What Has Happened To The Love For America? - Jack Carr

Twitter tells you something, an influencer tells you something, a politician tells you something, a news organization tells you something. What do they want to get out of that? They want a response. So, you're being manipulated right there. So, at least just to recognize that before immediately getting angry and retweeting something. Well, hey, take a breath. You owe it to that person who sacrificed everything in the Revolutionary War, in the Civil War, in World War I, in World War II. You could have these freedoms. Well, take a breath for them and study the issue a little bit. You are somebody that is ex-military service, now an author. You have the opportunity to write out scenarios that may be inspired by stuff that you went through and stuff that's complete fantasy as well. How therapeutic do you find the process of being able to dispose of bad guys with as much inventiveness as you want and no restrictions at all? Right. Well, I joke that it keeps me out of prison and that's only half joking, I think, cuz it is extremely therapeutic and our senior-level military leaders and elected politicians give me a lot to work with. The world in general gives me a lot to work with these days, but at the outset I didn't really realize that it was going to be something that was therapeutic or something that was intensely personal. I thought I'd get the sniper weapon stuff right and if I didn't know who to talk to or if I didn't know something about it, some sort of a a tank or a plane or something, I at least knew who I could call to ask these questions. Um, but as soon as I started writing, and not even in the coming up with a title, coming up with a theme, coming up with a one-page executive summary, getting the outline done. It wasn't until I wrote the first words that I realized, "Oh, this is going to be extremely personal." And not so much in the fact that I am recreating exact scenarios that happened in Iraq or Afghanistan, but more so that if I have my character get ambushed in Los Angeles, California as part of a completely fictional narrative, I go back and remember what it was like to be ambushed in Baghdad, 2006 and I take those feelings and emotions and apply them to a completely fictional storyline. Uh, so that was personal and then a lot of the other things that come in that are not so dramatic as that it just helped the story move forward to down to the the the type of car that my protagonist drives and his wife drives. Like that sort of a thing. Just those little personal the kind of music that his wife listens to and listened to in the first book. So all those little things really ended up making it very personal as did the the more dramatic action sequences where I go back and remember what it was like a sniper in Ramadi and then just take that and plop it into the fictional narrative. Take us through that ambush in 2006. Yeah, so that was a interesting one because a week prior we had tracked somebody into a mosque and I was working with the CIA at the time. I was the only military guy attached to them which was fantastic because the I guess the Barack bureaucracy that's overhead was a lot less it seemed like over there at least it was to to me at my level for what I was doing. But we tracked somebody that was on our target list into a mosque and we went in after them and I should say it was with the Iraqis we were working with really went in after them. At that time it was a sovereign country Iraq and yet we still got in quite a bit of trouble for doing that even though our guys didn't even really go inside. And so it was about a week later I think that we're tracking somebody else using both technical and human intelligence means at night in Baghdad and and track him once again into a mosque. But now because of the big uproar over us getting in trouble just a week or two prior. So we park outside and our profile at the time wasn't a military type profile and this is after the the golden mosque bombing so technically turned into Sunni Shia civil war out there and the profile of our vehicles I mean it could have been mistaken for for one or the other. But uh we sat there parked and waiting to get approval to go in to this mosque. And uh I think it had to go very high up the chain because we were waiting a long time. And as we're waiting, uh essentially the whole neighborhood came up and got into elevated positions around us uh because it was probably a good hour, I want to say. I mean, it's 2006, so let's say 45 minutes to an hour, somewhere in there. Uh maybe it was more than that. Um, and so all of a sudden they get in their positions and light us up. And so we had a nice little gun battle there, but it did we we'd uh done a little thinking of our own our own and we'd put some some snipers up in some even higher positions, the higher we could highest we could get, and looking at the ISR, which is uh like it was from wasn't really it was from a it was from an aircraft, let's say. Uh and you could look down the next day when we got that footage in or maybe it was even later that morning when we got back, and you could see our snipers up there, see them glowing on this kind of like iridescent ISR feed, and see them start people out of in these positions, which is pretty pretty cool. But uh but yeah, it was a it was a little dicey, a little western, as they say. And uh but we managed to get out with like just two guys wounded. Um but if we'd been able to go in or the Iraqis we'd been we were working with were allowed to go in in their own country, um then we would have gotten out of there fairly quickly, but as it was, things got a little dicey, but uh we came out on top. Is that the closest mortal danger that you've been in? No, there were some other ones. There were some other strange ones. Um and the the strangest was uh in Najaf in 2004. And we my sniper team and I showed up in this uh to the this city that uh was essentially a campaign, so 27 Cav, which is huge army unit for those watching or listening, um uh is in charge of this operation to retake this city from the Jaish al-Mahdi militia, which was run by Muqtada al-Sadr, for those who remember that name from from back in the day. Uh so essentially they had taken control of the city. United States and our allies wanted it back. Uh and so we go in there and I think it was about 2 weeks of um like psychological operations ahead of time really telling everybody in that city to leave because we're coming in. So we telegraphed our intent, not just our intent, we telegraphed exactly what we were going to do. I think up to the exact date. Like you have till this date to leave uh because we're coming in and we're coming in heavy. Um so we showed up I think about a day into it, maybe even right at the beginning, but it's fairly close to the beginning. So we were there for about 11 days of what then turned into a 2-week campaign to retake the city very kinetically. Um and uh so as it was day, it was night, it was it was the only time that I was really reminded of the World War movies I'd watched growing up with my dad when they're just running through these cities in in Europe and it's daylight out and there's tanks and it's just things are blowing up and it's just crazy. Um and that's because we had Abrams tanks. Uh not the same tanks in World War II obviously, but reminiscent uh of those movies that I saw and the rubble and all that. Bradley fighting vehicles. Um day, night, no breaks whatsoever. You didn't go back to a to a fob or a little little base and then go out at night like we typically do in special operations uh to take somebody off the board, build up a target package, go hit them in the middle of the night, come back to base. This was full-on 11 days of pitched street fighting, street battles. Um and at one point in this thing and we were just there to support. I just went into the to the cuz I was the the head of the the sniper unit at the time and I just went into the battalion commander of 2-7 Cav and said, "Hey, we're here to support. What can we what can we do? Here's what we bring to the table with our sniper weapon capabilities and our uh close air support of being able to do pre-planned fires cuz we have these these different um uh qualifications that allow us to talk to aircraft and and do all that stuff. So so we were value add to it and then it was just it was an incredible experience. But, at one point I'm jump over and we'd leave our snipers up like up at higher higher ground. We'd go push forward with the mother army units, go take the next set of buildings, push Jaish al-Mahdi militia back another block, then our snipers would come down and we'd go up here. And it was August, so it was hot. And so now you have the army logistics train bringing you food, bringing you water, bringing you ammunition. You kind of get situated again and then you go forward again. So, it was 11 days of that. But, at one point we jump over this wall and it was me and three other guys and we jump over this wall and we're in this little courtyard and they're both sides are sending mortars, I think. At least the other side for sure. You remember this is 2004. But, uh we're in this little courtyard and we look at each other like, "Can you believe we're in the middle of this thing?" Cuz up to that point we'd just done middle of the night type ops and stacking the deck in our favor. And now we're in this battle with these guys that are essentially, you know, similar weapons to us uh during the day. Anyway, at night we had the night vision and all that sort of thing. But, today, you know, they've got AKs and we've got M4s and, you know, uh Anyway, so we jump in this courtyard and we we're looking at each other like, "This is crazy." We talk about it for a second. And then we hop over this wall when the last guy hits, a mortar lands exactly where we were standing not 30 seconds earlier. Like, right in the middle. And it was kind of like, "Oh, this is fate." If something had happened uh at some point during that day to just delay us by 30 seconds, we would've been standing in that place. So, there are a couple times over my time in uniform where I sort of thought about fate because it uh allows you then as a leader especially to focus on the mission, focus on the task at hand, do your job, and realize, "Hey, there are these things that you just can't control like being in that courtyard with that mortar landing right in between you guys if we were 30 seconds later that day." Crazy. What do you do if you've got a very intense, high-velocity, kinetic firefight going on for 11 days? Because you can't continue to operate for 11 days or else you're going to start to make errors presumably that are so catastrophic that people start to get killed on your own side, etc. etc. So, during 11 days, what do you do to find sometime you've got to grab 30 minutes at some point presumably. What happens? Yeah, you split up your your group and a couple guys maybe will go back maybe one will grab 30 minutes of sleep and then come back. In these buildings you just try to get as deep into the building as you can where it's a little less hot cuz these buildings had really thick walls if memory serves and we'd go back in there and find kind of the place that was more safe-er than closer to the outside walls or windows and then grab a 30 minutes of sleep and then you're back at it. So, it was like that. But nobody wanted to sleep. Everybody wanted to be fighting cuz this is what we signed up to do. You wanted to be there doing the job, figuring things out cuz the enemy's adapting to you, you're adapting to the enemy. You could see them removing parts of buildings like small little holes where they were to take their shots and then put that stuff back in place and so we started doing that sort of thing too. A couple rooms deep though so you could have a little more protection from the outside and it's a little harder to see in if you have a window up here at the at the front. Well, you don't want to be shooting from this room. Maybe you move back into this other room and put a little loophole in the wall there so you can still shoot out but from somebody looking in just the shadows make it look like it's unoccupied. So, you're doing all these things to adapt to the enemy, the enemy's adapting to you and that's typically what warfare is and whoever's going to do that faster than their opponent often times ends up on top. From a storytelling perspective, it sounds maybe not romantic but at least heroic and and sanitized and and civilized in some regards. Like even you know, the most brutal there was a mortar and it landed next to us and we could have been killed and legs blown off and all this sort of stuff. What's the reality of your emotions and the sense that you have inside when you're going through this because you know, we get to observe a version in our own minds if we read your books or a version on a television screen if we get to watch a movie or a series or something like The Terminal List, but the actual felt sense of being somebody, even somebody that's been trained, even somebody that's, you know, gone through this and this is what they want to do and this is what they've chosen to do and this is what they're trained to do, what's that actually like when you're on the ground? Yeah, it's interesting because you can do all the right things. Like if we were in a room right now, uh air-conditioned, nice, had some water out, and we're we're going through a uh scenario, uh maybe with a group, maybe not, but just what would you do in this type of a scenario thing. Um and you could make all the right decisions in this air-conditioned space uh with all the experience that you have, all the books that you've read. Um and you could do those things and the instructor could say, "Yep, that looks great. Maybe you tweak this here, maybe not, whatever." Okay, you could do perfect in that scenario. You do that exact same thing out on the battlefield and it could be catastrophic just because the enemy gets a vote and things change so quickly and there is that Murphy's Law, that luck, that fate, all of those other things involved that aren't involved, that aren't in play back in this air-conditioned space when you're learning or teaching or evolving. So, uh back in the classroom, I mean. So, uh so it's so it's different. So, when you're out on the battlefield, all those right quote-unquote right things um are still in play, but now there's some other things in play also that weren't in play when you're in that air-conditioned room in training. Um and for me, the sense of as a leader, I remember this distinctly because I didn't expect it ahead of time. Um and it was a sense of relief. And I talk about it in my first book in about a paragraph, maybe two, in that first novel. And I had a lot of people reach out and tell me that that paragraph in particular meant so much to them because they hadn't really been able to conceptualize or articulate uh some of how they felt by doing the job downrange. And by reading those paragraphs, it made it okay. Can you recall what the sense is that you go through in those paragraphs? So, it's about the relief. It's about not about knowing that yeah, you think you can do the job and you've That's what your job is in the military is to prepare for war. Um it's not necessarily to go to war, it's to go if you're called, but your job every single day for every single second you're in the military is to be prepared for war and to prepare yourself even better than you were prepared the day before. Make yourself a better operator, a better leader today than you were yesterday. Um so I So, but you still don't really know until you get out there and do it. And bullets are whizzing by and you have to prioritize things because there's so much going on. Um and so for me it was a sense of relief. It was like I've been thinking about this my whole life. Essentially, I've been training for it my whole life uh both physically and uh and mentally by pushing myself and then intellectually by studying warfare. Um so for me being in that scenario in particular in the JTF in 2004, it was like, "Okay, this was a This was a test and it was a relief that I could do it." Um so anyway, yeah, that was not one that I was expecting to feel, but it's one that I wove into the novel in that particular uh paragraph because it it made sense and that's what I talk about by uh by being so personal was uh was in that respect cuz I wouldn't have really uh talked about it with anybody, talked about that in particular with anybody unless it made sense to flow into this storyline for my protagonist, James Reece. So, it's uh so it's in that sense it's therapeutic as well, but yeah, it's a sense of relief of being tested and and doing okay. Come on on the other side, okay, for your guys. I wrote a story in the newsletter recently that I think is very similar to what you're talking about, but from a civilian perspective. So, I'll read it to you now. I recently got to speak to a friend who I've been curious about for a long time. He went through a difficult period many years ago. Even though he's beyond it now, he came very close to losing everything. Financially, reputationally, psychologically. I asked him how he dealt with the darkest time that he'd ever faced. He told me that he'd had a concern in the back of his mind throughout his entire life. He was always worried that deep down he might be a coward. That secretly he might not be the strong capable person he thought he was. That when the rubber met the road, he wouldn't be able to stand up and face whatever the world threw at him. See, many of the challenges that we face in life are largely under our control. We choose the jobs that we apply for, the house we try to afford, the partner we seduce, the weight we lift. These things can still be hard. They can be tough, challenging, sometimes unbearably difficult. But it was us that chose the flavor of that difficulty. So, what happens when absolutely everything comes crashing down? The single worst possible scenario that you can imagine? Well, you get to see what you're made of. What you're genuinely made of. When all of your forces are marshaled to a single challenge. And he said that he'd had faith in himself, but he'd never been pushed hard enough to prove that his faith was justified. And this is the quote that still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He says, "I could always hear my best self clearing his throat in the room next door." He never knew if this self was able to come in when needed. And it turns out that he did. I love the quote and I love the story because I think many of us are uncertain about just how capable we are. Maybe a couple of times in your life all hell will break loose and your best self will have to stop his coughing and come say hello. Interesting. No, I love it. I love it. The The only difference is that like I I felt and I know a lot of the guys feel supremely uh I guess confidence the wrong word, but it's uh I mean you feel like you you know you can do it, but you haven't done it yet type of a thing. And even the other operations that I'd done up until that point, uh we'd stack the odds in our favor. So, it's like you're going in you're with the A-team. You're going into the Super Bowl with all this experience now uh of doing that particular type of an operation. Uh you put yourself in the enemy's shoes, you figured out how they're going to adapt to you after having seen you do this mission in X configuration, Y configuration, whatever it might be. How they would have adapted and you adapt accordingly. Um so, to be thrown into that old like World War II where there was it was just insanity for 11 days. Uh So that that was that was I mean it sounds weird to say cool, but it was. It was that's what we we trained up to do that to be tested and that was a I mean it was a test because that's not exactly what we've been trained up to do cuz we'd been trained up for those kind of operations where you're stacking the deck in your favor. And now we're out there with the enemy in the broad daylight street to street and all that. So it's so you still feel like you you you you know you know you can pull it off but if you haven't been in it there's still that little It's not like you're doubting it. Like you're not doubting yourself at all. But if you haven't done it it's not doubt it's just like a okay fine. Now I got to run that Yeah like I'm running this race I'm running it all the time on my own on the track or something like that. And you're somebody's there with the stopwatch bam you know you're hitting it you know you're hitting it you know you're hitting it. And then but you haven't run it in the Olympics yet against these other people at the same same track same track same distance weather conditions even but you haven't run it then under those Like same thing boxing or on the mat like some great guys like just can't do it in the ring in the octagon. Same thing boxing it's a different deal in that ring when the crowd is yelling at you. There's just something different about it. So you might be great just sparring and doing all your normal things at your local boxing gym or club or whatever or whatever it is but then you get in that ring and it's different when there's people there. Like that sort of a thing. Like you know you can do it but cuz you've done it but you haven't done it in this scenario yet type of a thing. So anyway it was a it was a relief to I guess have been tested and for lack of a better phrase to not be found wanting I guess. Damn right. What about the fact that you not only were a sniper but then were leading a sniper team? I think probably right in saying that the sniper position is the most romanticized kind of highly mysterious you're like the wizard of the of the battlefield in a in a way. What is it that people don't understand or what what do people get wrong when they think about the lifestyle, the role of a sniper, and what are some of the more sort of brutal realities of what you actually end up facing and and doing during a an operation? Yeah, that's good That's a great question. One I haven't been asked before, and I don't know if I've really thought about it in those terms. Um but I'll think about it right now. Um a lot of it it was based on leading up to September 11th. Uh like movies that we've seen about Vietnam or about snipers from Vietnam. Essentially alone, maybe with a spotter, crawling through the jungle to get to this position to wait for an NVA element to walk through, and then find the officer. Uh North Vietnamese Army. Uh and they come down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and then find that officer, and find that radio man. Like that sort of a thing. Um or is it an advanced element? Is it a trap? They just That sort of a thing. Uh so I think the the people thinking about how alone you are is probably the part that's misunderstood the most, especially today. And this is my experience. Like there are probably other snipers that have completely other experience, you know, different experience than I do. Um but when we went out, it was as a team. It wasn't just the one guy, the two guys going in position. You brought a heavy weapon gunner with you, so somebody with a machine gun. Uh or two, even better, in case you're compromised. And what? A medic. Yep. And a communicator. So you went out as a team so that you could at least fend uh uh defend yourself for a little bit if you're compromised while you call in QRF, so a quick reaction force um that's ready to come come get you. Uh so I think that's probably the most misunderstood part. People think of a sniper as alone. And you do our training alone a lot uh in the school. Uh you have a sniper buddy with you who you switch off being a spotter for, meaning you're looking through the glass and calling the shots, and then you switch off. And and uh but that's really based on the old Vietnam experience. And we really we really just that was the only experience that we had up until September 11th. And then we moved into Afghanistan, moved into Iraq a little bit later, and we really start to evolve these tactics, techniques, and procedures when it comes to sniping. A lot of time you're in support of a ground element that's moving in or somebody that's coming in ground and air. And you're just there in a supporting position to for to contain what we call squirters. They're leaving the target. So there's a lot of different things that you can do as a as a sniper. So I think that's probably the most misunderstood is that you just go off alone with your rifle and that's that's not exactly how how that wasn't exactly my experience anyway. You're in a window by yourself maybe but you have a spotter here or at another at another window. Somebody's on another level. Somebody's out the back door. You got your heavy weapon gunner there. You got support. So so you're you're alone in a sense but no more alone than you are as an 18-year-old Marine who's told to hold a corner with your you know M4 and just you're that person with that rifle making you're the last decision maker in that chain that starts with the President of the United States and comes all the way down. You're that last decision maker with your finger on the trigger right there on that street corner. So in So in that respect you're just as alone as that 18-year-old kid. You're just you just maybe have a little more training. Does it feel like a lot of pressure to have an entire a group of people who are all there to support one person's performance so to speak? Everybody's contri- buting to it and the heavy gunner is there in case you get spotted but the reason that you're risking being spotted is presumably because you have some special leverage. You are a very unique tool that is in a very unique position that can give a type of um uh assistance that is very difficult to get outside of that. Does that apply more and more pressure especially when you're on the battlefield there's mortal danger etc.? I mean just in the sense that you're worried about letting your guys down, that you're worried about letting them down by making out making a mistake maybe, but you're really so focused on that mission that that's not an overriding concern. Now, once again, this is just all all personal. Um so, it wasn't overriding as in in that respect. Um and you'll oftentimes you'll switch through because so many guys are trained up as snipers, so you'll switch through these positions uh cuz you can't be there on the glass all day or whatever it is or even all night with you uh whatever night vision type of a system that you're using. What was the longest time that you think that you sat up watching? Ooh, probably one of the one of the nights where nothing happens. Um so, probably a few hours. I can't remember right now, but I think we'd switch off every couple hours, especially with a team like that. Let's say four, five, six guys. I think we wouldn't be on for more than an hour or two um at the most. truth is there in the sniper position being held, rolling over, taking a dump into a Tupperware that the guy next to you has to clean up, and all of that stuff? Like, how much truth in that? Cuz it seems like you're talking about a period of time that's well easy enough to hold a dump in for. Yeah, yeah, we we wouldn't go out for too long. I mean, you you'd oftentimes make plans to stay out longer, and just like you're walking through your own neighborhood, I mean, you can tell when something's off. There's like, "Hey, something's different today. I don't know what it is." And you could sense when people would feel that uh in the daytime typically. Uh and people would be taking their kids wherever they're taking them, and there's normal traffic, and then all of a sudden something shifts. And why does it shift? Because they notice that something was different. Uh not sure what it is. I mean, you you can go back and think and be like, "I have no idea." Like, it sometimes it's just a sense. And then they take a second look at that house. They're like, "Oh, uh so-and-so didn't come out today. Usually at this time of day they're hanging up laundry." Whatever it is, something that you can't even figure out ahead of time. You wouldn't know ahead of time, but something that changed just enough, especially when you're in a place like Ramadi or Misool or someplace like that. do you um do you become if if you've been spotting for a good amount of time, if you've been watching a particular neighborhood or a number of streets and a number of individuals that come and go, do you become intimately familiar with them? Do you name them? Do you imagine what their lives are like at all? Do you sort of solidify them? Someone else might have a different experience, but uh but I did not have that that experience uh cuz I don't think I saw the same people often. I mean, it was like a city uh with all those things going on. So, there's a lot lot going on. Uh it's not like for me anyway. Uh I'm sure other people have a different experience of being a looking at a remote village for a long time and really getting to know people. I can see that, but my experience was really in the cities. Um which also meant that it was pretty dynamic and people would notice that uh that something was off on this house or this building. And uh especially after 2 days-ish or something like that, then you're coming you're coming out. Um and uh before before they get the upper hand. Um so, it's uh yes, but it was but it was but it's all it's a thinking man's game. That's what I mean my last in In the Blood, that's what I cuz I wanted to write a sniper-centric novel last time without that uh scene of two snipers on opposite hillsides or buildings that are looking for each other. And then they're looking and then they find each other at the last second and the one guy shoots and it goes through the other guy's scope just before he can shoot or you know, that scene that we've seen in a bunch of movies and and books up to this point. So, I thought, "How do you do a sniper-centric novel without that scene?" And that was the thinking man's part of it. Like, "How do you outthink this other sniper?" Um and I just want to That was the That was the fun part for me of writing that book, but it's similar to what you're what we're talking about right here is uh is outthinking the enemy. Um and uh you're doing that on the battlefield and that's what I'm doing on the on the page or in the pages of these books. You're a guy who's been through selection, who's been in kinetic warfare, nearly been hit by mortars, been in cars that have been attacked by machine guns. How does that compare to being in the middle of a cancellation furor when the Terminal List hits Amazon Prime. Can't like people that weren't too excited about it like Daily Beast. I guess it was to be expected. You know, it's you can't expect everyone's going to love it especially certain segments that might already have it out for maybe your lead star or the subject matter in in particular or have read one of the books and already hate you or have looked at your Instagram and and already hate you. So you know, that's just how it goes these days and that's okay. You know, that's there is a a large segment of the population who it does resonate with thank goodness and uh and Amazon has all those numbers though they'll never share them and that's why we have a spin-off and a many sequels. Yeah, the Terminal List is an attempt to valorize the same toxic tenor of military culture, a culture that's long protected rather than prosecuted those who engage in immoral and illegal behavior. This valorization of vigilanteism is a rising tide in pop culture. To me vigilanteism doesn't seem like a rising tide. I think back to movies like The Punisher that I think's been me remade at least two or three times. Now I think about John Wick perhaps which is kind of like that I mean that's pure vigilanteism like don't [ __ ] with his dog. But um I I don't think that that is the case and I think that we have seen a resurgence of relatively uncomplicated not simple but uncomplicated storylines where the good guys are the good guys and the bad guys are the bad guys. Top Gun Maverick last year I think one of the highest grossing movies if not the highest grossing movie of the year. Unbelievable to watch. Even other things like Bullet Train which was complex but also it wasn't subversive in a trying to get across some strange kind of political Yeah. commentary. Um so yeah man I mean me and my housemate absolutely loved it. He stayed up uh he he completely [ __ ] me. We watched the first couple of episodes and then he stayed up all night and completed the season woke up the next day and was like dude did you you've got to you need to stay up and watch it And I thought, well, we would this was an us thing and now I feel betrayed cuz you've stayed up all night and watched it. Um but yeah, you know, I I think you're right. For as long as the market has desire for this stuff, I'm sure people have got problems with Succession. I'm sure that there's some tropes in Succession and the reinforcement of white cis-heteronormative patriarchal capitalism or something. But the season and the series is absolutely [ __ ] fantastic. And for as long as it's good, people are going to watch it and you're not going to be able to shame people out of watching something entertaining. And you're also not going to be able to guilt people into watching something that's [ __ ] That that's it. And I mean, Death Wish in the '70s with Charles Bronson, I mean, these things have been around for for quite some time. And uh you know, it's really about for us it was all about telling a story. Uh like it is for me in the novels. I don't look at Amazon reviews and say, "Oh, look at this person didn't like this in the last book. I'm going to have to change this." Or what I wonder if I'm going to alienate audience. And And never. It is 100% only about the story. You have to honor that story. I never think about an audience. I never think about a critic. I never think about a comment. It's all about the story. That's what I have to do because people are trusting me with this time they're never getting back. Uh so that's something I take extremely seriously. So every part of me, my heart and soul has to go into every single word. But it has to be about about the story. And every single meeting we had with Chris and Antoine Fuqua and the whole executive production team, uh Chris always would remind us that we're making this. We're not making this for critics. We're making it for this person who went to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 20 years so that when they sit on that couch and crack a beer and turn this thing on, they at least know that we put in the effort to make something for them that was rooted in the realities of modern warfare that explored the mindset of a modern-day warrior with this skill set who now has nothing left to lose. So we're making it for you. We're not making it for the Daily Beast. That's for sure. Um and it's uh and some of those critics like some of the ones that uh that you read and and uh the way you just described looking at Succession or something like that. It's gosh, that's a what a horrible way to go through life it seems. I mean there's plenty of other things you could read if this isn't yours. If this isn't the thing that's speaking to you. We live in a time where there's so much. But let's just say it was just books and movies. There are plenty other ones out there. Why would you waste time just trying to ruin someone else's day or to apply a filter on a show that a lot of people are enjoying but you want to just Numbers speak for themselves I think. nasty it is and it just says something about you I think rather than oh it's subjective. Guess what? It's art. Art is subjective. Move along. You'll live a much happier life. But that's just how it goes these days. What would have been an easier way for you to compromise the screen adaptation? For instance, what were some of the decisions that keeping it in were always going to cause problems and there is I'm sure there wasn't a discussion because you wanted to stay true and it seems like Chris was also on board with with this also being super super aligned. But what were some of the things that you think this would have gotten rid of most of the criticism but also compromise the show? Oh, if we got rid of most of the criticism it would be awful. So we didn't really So we never really thought about that. I can't really you know, I can't I can think of disemboweling maybe the disemboweling with a a tomahawk axe perhaps. I don't think they were that upset with that but Amazon was nervous about it. That's for sure. And it was one of those ones where we had the scripts go up to the top Amazon and they come back down with notes. And this is a very collaborative process whereas the novels just me 100% creative control, no guidance or my agent. They never even hint at unencumbered yeah. It's 100% me which is great because if it doesn't work I have only one person to blame. That is 100% my yeah, exactly. Now the other side of the house here with screenwriting, this is a very collaborative, team-oriented process. So, just like in anything where politics are involved, and by politics I mean interpersonal relationship type politics, when you're when when you're trying to create something special. But, everybody wants wants that to be the end goal, but other everybody's bringing their past experience to it. Everybody's bringing something different, which can be wonderful, but I can also see when you hear these stories about writers' rooms devolving into chaos, or things just going off the rails on set, or whatever it might be. I can see how that can happen. We got very very lucky here, but very collaborative. So, once you get the outline for the scripts done, and then you get the scripts done, then they go up to the top of Amazon, and then they come back down with notes. And one of those notes was about the disemboweling scene. And there were some I guess the best way to put it, some concerns that that might be a little little much, and we lose the audience. So, that was one we we fought for, and to Amazon's credit, they went with us. They went with us on I think everything that we wanted. Every time something came up that was a little contentious, they sided with us and kind of went, "All right, you know, we're going to trust you." And penny, in for a pound, we'd say in Britain. Yeah, but luckily we had Chris, and we had Antoine, and we had the showrunner. And so, all of us as a as a team would very thoughtfully discuss how we were going to deal with this. And so, we filmed it. I think Amazon thought that we're just going to let them film it, and we're not going to we're never going to let them put it in. And then it ends up being the shot that's on every billboard in LA when it launches. It's Chris Pratt holding that tomahawk right like that, shot from the side. And yeah, so if we didn't have that in there, we probably would have lost a lot of the core audience that were fans of the book. Cuz enough has to change anyway where people that are going to get upset about changes, they're going to get upset anyway, but if you lose a couple of these scenes, you're going to really lose the people that are even understanding of the fact that there are going to be changes. So, uh so a few of those things like that had to really had to be in there um and were were important to keep in there. So, so that was that was one of them. Uh there was an ending I think we talked about on the podcast we did a TerminalList podcast. Uh so I think we talked about it on there, but there was another ending that uh that Amazon was fond of and it just wasn't going to work. Um we were going to we were going to lose everybody we uh taken along this ride. Insufficiently satisfying. Yeah. Yeah. And uh so, once again, they they went along with it. We did film two endings. Will uh will it ever be released in a DVD thing? I don't think so. I don't think so. The other one's not good. And I don't think we really put our heart and soul into that one. I think everybody involved knew that Chris turned up in half asset that day. It wasn't even Yeah, it's not even he's not even in it, actually, in that one scene. Um but uh yeah, I think we would have really lost everybody if But once again, Amazon, amazing, went with us and we pulled it off. Even though it's different than the book, the whole the what was really important to Chris and Antoine and me and the showrunner was to stay true to the spirit of the novel. Knowing we have 8 hours to tell this, it's a team process, you have budgets, uh you have set pieces, you have travel restrictions. There's all these things that aren't in a novel. I can do anything I want in a novel. But you have all those other things are at play in a script. Um a lot of rules uh for screen writing, which uh if they exist for writing a thriller, I don't know them because I'm just doing what I love to do and telling a story. Um but in screen writing, there are rules. Uh so, we ended up pulling it off and Amazon went with us on every single one of those um contentious decisions and uh and it uh it it and it paid off. [ __ ] him. What is a daily routine, a morning routine, a daily routine like for you when you are deep in the writing process? Well, the I just get more tired because I'm staying up later and later, but I still have to get up to get the kids to school and get everybody fed. It's just like any other parent out there that's like trying to get their kids to school and saying, "Where's your backpack? Did you Where's your violin Is it a violin day?" Like all those things. "Get in the car, we're late." Um so, all those things are at play as well. So, once that chaos has subsided, then dive in to the work. And for me, it's all about uninterrupted time, uninterrupted time. Um and uh it has to I don't need a great view. I just need quiet. Quiet uninterrupted time. So, each of the novels I've written in a different place. The first one was off our in a little office off our bedroom rental in Coronado, California during my last year in the SEAL Teams between about 10:00 at night and 3:00 in the morning cuz that's the only time that it was semi-quiet in our household with three kids, dog, wife, and all the all the rest. Um and this one before this Well, two before this, I went to the local library and was using one of those little study rooms that they have there, but you can only stay in them for like 2 hours if someone else is waiting. So, as soon as high school got out, I get bumped out for kids working on history projects and that sort of thing, but that worked for a little bit. And then I rented Airbnbs um for the last one for In the Blood. And that was fantastic. Found a little cabin not too far away, and I thought I was going to do it for this last book for Only the Dead. And then I got up there, and it's about a mile from our house. I can actually see the house from this little cabin. And I just didn't feel right. Didn't feel right. And I like I was realizing our kids are uh 17, 15, and 12, and I realized that I was going to miss the interruptions when they were gone. So, I decided to embrace the interruptions, which probably pushed my uh my this writing process about 2 months, maybe 2 and 1/2 months to the right. Um but I realized that, "Hey, this is just how it's going to be, and I'm going to miss these interruptions when they're gone. So, it's just what life is like right now, and that's okay." So, I wrote it at the house and just tried to write it when the kids were at school and then I pulled some some really late nights and pulled a couple all-nighters, which are getting harder to do the older I get for Savage Son a few books back. No problem no problem pulling all-nighters. This one oh yeah, brutal. Yeah, feeling it now. But eventually I will get a much more disciplined approach. But right now from the beginning it's felt like an entrepreneurial type of adventure. Meaning I have to I'm the CEO, I'm the CFO, I'm the CMO. I'm the creative, I'm the social media manager, I'm all of those things but and I have to also say yes to to everything. As people have to know that whatever this widget is if you're an entrepreneur you have this you've created this thing people have to know that it exists. So, what do you have to do? What are the supporting efforts to this product that are going to allow you to get this out in the world and allow you to continue to do what you do. In my case that's writing. That's what I love. That's my passion. My mission is taking care of my family. Writing is the passion they come together and form my purpose going forward. But I didn't realize I thought you could kind of just go to a cabin in the mountains right, send it to New York, maybe do an interview and then start your next book. That was totally not it. Especially today you could have gotten away with that in 1985 if you were one of the last names that we all know like King something or DeMille or Morrell or one of these last names Clancy from back in the day. But today it's different. There are so many more platforms that you can take advantage of and there sure are outliers of course. But if you're just going to do the work and get in there and get dirty and figure this thing out well, now you can take advantage of YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and a webpage and a podcast and do all these other things that support your main effort of the book. And still that product that book has to be the best that it can possibly be but then everything else also has to be on that same level. So, that podcast has to be the best that it can possibly be. Any blog entry, any post on Instagram because all those things people are trusting you with that time that we talked about earlier not just with the book whether it's an audio book or they're actually uh reading it. Um but just scrolling through and stopping on your Instagram post and reading a little history or whatever it might be on there. You have to add value to people's lives throughout the year and then there's this connection piece that wasn't available in 1975, '85, '95, even really 2005. Uh really after that's when things started to change and where it became important to know the person behind the product, in this case a book. That wasn't really as important 30 years prior because you couldn't You didn't really know what was behind that book or that movie or whatever else. Well, now now people want to know and uh that authenticity piece is so important today to everyone. Um overused term, but it's really there's not a better one. Um and so for me that authenticity piece it's it's as it's part of the novel, but it's also this. It's us talking. And you it'd be tough to not be you today. I know people try, but their lives must be miserable uh because if you're not you and you're active on social channels, eventually it'll come out. Um Correct. and uh it's going to be awful to try to do that, but but if you don't and you're just open and honest, people respect that and you have a product that is top tier and everything else you're doing is also top tier that supports that product. Anyway, that's how I looked at it. How do you avoid the main thing not being the main thing anymore? There's lots of these other ways that you get pulled. You've got to do the podcast and the interviews and oh there's a screenplay and then I've got this meeting and there'll be a Zoom call and we've got to make sure and there's emails and all the rest of it. And yet the highest point of leverage that you need to get done is to put words down onto paper. How do you avoid distraction from the main thing and what is your process for staying motivated and disciplined when it comes to writing? Well, that's that's really what I'm working on right now. It's I and I have been working on it since the beginning, but really more so over the last year it's become unsustainable to keep the pace up that I've kept that I've been on since the beginning. Um and there are more projects out there with this uh origin story, with the next book coming out with Chris Pratt. So, those two separate series writing for those. I'll write the finale episodes on both those. This time around we're pencils down on it cuz of the writer strike right now. But, there's and there's some other projects out there in the works as well. Have a non-fiction book coming out on Beirut, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. There's a pod just all those things. And so, there really is I mean, you are being pulled in a lot of different directions. So, I'm going to have to get at this stage turn from the like started the computer company in my garage in 1976-77 into like a more into the into the little in office space outside the garage type of a thing. What does your What does your team look like at the moment? It was me only from the beginning, but now over the last few months now I have not just one literary agent, but I think there's six different agents now. Each one has a different specialty, which is fantastic. Now there's an entertainment attorney that overlooks all of that kind of the umbrella over all of those different different agents. There's that. There's a manager to make sure business manager, but not the kind that like goes out and looks for things, but makes sure that you're keeping out of trouble with the IRS. So, that's I could never my brain does not work that way. So, that is totally outsourced cuz now you have merch in 50 different states, 40 different countries. Each one of those states changes their tax laws by the year. So, yeah. So, that's So, there's that. My publisher Emily Bestler amazing has been incredible from the very beginning at Simon & Schuster. My publicist David Brown, he's been with me from the beginning as well. My agent Alexandra Machinist literary side of the house, she's like the umbrella agent over all the other ones kind of. So, the team's I know an assistant now who schedules everything because I was just spending I mean, untold hours just trying to keep these different interviews straight and different appointments straight and all that stuff. And that was taking away time that wasn't going into the books. So, uh so, this is the year to kind of figure all that out, but I think now that's that's that's the team. That's the team. And really there's Ironclad who does the podcast production and does my book trailer videos and deals with uh any business side of the house with merch or whatever else. Like, it's outsourcing all those things, trusting that uh maybe some of it might not be done exactly the way you want it, and that's that's the price that you pay uh for being able to dive all into the book is something uh something else, something smaller not being exactly the way you would like it, but it's okay. You're probably the only one that's going to notice. Uh so, but for me it's like the Instagram thing is still me, Twitter is still me, all those because it's such an important connection um that I have with this readership because you know, leading up to the third novel, I was kind of hoping that Chris Pratt would tweet or put something on Instagram about the show. I was kind of hoping that Joe Rogan would invite me on. I would hoping that Tucker cuz I've known him for a while. I was hoping that Tucker would invite me on. Um but it didn't happen. Now I'm so thankful that none of those guys asked me on until that third book hit the New York Times list. And then the first two bumped on after that because now even in my mind one one yeah, you don't have to worry about people saying, "Oh, must be nice. Only reason you did this is cuz you got on Rogan or whatever else." Like, that's off. And and also for me saying, "Well, wow, jeez, could I have done this without going on Rogan? Could I have done this without That's not even any part of my That's not even part of my calculus and not taking up any bandwidth in my head because it was all grassroots and it was all people taking a risk on me as a new author and telling a friend at work or telling a the buddy on social media or telling a family member who in turn told another family member. So, that made it so grassroots and so powerful from a fan foundational standpoint. Um so, now I'm thankful that Chris didn't say anything until after that, that Rogan didn't ask me on until after that, and that Tucker didn't have me on until after that because those were the three that in the lead-up I was kind of like, "Oh man, it'd be really nice if one of those three happen, two of them happen, all three happen." Uh but none of them did until after the New York Times list. still made it work. Yeah, there's um I remember hearing about Eddie Hearn, who is a boxing promoter uh from the UK, and he manages a ton of huge, huge fights. And his father was very successful in boxing promotion, too. And they were talking about the challenges that Eddie had been through as a byproduct of his father's success. And he'd grown up with wealth and and stuff, which, you know, is both positive and negative. And one of the things that Eddie said was he almost resented his father's success in a way because he would never be able to prove whether or not he could have done it without him. Yeah. And that's a big mirror, I think, to the scenario that you're encountering. Another thing that I've been thinking about a lot over the last 2 weeks, Bill Perkins, guy who wrote Die with Zero. It's a very short book about um how to use money to enjoy life as opposed to saving indefinitely. It's fantastic. I I highly, highly recommend it. It's 3 hours long. Die with Die with Zero. Uh he's also been on the show, so I'll send you a link to to listen to that episode once it's up. Um he I spent a good bit of time with him. He has a a holiday home here in Austin, and uh I've been wake surfing with him four times since he's been on the show in the last 10 days. So, I've got really good at wake surfing, but I've also got to spend a good bit of time with him. And one of the things that I realized is there's lots of content on the internet about how to become rich, and almost no content on the internet about how to be rich. There's lots of content on the internet about how to become successful, and almost no content about how to be successful. Most people are on the come up toward getting toward the size of a jack Oh, you 1 millionth of the size of a jack car, right? Once you're there, all of the lessons, uh do I need an assistant? Do I need two? Do I need a personal? Do I need an executive? What about a manager? Do I need a chief of staff? Should I get uh an operations manager first or do I need a chief of operations? But what about the chief of staff? How do they work with the agent? And you know, it's a problem that the cohort who has this this issue is so small that it's not surprising because the incentives for writing this sort of stuff and creating this content online is to appeal to a wider audience. How many people have the problem of trying to juggle multiple fiction and non-fiction bestsellers with an Amazon Prime deal, right? It's a it's it's a pretty small cohort. But that doesn't make it any smaller of a problem. And you don't have anybody there to try and teach you. So, spending a good bit of time with Bill, somebody who is incredibly wealthy, very successful, and and uses it as far as I can see uh in a very smart way, uh and looking at his systems, how dialed in all of the things that he has in his life. He's got an EA. His EA's got a PA. He's got a person that does his diet and nutrition, his chef speaks to the nutritionist and then cooks his meals based on what that is. The assistant makes sure that his schedule's done and the driver makes sure he's there on time and the blah blah blah. Like everything is dialed in. And he calls them neuron cycles and he protects his neuron cycles as much as possible. Says for him it's making money, for you it'll be writing great words. I make money with my mind. The more neuron cycles that I take up thinking I haven't put petrol in the car or have we got milk for the for coffee in the morning, all of those things are taking away from my highest point of leverage. And yet, like having that conversation online opens you up to so much cynicism around people saying, you know, what a luxurious bourgeois wanker. Must be nice. Yeah, exactly. The bottom line is that there are people out there who have these systems in place and I've started to hang about with them and to see that is just really inspiring to see how high the ladder can go, just how good the efficiency can get, how much can be outsourced, how much can be delegated. And it it it's cool to see that you're beginning to uh turn pro in Steven Pressfield language, I suppose, to get to that level. Exactly. And it's uh it I'm I'm just started down that path to figure out how to become more effective and efficient, which means you have to let go and you have to trust all those people also uh to make sure, hey, they got the right date on the calendar at the right time. Something as easy as that. And to know that you don't have to double-check or go back in your emails just to confirm because you're like, wait, that didn't sound quite right. It has to be all the way off. You never have to have that thought. And that thought has to go into whatever that profession is. Uh for me, writing. Um so so I need There are definitely some tweaks that need to happen, but I'm starting down that path. And then uh then eventually I'll have to add sleep, nutrition um that's back on my list cuz those fell to the bottom of my priority list uh cuz you're doing all those other other things. And this is the time to to do it. This is what I love. Uh I've always wanted to write since I was a little kid. So I know that that right now is is my time to do that. But also, it's time to introduce some more of those efficiencies so that I can have take that breath because right now it's just family and work. That's it. Um and uh so I can need to introduce some more of that uh uh and some of those efficiencies in there so that I can um operate at optimal performance, I guess. Get the good the right fuel in there. And I've seen it. I've seen I've seen people now firsthand operating at unbelievably high levels very effectively and efficiently and enjoying life because of how much they've been able to outsource it. Now, you know, the bottom line is that much of this is a function of money. That if you have the capital to be able to spend, then you can afford the the bits that this gets put together. But also, it's a function of being able to relinquish control, being able to delegate, being prepared to do that, being able to put faith in other people to allow them to learn through failure, uh to to pay the price, the existential like, oh, I missed that [ __ ] meeting. Oh, the it's because they put the meeting on for the wrong day or they didn't didn't check the email or whatever. Like, those are just prices that you're going to have to pay. So, one of the other things that I imagine is a a big chunk of your time must be research for the story lines, uh for inspiration for the book. And presumably not everything can be inspired by personal experience. So, what does the research process look like for this? Well, a lot of them it shifted with COVID cuz I couldn't go anywhere. Um my initial thought out of the gate was that I would at least go to one color have one trip, maybe multiple countries, but one trip focused on research for a novel. Um so, I had for the first book, I'd been to Iraq, been to Afghanistan. I chose places in the United States that I'd already been, so I wouldn't have to travel to them to do that that research. So, that was the first one. Second one, now I'm out of the military, uh start that second one about month after I'm out of the military, and I fly to Mozambique cuz I know that this is going to be a very important part of the story line. Once again, I don't have any money to be flying to Mozambique or doing any of these things, but uh I thought about John Grisham story about he wrote A Time to Kill first, and he couldn't give that book away. And then he writes The Firm, and we've had a John Grisham novel every year, in some years two John Grisham novels, every year since. But, I always thought of like, "Well, what if he'd stopped? What if he'd stopped and not written The Firm?" Then he'd probably just now be retiring from some law practice that he'd hated, and he'd always it would have waste wasted some sort of bandwidth thinking about what could have been or maybe I should have written another book. Uh but, he did. And and he uh from all uh indications, he loves writing and loves the life that he has he has built. So, I always thought about that. So, hence my reason for being on a plane to Mozambique without any means to do so. Um and so, that was fantastic. Putting boots on the ground, I learned so much over there talking to the professional hunters and the trackers and talking to them about the politics in their country and Chinese influence, both legal and illegal mining operations, just all these poaching uh all these things that I incorporated into the storyline. Uh so much so that I went back uh before that was published to South Africa to do research for my third novel and a little bit for the one that I was just finishing up. Uh I also went to Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia for that third novel, for Savage Sun, cuz once again, that was going to be very important part of the storyline that I didn't want to just get information by zooming in on Google Earth and looking up something on Wikipedia. I wanted to go there and really know the sights and the sounds and the smells. Yeah, what are you What are you looking for there? You're you're you're in this place. Are you taking down notes? Are you doing voice recordings? Are you taking videos and photos? And what are you looking out for? Videos, photos. Uh I had a whole stack of questions in a notebook that I had written out for the Mozambique trip, for that first one. And I had a lot of phrases that I wanted to get translated into different dialects. So, I had maybe nine, I think nine different dialects that I wanted things translated into, just in case. I didn't know which ones I'd use, but just in the off chance that I would use some of them and that I didn't want to go back like, "Oh, I should have gotten that other thing translated cuz now it makes sense to have this other, you know, whatever involved." So, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of questions, like some basic stuff that I was going to ask about, but then once I got over there and started talking to people, then I wrote down and took so many notes on things that I never would have even thought to have asked back in this air-conditioned room taking down notes cuz one thing leads to another. You get to know people. You're having some drinks. You're having a cigar. You're having a shared experience together. Uh you're learning about their background and you would never have thought to create a background cuz this is someone real and who's telling you a story about their childhood or about how they got to this place in life or what their time was like in the military in Africa or whatever it might be. Uh and you wouldn't have gotten that just by reading an article or typing in uh Mozambique on the uh in in the in the search bar. Um so, when I went to Kamchatka, I I took a lot less. I had a couple things I wanted to make sure I I I I touched on or asked about, but a lot less because I'd learned so much that wasn't even in my notes. But then when I went to Russia, it was very different I thought it was going to be because I hadn't taken the time to think about it ahead of time. But I thought that everybody was going to be open just like they were in Mozambique. Everyone wanted to talk to me about their country and the politics and their background. Got to Russia and I thought it was going to be the same and very quickly realized that no, very everyone was very guarded and I think that's because for most of Russian history if someone was asking you the types of questions that I was for a a thriller political thriller espionage thriller that you weren't long for this world. Off to the gulag with you type of a thing. So they were just inherently more guarded over there which was interesting as well and also made it into the storyline. So So for the next one COVID hit and so everything was shut down for the the fourth novel. So I had most of my research was online. Luckily it was a domestically based storyline. So I did a lot of interviews just on Zoom or on the phone or via email and so so that's same thing with the next one. I couldn't get to Israel because you to get to Israel in middle of COVID it was tough. Even if you were an Israeli citizen, it was tough to get in and out of there. Everything kept changing. So I had to do a lot of research for that one just on my computer and reading books and then I sent those chapters though. The whole middle part of the that last novel in the blood is in Israel and I sent it to a family in Israel who had three generations read it and someone in their 90s, someone in their 60s, someone in their 30s and they all came back and said they couldn't believe that I hadn't been there. So that was that's what I was Wow. But research I have a lot of times you don't know ahead of time even in the outline where something's going to lead. And so for this last one a few went down a few rabbit holes and I had people on the podcast who I wouldn't have normally read their book because there's so much else going on, but they're coming on the podcast so I had to read the book. I had to come up with questions and then had a great conversation and because of that they made it in here. Made it into this last Wow. So that's that's that's Brian Mora that's a [ __ ] real content engine to have the podcast that I do to connect with the audience so that I can sell my book, facilitates conversations with people who end up becoming inspiration for storylines within the book, which I then sell to the audience that listen to the podcasts. The spoke about it all. A lot more crossover than I initially anticipated and for the podcast I thought podcast was just going to be something I did to I was getting a lot of questions on social media that didn't really lend themselves to a one sentence answer. And so I thought well, people are interested I'll just have a guest on and talk about this issue and it'll be a discussion and that'll be great and provide something of value. But there really is a lot of overlap in the last two books between the podcast and things that have made it into these stories. And in this one in particular it was Able Archer and this event in 1983 where we almost had nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. And there is just I didn't I knew a little bit about it but not nearly as much as I did after I read those that book which led me to two other books and then multiple conversations with Brian Mora about it. So good. What about national security issues when writing and getting clearance and stuff? Is that Do you ever encounter problems with that? Like what if you accidentally come up with a fictional strategy that the US is actually trying to use at the moment or something? I guess you can always run into something like that but for me it was really the out of the gate I wanted to make sure I was just doing the right thing. So I submitted the first one for review to the Department of Defense pre officer pre-publication and security review it's called. And I was just close to my time wrote wrote it during that last year that I was in the military. The protagonist is a SEAL but people think that SEALs or special operations guys in general know a bunch of secret stuff and that really wasn't my experience. My experience was that we're doing essentially what every major city SWAT team is going to do tonight. They're going to go serve a warrant. They're going to knock on somebody's door or not, go in, grab them, bring them back. And that's really what we did but we did it in places like like Kabul or Mosul or Baghdad or Ramadi or whatever it wherever it was. But very similar. I mean you're going out with a group with a team. You have a target. You go in, you grab them, you come back, and do a little interrogation, and go back out again. Um, so there wasn't really much secret about that. Um, but I want to be safe, so I submitted it. They took out nine sentences, I think it was. Not very many, and I thought it was pretty good. They said they'd get back in 30 days, and they got back in 45. And I thought, well, for a huge bureaucracy, that's great. So, I submitted the second one, True Believer, and they took out they took well, I had to push the publication date because it wasn't 30 days, it wasn't 60, it wasn't 90. It was creeping up on 7 months when they got back. So, I had to push my publication date, uh, which was not helpful. Uh, and they took out 54, I want to say, 54, uh, either sentences or paragraphs or words. And this time though, now I have lawyers, and so I had them tie each one of those redactions to a publicly available government document. Not something that's on Wikipedia or somebody else's book or somebody's interview, but things that anyone anywhere on the planet can get on a government website and download or see. And so, they tied every single one of those, all 54, to publicly available US government documents. So, that defended you against having them removed? Uh, it's an appeal. So, they were removed, go to publication with them removed, but now you have a certain amount of time to appeal. So, I appealed, and then I won on 37. Even though they were all tied, they let me win on 37. So, then when the paperback came out, I unredacted them. So, now people can compare the hard cover to the paperback Wow. the government was so worried about. Um, and so, next book, Savage Son, I do the same thing. Uh, this one they get back, I think it was like 6 months, 6 and 1/2, five maybe five months at least. Uh, so almost had to push publication date, got it back. I think they took out, let's say, 30 or something like that, lines. So, I did that same thing. Uh, I was going to planning on doing the same thing. I was planning on having the paperback and unredacting what they what I won on cuz we tied all of those things to publicly available government documents. But then they didn't let me appeal. This time they came back and they said we were uh we're even though we were on time, uh ahead of time, it was all done properly, they they would not look at the appeal. So, now I took that as them telling me, "Hey kid, quit bugging us with this fiction stuff. We have important government work to do here." So, uh so yes, and now I don't uh don't submit, which I'm really glad I don't now because for the last few books, all my research uh if it's been in the national security space, uh has touched on things that I had no experience with in the military. So, for The Devil's Hand, that's bio-weapons research or what they call bio-defense research to get around certain conventions that were signed in the '70s. Um and then the one right before this, into AI and quantum computing uh from the national intelligence kind of apparatus, how that's being used there. So, now I'm really glad that I don't submit them because they would probably taking out things uh that they shouldn't be taking out because I didn't learn it through my government service. Oh, how interesting. It's so cool that uh people can get the paperback in the hardback and do their own investigative private eye thing to work out what it was that maybe the government was a bit concerned about and now they they've worked it back and forth. Yeah, that's so fascinating. Yeah, there was one location in particular that uh and I I chose the location because I'd been there before my time in the military and I'll can tell you what it is now because I won on the appeal, but I put a CIA black site in Morocco. And I chose Morocco because I'd been there before my time in the military, had such great memories of it. I loved it. Marrakech, I just remember the sights, the sounds, the smells. It worked out geographically for my character to get where he needed to go. So, it just it just worked. So, I created it out of whole cloth. I had no never been to Morocco in uniform or through an intelligence service or anything like that. So, uh they took out all the references to Morocco. I won these, that's why I'm talking about it, on appeal. But uh they took out references not just where it said Morocco, they took out Moorish architecture, they took out Atlas Mountains. They took out anything that could give a hint that it So, what does that tell us? It tells us that there is probably a CIA black site in Morocco. Uh and if they but if they hadn't even done that, I would I would I would thought and the reader would have thought that I just made it up anyway. So, I think they Uh, or maybe maybe this is them playing five-dimensional chess and it's a does that. I'm pretty sure that's Or flagging a CIA black site in Morocco? Yeah, I don't think so. I think my experience in government service tells me that uh They don't think that far ahead. Yeah. Yeah, that's the nicest way to say it. Wow. Yeah, I I find that I find that so interesting. Something else that's been fascinating to me and I noticed this Are you familiar with Shawn Ryan? Have you been on his show? Haven't been on his show. I know who he is, but we don't know each other. Yeah, he's a an absolutely fantastic guy. Um, and he did he moved through a number of different military services and stuff. And I've noticed this, if I bring somebody that is a Navy SEAL or a Green Beret or a Marine or whatever on the show, there is one particular type of interpretation of that person's career, of what they do for a job, of their role, et cetera, et cetera. And broadly it's positive. If you bring somebody on that's ex-FBI or ex-CIA or ex-NSA, very different. Very, very, very different. Especially given the fact that many operatives phase out of their more kinetic uh, first job into one of these three-letter agencies to do something that to be honest as for all that I know as a British civilian, doesn't sound that dissimilar. Like it's the same skills, it's maybe slightly better kit or slightly cooler kit and it's a bit more clandestine and there's different security levels. Um, what what what is it? What why is that the case? Why is the uh, public's interpretation even in a broadly sort of pro-patriotic, pro-military veteran uh, audience, what is it do you think that's triggering those people to have uh, a little bit of skepticism or distaste for the three-letter agencies compared with people who could have gone on to three-letter agencies, but just happened to stop at Marine or Green Beret or whatever? Yeah, I think we're naturally suspicious of uh, authority, particularly when it comes to uh, agencies in the federal government that operate under mandates that uh, have a cloak of secrecy attached. I think there's generally generally uh, a more positive outlook on the military because are you going to get mad at the 18, 19, 20-year-old who just went over and did their job, served food in the chow line or whatever, and now they're back and whatever it whatever it might be? Um, but then you get into some of these uh, government agencies, and we can go back to not too distant in in in in in in in in our nation's history and go back to the Church hearings or the Pike Committee hearings of the '70s that uh, unveiled a lot of uh, overreach by different agencies in the federal government, in particular the CIA, um, and kind of uh, got the dirty laundry out there for all to see. Uh, and then of course there were changes made and and things that were put in place to supposedly keep some of those things from happening again. Um, so I think there's there's that natural distrust of a large government in general, and then you add to that uh, oh, this agency over here that's doing things in secret. Oh, you know what else they did in the past? They did these experiments on US citizens. Yeah, they may have been in a mental institution or a prison or a part of the military or college students, but they did them, and here's the documentation to prove it. Uh, here's the testimony in front of Congress in the '70s. Um, so I think there's this a natural uh, skepticism and distrust there that's not unfounded uh, that isn't really there with the military. With the military it's more like uh, ineptitude. Uh, when we look at uh, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and I think it really when the when people look at that, they can say, "You guys had 20 years to prepare for this? And this is your best you could do? Like I I would have any experience in the military. I've never seen a military movie. I've never read a book on strategy or tactics. But I can look at a map and I can apply common sense to this problem, and I can ask, 'Wait, why are we giving up essentially the high ground uh here in Bagram and putting our our young men and women at a tactically disadvantageous position at this airfield? Why didn't we just leave out of this other one that seems much more easily defendable?" Um and that's a valid question to ask. So, I think when we look at the military, it's more And I mean, we as a whole, it's more that ineptitude that stands out to us, not necessarily a uh a cloak and dagger type of a uh of of like secret operations using citizens unbeknownst to them or surveillance against US citizens or anything like that. I think it's more ineptitude on one side when you're looking at the the military, and then government agencies, it's a distrust that's in Yeah, like malice. Yeah, so um it's like Hanlon's razor falls on either side, depending on whether you're military or intelligence service. Like, do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. The military's stupid, and the the intelligence services are malicious. Interesting. Yeah, I um I I find that very, very fascinating to think about um you know, people who join, especially tons of people that join the CIA or the NSA or the FBI, that I'm sure believe that they are serving their country in the best way possible. It's not easy necessarily to get into these agencies, hard-working individuals. And uh yeah, I there's a branding problem, man. They need to get They need to get somebody in to sort out the the branding and the interpretation. I I found this stat earlier on, only 29% of Americans aged 18 to 29 think that patriotism is very important compared to 62% of those aged 65 or older, and that is a very recent study. What do you think's happening with the state of American patriotism at the moment? Well, when I think when I hear those stats, I I attribute that to a um not attribute, but I think about it in terms of a a younger generation who hasn't gone back into the pages of history to understand why we have the options and the opportunities and the freedoms that we have today and what was sacrificed for us to have this amazing country. Um and then there's a lack of appreciation and a lack of respect for people from the inception of this country up until today who sacrificed everything so that we could be here making these decisions that we're making today, really not for us, but for the next generation and the next generation and the next generation. And what's what's happening now, I think, and you're so easily manipulated today. So, at the same time that we're not going back in the pages of history books and you know might not have a touch point with let's say the World War generation because they're dying off so fast now. There's not that many of them left. Uh so, you can't sit across the table and have a meal with somebody and hear that story from your grandfather who was there going over the beach in Iwo Jima or Normandy. Uh and you realize that wow, this person did that at age 18. And then what did they do? They came home and they got back to work. Uh and he worked for all those years so he could provide for my father who in turn went to college who then allowed us to live in this house so that then I could go to like there's just that that chain. There's a break in the chain as far as that as that appreciation goes and that respect uh and just learning from the pages of of history. So, uh so that when we talk about that that stat that you just just read right there, those percentages anyway. Um so, I think that's that's a part of it. There's just a disconnect. We're farther away from uh a generation that really did save the world for all for all intents and purposes. Um and so there's there's that disconnect there. And then you add the social media to it and the easily how easily are we manipulated because of these things that we carry around right now in our pockets. So, uh it helps to have a a little bit of cynicism, I think, when you when that thing buzzes and Twitter tells you something, an influencer tells you something, a politician tells you something, a news organization tells you something. What do they want to get out of that? They want a response. So, you're being manipulated right there. So, at least just to recognize that, I think, before immediately getting angry and retweeting something. Well, hey, take a breath. You owe it to that person who sacrificed everything in in the Revolutionary War, in the Civil War, in World War I, in World War II. So, you could have these freedoms. Well, take a breath for them and study the issue a little bit. Put in that requisite time, energy, and effort. Now, make that decision. Not for you, but for your kid, grandkid, for those next generations. So, I think a lot of that is lost in in the generation that we have right now. Not even the generation, in this sphere that we're living in right now, where we are so dependent on technology for our very mood, for our thoughts and behaviors. And so, I think recognizing and then taking action to correct it, if you want to. And then, the sad part is people might not want to correct that. They might be very happy being manipulated from essentially cradle to grave. And that's that's not the way I want to live, but but it might be once again, different strokes, who knows. Will the incentives also align to encourage people to be catastrophic or overblown or cynical in a negative light or cynical in a patriotic light or whatever about a number of issues because that's what resonates online. You know, I'm really fascinated by this sort of pervasive culture of cynicism that we have, not skepticism, that's different. Cynicism, the world is bad, it's not going to get better, and the people that believe that it can get better are the ones that really the problem because they're giving everybody false hope, and you're a piece of [ __ ] and you shouldn't listen to you. I'm fascinated by it, particularly because it seems so self-defeating. It seems electing to choose pessimism or cynicism when optimism is a chance, to me, uh it just seems like a very odd road to go down. Yet, I understand why people do that because that's what's rewarded on the internet. It's very easy to look naive on the internet. If you have hope, if you believe that things can get better, if you encourage people to have faith that things are going to to improve. It's very easy for somebody to bring that up in a couple of months or years time and say, "Look, see, it was you that was really the problem all along. There's this almost, uh, like intellectual immaturity that can be thrown at you, that you didn't really understand the truth about the world. It's much easier to get cynical and call it realism because no one's ever going to accuse you of being naive. No, it's that's exactly right. And it's, uh but it's a tough way Gosh, it's a tough way to go. And I was talking to somebody about this not too long ago, maybe a week or two ago. And they said, "Hey, you have to remain optimistic because then you'll never be able to manifest that in the future." And I thought, "Oh, that's an interesting way to put it." So, I've been thinking a lot about about that because you can It's easy It's easy to think, "Oh, jeez, how are we ever going to pull ourselves out of this? We're destroying ourselves from the inside." That's what my fourth book was about, essentially. Uh, it started being about what the enemies learned on us tactically on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 20 years at the time. And, uh, and so that's what it started as. And then I started move Then COVID hit. And I thought, "Oh, well, the enemy's learning something about our response to COVID. How are they How are they going to incorporate that? How are they going to use that in their future battle plans?" And then a summer of civil unrest hit hard. And I thought, "Well, they're not just They taking this in casually as they walk by the the news feed. They're thinking about how they can exploit this. How can they exploit this division?" Uh, then we had a very contentious political season. Uh, and then once again, they're figuring out how to, uh, how to how to widen those divides and those fissures and work those in. So, in doing all that research and writing that book for about a year and a half from the enemy's perspective, my takeaway was that, "Geez, if I was the enemy, I might not be doing much right now, except watching, cuz we're doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves from the inside." And Let me give you this. I've been thinking about this for so long. There's two potential explanations for what is occurring to Western anti-Westernism, right? One of them is that these are seeds of discord sown by malign foreign actors. It's the Internet Research Agency coming out of Russia. It's Chinese misinformation agents and all the rest of it. That's the first one. Second one is that Western anti-Westernism is coming endemically and intrinsically and endogenously from the West itself. Which one is more [ __ ] terrifying? Like, is it more terrifying that you can be manipulated by a foreign actor that sets up 100,000 fake Twitter bots and then creates a cascade of anti-patriotism? Or is it even more terrifying that they're stood on the sidelines ringing each other going, "Was this Was this thing Was this movement Were all of these riots up Oh, they weren't. Oh. Oh, they're doing it to themselves. Oh, well. Yeah. Grab a coffee. Let's go for a drink. And yeah, dude, those are the two Those are the two options. And Like, both of them are pretty terrifying to me, and I don't know which one it is. Yeah, if it's the latter, then then the enemy recognizes that. And by the enemy, I mean Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, a super-powered individual or individuals, terrorist organizations. What do they need to do? Give a little nudge just to help it along? Just a little poke in the back. Yeah. What are your thoughts? You've mentioned China a couple of times there. I know that you've had Peter Zeihan on the show. He's been on my show, too. Very impressive and terrifying individual. What is your read on the Chinese threat given the research that you've done over the last few years? Yeah, well, I like I like the way he articulates it cuz he still comes at all these scenarios from a position of hope and optimism even when he's deep down into these numbers and he's looking at the China one one child policy and the same thing in in Russia and what they're doing and their demographics and a nose dive for ethnic Russians and and all of this. But when it comes to those like doomsday type scenarios, I really like how he is very logical about it. And what we hear once again is that manipulation side of the house when you're people throw that nuclear weapon in there. We're talking about Russia-Ukraine and he talks about it from the perspective of well, you want to take over Ukraine, you don't want to turn it into a nuclear wasteland if you want it and you're going to get to the negotiating table at some point. The question is when and that's that's the question. Then what are you going to negotiate out of it? What are they going to get? What is Ukraine going to get? What is Ukraine going to use? What what is Russia going to lose? Everybody wins, everybody loses, but it's a negotiation. You're going to get there eventually, but you're not going to be able to get anything if you use nuclear weapons of any sort in Ukraine. So I like the way he bring he talks about that and brings a very sane perspective to it. Same thing talking about microchips in China versus microchips in Taiwan and and if they were to take over Taiwan, how they wouldn't know how to continue to create microchips at the same level because there's differences between the ones made in China and the one made ones made in Taiwan. So I like that he brings things down into these kind of foundational elements that make sense logically rather he takes the hysteria out of it in a way that only he can. So he's he's fascinating. The accidental superpower was one that I read on the way to Mozambique back then in the summer fall of 2016 when I got out of the military and really informed my second novel, True Believer. But Uh, but I I I his stuff and I love the way he presents it and uh he's just a fascinating individual. So, He He He is probably the most certain man that I've ever met in my entire life. For the people that haven't listened to this guy, you can go back and listen to the episode of Modern Wisdom, search Peter Zeihan. It's spelled z e i h a n. Uh or I think you've had him on your show, too. And um he never speaks in caveats. He never speaks with uh the there's never any hedging, there's never any uncertainty. He is the most committed man ever. And the there's a degree of comfort. I can kind of understand why he's got such a It's almost rabid, his audience online. Like they follow him around the internet. They really love Peter. And I think that in a world where everybody's quite uncertain and very few people are prepared to do the original research that obviously he has or it seems like he has to have arrived at the conclusions that he has done. What he does is he provides a degree of safety, almost like a comfort blanket, because he gives in a world of chaos, he is able to create some order. He is able to say, "This is what's happening. This is what will happen. This is why. These are the stats that back up the reason why it's occurring." There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. No hedging, no no nothing. Um but it it is very it's very odd to hear in a way, to hear somebody that convicted about anything. It's like Yeah, cuz you don't I mean I can't counter him. And I just want to learn through our conversations. He's been on twice and I think both of them are the are my most downloaded podcasts, I think. Um but he is he's so so certain and and very rarely can I come back and challenge him on anything because he has done that research. Um and put in he knows those numbers and uh not only does he know these numbers, he knows the history behind them and where they're going and how they relate to these other factors. And it's it's I don't know anybody else that can do do the way he does it. It's very unique. What is the message that you hope people take away from the book? I know that it's supposed to be, you know, a thrilling and entertaining and all the rest of it, but deeper philosophically, ethically, symbolically, what is it that you're hoping people take away from when they read your series? Yeah, so there's a Each one you can read it a few different levels. And at its base level, I want these just to be time well spent for someone who's not getting that time back. So, that's the main thing. It has to be about It has to be about that story every single time. But, it can be a different story for a different different person. If you grab this thing off the shelf in a Hudson News on the way to your flight and just read it and it's action and adventure, political intrigue, espionage, awesome, and then you move on to the next one or get back to work when you're when you're home. That's one way. Um the other way is to read it a little bit deeper. And that first one especially, but all of them to some extent, are really about someone who becomes the opposite of of what he was. So, in this case, he becomes the terrorist. He becomes the insurgent. He becomes that person that he has been training to kill and going out and to Iraq and Afghanistan over these years um and and and meeting on the battlefield. He becomes that person now on home soil. Um so, they're they're about that. And then a little level deeper than that, they're about somebody who brings the wars from Iraq and Afghanistan back to the front doorsteps of people who've been sending young men and women to their deaths for those 20 years that we were in Afghanistan. So, there's a few different ways that you can read it. And then for me growing up reading all the masters, reading uh Ed McBain and J.C. Pollock and Mark Olden Tom Clancy and Louis L'Amour and David Morrell and Nelson DeMille and all these guys in the '80s who had these amazing books, I would always find these sentences or maybe it was a paragraph and it would speak to me in some way and like, "Oh, I should should know more about that." or "I'd like to know more about that." But, it's just thrown in there. I understand it because of the context that it's in. But, obviously the author has done some more research. It's in there for a reason. And now that's leading me down another path uh to research this and lead a richer, fuller life because of it. So, there's there's that side of it, too. But, there's not an underlying message of trying to sway someone. If it If there is anything like that, it's uh it's it's it's looking at the protagonist looking at things through his eyes uh and realizing that he's a student. Um and he's a student In this case, he's a student of warfare. Uh for me, I'm a student of warfare. I'm a student of this craft. to say, is there a lot of you Do you find a lot of you in the protagonists? I mean, he's uh he's got a background similar to mine. He's a former Navy SEAL enlisted sniper who became an officer and then I was a sniper and I became an officer. And uh the reader meets him at this stage in his life when he's probably not going to lead guys tactically on the battlefield anymore. And that's what it was like when I got back from my last Iraq deployment. I realized that was the last time I tactically maneuvered guys on the battlefield. And going forward, it's uh it would mean a staff job somewhere, which I would hate. And then coming back as a team commanding officer, which sounds impressive, but in today's military that you're really back in a tactical operations center. You're allocating assets. Or you're more of a manager. Um but, it sounds impressive. But, uh but, somebody has to do those jobs. Just wasn't me. I came in to do that tactical level job right here. Um and did that, came home, and that's when I picked my head up, looked around, and realized my family needed me. We have a middle child with severe special needs who needs uh 24/7 full-time care forever. So, I realized that uh that that's my mission, making sure that he's taken care of forever. into an author next. Turn him into an author. Writing military thrillers. There it is. There it is. And uh yeah, it just gave me that So, my mission was essentially handed to me, but my passion was writing, and I got to combine those two. Um but, uh but, yeah, I'm a I I would say there's Yeah, there's definitely a lot of me in in James Reece, for sure. But, he's faster than I am, stronger than I am, a better shot than I am, better at jujitsu, better at boxing. Uh he's better at all those things than I could ever have hoped to have been. Um but, he's a student. And uh and as am I. So, I think that if there's anything that one could take away from these other than the underlying underpinnings of the story, that is the importance of being a student. Because that is the the way we continue to build on whatever foundations that we have up to this point is by always being a student whether it's of an industry or of life in general. And that's just the way I look at things. Jack Carr, ladies and gentlemen, where should people go if they want to keep up to date with all of the stuff that you're doing at the moment? Oh man, you are awesome. It's officialjackcarr.com. That is the website and you can link there at Instagram. It's jackcarrusa on Instagram and Twitter which are are still me and I try to say thank you to everybody and hit that little heart button because it means so much to me that people really took a risk on me and allowed me to do what I love which is the writing. So I look at it as a way to do that. So yeah, that's the website that and then Danger Close podcast of course and then the next the next novel Only the Dead is out now and as soon as this week is over I dive back into number seven and start putting some more tweaks on the the Beirut Barracks bombing non-fiction work that comes out in about a year and a half. Damn right. Good luck, mate. I appreciate you. Thank you. Hey, thanks so much. Take care. What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe. Peace.