys you see how they feel about the president. Well, he's there, he supports us, he's this, he's that. And you see recruiting going up and down and all this other stuff. And sometimes you see raises being given. And I think at one point on under Obama like the enlisted got a raise of 1% over like four, five, six years. There wasn't a big raise that was being given. But for you guys specific to SEALs, are you do you care who's president? Does it impact you at all? Or because of the unique position you guys are at where there's only a few of you, Obama, you know, president, left, right, center, doesn't matter. We have a mission. We're going to go get our job done and we're not affected by the president. Is that kind of how it is with SEALs? Your political views do not matter whatsoever. I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, as long as you're not trying to use the military as like a social experiment or trying to decrease funding. That's really where it gets upset because the job and the threat don't ever change. But now you look at pilots now, they're chopping flight hours. You're not as good as you were 5 years ago. Do you still need to be as good as you were 5 years? Absolutely. The threat doesn't change. So when you see that, it really does take the wind out of your sales a lot because you're sacrificing everything for this one thing. You're like, "We need more money. We need more manpower. We need this." And you're not getting a support and the mission set doesn't change. But no, I mean that is the one thing that Cole echo is the same thing. I know it. I hate when people badmouth the president. I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat. That is a dude sitting at the pinnacle of the greatest country in the world. And if you are not supporting him right now, what are you doing? Just stop. Like I never heard anybody in that team room ever talk bad about the president, no matter who was in it. Never. I love that. And there was Democrats and Republicans. Yeah. I mean, everybody's really, really diverse. And at the end of the day, the only thing you can control are the guys inside of this room. That's it. Anything external that you're never going to meet him. You're never going to have a chance to bend his ear or break his will. So, it doesn't matter. You can't change the outcome. You can only control what you can control. And that's the only thing you focus on. Focus on the team right now. So, does does it does it at that level? So, um you know, you know the saying of I I'm willing to run through the wall for XYZ, right? Is it a Did you have a leader in when you were a SEAL where you said I'll run through the wall for this guy? Did you have somebody that you work with that you have? Who would that name be? Who would that person be for you? My first introduction was probably uh Barrett Johnson who's our third platoon chief. So me and Cole did three deployments of to Iraq back to back to back and my third platoon chief came over from development group with him and it was like the second coming of Christ when he cleared that threshold. I mean I got goosebumps. I got super emotional. I didn't even shake his hand. I wrapped my arms around his neck like I've been waiting for you for eight years dude. Why? What made him so special? He was everything you ever wanted to see. Looked apart, acted apart. He got on the flat range. Outshot everybody when he did CQB. It was the best you've ever seen. His jumping was better than everybody else. He held the standard. When you saw it, it was like watching Kobe Bryant on the court. You're like, my god, you have every reason to let your foot off the gas and you haven't for 20 years. Like, how long can you maintain this the entire time? He never let his foot off the gas. And it showed everybody who's 19, 20 years old, like you can achieve mastery in this sport if you just keep going. And he did it, man. I wor to this day. I do anything for that guy. Anything. I've had phenomenal leaders. That dude was my first taste of seeing what a pro is. And it changed my entire existence. He re really raised the bar and he provided resources and skills and training for the for the entire team to to meet that bar and really raised kind of the performance elevation culture environment. What was his name? Barrett Johnson. Barrett Johnson. Barrett Johnson. Is he is he a known guy or no? Like the average person doesn't know who he is. No. No. You'd never find this guy. I mean, he's got a historic past. I'd love to be able to sit down to do an interview with him. His mindset changed everything. Is that him? That is him. Can you zoom in on the picture, Rob? Is he a big boy? Uh, probably my height. Yeah. 510 180 pounds. Just the What was his What was his style of leadership when conflicts would come up? Like was it be was he was he more of a guy that he led by example or was he the one that could get you to do things that others couldn't get you to do? He led by example, but he was one of those guys that I mean, he really embodied, I'm never going to ask you to do anything I haven't done, I'm not currently doing, or I'm not willing to do. And then he did it. Okay? Like, you walk into the gym, he's in there before you, he leaves after you. You go to the range, he's already been there. All right, this guy sees the importance of this because a lot of times if you don't have that example, you kind of adopt a nineto-ive mentality. Like, I show up, I do train with everybody else, 5:30, even in the Seals. Yeah. I mean, like, it's a normal It's a normal job. I mean, you wake up 5:00 a.m., you're doing fitness, you're lifting, you're fighting, you're training, you're eating, training, eating, going home, rinse and repeat every single day over and over. Well, there's guys that show up earlier and they stay later and they do more polishing. And on the weekends, they're training, they're messing around with kit, they're developing new tactics, new procedures, just trying to make the overall collective better. And I thought he just did it better than anybody else. I mean, you really had a sense and feeling that he had your back, like no one was going to come between him and us and the team. Even if we made mistakes and failed, obviously he held us accountable, but it was very much coaching and making us better and grow. What does he do now? Can you pull up his LinkedIn profile? I'm curious. I'm sure he's doing some consulting now. I was texting him the other week, but go a little bit lower to see what is his most recent. Okay. So, program manager to tell him uh director of K9 operations because contract independent contract go a little bit lower. He doesn't even put his military stuff probably there. Go a little bit lower. Probably not. No, he's not going to put his stuff there. Wow. Yeah. So, he was doing guided hunts for a little bit. That's what the hunt is. I mean, yeah, there it is. Senior chief. 22 years. Yeah. He was at uh he was at team two with my dad, too. Wow. Mhm. Wow. That's kind of cool. Just full circle. Now is is in in um is the do you feel the loyalty is whatever he says I do or is it more president commander-in-chief man I'm willing to run through the wall for this president no I'm willing to run through the wall my chief it's more chief chief okay because it's the day-to-day guy it is at the end of the day when you're out there alone your political views don't matter your religious views don't matter do you guys watch politics when you're out there do you because when I would talk to my friend who went uh uh Delta, you know, he would say we would watch the news and we would say, "Why are they lying? That's not what's happening. We're here right now." Did you Did you guys watch the news at all? You're like, "No, we're not fun there." Nah, not really. No, we watch a lot of episodes. Watch a lot of episodes, TV. Yeah. Not politics and news at all. No. What did you think about people that were, you know, telling the news or they're working for CNN or Fox or MSNBC or NBC? Did you have an opinion of them? You're like, "No, it's just we mind our own business." I just see if what it is you're trying to push an agenda. You know, a lot of you're trying to breed fear into people, trying to make it seem like it's something it's not. And yeah, I mean, you're over there on the ground. You're watching it on TV in real time. Okay. And then your parents start calling you, wives start, I'm seeing this on the news. What's happening? None of that's actually happening. So, you know, the one of the uh ambassadors, I don't know who it was, Rob, that was here yesterday, uh trying to negotiate on behalf of Russia, Ukraine, all the deals that's going on behind closed doors and you know, the peace deal, you know, Zalinsky, all that. He's in town. I think he's in DC yesterday. I I don't know what his name is, but Tony knows who it is. If you want to text him, uh actually just go to news uh type in Russia US uh peace treaty. Uh uh that's not that's not the guy. Russia US peace treaty DC. Type in DC. Yeah. Let's see. And then go to news. Zoom in. You know, ladies, seriously, you see fire. Okay. See? Okay. Just just have them uh text it to you for you to know. So, during the 17 years you guys were in, was there ever a moment where you guys were so deep that you had intel where we were this close to possibility of a World War something really nasty? Was it ever a point where it was so close that if this thing happens and this triggers this, we could be in a World War II overnight? Was there ever a moment like that in your 17 years? There were a couple scenarios under the Trump administration right before I retired. We were spinning up to do a couple things that if they would have went potentially, potentially. And I'll be honest, uh, Trump kanked us when we were on the ramp getting ready to go. He solved it. However he does whatever he does, he called and literally stopped us on a ramp. You vividly remember that? Mhm. I mean, we spun up to go. We were going to go do the thing and got in midair and got ready to do the the whole process and we got canceled and spun around and came back home. Okay. So, this has got to be 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. This is that time. Yeah. And if this were to happen, I mean, potentially, I mean, could have been an active engagement with a bunch of Russians. Could have been dicey. You just never know. So, you're on the ramp. You're ready to go. Everybody's, you know, strapped. You're boom. Get the phone call. Nope. Escorted. We're not going on it. Mhm. Huge letdown. Huge let down. You wanted it. Oh, I mean, everybody wants it. Everybody wants to go and you start to think about the ramifications like what if this goes south. What if this does spike off the whole thing and now we're stuck here? We can't get back home. What if it what if it does go nuclear? Now everybody's back home and we're stuck here in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it gets dicey. But but is is it like Okay, so maybe let me ask a question a different way. Is is it like um you ever seen you've seen the movie Hurt Locker? I don't know if you with what's his name who's phenomenal Jeremy Jeremy Rhiner. Rer something named like that, right? What's his name? Jeremy Rener. Rener I'm sorry. Jeremy Rener. Yeah. phenomenal actor and you watch him just go up and he shows almost the addiction with the adrenaline and the life on how close you're always on the edge and he always wants to go back. Every time he comes back he's around his wife is like he just wants to go back and doesn't know how to be a father. Is it like you're you're always itching for something to be a part of? Like give me the next mission for me to go on. Yeah. And what Jeremy Rener does in that movie is he's operating on switches and not dials. He's flipped it. He fell in love with it. He gets a taste of the adrenaline. You can't get it out of your system now. Now you just chase it. We call it chasing a dragon. You can chase it the entire time. Be careful what you wish for. You'll eventually find it. But a lot of times they spend your entire career chasing the one thing and they never stop to, you know, enjoy it. Was this mission to take somebody out? I can't get into all the specifics, but yeah, I mean, it was a a lot of people going through international waters that shouldn't have been potentially possibly carrying some stuff they shouldn't have been. We were going to intervene and he solved it, which is a good thing and a bad thing because you want to go to work, you want to do the thing. But the way it was presented that was solved, was it like, "Yeah, I made a phone call. I spoke to him. Did he publicly say how he solved it or no? This was all be." So, this is not even anything that publicly has been disclosed. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't even get a a phone call. Just they literally turn around like can't get going back home. Was Barrett your was was he your commander at the time? The the chief at the Okay. No. So, he got out in uh 2024. No, 92 to 2014. So, no, he wouldn't have been in uh I thought he was 92 to 2014. 22 years and a month, I think. Yeah, he would. He wouldn't have been in. He got a 2014 22 years and a month. Yeah. So, okay. Interesting. So, today what we're seeing right now right you and maybe let me go while we're still on that topic theream solemani do you guys remember solemani and when that that happened that was a were you guys part of that at all or no do you guys know friend okay so you obviously have peers that were part of this who were on this mission this was a crazy one no I mean this was a January 3rd 2020 we take out Gasam Solmani who is the guy who manages all the, you know, uh, Islamic Revolutionary Guard. He's the guy that's dealing with all the proxies. He's the guy that's dealing with Houthis, with Hezbollah, with all those things. And he could potentially be the guy that's running Iran. When this happened, were you guys like, "Holy [ __ ] this could turn into something." Or was it like, "Okay, this is a statement. Knock it off. Stop. don't do anything. And if you do, this is what the US is capable of doing. I see that as like a show of force, like how committed we are, how far you're willing to go for the whole thing. No different than, you know, the Israelis after Black September. I don't care if it takes a decade, we're going to go the entire way. And I think we've shown that as a country a lot. Take us 10 years, 20 years, we're going to keep going the entire way just because we said we would. I think that's what it is. You can go wherever you want. You can hide as much as you want. Your trade craft can be phenomenal. We just have people that are going to sit in this room all day long, do nothing but hunt you, and we'll find you. That's a superpower that we have. Mhm. I You have people that just sit in a room all day long, do nothing but just pick you apart. They'll unravel your entire existence right now. It's all they do. And there's endless manpower of them. Us. Yeah. I mean, like anybody we have to go after, any target we have, I mean, there's just there's people that's all they do. Okay. So let me let me ask you this question. So um um you know I lived in Iran almost 11 years. So I I was born in 78. We left July 15th of 89. Went to Germany at a refugee camp and then we came here. So but I'm in I live there. So I know the environment, the climate, how how it is. And when you're in business, you have enemies. You have a lot of competitors. And you have to know whose threats are real threats and whose threats are just, you know, hot air. I want to do this to you. You're a gonna do nothing. But if that guy says, "I'm gonna do something." You're like, "Hey, listen. We have to pay attention to this." You guys sit there all day, watch tape of who the enemies are. You study Iran, you study, you know, uh, what happened with Yemen, you study what happened with, you know, Gaddafi or or Saddam Hussein or Putin or all that. That's the business model. I'm assuming. I'm just speculating. I'm not in it. That's your world. And do you guys talk about yeah those guys are not going to do nothing to us their threats mean nothing or to say no when that guy says that listen we have to really be ready that they're capable of doing something how did you guys 17 years you're tier one how do you view when Iran makes threats for me personally I look at it just like Osama bin Laden threatened it for a long time said he was going to attack the homeland and didn't take it serious and I think after that you got to take every threat serious. You just have to. Especially now with open borders, there's so many people pouring in this country and if they want to spin it on and turn it on, they can really, really fast. So, I think now after 911, I think everybody is taking every threat seriously. At least you should because they proved it. I mean, we've had to adopt a lot of cultural changes since 911 for the good. I think it's made us better overall. I mean, you can't look at guys like that and just, oh, he won't do that. Well, we've already said that before. We said that multiple times. We said that as long as I can remember. We said that through World War II. We said it with Japanese. We said it with every Oh, they won't do that. Yeah, they did. Yes, they did. They drove They flew his plane straight over here, crashed them into Pearl Harbor, and then kicked off the whole thing. They will they will do that. Yeah. Now, so don't don't underestimate the power of any threats, especially not threats that have actual money and resources. I think after 911 it was a complete switch um that you can't just pass off threats and the communication technology that's evolved across the world on intel. Um and I think there's different ways to defeat him even if it's not a missile. But I don't think they're missing any of it now. I mean they're catching everything and they probably got AI involved as well. And you know, part of the problem from my understanding with 911 is none of the intel were talking to each other and now it's like all the intels are talking to each other. All the intels are talking to each other. So like all the different intelligence agencies who whoever's collecting picking up from different countries or Oh, okay. So you're saying like a more of a united front of a CIA, MSAD, MI6 than it was before? Yeah. Or you're saying more at your level? Definitely at our level. Definitely at our level, but then our inter agency partners and all our allies, like our closest allies. That's what I'm saying. So yeah, we're all pointing in the exact same direction, which is the source of our strength really is how good our allies are and then how much we really do support each other. Got it. So when you say that like you guys you do you see Delta as a team? Do you see 18 Deltas as a team? Do you see Delta Force as a team? You guys see each other as equals? Mhm. You do. So, okay. Was it more competitive pre- 911 or it was a little bit more lax and now it's like, listen, no one's going to ever do a 911 again under our watch. It certainly felt like the '9s. You know, I wasn't active duty in the 90s, but I grew up in the 90s. A lot of it was training. You deploy to Germany. You do inter agency ops with Poland. All our all their European counterparts. They deployed a they do cold weather training in Alaska for 6 months. I mean everything was just a big training mission waiting for one big thing to pop. And now that it has popped and we've seen it, we've come so far tactically, technologically in the last 20, you know, 25 years that I think now like we're in such a good spot to defend the nation and now with our allies too. I mean 911 was the worst thing that's ever happened to us, but in a lot of ways if it wouldn't have happened we'd be in the stone age still. I mean, we all, you look at body armor, AI, just digital communications, everything that had to elevate and grow so fast. If we wouldn't had 911, we wouldn't we would have stayed the same way. And I look at it like, and this will sound messed up, but if you look at um Blackhawk Down October 393, look at the gear they're wearing and then look when they stepped on the ground in Afghanistan, not much change. Same body armor, same carbines, same helmets. Nothing really changed because they didn't have a reason to evolve. Now you step foot put on Afghanistan, you're like, "Oh my god, this is not the same. This is very, very different." Then you teleport that same crew in Iraq 3 years later. Oh wow. Oh no. Like these IDs are a serious issue right now. They're detonating them 50 different ways. Like we can't stay ahead of this. How are we going to do it? Engineers attack this problem over and over and over. EOD, everything you come across, pump us the info. We've got to be able to solve this. And that's what they did. I mean, we think about it like if we only would have hit Afghanistan, no Iraq. There's so many lessons we learned from Iraq that if we wouldn't have invaded, we wouldn't have had them. Like, we would not have evolved to where we are right now if we wouldn't have hit them both. I'm not saying we should have hit them both, but I'm saying the benefit of doing them, it really I mean, the learning curve, tactics, techniques, procedures, just everything, it really really evolved during the height of the war and all our allies really benefited from it. Let me let me ask you. So has because technology's advanced on all levels, right? So the way they did 9/11, you know, and now afterwards, whoa, no, it's not going to happen again. What what do we make a mistake? Boom. Communications. Okay, great. So we knew we had science. Yes, we knew. Okay. Airport. Who was able to get in? The enemy, their technology is advanced as much as us. Our technologies advanced, right? Is it easier for the enemy to the the the level of advancement to be able to conduct another 911 in a more creative way, has that advanced more than our ability to prevent it from happening? What what do you think has advanced more? I mean, I think with with growing and technology threats, I'm not going to say that you can't keep up with them. I mean, it's kind of like I say hacking. You're you're always like stepping up that code to to protect your systems, but as technology evolves, you're always kind of playing that cat-and- mouse game of maybe the technology hasn't evolved as fast, but your defense is higher and kind of vice versa. Um, but I think they're always evolving every year and new threats. I mean, it's no different if if you and me are both professional boxers. You're doing your training camp. I do a secret training camp with some ninjas and I'm just training in isolation. You have no idea. There's no training footage leaking. You have no idea what I'm doing. I step out, bell rings, and I hit you with something you've never ever seen before. Okay, now I have to go back to the drawing board. Now, everybody else sees that. I think a lot of this time it sucks, but you're almost in a you're almost in a defensive posture. Like, we've prepped for everything we know right now. We have contingencies for the unknowns, and if they happen, this is how we're going to this is how we're going to combat it. So, which one are we though? Are we the one that's trained and improved without anybody seeing it, or is that the enemy? Both. Okay. So, that's that's a little bit intense. It is because yeah, I mean it's spy on spy. I mean you're training, you're perfecting, advancing as much as you can, but you have to do it in secrecy. And that's where a lot of the general public, they want to know everything you're doing. The Area 51s release all the documents. We want to have full open source to everything the military does. You can't do that. You shouldn't have any right to do that because if you know it, everybody else knows it. Well, they're doing the exact same thing. Just a lot of time their trade craft is better. Like they don't have cell phone communications. They just do it in straight isolation. They bring in all the parties from all the other countries and train them up on bomb making and all this other stuff. Now they're doing isolation. They're not putting out propaganda videos. So you don't know how far ahead they are. Rumor mill. There's there's a community that said, "Hey, uh, you know, uh, Trump, his first four years when he was president, there was no wars. ISIS was gone." You know, a bunch of different progress that took place. And then Biden comes in, Ukraine, Russia, you know, you got uh uh Israel, Hamas, all these things that are taking place all over the place. Now Trump is in day one peace, you know, deal between Ukraine and and Russia. Day one, we're going to have Iran, Israel, is going to be done. That's it's not going to happen. Hamas, boom. Okay, great. Now it's slightly different energy. If you do this, we're going to do this. Okay. And you better release the hostages. They don't. You better release the hostages. They don't. You better release the hostages. They don't. What is your position? Because some are saying, "I'm a fully anti-war. If Trump, I swear to God, if Trump goes out there and we go to war, I'll be the first one to come out and say that I make the biggest regret of my life ever to, you know, vote for Trump and I should have never done it. We cannot be going to war and we're getting closer to war." What's your position with that? He's putting it on you, Cole. I'll say the limited foreign policy that I somewhat know, you know, we've always helped fund um our partners internationally um to protect whether it's just a partnership or there's a mutual benefit between those. And it we we become kind of taken advantage of on that on how we help support and fund those and where the countries kind of just depend on us no matter what. I appreciate Trump's approach on kind of getting or trying to get those wars to stop. Um understanding both sides of why they're angry, why they're fighting. Um, I don't know the conversations that go on behind closed doors on how they get Trump pushes them to get the treaties, but I think it's great. Um, it would definitely be something different if we were attacked here and we were having to attack a different country, but really trying to minimize and and stabilize um the countries and environments. And I say there's always a winner in war, but it's like no one's winning. I mean, both sides are losing uh people. So if it's not strategic and I mean I I think it's just good that he's able to try and create peace on those. What do you think? I think if you haven't fought in the war, if you haven't given up your children to fight in the war, I don't really care about your opinion. And I know that sounds bad, but we've been doing this for a long time. And if I didn't think it was a worthy cause, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't. And if if Trump did a recall right now and I had to slap it all back on, I'd go because I think it's worth it. I watched him for four years avoid all these major conflicts. He is not one of those dudes, some wararmonger just trying to push. He's not. If he was, he would have done it. He had every reason to do it. The most powerful dude in the world. If you wanted to spend your first four years just laying hate and waste to everybody who ever did you wrong, he could have done it. He didn't do it. I watched him be really diplomatic and solve a lot of issues with just a phone call that I hadn't seen before. Yeah, I mean my foreign policy is not as good as it probably should be. I mean, there's a lot of backdoor conversations that are happening, but at the end of the day, if you say you can't ever do that thing ever again and they continue to do it, at what point are you going to send it going to go the entire way? That's where it gets dangerous. You call their bluff. If you don't release a hostage, I'm doing X, Y, and Z. They don't release them. Well, now I've kind of painted it all in a corner. And that's where it gets kind of dicey. It's like, well, you have to go now. You have to go. You have to go. And I don't know what he says on these phone calls to get them to change their mind. I have no idea. But it's working. I mean, he's done it successfully multiple times. I I don't want us to go to war. I definitely don't want us to go to war with China, with Russia, with any of these people. But at a certain point, we cannot you can't give them an inch. If you do, it'll take a mile. I think a lot of times, just like Cole said, I mean, we become the blanket of coverage and support for everyone else. And Ukraine's a perfect example. We have to fly over quite a few countries that are really close to Ukraine in order to give them support. And I feel like not a lot of other people are. Like I always hear that like, well, if they take Ukraine, they're just going to keep going. What are you guys going to do about it? Like I shouldn't have to fly from our country over all of your countries and land there and try to solve that for you. We should all be trying to solve it together. And I feel like we always have to be the big brother to step in first and kind of draw that line in the sand. And it puts a lot of people against us. And then it stirs up a lot of hate and discontent inside of the own country. Just does. People don't want to go to war. They want to go to war. They see this. They see that. It's a lot of times it's a lose-lose. When when you're in it and they're given a mission, they're not explaining why. They're just saying, "Here's the mission. Go." Right. For you. We're going to go take out Leman, we're going to go take out, you know, you know, Osama bin Laden. Does the chief, does the the leader sit there and say, "Here's why we're doing it. Because of this, this, this, this, that, or no, guys, get ready. We're leaving at, you know, 1,800. We're leaving at this." Is that how it's communicated? Or do you guys ask the question, why are we doing this? They always provide an intel package and why they they go over it from start to finish. I mean, it's a complete picture. everybody, every contingency. And then when they do say why, are there side conversations saying, "I don't know why we're doing this. It's not even worth it." Or no, it's like, "No, we're locked in. Let's go." I think the side conversations are more on the logistics and and the timing. Got it. That more environmental. Got it. You said something earlier. You said at times I felt like we were being used. What did you mean by that? You mean the US? Yeah. You said sometimes I feel like we're being used by other countries that Yeah. that we're they're expecting we're always going to step in and and cover their back. We're going to fund it. We're going to support them. Um and and there's no real thought of their internal defense system. It's always like they're the little brother and they're like, "I have my big brother and I know he's always going to show up and the day he doesn't, what's going to happen?" But I mean, I think again our our resources, our technology are used genuinely um in partnership, but some of the countries I feel like uh expect it and they have no kind of responsibility almost. Are you talking because you're talking kind of like Ukraine? Is that No, I I have zero perspective on what their their perspective or expectations of with us. But if Russia's invading their country that I mean you had 80 90 year old grandmothers grab an AK case to defend their house. I think we'd have the same if somebody some other country was trying to invade us like we're going to protect where we live and whether they're politically involved or not have some political stance or they have family in Russia. I think there were quite a few stories of you know families fighting each other on the Russian side in Ukraine. But it's like I I would 100% defend my own and I think that's what they're doing. I mean, do you think if um I'll just ask it over to you. Do you think if Trump was president, Russia would have invaded Ukraine? No. No. Not at all. I don't think so either. I don't think so at all. Yeah. No, I think it No, I don't think so. Now, um Well, I mean, you kind of said it's not the negotiation now. Now he says, "Give me the hostage. Give me the hostage. Give me the hostage." You don't do anything. It's like Putin when the He's being said, "If you guys do this, I have a nuclear weapon to use. If you got because Putin's the last few years has threatened nuclear." He's gone straight up and said that, right? That's a pretty big threat. And you said take every threat seriously, right? So what I said a few times, I'm like, "Dude, you can't keep threatening and not doing anything." either don't make the threat or if you do be ready that if they don't back down to your threat, you have to actually execute the threat. So use your threats accordingly. You know, you don't want to be threatening every month. You lose the power of the threat. So I I feel like what happened with Putin kind of Trump's been put in that situation right now a little bit with Hamas and the hostages and Israel which you know the slippery slope but he said something you said about the phone calls. You don't know what he says on the phone calls but whatever he says he gets them to do something. Who knows what those phone calls are about. Who would love to be on those phone calls just to hear what he says? It'd break the internet. There's no telling what he's saying but it's working. What do you imagine he says on these calls? I I bet he's saying to play golf. Can you imagine like a purely a fun conversation? It's not even like, hey, hey, listen. I swear to God if you do anything, your golf memberships are done permanently. Never again. Maraago done. The meatballs will suck. We're going to give you two week old meatballs. He's doing something. He's saying something on that phone that is scaring him. Does a commander-in-chief like that make you want to fight for him? Cuz you just said right now if something happens, there's a recall, you're in. No problem. 100%. Seriously? Yeah. How old are you guys? 41. Oh, yeah. You still Okay. Yeah. Sick. That I love that. I love that energy, though. Like, we're ready. Look at you. You have a smile like this the entire podcast. I'm just thinking about you stay ready. You ain't got to get ready. Oh, brother. Call. Yeah, I'll throw it on real quick. Real quick. There is something special about fighting for America and our freedom. Like, tell me what that is. I mean, patriotism. Like, I don't have to know you. We don't have to have the same beliefs, but I love this country. I love the choices everybody gets. I love the freedom, the opportunity. Like, I'll die for it today. Fighting for it. Absolutely. Our kids, our kids' kids. Like, I want them to have the same choices, chances that that we enjoy. Got to love that, man. I'm in the army first time. I'm like, I joined the army for the GI bill originally. None of my parents were from Iran. So, it's not like I went because my dad was a 99 cent store cashier. So, it's not like I'm going because of that. You go in and I joined uh April 15th, give or take, whatever the dates were. I go to um uh uh what do you call it before you go to boot camp? That one week where you get the vaccination, the air gun vaccinations line, you know, you get a scab, all that stuff. You go MEPS. Is it MEPS? thing is maps and you get to the unit and then you're in boot camp and then Memorial Day whatever is end of May is Memorial Day. Yes. So Memorial Day happens and there's a ceremony and I look at these guys who are decorated uniform everything in tears stand guys that are tough and they're standing like this and you just see tears. I'm like whoa. I say sorry what's going on over here? Do you know what those guys did? Do you know what that guy did? Do you know his story? Do you know what happened? These guys loved their country from that moment on. Fourth of July came cuz that's right after it and you're just standing there. Dude, this is And then we go to our unit first airborne. I get there September of 97. Can you look rap when Saving Private Ryan came out? They take us. They said there's a movie coming out about your unit. You guys get to watch it first. We go there. 600 of us in the unit. We watch Saving Private Ryan. What year did It's got to be 97. Okay. Yeah. So, so that's so weird. So movie comes out in 9798. We see this movie in 97 and we watch this movie. This is about your unit. This is the hunter force. It was done after that. Yeah, I did. The the pride of wearing that, you know, the the badge and you know, I I I got out because I wanted to get into business and I got one phone call. But, uh, it was a unique experience of having that pride and loving your country. Were you brainwashed a little bit? Probably, but I don't mind who's washing my brain. You know, sometimes you have to be asking yourself because you know that can go in many different ways. The negative side as well having the level of pride in your country. There's nothing like it. I don't know if we helped it the last four years. I don't know if the last four years we sold America and our military the way that we typically do. You're seeing the recruiting numbers that are coming up right now, which is a beautiful thing. But I love seeing your level of patriotism. Pete Hack said, "Did you guys ever serve with them? Did you guys ever work with them?" No. No. Never. Never had any interaction. How do you think he's doing? How do you think he's doing? Not his hair, because his hair looks good. Okay. Hair looks great. Hair looks great. How do you think he's doing? Because when he got the job, you know, you know, out of nowhere, Pete Hexet, Pete Hexet, Pete Hexet, given a big job like that. Uh, how do you think he's doing? I think right now it's pretty young or pretty new into it. I think he's going to develop, right? I think he's surrounded himself with really good people. And I think the fact that he is down to earth, he is one of the boys. I just classified as that. Not a politician, not going to be bought, not gonna be paid for, just and I know a bunch of people that really really know him and they all classify him as a dude. He's a dude's dude. He's a good guy. He really cares. And he is a [ __ ] patriot. And I honestly that's that's what I want to be around. I want a dude that walks the walk, talks the talk, and really really cares. And I think he really really does. So I think right now I mean all signs right now show me that he's going to do a great job. Yeah. You know I hope the the the the the idea of having moral authority where the guys are willing to say this guy understands me. Sometimes a guy telling you what to do like you don't even know what we've done. Like you don't even know our life to really appreciate and respect us. Like I've been a sales guy my entire life. I understand the value of somebody that sells. It sucks. Got to make the phone calls. Got to get rejected. you're going to have days where you're not going to make any money. You guys run a business, so you know what it's like when things are not going your way. Uh how how much does that matter when the guy that's going to be at a level like this, especially nowadays, is younger, none of the woke stuff, has served before. How much does that matter to the guys that are now following his lead? Well, I'll be honest. I never had that opportunity. I would love to have that. A guy that's actually doing PT with you, a guy that comes out, you know, first month on a job, he's standards equal across the board. I'm sick of the social experience. We're done. If you can't do 15 pull-ups, you're out. I don't care if you're a male, a female, brown, white, black, Chinese, I don't care. If you can't meet the standard, you're not here. Thank God. Finally, somebody said it. I mean, outside of the Marine Corps, everybody basically lowered the standard. Everybody did. I'm so glad he brought it back. No more of that. It doesn't make us better. It doesn't to do the DEI stuff that we were doing. No. Weakening the force does not help anybody. It doesn't. Lowering the standard. I mean, we pulled up one the other day. I have a we had a world class strength and conditioning coach, Vernon Griffith. He's with us five days a week, been with him for seven years. He's the world's best. And we talked about it just if you look at in the 40s and 50s, high school gymnasium class, what they were doing, rope climbs, every single person, the monkey bars, O course, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, running. Like, they don't even do a mile run in school anymore. The physical standard has dropped so far and there's no reason for it because now we have the best athletes that have ever lived. It's not a matter of nutrition, science, data, exercise. I mean, we have all the data here to make superhumans and for whatever reason, we just don't want to do it. I'm not about that life. Everybody, in my opinion, everybody should be walking around looking like Dolph Lunger off Rocky four. Like, your physical presence matters. When you see guys go through a threshold, they should be the most intimidating people on the planet. Yeah, it's funny you're saying this. Do you remember the clip of John F. Kennedy when he was talking about uh fat kids? You ever seen that one where he You've never seen this? You got it. Rob, can you pull this up? This is John F. Kennedy talking about nothing more unfortunate than fat children. Uh and this was a speech. When did he give the speech? Rob, I'm going to send it to you. Uh there's two of them. I sent you the first one and second one. If you can pull up the second one that I just uh sent Okay. Is this uh this is the first. Give me one second. I'll get the man. You are so fast on that computer. God, I need Rob is a genius. Rob is uh very quick with this. But the other one, Rob, that if you pull up, this one's 23 seconds. Watch this here. Go for it. Hey, what's going on guys? DJ Shipley and Cole Factor from GBS Group. Want to talk to you real quick about my neck. Retired Navy Seals, entrepreneurs, and co-founders of GBRS Group. Cover everything from flat range shooting, mental health, mental resiliency, physical education. Anything you guys really want to drop into, search us on the neck, find us on there, and I'd love to connect with you guys. look forward to hearing from you. Appreciate you guys. We'll talk soon. There is nothing uh I think uh more unfortunate than to have a soft, chubby, fat-l lookinging children who go to watch their school play basketball every Saturday and regard that as their week's exercise. I hope that all of you will join and everybody in the United States to make sure that our children participate fully in a vigorous and adventurous life which is possible for them in this very rich country of ours. Can you imagine saying that two years ago? Fat children, chubby fat children, offensive, you know. Is this continuing of that, Rob? Yeah, this is uh the longer clip. It's about three minutes. Let Let me just Let's just hear the first minute. Rob, fast forward if you could a little bit when he starts talking. Go for it. to speak to the people of America about a subject which I believe to be most important and that is the subject of physical fitness. And I speak not only as president of the but also as a parent of two children who I hope will grow up with those qualities of vigor and energy which we identify with the best of America. This should be a matter of concern to us all. A country uh is as strong really as its citizens. And I think that mental and physical health, mental and physical vigor go hand in hand. Vigor. I hope that we will not find a day in the United States when all of us are spectators except for a few who are out on the field. I hope all Americans will be on the field. That is they will concern themselves with the education of their children, with the physical development of their children, with the participation in the vigorous life and then also as their children get older, inculcate into them a desire to maintain that vigor through their normal life. Our citizens are living longer and we want them to participate fully in that longer life. But they can only do so if they give some of their time and some of their effort to maintaining that vitality. You can pause. This is a Got to love this. How do we get to a point where now, you know, we're we are where we are with physical fitness. How does that happen? Entitlement, no accountability, lowering their standard. I mean, I we've been saying this for a couple years. There are too many kids that never got punched in the face on the playground that have now grown up and become adults getting trophies for losing. Everybody gets a trophy, not working for anything, expecting everything. And now it's spilling over to the kids. The parents are offended. You can't say that to my kid. I I'm not sure exactly how old you are. I know you're older than us, but it's like how we grew up. It was like they weren't always here, take this medicine. You're bouncing off the wall. like you were held accountable. Like schools dealt with you. They weren't just like, "Oh, here's their problem. Like they can't be here." Um, and the schools have become softer. There's no question about it. I mean, you get kids that get suspended or not allowed to go to school annual trips because they were playf fighting with the kids, boys specifically. Like, you want this boy to be a man, but you're making him soft. What are you doing? Sometimes this happens at you know private schools and the challenge with that is you know is man I I read something about uh how boys used to be raised by men and a lot of times nowadays teachers most of them are you know purely through professions it's a lot of them are women so uh uh the way they raise boys is the way they would raise girls and they think they're doing a good job but they're making them softer And how do you balance that out? It's a very complicated uh situation where we've been in this for a long time. To change this is going to take a minute. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take a minute. It's going to be the involvement of fathers being there to, you know, shape them up and challenge them and let them know, hey, this is normal. This is what life looks like. You're going to get punched in the face sometimes. It's going to suck at times. Trust me. In business, you get punched in the face every day and you don't have a choice. Sometimes you get punched in other places where your voice changes. So, you got to be braced for impact when you're getting kicked. Uh, but uh yeah, no, I'm with you there when it comes down to that. But it's funny that John F. Kennedy gave that speech. John F. Kennedy, imagine you like Joe is them John F. Kenn was a Democrat giving a speech that direct. Your kids are chubby and fat. Get your act together, parents. What are you feeding them? I can see Trump giving a speech like that. Okay. Very easily. Yep. Uh uh. Okay, let me go to the next story here. So PMC's, right? We've had Eric Prince on a couple times, private military contractors, and we've had that conversation with them. It's almost as if movies are portraying what's going to happen in 20 to 40 years. Okay? And you watch them, you're like, "Yeah, I don't know. Maybe seriously, that'd be crazy." It's no longer crazy. It's not crazy. It's normal. Yeah. A movie 30 years ago that was crazy. Wow. I even I said that was crazy. Now I've accepted it as the norm. Huh. So let me let me kind of take this in a different So I'm watching uh Iron Man one and two. We're going through it at the whole We had Terence Howard the other day on the podcast. So we went through watching Iron Man one because he's in it. So now Dylan is like that. I want to watch Iron Man 2. So we're watching Iron Man 2. in Iron Man 2. Um, whoever is the Mitch McConnell role or the Chuck Schumer role is asking Robert Downey Jr. to give up the Iron Man robot to the government. He says, "I'm not going to be doing that." He says, "Look what Iran is doing." He shows this clip, the robots that they're building in Iran, and look what Russia's building, and look what this is building, showing the fact that everybody is building their own form of a superhuman Iron Man machine that you get to use, fly, travel, all this other stuff, right? Okay. And then this guy's a billionaire. He's very wealthy. He has the ability to build this stuff. He's super smart. He's super brilliant. And then you bring it to today. Elon Musk has given a speech about robots. And Rob, if you can pull up the speech, he says, you know, in the in the next 10 20 years, the average person is going to be able to buy robots for 20 or $30,000. And I believe there's going to be, you know, Tesla's going to have 10 or 20% of the robot market. Okay. He's talking about when you're sitting there and and and processing future threats of military. I'm curious if this even happened or not. How much of the conversation is uh No, that's the one. Rob, if you can play that. No, you just added Rob. The one right there. Yeah. play this clip if you could. Is there an audio to it? Oh, perfect. Go for it. And even the most optimistic estimates that I've seen for for Optimus, the Optimus Optimist, um um I think under underount the magnitude of of what this robot will be able to do. Um you know as I said at the beginning of the of the presentation I you know I agree with the Arc Invest analysis that uh autonomous transport is called sort of a 5 to7 trillion market cap situation. Optimus I think is is a a 25 literally $25 trillion market cap situation. So, yeah, that's not it. There was another clip that says there we got Tesla. It says there'll be $30,000. Is that the one? Play that clip, Rob. I think I think everyone in the world is going to want one. Like literally everyone. Um and and then there will be obviously uh robots in industry um making stuff and so I mean I I think the ratio of humanoid robots to humans will probably at least 2:1 something like that. One to one for sure. So which means like somewhere on the order of 10 billion uh humanoid robots um maybe maybe 20 or 30. Um, and so then it's like, okay, well, let's say, you know, you kind of make, let's say the build rate is I I think the build rate will be probably something ultimately like a billion a year, humanoid robots, like actually a billion a year. And if Tesla just has a 10% share of that, and it might be a lot more than 10%. Um, and there's, you know, we make like 100 million Optimus units a year. I just I mean for reference the auto industry is roughly 100 million vehicles per year. Um so that you know sort of similar ballpark at least within an order of magnitude and I I think we could make one for a cost of maybe at at at really high scale of about $10,000. It's it's it's smaller. It' be less expensive than a car. You can pause right there. Okay. So check this out. 10,000. So for me, if I'm in the if I'm the chief of, you know, put me as the, you know, sergeant- major of the army, you know, star major of whatever, navy, whatever the the that position is, or the fourstar general, whatever this is, are my enemies to worry about officially governments that I have to worry about, or do I have to worry about free market billionaires that are soon to be trillionaires? They're going to be able to have a million robots that they can build and deploy that how do we regulate them? What what new threats are we going to have 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now where that could be taking place? Do you guys talk about that? And when you were in for those 17 years, at what level were those conversation coming up or was no, it's just more here's what China's doing, here's what Russia is doing, here's what this is doing. What were those conversations like? I mean, I I think the worst world war that'll ever happen be between AWS, Google, Apple. Like, we've seen it. Terminator. Like, I think I don't think it's unrealistic at this point. For sure. With AI, the the speed it's evolving. I mean, everybody will have one in their house just like Alexa or or whatever. Amazon kind of it'll be in there out of convenience. Do your laundry, pick your kids up, get groceries. They'll make it affordable. Own it for five, 10 years, lease it, buy it, get new models. It'll be a problem when they can't control them. Yeah. Short wire, kill the dog, attack one of the kids. Like, you know, we've all seen the movie. I don't put a whole lot of faith in that. I mean, that is a serious concern, though. I mean, he has an ungodly amount of money. And if he wanted to build an entire robot army and deploy it, he most certainly could. I mean, you see the same thing with some of the drone stuff now. They can throw out a couple thousand drones, do these huge parades and all this stuff. All they got to do is put a little bit of armament on them. That's a very hard thing to combat. I mean, the robot self was scarce, but I mean, it never came up in conversation. The only thing we're trying to do is solve a human problem for our line. I think it's about to change. So do I. I think it's about to change. And yeah, because to me, the PMC side I kind of support, right? because you need more competition, which is good. You you need like private military contractors. Now, if the PMC is deploying business to our enemies and us, it's kind of weird conflict of interest. So, then I have a problem with that. So, you're sending 88 former military whatever guys to help uh Russia and to help Ukraine and to help this. So then do you sign NDAs and say we'll do this $238 million contract with you, but you can't do with my enemy Russia for the next three years? Is that kind of how the deals are going to get done? Hey, free market. We're selling cars. I'm going to sell robots. Guess what? Russia wants to buy a million robots from us. This person wants to buy two million robots from us. Now there's robots that travel. Now there's robots that fly. Now one guy comes in, battery ends, drops, six people die. Um I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Like again, everything is about anticipating a future war. I wonder how much of us I want to believe that our military is already ready for the 2045 war, not the 2025 war. I want to believe that. Do you believe we are working towards that or you guys are in it? What do you think? I mean, we're not in it anymore, but they were always talking about the next ridge line. Always. Even when Iraq was brand new, they were always foreshadowing, always looking for the next obstacles that's going to come up. You know, if this happens, these two countries align, we'll be dealing with this. I mean, you got a lot of people in the US military that are just looking at future conflicts. I have no doubt they're trying to actively combat that, but that is not going to be an easy thing to crack. Especially, I mean, people with ungodly amounts of money can just do kind of whatever they want to at a certain point. Yeah. If you don't hold them accountable, if you don't make them sign on dotted line, like you cannot provide this tech to our adversaries like they're not willing to do that, then I think you shouldn't be able to get support from this country. I mean, Lockheed Martin, I think um definitely didn't sell F-35s to Russia, but I know they sent sell them internationally. At least what the article said is they don't get our version. So they may look the same, but internally and and how they're they perform, ours perform better. So if we sell or they sell F-35s to Thailand, they may look like the same F-35 we have, but ours is more capable. How certain are we of that? That's a trust we have in the government and the State Department in Nitar. Rob, can you pull that up? Can you can you just search it and see? Got to ask chat GBT. If you said Loheed Martin, right? If Loheed Martin sells F35s to us versus what country do we want to say? Uh, Russia. Ah, they don't sell to Russia. Versus who? Anybody? Give a country. Anything versus UK. UK. How different are the models or are they identical? Great question. F35 is designed to be multi- stealth variance. Uh there are notable differences between the locking Martin sell to the US and the UK the special. So the variants are three things. F35 conventional takeoff C2L used by US Air Force. F35B short takeoff vertical landing used by US Marine Corps UK Royal Navy and Air Force. Uh F-35C carrierbased version used by the US Navy. US models are F-35A air force, F35B Marines, F-35C Navy. They also receive top tier hardware, software, full access to mission data files, proprietary electronic warfare, unrestricted access to source codes to deeper in integration, full control over weapons, the UK models use excessively F-35 variant, Queen Elizabeth, it's a it's the only tier one partner in F-35 program and has Okay. Can you ask the follow-up question to say uh uh which countries does Loheed Martin not sell F-35s to? Loheed Martin not sell F-35s too. F335s too. Yeah, let's see what it says. Actually curious now like if the US government gets involved. Lockheed Martin does not sell F-35 to several countries primarily due to US export concerns lack of alignment countries not allowed. Russia, obvious conflict. China, okay, good. Iran, North Korea, all four make sense. Syria, Cuba, makes sense. Venezuela, makes sense. Turkey, interesting. That's got to be recent. Was a partner got kicked out of the program in 2019 for purchasing the Russian S400 missile system seen as a security risk to the F-35. Huh. Just six years ago, countries not currently approved but may express interest, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, who is approved to buy NATO allies, close allies. So all the NATO and then Japan, South Korea. See, that's that's interesting to me to have that kind of a system. To me, my question is not countries moving forward. Really isn't. It's not the you get a guy who has all the money in the world and decides to build real weapons and then the government tells him to do something. No. And then the government needs him for the products that he's producing. So they also don't want to do anything to him because the reliability is on that guy as well. It's going to be very interesting. The next 20 years are going to be potentially many of these movies we watched the last 20 years. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's sketchy. It just like it's so much easier fighting a human. It just is. It's so much easier fighting a person than it is. That's what I'm saying though. Like for you guys, you're like, "Listen, if I fight a human, guess what? I'm fair. If you kill me, you beat us." You know what? Cool. But you going up against robots? We're talking about robots. Allan Iverson would say, "We're talking about robots here." That's a very different situation. Yeah. Yeah. Just fight them on the water. Do what? Fight them on the water. Fight them on the water. Robots don't do good. Where do you feel the safest? Like for you guys got families. Like if you were to a guy here, his name was He's the only guy that we brought on the podcast back toback within a month. What was his name, Rob? That Peter Pry. Peter Pry. Do you guys know Peter Pry? This guy was the expert in EMPs and nuclear uh uh weapons. Peter Pry. We brought him two times in a month. It was so interesting. And then second time around we brought him the guy ended up passing away months later if you remember that it was such a tragic suddenly all of a sudden we're like wait what happened we just had the guy on the podcast twice in a month and I asked him where do you feel the safest to live to have your kids you guys are military if this is the direction it's going you got kids you got family you have the resources where would you feel building something to feel the safest in case [ __ ] were to hit the fan and you got family what do you do with your two girls moved to Montana, get off the grid. Yeah, definitely move inland. Grid. Yeah, but you're not there yet. You're not You're not thinking about it yet. No. Now the business on the East Coast. Can't leave it now. No. Yeah. Kind of stuck. I mean, in a perfect world, you'd be more inland. So, in other words, what you're saying is maybe in the next 5 years, you're going to employ 200 robots and take Yes, sir. Put them right on the ocean. Just look out. The ocean. I dare you to come in and do something here to us. Um, okay. So, another question. Okay. The uh um when when I was in Iran, you know, when we came here, they're talking about marijuana. They're talking about weed, you know, smoking weed and all this stuff. We would hear, you know, Teddyok. We would hear about uh op, you know, diff opium and different things that guys would do right in Afghanistan or maybe any of these other places. How much was the drug epidemic? Was there a drug epidemic going on? The poppies, the protection of the poppies. Have you seen those pictures where the poppies are being protected? You want to pull up some of these pictures here? Were you guys ever around this? Were you Were you guys ever seen any of this stuff? Why is this so important for us, the US military, to protect some of these places? It's how they make all their money. It's how they do it. It's how they fund everything. I mean, their number one export is that um and in marijuana, too. fields of it in Afghanistan. They would burn bricks. Like we would use wood for fires to stay warm. They burn bricks of marijuana. Stay warm. Bricks of marijuana that here you could sell it for god knows how much. Yeah. I mean they're probably 5B bricks easily. Yeah. That and you got the guys chewing the cotton Africa. What is that right there? That's a cannabis field in Afghanistan. Bars. Yeah, I can see there's a bunch of really cool pictures. Um, we didn't hit a bunch of those things. There's a ton of photos like green berets neck deep and it was just armfuls of like what are we doing? They're telling you to burn the entire field. I threw a kerosene setting the whole thing on fire. Just get upwind of it and send it. Are you like you're talking about secondhand high at the highest level if you're burning all this stuff. If you're angled properly with the wind coming your way. Yeah. Set it set fire. Get on a helicopter. Stand over there. Everybody's all blasted out. But yeah, I mean like that's what they have to do. That's how they make all their money and they have just endless supplies of it. That's how they're funding terrorism. I mean, I remember one time in Afghanistan, blew my mind. They literally had drug rehab facilities there for heroin for for us or for them? No, like for them in Afghanistan, you know, treated like a drugstore. They just had a drug rehab place for heroin for Afghans. It blew my mind. I had no idea. What is the stat, Rob? Do we know any stats with the drug issues in Afghanistan? Like what? Oh, that's a good one. How much of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan? Wow. There you go. Damn. Yeah. Holy [ __ ] Are you joking? telling you man it's their national pastime 90% 2022 cultivation Afghanistan was estimated at 233,000 hectares marking 32% increase from the previous year however the following the Taliban ban on opium cultivation April there was a significant reduction in production by 2023 opium cultivation has decreased by over 95% that's a lot it's a lot of money being lost despite 90% increased cultivation to the culture in 2022 as a result of Wow. W when you guys were there, would they ever try to bribe you? We made a video this week on blackmail, how blackmail is um one of the oldest currencies that a lot of people in power use. I mean, the whole Epstein stuff, you hear blackmail, all this stuff. Would they ever try to bribe you or win you guys over the locals when they see guys like you? No. You don't have a chance. Why not? Cuz there's no conversation. There's no conversation. We're not there. us specifically are not there to have a conversation. Not and not the regular guys. I'm talking about specifically not at all. You come in to do job and you're out. There's nothing you're gonna say to stop it now. Put your hands out, lay down or Yeah, that's it. We can speak a universal language. How f how it would be interesting to go over that when you talk about uh the decrease of 95% of opium. Remember what else was kind of going on around there when we pulled out and China came in and made a deal with the Taliban. They're super rare earth metal rich. It's just been impossible since there's a war been going on to be actually actually be able to mine them. What is that rare? Um it ties into electric vehicles and batteries like lithium or something. Is it lithium or is it um what's the other one? Not cobalt. Is it uh might be a mixture? I'm not sure. Afghans estimated approximately 1.4 maintenance of burnt minerals globally. But what specific what specific rare earth element is it? Because if it's cobalt or aircraft engines, batteries, catalytic converters, makes sense. By the way, I just looked it up here. In 2021, it was estimated that the opium related activities accounted for 9 to 14% of the country's GDP. Wow. That is wild for them to have that going on. That's absolutely insane. Leaving Afghanistan, the way we left, okay, you know, that was obviously a big uh story here. I think it was what was it was it May of 2020? May of 2020, I think it was. When When was it when we left? What month was it when we left? Was it says August 30th of 2021? Completed the United States armed forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30th, 2021. Uh okay. So, uh which stipulated the fighting restrictions from US and Taliban and return Taliban's counterterrorism provider from withdrawal NATO from all Afghanistan by May 1st, 2021. Got it. So, okay. when this happened and you're seeing it everywhere. We're hearing about it. Uh your initial reaction on how big of a screw- up this was kind of devastating. Just devastating. You got to think most of the people that joined think like the Pat Telmans of the world. The people just stopped everything they were doing to pick up arms and serve the nation. That's why you did it. I understand. Well, I don't side with those people, the guys that didn't want to get involved with Iraq. I get it. You can't tell me the same thing for Afghanistan. Just can't. Like, when we went there, I mean, me and Cole, I'll say we got stuck in Iraq for three rotations. I wanted to go to Afghanistan so bad I could taste it. I know he did, too. It was like that felt like that's where you're supposed to be. Why is that? Because you flew planes in the trade center, killed thousands of our people. That's why. It's like we're going to get vengeance for nothing else. I'll be honest. I'm not there to liberate anybody. I'm only there to get get even. That's it. It's the only reason I'm there. And then when you pull out, you think about all the people that sacrificed their lives for that entire war. That's the way you're going to pull out. Like we've already seen it before. We saw it with Vietnam. We've done this before. We should have done this much, much better. For me, it just seemed like all for nothing. [Music] Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It was tough to watch. I mean, it felt like there was no respect for the people that had paid their lives um the US lives and and fighting there and being dedicated. It felt like and I know a lot of families that that lost loved ones um brothers, sisters, sons, fathers, daughters, moms, like it just felt super disrespectful. And and the people that were the last to leave, you know, they felt like they were left to hang out. Yeah. Like good luck. I mean, you ever see the documentary restrepo? You should watch it. What's it called? Restrepo. I believe it's an army unit top of I think it's in a cornall. Just a nightmare. But it documents the entire deployment. When we pulled out, you should definitely watch it. You'd love it. Really, really good. I know. I'm going to watch it tonight. They uh when they pulled out the Taliban released them inside of that camp running on the treadmills, you know, living in their beds doing like we just left everything. All the technology. Why? But you don't think they can fly a C130? Of course they can. They'll figure it out. A couple videos of them trying. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, man. When you come back from Vietnam, you see them pushing the the Hueies off the edge of the ship like it cost too much to f theming back. We're just going to sink them all. Why are we not just blowing all that stuff in place? I get it. Math. It makes it cost too much money to fly them all back here. We have too much in reserve. It's cool. Why are we not blowing them all up or selling them to the allies? You're just going to leave them all for them? That makes no sense to me. Why do you think we didn't? I have no a shitty plan. I'm a very logical person. Logically makes no sense. You left them all the armor, all the weapons, all the night vision, everything that makes us superior. You gave it to them. Why? I mean, we've been training thousands of these guys. I mean, there's some serious forces in Afghanistan we've been building for the last 20 years, and you just left them there. What's going to happen? They all get killed. Taliban knows who they are. They just wipe them all off the face of the earth. Just what they do. That's why there was such a big push. You saw a bunch of SF guys who were going back to Afghanistan and try to pull these families out, the interpreters and all that. It's because we dumped so much time and energy into them. Like, they were trying to make their country better and now we just left them. like that's not going to work and it didn't. Yeah. To me it was very disheartening to see that whole thing happen. How do you how do you think Ukraine and Russia is going to end? How do you think that's going to end? You think it's going to end soon or you think that that's going to continue? I hope it ends soon. I think if anybody's going to end it soon, Trump will. I don't think if he doesn't get it solved by mid year, it's not a good sign. I if we get into the summer months and this thing still is going on, I think somebody's going to have to step in, intervene. I mean, if Trump gets Putin to kind of withdraw, they get a ceasefire and a treaty, that would be ideal. Yeah. It's definitely concerning if we get involved, you know, China's going to get involved and it's kind of a domino effect after that. I I definitely see China backing up North Korea, too. Um, but hopefully I mean Trump's been doing pretty well at it. Did you guys see what Zalinsky said about Putin two weeks ago? Rob, do you have that clip? Yes. Let me find it real quick. So about two weeks ago, Zalinski is is up there just kind of openly talking about, look, we don't know if Putin's going to be alive or not. You know, we don't know if he's going to make it or not. Is this it, Rob? I think this is it. Go for it. Is he sick? But it's also it also depends on his age. He will die soon. That's a fact. And it will come to an end. It could be come to an end even before he ends his absolutely safe uh losing historically losing life. Historically life. Do you hear what he said? He's just just play the first seven seconds and lower the audio a little bit, Rob, so we can because it pops because both of them are speaking. Just play the first seven seconds again if you could. But it's also it also depends on his age. He will die soon. That's a fact. And it will come to an end. Continue four more seconds. And it could be come to an end even before when you're in the military, you hear something like that. A world leader who's in war right now say something like that. How do you interpret that? Wishful thinking. I think you hope that's going to happen. This is a leader of a country that's at war with Russia saying he will die soon. I mean, was your take on it that he was going to die of old age or from violence? How old is the guy? Putin's only 70 years old. Is he only 70? Yeah. 72. I don't know how Putin is. He's not 72 years old. Yeah. And he looks pretty good. He doesn't look like he's a Biden, you know. He's 72. He looks healthy. He's training. He's doing his thing. But to make a comment like that, see to me um I don't know if you you know at again you said something. You said no we don't watch the news. We just kind of watch shows or whatever. You said you guys just kind of hang out and do your thing. Right. I watched postgame interviews more than I watch games. Mhm. And you hear a guy speak and I I'm trying to catch to see what he's saying. if they're speaking sign language, you know, and every once in a while you're like, "Oh, he said something and that was he's talking about XYZ. I got it right." Is it that detailed where you're kind of looking to see what a world leader is saying while a war is going on? There's an active war between the two. Are we paying that close attention to what they're saying or not really? Like, ah, it's just another media interview that's taking place. Who who knows why he said that? Talking about a high level or at a high level at your level? I'm sure a lot of guys are. I mean, The media puts such a twist on things that when you're over there, a lot of times it ruins your confidence if you if you listen to what they're saying. Yeah. A lot of times it makes you think you're there for the wrong reason. Like, wow. I'll just say it because we cut our teeth in Iraq and those are some rough deployments. I never once heard anything outside of WMDs until it was too late. I didn't care. We started talking about oil and I don't care about any of that. None of that matters to me. It doesn't stop that ID from going off. Doesn't matter. It doesn't put a tourniquet on that guy when he gets shot. I don't care why we're here. Doesn't matter cuz I'm here. I can't leave. So, it doesn't matter to me. Your political views, I don't care. You're not going to come over here and do it for me. So, right now, everything you're saying is just it's really making me second question what I'm doing. And that flag isn't to be second questioned. I'm here for that. Now that you're disconnected from it and you see WMD and you're reading these things and you see the documentaries, does it change anything for you now? For me, it doesn't. just I take it for someone who just, you know, put yourself in bushes uh scenario, you know, reading reading books to a couple elementary school kids and next thing you know, they tap you on the shoulder and say they're flying planes in a World Trade Center. Now you have to act, now you have to go. And then you have I'll just call a psycho known for killing thousands and thousands of people, saying he has this. Are you going to question him? That was my justification. Like if he says he has him, better go find out whether he had him or not. Personally with the information I had at the time I didn't second question anything say we got to go we got to go but I also said that the entire time if if it would have been some random country if it would have been Dearbornne Michigan would say the entire thing it's inside the US the entire city's gone corrupt we have to invade and take it all over I wouldn't have batted it on I if they're all a terrorist organization same thing with the cartel okay let's go like I don't have find a second question. It doesn't matter to me. And at a certain point, it can. I'm not there. I'm not a policy maker. It's not what I do. I'm only here for that. That makes sense because that also matches up with what you're saying at the beginning when you said when Kobe gets locked in. Um, you know, what was the word you used? The switch. Did you say the switch? Where you once you're locked in, you're in, you go. You don't need anything else feeding you to throw you off from the mission that you're on. And the average person's not going to understand that, right? With there needs to be a maniacal level of focus and selfishness on the mission you're on. Let the other guys debate it on. See, whatever you're doing, I've been told to do this. I'm just going to go do my job and I'm out. This is what I'm doing. I do the same thing. Like I'll go out and I'll do uh talks or SWAT teams and performance teams and I was talking to NHL guys not too long ago and I was talking about the level of loyalty it takes to like really commit to a team. Like nothing else matters, just the 25 guys inside this room. And one of the guys kind of spoke up and he's like, "It's hard when you can be drafted at any moment." I get it. Same thing for us. We could be kicked off that team tomorrow. You'd be switch positions. You can get pulled out. It's the same thing. I would just tell you to lean in and give them that loyalty because they're giving you the opportunity to showcase your craft. You're not playing for any other team. And the moment you do, they get the full loyalty. So, as long as I'm wearing this, I'm fully bought in. My individual hopes, dreams, wants, and wishes don't really matter. not above that. Uh post uh I remember one one time uh Balon, what's Balon's first name? Um he's a he's a very good content creator. Mr. Mr. Balon, what's his first name? I just know him as Jonathan. John. Yeah. Real nice guy. Mhm. And uh they were doing something in Dallas that was for uh uh high level guys, paratroopers, you know, ranger, you know, green beret, black, everybody was, you know, somebody. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm airer assault or I'm airborne. No, it was like you did something right. And you're in a room, you look at everybody, everybody looks like a stud. Like literally, everybody in the room looks like an absolute stud. Like people you'd want to hire, right? But everybody was also dealing with an element of PTSD. Okay. When you get now trying to disconnect from it, that high you're talking about in Jeremy Rener in Hurt Locker, right? And you're getting out and you're like, "Oh my god, you're going to switch all that stuff." You get I want it again. I want the next rush. I want the next rush. When my friend was ETSsing and getting out after his 20 years, there was a moment he and I had to have a conversation together. It's like, "Hey, I really need to talk to you." Boom. What's going on? I don't know what to do. was like, "Pat, it's a real thing. I'm really And by the way, this is not a guy that would ever complain about anything. This is a G. This is a legit real guy. This is not a, you know, but he says, I'm telling you, I'm I'm going through, you know, some weird thoughts on of me trying to make this transition." How hard is that? How long does it take? Does it ever get to a point where you're so disconnected that you now moved on? And is there a mechanism on how to disconnect from because you know when you look at sports, you know, historically when a guy was a professional bodybuilder or professional athlete, there's I don't know what the statistic is, but it's pretty high. The moment they retired, they get a divorce because now the enemy becomes the wife. You're coming seeing her more and more and more, right? They don't know what to do. The ETSsing part, PTSD. How do you deal with that when you're leaving after you're done with your 17 years? I mean, I think any transition in the military is extremely tough. Um, we were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be doing our military transition middle co. Um, you leave an environment that you've known so well and it's a new introduction to the world as a civilian. Everything from your schedule, choice. I mean, imagine doing something for 20 years. Now you have to go reinvent yourself. You have three little ones. You got an ex-wife, a new wife, and you none of your family's around. What am I going to do? I graduated high school 20 years ago. And just the uncertainties, um, the accountability to your family, not knowing. There are some great programs out there that are are really helping veterans transition and get exposure professionally and and there's a lot of really really smart people that can add value completely outside of the industry that we're in. But it's a mentorship and and showing those individuals a you can have a great life afterwards. But it's extremely challenging the PTSD being around groups being in front of people. I mean this this like we avoided cameras, we avoided social media and now all of a sudden it's like I got to be normal in front of cameras. I mean that that's the scariest thing right there. Is it? Is it though? Oh yeah. Are you serious? Yeah. It wasn't natural. We The natural thing was to avoid it. And luckily we had each other going going through it in the transition and it wasn't easy for us with everything we had going on. There are some different treatments that have definitely helped. We we did the the psychedelic uh treatment down in Mexico through vets and that was a great reset. I think both of us it saved both of our lives uh going down there and doing it. It was a really good eye opening reset. Um but having a good community and support network around you is key. And we're always confident in our abilities, put put our heads together and not having to reinvent oursel, being able to pass on our knowledge and what we're passionate about and our experiences on to the next generation so you didn't have to learn the same lessons we did in blood. We wanted to pass on that knowledge. I mean, that was something that bugged us sometimes. Different teams would do ops and they would go well or bad, but nobody would would talk about it. They wouldn't pass on the knowledge. And we we really wanted to do that. kind of going through that and doing that, nobody would talk about emotions. No one would be like, "Hey, like I'm going through a nasty divorce or we're going through a low point." We started talking about it. DJ's way better than me about talking about it. But addressing those kind of topics that nobody ever talked about and the amount of people that gave a reaction of I felt alone. I felt like I was the only one going through this. pretty much any experience in any life outside probably a few. So many people have gone through it. So many people go through it afterwards. But being able to talk about it, that's been a huge kind of key thing in realizing that you're not alone. And everybody has low days, high days, just managing them. DJ, what would you say? I'd say that transition is so much harder than everybody makes it seem. You get these guys that get out and they're like, "Oh my god, when you get out, every job is going to pay you 350 grand a year. They're they just want you to sit around. They're just going to pay you because of who you and then people get out." And those jobs aren't there. That's not a real thing. And then you've left the only thing you've known, the only thing you've ever loved. You've left it. And on a Tuesday, you're out of the group chat. There's no email. There's no body armor to put on. There's no one who needs you really. And you haven't built a relationship with your family. And now you're stuck with them. I I use Tom Brad's example. Tom Brady's a Navy Seal. You did that one thing at full capacity the entire time. The moment you left it, you're like, I can't leave it. She's like, you have to leave. You have to retire. No. Gets a divorce. Can't do it. Can't get off the train. Cannot do it. If you don't think Tom Brady laid in a fetal position and cried after he fully retired, promise you he did. Everybody does it. Some of the darkest moments have just been just leaving it in the moment you're out. Man, I don't know how to do anything else. I feel like I'm I feel like I'm empty. I don't have anything. That's what we talk about when I tell guys now like my physical fitness, my my mental health are really my at the forefront of my priorities. I wake up in the morning and that's what I knock out first because that gives me the bandwidth to take on everything else throughout the day. I feel like a lot of people lose that. They leave the military. You've been on the same structured routine. I don't care if you're on an 82n Airborne, one some SF team, a SWAT team. You've been doing the same thing the entire time. You wake up, you go do PT, you eat breakfast, you go upstairs, meeting, training, deploying, blah, blah, blah. It's the same thing. If you just keep that first morning routine the same, it feels so familiar that now between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., you can do whatever you need to now because my first morning, it feels so repetitive. It feels like I've been doing it my entire life. I wake up at the exact same time I did when I was in. I do the same fitness, hang around the same people, same protein shake, same 20-minute walk, same everything. So the first part of my morning, it feels like I'm still in the team. I mean, we're surrounded by nothing but team guys now. It feels the same. What percentage of your employees are former vets? Uh with training c former vets, right? 35 40% or so. Training cad I mean they're all team guys. By the way, when when you when you get out like I remember how much money I got out with, but I wasn't in there for 17 years. I was there for three two and a half years. When when the average seal gets out, how much money do they have in a bank? Well, it depends because we got medically retired. That becomes an issue that no one ever gets you prepped for. So, we'll say, you know, E7 and the SEAL teams, I'll say you make 90 grand a year, everything all in. As soon as you start that medical retirement board, they take away all your special pays, dive pay, jump pay, demo pay, hazardous duty, AIP, you lose it all. And depending on how messed up you are and how long that whole process takes, you go to 50% of your pay. So for me, when I started that medical retirement, it took about a year. So I have to bridge that with all my savings. So when I retired, retired, like when I got it, I got electrocuted right before I retired. So now I couldn't work. I couldn't do anything. I mean, I'm laying on the bed in double slings, can't make any money, and I've ate up every ounce of my money market, every ounce of savings, put the kids through private school because nothing changes. Now I just don't have the income. And now physically, I can't make it. That's where everybody hits rock bottom. Now you feel like a total failure. Like I've done this one thing. I've sacrificed so much for this one. Deserves a medal, bro. Exactly. Holy [ __ ] I put her through absolute hell. Absolute hell. And me and her story is Yeah. Wow. It's not a Hallmark movie, but it's not a Hallmark movie. Uh and and what business are you guys in? What do you guys do now? Now, uh we started Greas Group back in September 6 of 2019 and just over 5 and a half years old. have close to 40 employees now and and in house [ __ ] another 15 1099s bunch of different verticals within the company you know it it started from a lot of emotion and passion of passing on the tactile knowledge that we learned to to the next generations and being open and honest and just really trying to pass on what we had learned and not have to reinvent ourel what's the product so we have a few a vertical. So, if you go to gbscoopgear.com, it'll pull up. Yeah, there there's what I'll call hard goods. So, uh mounts that that take red dots and you put them on the rifle. Um and a few different kind of variants in that. That's one of the mounts right there. Mhm. Some tactile nylon, so gun belts, slings, but everything that we've designed, there's a number of that have patents on them now. But everything we designed, whether it was an invention or making a product better, we were trying to solve for a gap in the problems that we experienced. Super simple weapon sling, but we designed our weapon sling. Could tell you every reason why we did it. The naked eye may not look any different, but all of our products were trying to solve a problem. be 100% dependable and and enable the end user. Um, and so that hard goods, soft goods, kind of branded t-shirts, hats, subscription apps, uh, workout, Patreon, and training. Um, we have a international dealer network from Thailand to Poland, everywhere in between. So, we've grown a lot in the last 5 years, going from zero employees to over 35 now. That's so cool. We learned we learned everything kind of just on the fly and figuring it out. We had zero business background and just kind of figured out. Got 401ks, health insurance. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. All the fun fun parts. But like the irony is that was never the goal. So I was right when I transitioned out, Cole was doing real estate, super successful, and I was going to contract with the agency and go off and just do private military contracting. That's all I wanted to do, just keep doing the same job. A bunch of guys that were in that same organization we had worked with before and everybody was getting shot. Everybody was getting blown up and dudes were dying left and right and COVID just happened to happen. I got really really hurt and we had a little bit of downtime. Had to get a bunch of surgeries and kind of rebuild back up. So, I missed my class update. And in that process, I was still training, training with the Air Force, teaching CQB, still skydiving, still doing all that. and we're sitting down one day and he's like, "What's it going to take for you not to go do that or I don't know how to do anything else when I have my retirement?" I was like, "If I could squeeze out a hundred grand a year, that plus retirement, I'm done. I think we can solve that." So, we decided we were going to teach CQB and flat range to SWAT team guys and you know, military dudes. And what three weeks later, COVID, everybody's on lockdown, and now you can't make any money. So now, so now what do you do? We all quit our day jobs and now we're stuck. Yeah, man. Oh, that's great. And somehow we somehow we made it happen. Good for you guys, man. Respect. Salute. First of all, thank you for your service. My pleasure. Uh at the highest level. Rob, can we put the link below as well? Um this has been a blast talking to you guys. Of course, I've seen your stuff before out there and you know the the military community, highest level of respect. But when you hear the stories and specifically sitting now learning about you guys, likable patriots, straight up, honest, you know, values, principles, you got to love it. I'm not surprised where you guys are growing. 35, 40 employees the way you guys are going right now. Who knows how big this thing can turn into, right? You you got two driven guys that the fire is going to go from there to here. By the way, who do people say you look like? I'm curious. A mix between Jake Gyllenhaal and um Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper. Yeah. If they had a kid, that's what I that I'd be. So, I would say um if Billy Baldwin and Sean Penn had a kid, it's you. And we've had multiple of the Baldwins on it. You know, the Baldwins, these guys were good-looking. the the the Billy. Billy was in what was the movie Billy was in? Was it Sliver? Was it Sliver? He was with Sharon Stone. Is that the one? Yep. Billy. Yeah, a little bit of Billy and a little bit of Champen. You have Cole here. Anyways, maybe I'm off, but that's kind of how I see it. Fellas, thank you so much for coming out. Appreciate your service. We're going to put the link below to your website gang. Go to their website, support what they do, and we will see you guys soon. Next time. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hey, what's going on guys? DJ Shipley and Cole Factor from GBRS Group. Want to talk to you real quick about Manag retired Navy Seals, entrepreneurs and co-founders of GBRS Group. Cover everything from flat range shooting, mental health, mental resiliency, physical education. Anything you guys really want to drop into, search us on the neck, find us on there, and I'd love to connect with you guys. Look forward to hearing from you. Appreciate you guys. We'll talk soon.