545. The Return of the War Department w/Captain Brad Geary

Summary

Apologia Radio Ep. 545: "The Return of the War Department" w/ Captain Brad Geary

Date: October 9, 2025
Host: Luke the Bear (standing in for Jeff Durbin)
Guest: Captain Brad Geary (ret., US Navy SEAL)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Apologia Radio dives into the seismic military and cultural implications of the "return of the War Department" and the rousing speech by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Host Luke the Bear is joined by long-time friend of the show, newly retired Navy SEAL Captain Brad Geary. Together, they dissect themes of military leadership, the restoration of standards, deterring America’s adversaries, and the necessity—and Biblical foundation—of a war-fighting ethos rooted in strength, courage, and uncompromising excellence.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Catching Up with Captain Brad Geary

[03:50] – [05:13]

• Summer of "Sabbath" after retirement, focusing on healing, rest, and making no major decisions.
• Brad has started consulting, public speaking, and began writing his memoir with creative control ("God's hand has been in it").
• Announcement of a new job forthcoming.
• Luke highlights Brad’s impactful "Dangerous Man" talk: “I sent it to all of our church leadership. I was like, you all need to listen to this.” (Luke, 05:06)

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2. GI Joes, Nostalgia, and the Warrior Ethos

[05:13] – [07:38]

• Shared childhood over GI Joes and what those toys symbolized for military-minded, mission-driven young men.
• Luke: “For guys like us that grew up with GI Joes and love the idea of war and manly war, it was a breath of fresh air to see the return of the War Department...” (07:02)

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3. The Impact of Secretary Hegseth’s Speech: "The Return of the War Department"

[07:38] – [21:41]

Brad’s Initial Impressions

[07:47] – [09:18]

• “He crushed it… So refreshing. The guys at the ground level are just jazzed. They're so excited to be serving under this kind of a leadership model.” (Brad, 07:47)
• Enthusiasm for the shift back to lethality, apolitical focus, ending the distractions of generalized “military training,” and focus on warfighting.

The Incremental Decline: Institutional Change and Culture Shift

[09:46] – [11:30]

• Brad observes that the culture shifted incrementally, like "the frog in the pot" analogy.
• “It's hard to say one time, one era, one place... but it was incremental. And it's one of those… you slowly turn up the heat, and after a while [the frog] doesn't even know that it's dying…” (Brad, 09:49)
• Institutional inertia: "We become indoctrinated—this is the new normal."

The Importance of Language: From "Defense" to "War"

[14:15] – [17:51]

• Brad: “Words matter. Department of Defense sounds much different than Department of War, and it's an important nuance…” (09:04)
• Bureaucratic culture had become apologetic rather than offensive/deterrent.
• “I saw in meetings where instead of addressing the merits... the question was, ‘What is the public saying? How many negative comments?’ We need to respond to their perception, not to reality anymore.” (Brad, 16:23)

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4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Hegseth’s “FAFO” Declaration

[23:50] – [25:03]

• Pete Hegseth to America’s enemies: “Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the war department. In other words, to our enemies, F A, F O. If necessary, our troops can translate that for you.” (Hegseth, 24:08)
• Luke: “This is a Christian program, so I’m not going to translate that for you. But… that’s the idea: Don’t tread on me. Mess around and find out.” (24:24)

Leadership and Autonomy

[29:34] – [38:21]

• “Our war fighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders. ...even if you do everything right, you may still lose people because the enemy always gets a vote.” (Hegseth, 30:07)
• Brad on real combat: “In the chaos of war… you could have done everything right… and things can still go awful. ...The burden of leadership is making decisions with imperfect information and imperfect people.” (31:33)

Autonomy Sets US Forces Apart

[37:55] – [41:00]

• Luke: “What separates us from other military powers... everyone has the ability to lead, to think critically... not just following orders.”
• Brad: “That’s one of the things I love about the field teams: autonomy to maneuver, make decisions that might actually, at face value, contradict doctrine…” (37:55)
• On bureaucracy: “Over time, we have seen this incremental growth of instructions... We've lost some of that autonomy.” (Brad, 38:51)

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5. The Cost of Conformity: War on Warriors & The Institutionalized Leader

[41:10] – [46:48]

• Hegseth: “We've promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons… based on race, gender quotas… weeded out so-called toxic leaders… under the guise of double-blind psychology assessments, promoting risk-averse, go-along-to-get-along conformists…” (41:10–42:37)
• Brad: "We have produced over time conformists that have created a military that focuses more on 'are you in compliance' versus 'are you leading.'" (42:49)
• Case study: Army unit’s risk aversion in combat leads to unnecessary friendly casualties due to delayed action, waiting for explicit permission (49:41).

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6. Restoring Standards: Physical Fitness, Gender Neutrality, and Relentless Meritocracy

[53:50] – [67:45]

The "Golden Rule" for Unit Standards

[53:50] – [55:18]

• Hegseth: “Do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child's unit. Would you want them serving with fat or unfit or undertrained troops…?” (53:50)
• “Restore a ruthless, dispassionate, and common sense application of standards…”

Gender Neutral, Unbending Accountability

[55:50] – [62:46]

• Brad on standards at BUDS: “We were constantly pushed against precisely that pressure to bend the standard... No, the standard’s the standard. Either you meet it or you don’t.” (55:50)
• "You have to dress the part… if you can't meet [the standard] anymore because you're too broken... time to move on." (69:58)

Fixing the Mess: Why PT Standards and Appearances Matter

[67:19] – [69:02]

• Hegseth: “It's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.”
• Twice-yearly fitness tests, height and weight checks for all ranks.

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7. The DEI Era and the “Woke” Military: A Direct Rebuke

[70:04] – [74:28]

• Luke: “When we met with those [SEALs] in '21… they had just… started to go through all that DEI training.”
• Brad: “It was exactly that—mandatory DEI training you have to put your command through… Mandated down to the CO level; had to come from your mouth… I might have been actively resistant... I sneakily changed the word 'equity' for 'equality' and ignored a lot of the talking points."
• “You shouldn’t need me to coddle your identity, coddle your sexual preferences, in order for you to feel included at this team… You are here... we value [you] because of your contributions as a teammate.”
• "The critics of Hegseth will say... he's bringing politics into the military. No, he's... liberating leaders to be apolitical." (Brad, 74:09)

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Key Timestamps

• [03:50] Brad’s retirement, writing, public speaking
• [09:46] The slow cultural shift in the military
• [14:15] The importance of language: "war" vs. "defense"
• [24:08] Hegseth’s “FAFO” quote
• [29:34] Leadership, autonomy, and critical thinking
• [41:10] War on warriors, conformists, institutional resistance
• [53:50] Standards, accountability, gender neutrality
• [67:19] Physical fitness and public perception of leaders
• [70:51] The impact of DEI training and political ideology

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Tone and Energy Highlights

• High intensity and urgency: “I was ready to run through a wall after the first four minutes.” (Luke, 13:21)
• Straight-shooting, unapologetic: “We have produced over time conformists... I heard from a CEO recently: ‘I don’t feel like I’m in command... All I’m doing is appeasing my boss and going through our instructions. No time to actually make judgement calls.’” (Brad, 42:49)
• Biblically rooted worldview: “The stuff that we’re talking about here is grounded in biblical principles… not wanting to kill bad guys for the sake of it.” (Luke, 28:39)
• Wry humor: “Chairborne ranger… I love it. I don’t want to see no fatties walking around in the Pentagon.” (Luke, 67:19)

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Memorable Quotes (by timestamp)

• Brad Geary:

  • "This was exciting. It was liberating. I am jealous of the dudes that get to command right now in this era where they actually have that liberation to be apolitical, to return the military to an apolitical organization that is focused on war fighting." (08:25)
  • “We are now offensive in nature, and that needs to reshape how we look at everything.” (17:26)
  • “On the battlefield… what if the right thing is the least worst thing? How do we navigate that terrain, especially as Christians?” (34:28)
  • “Instructions have become instructional, which has now limited the autonomy of leaders… We are losing, we have lost some of that autonomy as the US military.” (38:51)
  • “If you spend all your time making sure you’re in compliance, you’re not leading.” (42:49)
  • “We should push back as leaders when people pressure us to bend those standards...You have to meet the standard. If you did, and if you do, and if you continue to pursue the standard, welcome to the team.” (59:37)
  • “You are not special. ...What’s special are the people that show up, contribute to the team, contribute to the mission, and you are valued because of that.” (72:23)
  • “He's liberating leaders to be apolitical. Politics was brought into the military a long time ago... He's returning us to being able to focus on lethality.” (74:09)

• Luke the Bear:

  • “This is a Christian program, so I’m not going to translate that for you. …that’s the idea: Don’t tread on me. Mess around and find out.” (24:24)
  • “What separates us from other military powers... everyone has the ability to lead, think critically—what separates us from China and Russia.” (31:26)

• Pete Hegseth (from speech):

  • “Either you protect your people and your sovereignty, or you will be subservient to something or someone. It’s a truth as old as time.” (21:11)
  • “Do unto your unit as you would have done onto your own child's unit.” (53:53)
  • “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don’t hurt anyone’s feelings leadership ends right now at every level.” (64:07)

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Conclusion

This episode offered a vigorous defense of returning America’s military to its warfighting roots: uncompromising standards, genuine leadership, and an end to the risk-aversion and politicization that have crept in over the past decades. The mood was bullish on change, unfiltered, and unapologetically Christian in orientation—framing the restoration of the "War Department" as not only strategically necessary, but a matter of Biblical principle and national survival.

Brad Geary’s inside take as both a leader and recent retiree grounds the discussion in real-world experience, highlighting both the perils of past policies and the hope (and urgent work) required for new reforms to take root.

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For listeners who missed this episode:
Expect a no-holds-barred, thoughtful deep dive into what effective military leadership looks like, why standards matter, and what it really means to defend peace through strength. The play-by-play through Hegseth’s speech, paired with Brad’s field wisdom and Luke’s cultural/theological take, makes this required listening (or reading) for those passionate about American renewal and the unchanging virtues of strength, courage, and truth.

Transcript

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[Luke the Bear]

Welcome everybody. Back to another episode of Apologia Radio, Luke the Bear hosting today. Pastor Jeff is at the Future of Christendom conference that we've been advertising for quite some time in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Hopefully some of our listeners are actually there right now. This is a weird intro. I know. It's because our normal intro keeps getting flagged for some reason. And so I played, I played a drum song called Navy Seals, which is very fitting for today and I'm very excited. Thank you once again for Dominion wealth and their support of us. They are fantastic dudes. You can go to Reform Money to check them out and you will be seeing more stuff with us and them in the future. Super grateful for them. Adam, I see you in here, bro, in the chat. So very excited for today's show. I'll get right to this here. I'll just bring my guests in. He's. He's no. Nobody new here at this point, but newly retired Captain Brad. Gary. What's up, brother?

[Captain Brad Gary]

Good to see you, man. Good to see you. Thanks for having me again.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, of course. It was so this. Thank you once or from the beginning for being available quickly because I had another show scheduled for today which we're going to reschedule because some people had to. Had to book it to the airport to go to Vodi Baucom's funeral. And so we had to reschedule this show today. So we'll let you know when that, when that Happens. I'm excited for those guests, but we may have another surprise guest joining us too. Not sure we're trying, but the zoom link is available to that person if he can jump on. Yeah, but we're just, we're going to talk about the new SEC War. Is that the. Is that the appropriate. Uh, yeah, short title. Uh, Pete Hexa speech to uh, our military's uh, leaders into the world last week. And it's. It was amazing. It got me all kinds of fired up and I know Brad Newsmax, which is awesome. Hopefully they reach out to you for more stuff. But before we get into that, what's new with you? For those that are tracking your life, we've kind of been chronicling your life for the last.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, that's right.

[Unknown (possibly a producer or assistant)]

Eight.

[Luke the Bear]

Eight months or so. So that's right.

[Captain Brad Gary]

We've been in a decision free space. Right. It was a, it was a God ordained summer of Sabbath for us where once we realized he was, he was telling us to take a knee, telling us to rest, telling us to heal a little bit. We took that summer and we committed to no decisions to him for that. Which was great. We're coming out of that now. We're approaching this next season of life and we're making some decisions, which is exciting. Some of those will be revealed soon. Yeah, but we've already started doing some, some leadership consulting and some public speaking and then we have officially started writing our book, which is exciting. We're working with Ballast Books. They're a fantastic company and they're giving us creative control here to awesome write out our story. And in doing that, God. And we got a couple other things that'll be breaking here soon. But those are, those are exciting starts.

[Luke the Bear]

That's awesome, man. I. I know. I was hoping, I was hoping to be able to announce his new job, but probably not till next week. But I'm very excited for it. I'll say that. It's not official. So we can't, we can't announce it yet, but. So by the way, dude, I forgot to tell you. I watched this morning as I was getting ready, I watched your dangerous man talk and boy, did I need that today. So thank you. It was very time.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Hey, you're welcome. Thanks, man. Yeah. The one I shot him around, right?

[Luke the Bear]

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I sent it to all of our, all of our church leadership. I was like, you all need to listen to this.

[Captain Brad Gary]

So awesome.

[Luke the Bear]

Thank you. Yeah, man. So before I get into the speech, I was going to say because you're a few years old Than me. Did you have GI Joes when you were a kid? You had to have.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke the Bear]

So. So probably three weeks ago, maybe not even that in two weeks. My wife took my two older daughters to a concert. And so it was. It was boys night with me. And my. My. My Jonas bonus. Brad also has a Jonas bonus, but so it was boys night, Right. So we went to Bass Pro, hung out there for a little bit, and we came home and we watched the original GI Joe cartoons. There's actually a YouTube channel where it's 24 7. They just play those cartoons. It's incredible.

[Captain Brad Gary]

I had no idea.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. So anyways, my son, he's four and he loved it. Hooked, you know, just was glued to the tv and I was like, yes. So anyways, I was telling him. I was telling me. I was like, hey, I actually have some of those guys. I still have some of mine that I've saved over the years and. And was like, you know, I saved them for you. And he's like, can I see them? And I was like, well, I'll find them tomorrow. So anyways, I got him out and he's like, all into my old GI Joe's, which has been cool and fun. The thing. The thing that stinks is you start going on ebay and looking at the prices of some of these, and I'm like, holy cow. Like, I'm looking at one guy holding my hand. It's like new. It's like $300. And. Yeah, like, oh, my gosh. And my favorite guy was Shipwreck. The.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Really?

[Luke the Bear]

The Navy guy? Yeah, the parrot. You know, he had the. The Navy blues on and stuff. And. Yeah, and the tattoo.

[Captain Brad Gary]

He was great, man. I liked him, but I liked Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were my two.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Those are good.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah.

[Luke the Bear]

So I found on ebay, there was. It's a. The. That same shipwreck, the original, brand new in the box, 725. And I was like, oh, my goodness gracious. Anyways, yeah, woulda, coulda, shoulda. Yeah, right. The point I'm getting to is for you, for guys like us that grew up with GI Joes and love the idea. The idea of war and manly war and stuff, it was like a breath of fresh air to see the return of the war Department and the Secretary of War. And so before I got some clips we'll play, I want to get your. You.

[Captain Brad Gary]

You.

[Luke the Bear]

You did a little video the other day. It was fantastic. I just want to get your initial thoughts as someone who just spent 29 years of his life in the Navy.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah. Initial thoughts are he crushed it. And it's, you know, it's. It's so refreshing. And I've been talking to a lot of the guys at the ground level. They're all just enthusiastically, just jazzed. They're so excited to be serving under this kind of a leadership model where we're returning to lethality, we're returning to America. We're returning to no more walking on eggshells. Anonymous complaints have been paralyzing career progression and actually focus on the mission. General military training, online training courses have consumed our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines and guardians time. And we're just getting away from things that are distracting us from our sole mission, which is winning wars on behalf of our nation. That is critical. So goes America, so goes the rest of the world. And if we don't have a strong military, then others will start taking advantage of us. And we've seen that from a foreign policy issue, even from boots on the ground issue overseas. So this was exciting. It was liberating. I told a couple dudes already, man, I am jealous of the dudes that get to command right now in this era where they actually have that liberation to be apolitical, to return the military to an apolitical organization that is focused on war fighting.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Words matter. Department of Defense sounds much different than Department of War, and it's an important nuance, and it's a worthwhile venture that they're making this shift. So I'm a huge fan. I love the speech. There was so much goodness in it.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. And I love the. We're not going to get to this clip because it was like, at the end of his talk, but he specifically said, the liberation of our warriors. And you and I know very well what that means since COVID And. And so I was like, oh, man, that's such. Just such a relief to hear that. And we'll. We'll get into a little bit more. But just curious, like, did you. When did you know? Over 29 years. At what point in your career did you start to see this shift?

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, it's a great question. It was incremental.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

So it's hard to say one time, one era, one place, but. But it was definitely. It was incremental. And it's one of those. It's like the pot, the old story about the pot and the frog in it, and you slowly turn up the heat, and after a while, doesn't even know that it's, you know, dying in boiling water. That's How I saw it happening, you know, it started with this whole, you know, don't say things that are uncomfortable anymore and don't make crass jokes or there's some goodness in there. Right. To be a professionalized force. But you just saw it happening over time. And then before you know it, you.

[Luke the Bear]

Know, for those of us that.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Well, that's the other problem. Right. Just like the frog, we become indoctrinated these things as normal. This is the normal way of doing business. And in the military, we have a very interesting way of. If our boss says something and that becomes our mission objective, everyone starts repeating that boss's narrative. They say it in their meetings, they write it in their situation reports, they put it in their award citations. You're regurgitating what the boss's priorities are because everyone wants him to have trust and confidence that you're running in the right direction. If he says that's the right direction, we're going that way. So it's very hard. The longer that goes on, the more institutionalized we become and the harder it is to take a step back, take off the blinders and say, hang on a second, guys. What are we actually doing right now? Why are we spending so much of our time on online training courses that don't help us actually increase our warfighting capability? Why are we entertaining so many anonymous complaints out there that have no basis for any kind of allegations, but we're letting it paralyze our legal system and our investigative system? All of these things just started happening to the point where finally a few of us started looking around saying, this is, this is insane.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

So again, tough to pinpoint when, but it's undoubtedly. It was undoubtedly happening for sure. For four years.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, for sure. And I think it probably, from what I've heard, it probably hit your neck of the woods last. It sounds like it. You know, it kind of hit military wide before it really went to the special Forces. Oh, sure.

[Captain Brad Gary]

We were some of the last bastions to hold out. For sure.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, for sure. All right, well, let's just for sake of time here. We're already 10 minutes in. Let's. I'm going to just start here. At the beginning of his speech. The first four minutes were. I was ready to run through a wall, like after the first four minutes. So we'll just work our way through this year. Gabe, if you want to pull that up.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

Thank you.

[Luke the Bear]

Might want to turn that up, Gabe. I don't know.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

Please take your seat. Well, Mr. Chairman, the joint chiefs, generals, admirals, commanders, Officers, Senior Enlisted, NCOs, Enlisted, and every member of our American military. Good morning. Good morning, and welcome to the War Department. Because the era of the Department of Defense is over. You see the motto of my first.

[Luke the Bear]

Platoon, I'm just gonna stop right there. It's like, I love that. He's like, all right, let me get the nices out of the way. And now I'm moving. We're not gonna just stand here and be still. Like, it's. This is. You know, we're preparing for war here. We're. We're not gonna sit back anymore. I loved it right away. I was like, yes, I love this. Now, if you were in still, would you have probably been here, do you think, or.

[Captain Brad Gary]

No? I think this was. This was admirals and generals, and I retired as an 06, so I would have just missed the cut.

[Luke the Bear]

Gotcha. Okay. All right, let's keep going.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

Was those who long for peace must prepare for war. This is, of course, not a new idea. This crowd knows that the origin dates to the 4th century Rome and has been repeated ever since, including by our first commander in chief, George Washington, the first leader of the War Department. It captures a simple yet profound truth. To ensure peace, we must prepare for war. From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this war fighting. Preparing for war and preparing to win. Unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit. Not because.

[Luke the Bear]

Okay, so I. I love, like, one of my favorite slogans I've seen on T shirts. It's. They've. They're like, the Christian version of that is Pray for peace, prepare for war. Like, yeah, you know, it's the. It goes. Goes back to the idea of the. Why is the serpent innocent as doves? Right? Like. Like, you're. You don't want war, but you have to be prepared for that. And so, like, you know, there's. That's more than just, you know, not being fat, which we'll get to, you know, or, you know, and. And it applies, like, to all of life, too. It's not just to the military, right? Like, it's a mindset where you're. You're taking care of yourself. You're prepared for every circumstance. And I. But you're the expert in this, so let me. Let me hear you. I don't want to take all your time here.

[Captain Brad Gary]

No, you're exactly right. And, you know, it's in a. In a utopic society or globe, everyone would do the right thing and never oppress other human being, but that's not reality. And so in order to. To facilitate peace, we have to have deterrent values and to deter someone, to have peace through strength, our adversaries and our. And our potential enemies out there have to fear and respect us. This can't just be diplomacy. A strong military is good diplomacy because it creates that deterrent effect. Don't mess with us. Don't mess with our interests. Don't mess with the peace. Don't mess with people that can't defend themselves because we will come in and defend them for themselves, for them, and fight you. And you have to be afraid of that if it's going to actually deter you from taking advantage of societies, from taking. This is what we've seen in the history of the world. Nation states will take advantage of other nation states unless there's a deterrent value. I love this. I love his lines. Back to words matter. The Department of Defense is over. Defense implies. Well, it doesn't apply. Defense is defense. Defensive war implies offense. And for too long being known as the Department of Defense, it has slowly, culturally shifted our posture across the board. I've said for years now, and I saw through our case that even our public affairs posture is very defensive in nature. Well, we don't say anything because there's an investigation that's ongoing right now. And even when the investigation's over, we really don't say much. We just kind of respond to the public's perceived perceptions. And so I found that oftentimes decisions were being made not from an offensive deterrent perspective, as the War Department, but almost apologetically, like, oh, you know, we're sorry for being so rough around the edges. We're sorry for the perception that we might offend some people out there. And so we're going to respond to your perception of us, which is the tail wagon and the dog. And I saw, I was in meetings where an issue would be brought up, and instead of actually addressing the merits of the issue and how we should respond to the issue and the truth I saw the question was, well, what is the public saying? What are the comments looking like? How many negative comments are there? They show graphs of what are clicks, what are the likes, what is everyone saying? We need to respond to their perception, not to reality anymore.

[Luke the Bear]

That's done.

[Captain Brad Gary]

According to this, we are now offensive in nature, and that needs to reshape how we look at everything. The War Department should start looking at public criticism through the press and saying, you're welcome. We are who we are. And you can sleep soundly at night because of who we are because we are that scary, because we are that strong, and because we are that deterrent value that our enemies both fear and respect. This is such goodness.

[Luke the Bear]

So I just thought of this. This very point. Hits you home. Hits home for you personally. You lost your swim buddy because of this very reason. Am I right?

[Captain Brad Gary]

You're talking, Danny.

[Luke the Bear]

Yes, because. Because of the fear of the backlash they would receive from the public if they hadn't handled that situation appropriately.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, that's. It's a factor. And, and man, it's a factor. And that shouldn't be a factor in guys minds. Now, I'm not saying, looking back at that case, I'm not saying they should have just killed all.

[Luke the Bear]

No, I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, but.

[Captain Brad Gary]

But the fact that that's in the back of their minds on, hey, what's the public going to think if they hear about something here? It's. That's absolutely something that is, unfortunately, downranging guys minds.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

100.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. It's all right. I didn't mean to put you on the spot there. Just dawned.

[Captain Brad Gary]

No, that's okay.

[Luke the Bear]

I just thought of you. I was like, wait, that's a perfect example of what we're talking about here. Um, so I, I didn't realize this either, and I don't know if we'll get to this at this point, but he says later on in his speech that I didn't realize that they had changed it from the War Department to the Defense Department in 1947 after World War II. I didn't know that. And I was like, wow. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you know the history behind that and why they did that then. I was just. I was shocked to hear that. I was very surprised to hear that.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, I don't. I don't know the history, but I can imagine seeing, having lived in the military for as long as I have, they probably changed the language in order to open up more opportunities. They were probably wanting to do certain things and were probably meeting roadblocks from. From other agencies within the United States government. Right. The State Department, whoever. Hey, well, that's not your job. You guys are just the war guys. And we're not at war, therefore. So it's probably a very reasonable choice to shift it at the time if they kept getting shut down, because, hey, we're not at war. So you guys stay in your corner over there.

[Luke the Bear]

No, no, no.

[Captain Brad Gary]

We're so much bigger than just war. So they probably changed it for. That would be My guess, that would make sense. But once we make decisions, we have to look at what culture we actually incentivized and disincentivized by doing that. And over time, we're at where we're at. It's time to come back.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. I mean, just thinking, like, the history of our nation at that point, the nation's what, 150 years? A little more than that. And look at all the wars we had. You had the Civil War, obviously. Obviously, you had the war for independence, but civil war, World War I, then World War II, you know, those were all relatively. In a short period of time. So they were probably like, we're tired of war. Yeah, probably. But probably. But anyway. Well, let me just. Let me keep playing here. I want to get through this first four minutes.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

Not because we want war. No one here wants war. But it's because we love peace. We love peace for our fellow citizens. They deserve peace, and they rightfully expect us to deliver it. Our number one job, of course, is to be strong so that we can prevent war in the first place. The President talks about it all the time. It's called peace through strength. And as history teaches us, the only people who actually deserve peace are those who are willing to wage war to defend it. That's why pacifism is so naive and dangerous. It ignores human nature and it ignores human history. Either you protect your people and your sovereignty, or you will be subservient to something or someone. It's a truth as old as time.

[Luke the Bear]

All right, we'll stop there. That's. That's my timer for the end of the segment. Any thoughts you want to add to that part right there? I'm trying to get to this one part that, you know, what I'm going to get to, but. Yeah, yeah, let's.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Let's keep rolling. Let's keep going.

[Luke the Bear]

Well, let me.

[Captain Brad Gary]

It was all good, but. Yeah, yeah.

[Luke the Bear]

Okay, so let's. Let's go to a quick break. Then we got to add from Ion Layer from one of our sponsors. We'll play that and then we come back.

[Captain Brad Gary]

We'll.

[Luke the Bear]

We'll pick up with this and keep going.

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[Luke the Bear]

Welcome back everyone to Apologia Radio. From the short break there, we'll just get right back into this. I'm trying to get to the part here where he's going to do this very quickly, where he kind of switches from speaking to our military leaders to our enemies. And it's one of my favorite parts. So let me. We'll just get right into it here.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

Costly in blood and treasure, we owe our republic a military that will win any war we choose or any war that is thrust upon us. Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the war department. In other words, to our enemies, F A, F O. If necessary, our troops can translate that for you.

[Luke the Bear]

Okay, so this is a Christian program, so I'm not going to translate that for you. I was, I was like, threw something through the wall, I think what I heard. So it's like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. But here's, here's the point. And it goes back to our founding fathers. It's the idea of don't tread on me, right? With the rattlesnake. You just let me, you know, rattlesnake is good to go. You leave it alone. But if you step on me, I'm. I'm going to bite and that's kind of. It's kind of the idea here. You know, mess around and find out. We'll. We'll see. We'll go with that. So, anyways, I want to hear what your thoughts on that.

[Captain Brad Gary]

I mean, I think it was perfect. And it's also an indication if you pay attention to a lot of his jokes through here or sayings like that, those are very relational to Gen Z and the millennials as well. And I think when you. When you consider who his audience was in this, that's important to note. He was partly talking to the admirals and generals in there, but he was messaging to the troops by saying that, and he was trying to encourage them. And I think by publicly broadcasting this message, as you've kind of alluded to, not only was he talking to our adversaries and sending them strategic communications, he was messaging to the troops and making sure they knew. This is what I'm saying to your admirals and generals, this is okay. This is good. That gives them now that. That liberation as well, to push back. Because in the end, no matter how much the SEC Secretary of War says these things, we're going to have institutional resistance at the flag officer level. It's going to happen. So now the troops understand what the commander's intent is from the top, and they can actually start maneuvering. They can actually start pushing back. They can actually start submitting proposals, freeing up their space to actually act that way, to actually represent the War Department the right way.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

So nothing but goodness.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right, well, let's. I got, like, one more minute through this first opening section here. We'll just do this real quick.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

Another way to put it is peace through strength brought to you by the warrior ethos. And we are restoring both, as President Trump has said, and he's right. We have the strongest, most powerful, most lethal and most prepared military on the planet. That is true. Full stop. Nobody can touch us. It's not even close. This is true largely because of the historic investments that he made in his first term and we will continue in this term. But it's also true because of the leaders in this room and the incredible troops that you all lead.

[Luke the Bear]

All right, we'll just stop right there, man. That's just. I mean, the warrior ethos. You could talk. It's funny. I'm, like, listening to this, and there's so many things that you and I have talked about, and I was like, brad could talk for days on this. I actually have a Yesterday was easy episode coming out in a couple weeks called Live the Ethos Ethos, which I, you've seen the, the script for, kind of went through the SEAL ethos. And so anyways, before I switch to the next topic here, let me hear your thoughts on that, Brad.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, it's, it's great. I love that. He said, he reinforced. We are the most lethal force in the world. We're the most capable force in the world. We're the most technologically advanced force in the world. No one could have pulled off what the United States military pulled off with the strike on Iran a few months ago. That was absolutely unprecedented. You look back in our history, you'll see the same thing represented in various operations. But if we're going to measure ourselves not based off of where we are today, but who we were yesterday, we're falling short because we can be better. And I think that's the message he's trying to say. We are great, we are some of the best, but there's room for improvement. We've got to fine tune this and we've got to prepare ourselves for tomorrow because our adversaries are only getting stronger. They're only watching us every single day and maneuvering to surpass us as the world superpower. And so we've got to stay razor sharp. And we're not going to do that if we keep bending to political agendas, if we keep bending to political ideology. So all goodness.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. Amen. Okay, so the next, I'm going to go to here to the seven minute mark and he starts talking about leadership. Yeah, this is right up the next. Again, standards and leadership. Those are right up Brad's alley. And so I'm, I'm just going to get right into this here. And then again, I was stopping it. Brad, if you want me to stop it, just wave at me or something. But there's, there's some, some excell stuff. And I want to say this too before I get in here. Like, you know, you and I have talked enough. The, the stuff that we're talking about here is grounded in, in biblical principles. Right. And so we're not here just, just for the sake of being warmongers and you know, wanting to kill bad guys and stuff like, you know, this is rooted in scripture and, and that's the perspective, the worldview we're coming from here. So again, right around seven minutes, he starts talking about leadership, combat.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

There are thousands of variables, as I learned in Iraq and Afghanistan and as so many of you did in so many more places. Leaders can only control about 53 of them. You control how well you're trained, mostly how well you're equipped. And the last variable is how well you lead. After that, you're on your own. Our war fighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders. That is who we need you all to be. Even then in combat, even if you do everything right, you may still lose people because the enemy always gets. Gets a vote. We have a sacred duty to ensure that our warriors are led by the most capable and qualified combat leaders. This is one thing you and I can control. And we owe it to the force to deliver it.

[Luke the Bear]

Okay, so man, some good. Just 50 seconds. There's all kinds of content right there. And I, I'll say this, and I'm let Brad take over. One thing I think that this separates our military from the other military powers in the world is the ability to lead. Not just from leadership, right. But top down. Everyone has the ability to lead, has the ability to think critically, think creatively, make decisions in difficult moments. And I think that's what separates us from some like China and Russia stuff like that, where it's very much like the upper echelon makes decisions and everyone else just falls in line and there's no room for making those tough decisions in those difficult moments. You just do what they say and that's it. And, and, and Brad can talk for, for days on how our military trains our men to think critically. So anyways, run with it.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, there's so many directions we can go. So cut me off like when I'm, when I'm.

[Luke the Bear]

I want to hear it, bro.

[Captain Brad Gary]

I mean it's, it's. He's right. Leadership matters. And you know, he says control your controllables. How well you're trained, how well you're prepared, equipped, and then how well you lead on the battlefield. What does that mean? What does that look like? He said the enemy gets a vote. The thing he left out here is Murphy gets a vote too. And, and the reality on the battlefield is it's a great space of moral ambiguity and absolute chaos where you could have done everything right and just nailed it every single time with your training, your prepar operation, in your leadership. And things can still go awful, things can still go wrong. You can still find yourself on your heels failing and losing a battle, losing teammates with very, very high consequences. Clearly here. So you look at war, I mean, we have leaders making decisions with imperfect information on the battlefield, an imperfect understanding of all the variables, and with imperfect people who even when they make the right Decisions are going to probably execute them imperfectly. And then the burden of leadership really is okay. We have to make decisions in that environment and then live with the consequences of those imperfect decisions. That formula, you think about the statistical odds of you actually crushing it every single time and having a perfect consequence free operation in the chaos of war, it's astronomical. And it's why it's such a horrible affair. It's why war is such a horrendous thing that should be avoided at all costs. But if we have to do it, we have to be ready to do it, as Secretary Haig says, talking about with absolute violence and lethality as quickly as possible. Clausewitz talks about this at length about the idea that war is so I'm paraphrasing him. Of course. War is so bad that if it is required, we should do it as horribly as possible, as quickly as possible. That is more humane than a long term, protracted war of attrition that just gets dragged out and causes more death, destruction, misfortune, misery and suffering across a longer period of time. Better to compress and condense that suffering into something really, really, really horrible now than spread out over long term. So that's leadership in a nutshell, living with those consequences. Right? We've talked about this, you and I, at length. The idea of, yeah, I got a lot of regret, but no guilt. And those are those. That's the weight that's on the shoulders of leaders downrange who, who have to live with the decisions they've made. The survivor's guilt, the guilt complex. What if I had done this? What if I had been there? What if I had had this piece of information? Well, I did it. And we made the best decisions we could in that moment and we moved forward through that. As you and I have also talked about the moral ambiguity of war and the definition of integrity, you know, being very overly simplistic with a lot of people out there doing the right thing when. When no one's looking. Okay. On the battlefield. What if the right thing is the least worst thing?

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

How do we navigate that terrain, especially as Christians? What principles are we leaning back on? When you're in the middle of an impossible scenario and there's no playbook, there's no checklist of, oh, let me pull out the scenario checklist here and walk through the precise decision I should make right now, because everything's happening dynamically around you as well. This is leadership. And all of these principles transcend industry. All these principles aren't just wartime. They can be Applied into the private enterprise sector as well. But, but that's the burden of leadership. And he's right. We have some of the best leaders in the world. These are admirals and generals and captains and below who have been doing this and studying it and making decisions and building that decision making experience. Smaller, smaller. Smaller to bigger. Bigger. Bigger to where? Yeah, they're fantastic at this. Some of these people up there are absolute professionals at leadership in the war fighting industry. So they are the right ones equipped to lead this force. And I'm glad he talked about that. Some people would say he was being redundant. He was telling them things they already knew. Yes, but it was positive reinforcement too, that we have this incredible force. We just have to keep moving the needle and getting better at it. And he's counting on you to lead and you're the right people to lead. But there was also an undercurrent here and we'll probably get to this near the end. But the foot stomp message also is I need you guys get up and lead. I need you to actually get up and do this. You have to embrace the change that you, that we're talking about and don't push back with institutional resistance, because that's the other thing we've seen through the military model, unfortunately, is even the great admirals and generals oftentimes are so institutionalized they're incapable of change. Even if the change is exciting, even if the change is where we all agree we should probably be. People don't like change and institutions certainly don't like change.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I've never asked you this. Assuming you probably have done hundreds of missions. I think that's probably a SA. For 29 years, we can say hundreds of missions. You know, one thing that the seals pride themselves in is precision with, with plans and, and knowing every contingency, you know, in, in case things go wrong. If you had to just give me off the top of your head a percentage of how many of those missions went precisely according to plan every single time. With like what? Yeah, exactly. To zero.

[Captain Brad Gary]

My son has this quote from I can't remember some kids show, but it was perfect. Make a plan, stick to the plan. Expect everything to go wrong. Wing it.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

And that's really what happens every single time we make a plan so we have something to deviate from. And when you have to deviate from the plan because of factors that you hadn't considered, or like you said, the enemy or Murphy, that's where your training comes in. And that's where decisions are made based upon principles, based upon concepts, not just a playbook of tactics that will save you in the end. And then having the autonomy to make those decisions. That's one of the things I love about the field teams and in general, Special Operations forces across the SOCOM enterprise, on the battlefield, they have autonomy to maneuver. They have autonomy to make decisions that might actually, at face value, contradict with what a doctrinal playbook would say you should do in this scenario. But they're reading the battlefield dynamically and they have the autonomy to make that decision. So they do.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

And we always say in combat, any decision is better than no decision, as long as you execute it aggressively and violently and then flex from that if you have to. If you have to retract it, make a different decision. Be willing to be flexible there. But the only really, really bad decision in combat is paralysis, is not making a decision, because now you're making yourself a target, the enemy continues to maneuver, and you're just on your heels on your defense, so to speak.

[Luke the Bear]

Yes. Thank you, man. That's the word I was looking for earlier that I could not pull on my brain was autonomy. And, you know, if you think about, you know, that's what separates us from AI, too. I don't want to get into that conversation, but, like, AI doesn't have the ability to be autonomous. It just. It's reacting. It's numbers. It's ones and zeros. Right? And. And that's again, what I was saying earlier. What separates us from those other nations is they. They respond like robots. They don't have autonomy to do what we're talking about. So thank you, that's great.

[Captain Brad Gary]

That's a really important point, though, and I want to highlight that because, sorry, my dog's barking. One of the problems I have seen with the military, but this incremental politicization, right, is this demand for a fix when we have a problem, when we operate in this, in this type of environment, we're going to have mistakes. We're going to have things go wrong. Like he talked about, Hexa talked about, mistakes are okay now, as long as they're not malice. We're going to allow people to fall forward. My words, not his, but that idea. What I have seen in the Navy over time and across the military is when something goes wrong, the general response from leadership is, let's create a new instruction, a new policy, a new something that had this been in place, when that went wrong, it wouldn't have ever happened. And they sell it. That Way. So over time, what we have seen is this incremental growth of instructions back to your point of view, that has become instructional, which has now limited the autonomy of leaders. And I've seen that across, across absolutely the United States Navy. So we are losing, we have lost some of that autonomy as the United States military going back to the end of the Cold War era. I heard a brief by Colin Powell back when he was, he was, he was, I think he was the chairman at the time that the Russian Empire, Soviet Union empire kind of crumbled. And he was in some of the meetings and one of the things the Russians were saying at the time was we had everything figured out. We had your doctrinal playbooks. We knew exactly what the US military would do when we did X, Y and Z. You would do A, B and C. He said the one thing we couldn't figure out was your Navy because we would do something. And by your doctrine, we would expect this response written in your doctrine. But your ships and your ship COS would often do the exact opposite thing because they had this autonomy as ship cosmic, these gray hole vessels out to sea to make their own decisions based upon the conditions they saw in front of them. And the Russians said, we could not figure you out. And because we couldn't figure you out, your Navy terrified us.

[Luke the Bear]

Wow.

[Captain Brad Gary]

I'm paraphrasing now after years of hearing this story from Colin Powell, but I thought that was fascinating. The idea of having doctrine, having a playbook so that you can deviate from it on the battlefield where situational awareness matters.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, that's good stuff, man. All right, let's. I'm just gonna keep going here.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

For too long. We have simply not done that. The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things. In many ways, this speech is about fixing decades of decay. Some of it obvious, some of it hidden. Or as the Chairman has put it, we are clearing out the debris, removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders. You might say we're ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that. For too long we've promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons. Based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so called firsts. We've pretended that combat arms and non combat arms are the same thing. We've weeded out so called toxic leaders under the guise of double blind psychology assessments promoting risk averse go along to get along conformists. Instead, you name it, the department did it. Foolish and reckless political Leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the Woke department. But not anymore. All right, right now I'm looking.

[Luke the Bear]

I can listen to this all day. Okay, I'm just gonna let you take it because there's, there's so much again in a minute and a half there, there's so much stuff. But let's end, we'll end the segment here on your, your response to that part.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, the conformist piece is huge. And bringing up the war on warriors piece is huge. A lot of contrarians would push back and say the generals and admirals haven't had a war on warriors. I disagree. Some of them unknowingly have, like he said, by a system that has incentivized and promoted the conformists. Back to the instructions. Created risk aversion amongst our leaders, punished leaders who made mistakes, not malice. That has created a risk averse environment. And my lawyer said it really well. He said, in this day and age, there's so many American laws out there, most of us are walking around, probably felons, we've probably committed a felony without even realizing it because there's so many nuanced laws out there. Well, now imagine being in the military and on top of all the laws, we have policies, we have procedures, we have instructions, we have all of these things that regulate our left and right limits in our day to day interactions. Well, guarantee every single command out there, every single person out there is not meeting the mark according to your instructions. Back to instructions. We have produced over time conformists that have created a military that focuses more on are you in, in compliance with all the instructions versus are you actually leading? And if you spend all of your time making sure you're in compliance with instructions and policies, I guarantee you you're not leading. I heard it from a CEO recently who told me, brad, I don't feel like I'm in command. I, I feel like I'm a chief staff officer. All I'm doing is appeasing my boss and going through all of our instructions to make sure we're in compliance across the board. And it leaves no time in my day to actually make judgment calls to actually lead, to actually get out there and get uncomfortable and accept a little bit of risk as a commanding officer and make a decision based upon a principle and manage that risk as we move forward as an organization. We have castrated so many of our leaders. And then the leaders that dare to lead, the ones that dare to accept that risk and actually step away from the instructions, they know they're accepting career risk because if something goes wrong or someone filed an anonymous complaint, the investigators come in and find, oh, well, we find that, you see, we're putting cover pages on our TPS reports now. And so if you weren't putting cover pages on your TPS reports, well then, you know, you clearly were accepting too much risk as a command. So you have to be sidelined and moved on. Other people see that and that creates this risk averse environment that Secretary Hegseth was absolutely talking about. So back to who his audience was. Yes, some of those admirals and generals are fantastic combat leaders. We absolutely have to grab those, prop them up, continue to promote them and let them lead our effort. Now as we're back to being the War Department, however, there was a large number of men and women in that room that fit the other description. They are the conformists. They're the ones that were rewarded because they were risk averse. And so they are products of the institution. And their career success has been a product of that institutional, institutionalist mindset of risk aversion. And follow the instructions. It'll take more than this speech to get there. I think he's going to have to fire the conformist that he finds. He already knows who they are. I think there's, there's lists, so to speak, rumors of lists out there. And I think more than that, though, the military needs to go through and scrub their instructions and generally start just canceling them and providing leaders back to this autonomy to actually lead, to actually move us in the right direction instead of getting so bogged down by instructions and policies.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, man, that's so good. And in the last segment, we'll get into the woke department a little more because when we start talking about some standards and stuff and he says that's where he starts talking. I'm going to find out who was guilty of this and who's not. We're going to make changes. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's, it's so stinking good. And I completely just lost my train of thought.

[Captain Brad Gary]

I had a point.

[Luke the Bear]

I was going to make it. I just lost it. It's gone. Any other thoughts while I try to remember what I was going to say?

[Captain Brad Gary]

No, I think, I mean, I could. Yeah, we do a whole session on this part alone.

[Luke the Bear]

Oh, I remember. Sorry. Yeah. So you know, this whole. He talks more about the risk aversion later on as well. But like, I want to hear from your perspective, obviously he's talking right now. We're talking leadership right we, we don't want risk averse leaders, but talk about how that affects the operator, how that affects, you know, the, the guys in the field downrange. If they're risk averse, how is, how, how, like why is that dangerous? Why is that a problem? If they're making decisions because they're afraid. Go ahead.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Absolutely. I mean I can, I can, I can do a wartime story of that. I was watching an army unit, watching an army unit downrange and they, they were up on a building, they had the high ground and some young operators, so some war fighters, not a significant ranked leader on the rooftop, but they're looking down into a room and, and the enemy becomes aware that that coalition forces are present and they're looking through the window and they see this enemy grab a belt fed machine gun and start getting it prepped with a chest rack and he, he's locking and loading, getting ready to engage. Now for, for people that don't understand what that means, belt fed machine gun, that's not grandpa with his hunting rifle. A belt fed machine gun means this is a war fighter, this is a hostile person. And that in and of itself should be determined as hostile intent. This person knows we're here, they're prepping for war, they're grabbing the belt fed machine gun. That is hostile intent. That should be grounds for every single warrior on that battlefield to make an independent and autonomous decision to defend themselves before you let that guy start shooting a belt fed machine gun at you, which by the way outguns most of us on the battlefield any given day. Most of our dudes are not rolling around belt fed machine guns. We have a few here and there but, but, but not everybody. So what happened was instead of, instead of actually taking action, instead of feeling empowered on the battlefield, this is like 2010 timeframe, they made a call back to headquarters and requested permission to engage that hostile act that hostile enemy. And by the time the communications happened through the chain and then came back with a clear approval to so great, we got to the right solution. But that is time. And in between time that went ahead and opened up on coalition forces and ended up wounding and I think killing some of our partner forces there who were in the line of fire. So, so casualties that could have been prevented by having autonomy and by not being risk averse. But, but those guys on the rooftop were. So I wouldn't say they were risk averse, but they certainly were impacted by. I don't want to get in trouble if I, if I'm in front of My skis here. If I make a decision that might get me in trouble later if this goes wrong. So the alternative is we lost some friendlies and we had folks wounded because of that. Yeah, that absolutely makes its way down to the war fighter.

[Luke the Bear]

Well, that, that belt that had probably been like a seven, six, two, I'm guessing, so. I know. And I've heard, you know, some friends of ours, I've heard a lot of guys talk, guys our age maybe a little bit older even than us, saying that a lot of the reason they got out when they did was because. And you can speak to this is you. We no longer one knew who the enemy was, but two, especially like in Afghanistan, the. The law of the land became don't fire unless you're fired upon. And that goes exactly to what you're saying. Right. So if there's someone who's clearly a threat, you're not allowed to shoot until he shoots first. And that already puts us behind the A ball. And that's that risk aversion that we're talking about.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, it's the classic example of if you study the laws of war, you had commander's intent from the top. Whoever was running the Afghanistan campaign at that time, their left and rights might be here. The problem with that is the guy below them who then takes those orders and translates them to his force. We say, well, let's err on the side of caution and let's put the limits right here and here. And then the guy below him, well, I don't want to get in trouble either. Let's put the limits here and here and then here and here and then here, here. And so by the time you get the guy in the field, the problem there is if he could cut through the chase and actually talk to the four star or the three star running the campaign, the guy would probably like, what are you talking about? You could have shot back here, here, here. You didn't need to wait for all of that. So everyone's well intentioned, but they're all worried about career. They're all worried about overstepping. They're worried about having to explain to their boss, one of their young dudes who may have taken things too far outside of guidance. So they get overly restrictive. It's the same exact example as the instructions. And then everyone starts operating under overly restrictive ROEs. And these are the ones that Secretary Hegseth was talking about. No more dumb ROEs. I was on one deployment where there was no towns nearby, but there was this lone structure nearby and Every single night, enemy forces would come into that structure, stage and launch indirect fire attacks, so mortars, rockets into the US Base, and then they would leave. And so the next day, it's sitting there, it's alone. It's just a small little cement shack in the middle of nowhere. But US Forces were not allowed by the overly restrictive armies at that time to destroy that building for no reason whatsoever. We could guarantee there would be no civilian casualties. There was zero reason not to destroy it. But the new policy was no more drop in buildings. So instead we gave the enemy terrain to stage attacks from every single night. Now, we went after that cell, we ended up getting them. But ridiculous amounts of risk to solve a problem that would have been easily solvable by a little bit more common sense. ROE at that time. Drop the dang building. Why would we give the enemy terrain to maneuver against us, to stage attacks against us? Made no sense.

[Luke the Bear]

Roe, meaning rule of engagement for those.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Thank you. Yeah, Rules of engagement.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

How we operate in the past.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, exactly. Excellent. Okay, that's a great, that's a great stopping point there. So we're gonna. You're gonna hear from one of our sponsors here, Heritage Defense, real quick. And then we come back. We will get into our last segment and start talking about standards and, and, and that's again, something that excites Brad very much so. Heritage Defense, Gabe, if you want to pull that up. And we'll be right back.

[Unknown (possibly a producer or assistant)]

The sponsor for this week's episode is Heritage Defense. Heritage Defense is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization dedicated to advancing the Kingdom of Christ by protecting and empowering the biblical family. If any three letter agencies show up at your door, have peace of mind knowing that an attorney who shares your values is available round the clock to advise and advocate for your family, protect your household today, use the discount code apologia and get your first month's membership free. Visit heritagedefense.org for more.

[Luke the Bear]

Welcome back, guys. Man, I'm loving the show. We could talk for hours on this stuff. So we're going to get. Like I said, he. This is where he's going to start talking about more about the WOKE department, the standards and housing people that need to be ousted. So we're just going to get right into it just for the sake of time here. And I'll stop it when I'm fired up.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

Think of it as the Golden Rule test. Jesus said, do unto others. That's what you would have done unto yourself. It's the ultimate simplifying test of truth. The new War Department Golden Rule is this. Do unto your unit as you would have done onto your own child's unit. Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or under trained troops? Or alongside people who can't meet basic standards? Or in a unit where standards were lowered so certain types of troops could make it in. In a unit where leaders were promoted for reasons other than merit, performance and war fighting? The answer is not just no, it's hell no. This means at the War Department, first and foremost, we must restore a ruthless, dispassionate and common sense application of standards. I don't want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat unit with females who can't meet the same combat arms physical standards as men or troops who are not fully proficient on their assigned weapons platform or task, or under a leader who was the first but not the best. Standards must be uniform, gender neutral and high.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Whoo.

[Luke the Bear]

Real quick. I, I told you guys wrong. We're not going to get to the woke department. I forgot that's further on down. I was thinking there was this part, but we already. Yeah. Anyways, this, this is great though because. And the reason I know Brad, this excites Brad, because this is. You spent a lot of time and effort for several years really focusing on the standards as you were, you know, commanding buds and you were in charge of the pipeline for the guys coming through the program. So I. You take it away, brother.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, you can't over, you can't overemphasize standards and the need to adhere to them. Years ago in the SEAL community, particularly SEAL and swic, we brought in these experts and said, hey, tell us if our standards are up to par with what are the requirements down range in combat. We've been at war long enough now to know. Here are the combat ops that the nation expects us to perform at back plan from there. Do our standards actually meet the mark? Are we training or are we over training?

[Luke the Bear]

Right.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Are we making this too hard and losing opportunity to bring teammates to the table and grow our force if our standards are too stringent. What they did was they came back after studying it extensively and said, hey, actually your standards, you could probably raise them even more based off of what the nation is requiring you to downrange. We said that's great, thank you so much. We're not going to do that because we need a force and if we make them too much harder, we're going to lose everybody. But that validated BUDS and SWIFT school as a standard that was derived from combat. So we should Be unbending in that. If we dilute that standard anywhere in training downrange, that'll translate to operational failure. Back to Murphy gets a vote and the enemy gets a vote. Why would we give them an additional vote? Why would we give them any more maneuver space by watering down our standards, diluting our standards left of war and then putting ourselves on our heels. That's like walking into the low ground knowingly and voluntarily to try to put yourself at a tactical disadvantage when you know the enemy area has the high ground. It's stupid. And yet. And yet we've done it over and over and over on the namesake of what? Equity. I've hated that word for quite some time. Equity and equality are very different. We've talked about that. The Bible very much teaches equality, not equity. It's why our forefathers talk so much about all men are created equal. And so if there is a standard out there, we should meet it. We should meet it and we should be unbending and unyielding in what that standard looks like. We should push back as leaders when people pressure us to bend those standards. And I've seen that happen. We felt it even at Buds while I was there, 100%. Thank God I had a couple leaders above me that were reinforcing us and backing us up early on in adhering to those standards and not bending. There's a great story. There's a great story about the first female to ever make it into first phase. You know, the, the hand recession of first phase. And she ended up quitting after day one. But she was a total stud. She'd done really, really well. She'd earned it. We did not bend the standard at all for her, but she quit. And when my boss at the time was reporting it to our admiral, he said, hey, sir, she didn't make it. She dropped on request. Great teammate, honorable young woman, but just wasn't for her. And the admiral said, hey, well what happened? He said, well, the standard is just really tough. And she just self deselected and decided she wasn't going to meet it. The admiral replied, well, should we change the standard? And my boss at the time said, sir, absolutely not. The standard's the standard. Either you meet it or you don't. We don't care what gender you are, but you have to meet the standard. Then the admiral's reply was good, that was a test you passed. So you know, that was so refreshing to work under leaders that had that mindset. I wish I could say they all did, but. But that's not always the case. And even if they have that mindset, there's always this pressure. There was this pressure from big Navy 100%. We were getting calls all the time about, well, justify your numbers, you know. Well, the numbers are the numbers. We got to the numbers because we held a standard. Well, but, but should we relook at the standard? No, we already did that. Our standard is validated. That pressure was relentless. And we were constantly push against precisely that. A pressure to bend the standard to, to accommodate, to, to pursue equity instead of equality. To change the starting line for some people, so to speak. And the problem with that mindset, as you know, it's a fool's errand. If you start that rationale, you're never going to stop. Well, now what, what about, what about short guys versus tall guys? Well, that's not equity. Short guys can do more push ups and pull ups and they're not carrying as much weight when they do it. So should we make tall guys with long albatross arms do less pull ups and push ups? Well, how much is less? How do you define that? How would you even quantify what would be equitable across those two people? Of course, swimming, all these things matter. And you'll find yourself in a never ending pursuit which is exactly the fool's errand that equity presents. So, yes, this was good. We have to stick to standards. If you meet it, welcome to the team. We don't care what color you are. We don't care what race you are. We don't care what gender you are. We just care that you met the standard. And if you did, and if you do, and if you continue to pursue the standard, welcome to the team. We will roll with you all day long, every single day.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. Excellent. I know it's funny, we, when you were here in July, that was when that we had talked about this, they had just announced the new master chiefs for the, for the submarine. Oh, gosh.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, yeah.

[Luke the Bear]

And it was like, it was so embarrassing because it was. I'm going to be, I'm going to be gracious here. You know, they promoted to master chief some very rotund, probably homosexual women to master chief. And I was like, that's just an insult to every master chief that's ever, ever existed in the history of the Navy. It was so embarrassing. I was like, how are we celebrating this? You know, Go ahead.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah. You want to get so much more nefarious than that. Because while I don't like one of the body shame. Right. Everyone has their history but, but the point is you have to dress the part. And, and I'm sorry, you've had some life scenarios that have, that have, you know, produced a physical representation that is no longer compatible with leading in a war fighting environment. Thanks for coming. Enjoy your retirement. You know, here's your award. Let's move you on. But, but what, what's telling about this one is that those master chiefs were promoted and the Navy thought it was a good idea to take their picture.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

And put it out there in a public environment. This was post hegseth already taking the seat.

[Luke the Bear]

Yes.

[Captain Brad Gary]

As the secretary. So, so people that would say, like, well, why was he giving a speech in the first place? Well, because they weren't getting the message.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

None of this was new information. None of this was a new narrative. He's been saying it from day one. He's been saying it since he wrote his book. And yet the institution kept doing the same things.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

It kept promoting the people that should never been promoted and back to peace through strength. Hey, I don't know one foreign Navy out there that would look at that picture and be like, man, I'm afraid. And I respect the United States Navy based off of the leaders they're promoting right now. It was a joke. Yeah, it was an absolute joke.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. I mean, the point is going back to the standard. Right. And so it's like, yeah, she. You know, those women may have very brilliant minds and they may even be great leaders, but they're not. They definitely weren't passing the standards. And that's why I don't know if we'll get to a boats where it's like, I don't care who you are, you're meeting the standards twice a year, like all leadership. So. And it's funny because we just, we were laughing about this last week that. And I don't know if this was legit or not, but it looked like it might have been legit. It was like the ad for the Canadian Special Forces or something. Remember that? I haven't seen this.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah.

[Luke the Bear]

I sent it to you. Remember? It was like a. It was like a woman coming out of the water and she, like, there was like all kinds of issues with her. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Everything was a hot mess.

[Luke the Bear]

It was just like, I was like. But that's the problem with that because there's a lot of standard failures there or failures of standards even in that one picture. And you know, the fact that if it was legit and Canada was putting out as, as a cool good thing, it was like, whoo, that's not very intimidating. Anyways, let's, let's keep going here.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

If not, they're not standards, they're just suggestions. Suggestions that get our sons and daughters killed. When it comes to combat arms units, and there are many different stripes across our joint force. The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don't hurt anyone's feelings. Leadership ends right now at every level. Either you can meet the standard, either you can do the job. Either you are disciplined, fit and trained, or you are out. And that's why today, at my direction, and this is the first of 10 Department of War directives that are arriving at your commands as we speak and in your inbox today, at my direction, each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat mos, for every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male standard. Only because this job is life or death. Standards must be met and not just met at every level. We should seek to exceed the standard, to push the envelope, to compete. It's common sense and core to who we are and what we do. It should be in our DNA. Today, at my direction, we are also adding a combat field test for combat arms units that must be executable in any environment at any time and with combat equipment. These tests, they'll look familiar. They'll resemble the army expert physical fitness assessment or the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test. I'm also directing that warfighters in combat jobs execute their service fitness test at a gender neutral age normed male Standard scored above 70%.

[Luke the Bear]

We'll stop there. So just curious, did you. Do you happen. Did you happen to see what those 10 directives were, or is that.

[Captain Brad Gary]

No, I haven't seen them. I've not seen them, but yeah, I mean, I love the messaging here that as I'm giving you this verbally, administratively, this is being sent to your status right now, right?

[Luke the Bear]

You probably already have it.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Fire for effect.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, yeah. And again, it's, it's just. I mean, we've talked a lot about this just now, but this is just. It's good stuff. We'll just keep going because, Peter, I don't want to repeat, but yeah.

[Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War, speech clips)]

It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. If the Secretary of War can do regular hard pt, so can every member of our joint force. Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It's a bad look, it is bad and it's not who we are. So whether you're an airborne Ranger or a Chairborne Ranger, a brand new private or a four star general, you need to meet the height and weight standards and pass your PT test. And as the chairman said, yes, there is no PT test. But today, at my direction, every member of the joint force at every rank is required to take a PT test twice a year as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year.

[Luke the Bear]

I chairborn Ranger. That one got me. That was, that was a good one. I mean that's, I love it, man. I love it. Like he's like, I don't want to see no fatties walking around in the Pentagon. I don't care who you are. And man, I've seen some, some liberals losing their minds over that point. But again, you're representing the best military in the world that's ever existed. Like, look the part.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, yeah. This has implications though, even so far beyond this is the goodness too. So far beyond. Just have the personal discipline to go work right. Have the personal discipline to count your calories, watch your intake. If you go to galleys around the country and go on a ship for sure a lot of times their diet, their food service, while the culinary experts do their best. And some of them are just incredible what they serve, but they're very limited. They have fryers, they have frozen burger patties and just a lot of junk, a lot of carbs. And so I hope that what the military does is takes this guidance says, hey, great, we need to propose new standards for what we're even cooking for our troops. Because no matter how hard you try, unless you're just burning insane amounts of calorie every day, living a sedentary life at sea, eating junk produces what we see. So this is multivariable and we have to get after it holistically. And I hope we do. Instead of just the standard, okay, yeah, we'll do PT once a week. Sounds good sir. But no, we're gonna have to do more than we're going to have to really help. Some of this is not our sailors fault, some of it's not our troops fault. They've been set up for failure by, by a system that's kind of pushed this way. So. Okay, let's get back, let's figure this out.

[Luke the Bear]

No more cake eaters, right?

[Captain Brad Gary]

Hey, hey. Being an officer, you know, like my cake, so as long as I earned it each day, you know.

[Luke the Bear]

Well, you know, I mean, I know this was important to you. You've you've told stories when you were commanding buds that you were out there with your guys. Like, you know, if we're expecting this from you, I got to be able to do it too. Even with a broken foot. Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

I would say regularly to our candidates, the standard is the standard. If I expected of you, I expected of myself. Now I may be a lot slower than I used to be. I may be a little more broken. I may have to take some time after an injury. Right. But the goal is always get back to the standard. Get on the bars, climb the ladders, do the obstacle course, get in the water, get out and run, get in the gym. You show the dudes that I will never expect you to do something I'm unwilling to do myself. And if you can't meet that anymore because you're just too broken.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Hey, time to move on. Yeah, it's unfortunate, it's a bummer, man. But that, that's the way it goes.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah. Well, for sake of time, we'll, we'll wrap it up here. I just want to end on this point. And this was, you know, just the whole WOKE agenda, the whole dei, he gets into that, which was phenomenal. But we can talk about that without getting into his speech. I mean, obviously, you know our history getting involved with the seals and staying with warriors and dealing with the COVID vaccine, all that. And you know, when we met with Those guys in 21, they all sat there and said they were, they had just, or were just starting to go through all that DEI training, which, and so you would have been at BUDS at that time, commanding. So talk, talk to our listeners about that, what that looked like, what were, what were you being told you have to, you have to do? And, and yeah, I just want to hear your, your side of that.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Yeah, we, it was exactly that, right? Like, hey, here's a mandatory DEI training thing you have to put your command through. And here's the slides, here's the talking points. This is this need they even at some point mandated down to the commanding officer level. Hey, you can't delegate this down. This has to, to come from your mouth as a commanding officer to your force about, about dei. So yeah, it was very oppressive and I did not care for it. So I, I, I might have been actively resistant in doing that, but in the typical soft, surreptitious way. So I, I sneakily, if that's the right word, you know, change the word equity for equality out and, and ignored a lot of the talking points and instead just talked about what it means to be a good teammate, what it means to take care of our teammates, what it means to show up to our institution. Row hard, earn your keep, and you will have earned everyone going to bat for you. That's how we be inclusive. Not by stroking someone's social agenda or propping up what you do in your personal life outside of work hours. That's irrelevant here. And you shouldn't need me to coddle your identity, coddle your sexual preferences in order for you to feel included at this team. And if it does, then we're failing as leaders. That doesn't make any sense. Because if I open that door, same same parallel idea. Back to equity. If I open up that door, we're never going to end because someone out there will feel marginalized because we didn't give them a month of celebration, because we didn't give them flyers on the quarter deck wall talking about how great their intersectional group is, you know, and, and the problem with those models is the intersections keep growing and the, the pronouns keep increasing. And so we'd be in a never ending pursuit to make sure everyone feels special. So guess what? You're not. You're not. I'm sorry if that offends you. Actually, I'm not sorry. You're not special. What's special are the people that show up here, contribute to the team, contribute to the mission, and you are valued because of that. I don't care what you look like, I don't care what you believe in. I don't care what you do in your off time. I don't care what you do in your bedroom. You are here. And we value because of your contributions as a teammate. That's equality measured off of meritocracy measured off of what you bring to the table as a war fighter.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, that's perfect. And I love the quote Pete had we missed that somewhere? We played it, but we didn't address it where. He said it's, it's not about being the first, but the best, you know, so it's not about being the first female to make it through buds, or the first transgender or the first, you know, African American, whatever. It's about being the best. And, and, and what sucks, right, is when you reach that point and then you're down range, right? And there's guys that maybe got pushed through because, you know, they were the first of something, but they weren't the best. And then it gets all the dudes killed because, you know, and liberals don't think like that. They're Just all about celebrating their political agenda. Right. And I love that Pete said that too, somewhere there. I don't know if we play that. He's like, this isn't about political agendas. Right? Like, this is about being the best and promoting the best.

[Captain Brad Gary]

That's what's so frustrating, too, is the critics of Hegseth will say that, oh, he's bringing politics into the military. No, he's doing exactly what you said. He's liberating leaders to be apolitical. Politics was brought into the military a long time ago. The ideology was infiltrating our ranks. Like we said incrementally for the last years. He's returning us to being apolitical.

[Luke the Bear]

He's removing.

[Captain Brad Gary]

He's returning us to being able to focus on lethality, to focus on war fighting. This is freedom. This is everything that we should have been doing and holding the line on for the last two decades, but we haven't. So it took this. It took a hard reset. 100%. Yeah.

[Luke the Bear]

Good stuff. Excellent. Well, we'll. We'll end on that point. It's a good place to end. Brad's gonna stick around for a little bit. We'll do after show for everyone. That's all Access. We're grateful for you and your support and helping us keep the lights on. I do want to mention you're. I mean, Brad's been living out of boxes soon, hopefully to have his own house.

[Captain Brad Gary]

That's right.

[Luke the Bear]

For the first time in a long time. He's been all over the place for 29 years. So he doesn't have his battle axe with him. He's probably in a box, I'm assuming.

[Captain Brad Gary]

No, actually, I've got it upstairs. I got my blade. I do, I do. I got it right next to the bed.

[Luke the Bear]

Right under my pillow.

[Captain Brad Gary]

It is sheath, of course.

[Luke the Bear]

Yes. We love Bill. Bill's. That's how I got to know Brad was through Bill. Rapier and AMTAC blades. You can go to amtacblades.com, put a apology in the coupon code and get 5% off your order. And he will match 5% to end abortion now to help us save babies. And I've mentioned it before, but if you watch their Instagrams and stuff, that he's been putting out specials on Fridays and there's been some really cool unique blades they're making, and he's got some very cool stuff coming down the. Down the pike soon as well, he was telling me about. So check them out. This is my Northman X serrated Love this blade. And I did forget to mention. I want to mention this before I forget. Next week, next Wednesday we'll be dropping. I did a two hour interview with Brad and his wife Amy, which is fantastic. I'm so excited to be able to drop this finally. We recorded in July and we're finally getting out. So good stuff. And so be looking for that. We should have a promo up ahead of time, but it's great. I'm excited for that. And then of course, I want to point you to shop, not apologiesstudios.com where you can get our tracks, coffee, our swag. I wore this shirt today. Respect the Grinder. It's an episode I did on yesterday was Easy about Brad's retirement ceremony on the Grinder. And these. This the coordinates of the Grinder. And these are actual flipper footprints I took a picture of on the Grinder. So pretty excited about that. Any closing thoughts or any. And we. Can we point anybody. Not quite yet. We can't really point anybody anywhere yet. For you, but coming soon.

[Captain Brad Gary]

Coming soon. Yeah.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah.

[Captain Brad Gary]

I appreciate it, man. Thanks for this day. Thanks for, for highlighting and having me and Amy on. On recently, which will drop this week. That's the first time I've talked a lot about her. It's the first time someone's given her a voice and I think it's an important voice.

[Luke the Bear]

It's an important voice for sure. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited and I hope I. I really believe it's going to bless a lot of ladies, especially military wives and mamas. So. Yeah, anyways, we'll. Like I said, we'll take about a five minute break here and we'll be back for all access on the after show. And Brad, thanks again, brother. Appreciate it. Our other guests obviously didn't make it. We'll have them on a different time. Been working on that. Oh, sorry, that's really loud. Thank you, Gabe, for hitting that. So is this an actual like seal song or is it just. Does this sound familiar to you?

[Captain Brad Gary]

I couldn't hear it, so I don't know.

[Luke the Bear]

Okay, we have to tell me later. Yeah, it's a cool drum track called Navy Seal. So anyways, that's it. Grateful for you guys. A lot of exciting stuff coming from apology of studios and abortion now the app. I Promise, I promise is coming very soon. We're in the test period with that right now. We're trying to break it so it will be out very soon, which is going to be a game changer for us. But anyways, thanks again, everyone. Thank you, Brad. We'll see you next week. Peace out.