Episode 368 - Nic Mckinley

Summary

Podcast Summary: Episode 368 - Nic McKinley

Title: Cleared Hot
Host: Andy Stumpf
Guest: Nic McKinley
Release Date: January 6, 2025

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1. Introduction

In Episode 368 of "Cleared Hot," host Andy Stumpf welcomes repeat guest Nic McKinley, CEO of Deliver Fund, an anti-human trafficking organization based in Montana. This episode delves deep into the pervasive issue of human trafficking, expanding the conversation beyond the commonly addressed aspects of sexual exploitation of women to include the often-overlooked trafficking of young boys.

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2. Guest Introduction: Nic McKinley and Deliver Fund

Andy introduces Nic McKinley, highlighting his extensive experience in the fight against human trafficking. Deliver Fund operates out of Montana, working closely with law enforcement and leveraging technology to combat trafficking across various states.

Nic McKinley [05:23]: "Everything we do at Deliver Fund is free for law enforcement. It's a lot of tech and it's hard to keep it funded."

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3. Shifting Focus: Human Trafficking Beyond Women

The discussion begins with a reflection on the common misconceptions surrounding human trafficking, predominantly associated with the exploitation of women. Nic emphasizes that trafficking occurs daily across all states and often remains invisible to the public eye.

Nic McKinley [99:16]: "We've known that is happening. We've put information out about that. The FBI has put information out about that. That's fine. A couple of years ago we had a story called that we call the Noah Story that happened at Deliver Fund."

4. Trafficking of Young Boys: An Overlooked Crisis

Nic sheds light on the alarming rise in trafficking cases involving young boys. Unlike young girls, who are increasingly educated about the dangers of online exploitation, young boys are not receiving the same level of awareness, making them prime targets for traffickers.

Nic McKinley [100:06]: "Nation states getting involved in the trafficking of children in the United States of America? That is happening right now."

5. Tactics and Challenges in Fighting Trafficking

The conversation delves into the sophisticated tactics employed by traffickers, including the use of spoofed online accounts to gain trust and exploit young individuals. Nic provides real-life examples of cases handled by Deliver Fund, illustrating the complexity and stealth of modern trafficking operations.

Nic McKinley [103:15]: "The traditional template was just a good looking younger young boy, but who's older than the 12-year-old girl they're targeting."

6. Technological Evolution and Its Impact

Nic discusses how advancements in technology have both aided traffickers and provided new tools for organizations like Deliver Fund to combat trafficking. The proliferation of social media and communication platforms has made it easier for traffickers to locate and exploit vulnerable youth.

Nic McKinley [137:04]: "People talk about, like, when do you think World War III is going to start? I think we're already in it."

7. Nation-State Involvement and Organized Crime Links

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the involvement of nation-states, particularly China, in facilitating human trafficking within the United States. Nic speculates on the motives behind such operations, suggesting strategic long-term goals to destabilize communities.

Nic McKinley [105:55]: "So, so when you look at it through that lens, it's like, oh, well, there's going to be people who are involved and then there's probably people who were involved in the Diddy thing who, who didn't say anything and now are very embarrassed."

8. The Role of Deliver Fund and Success Stories

Deliver Fund's contributions to identifying and rescuing trafficking victims are highlighted through various case studies. Nic recounts successful interventions where technology and strategic partnerships led to the safe rescue of victims and the prosecution of traffickers.

Nic McKinley [107:02]: "The FBI never should have allowed that to happen. They did. That's on FBI leadership."

9. Advice for Parents and Preventative Measures

Nic offers actionable advice for parents to protect their children from online exploitation. Emphasizing open communication, awareness of online interactions, and the importance of reporting suspicious activities, he outlines strategies to mitigate the risks of trafficking.

Nic McKinley [120:02]: "Make sure that you give all of the evidence and definitely the photos that your child took to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and to obviously law enforcement."

10. Conclusion and How to Support Deliver Fund

Andy and Nic conclude the episode by reiterating the critical role of community awareness and support in the fight against human trafficking. Nic urges listeners to support Deliver Fund through donations, emphasizing that all contributions directly aid in their mission to rescue and rehabilitate trafficking victims.

Nic McKinley [145:48]: "Best way to support Deliver Fund is deliverfund.org donate. Everything we do is free for law enforcement."

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Notable Quotes

• Nic McKinley [99:16]: "We've had a nation state. Well I'll say it's China who is using these massage parlors in rural America to distribute."

• Nic McKinley [100:06]: "That is happening right now."

• Nic McKinley [137:04]: "People talk about, like, when do you think World War III is going to start? I think we're already in it."

• Nic McKinley [145:48]: "Best way to support Deliver Fund is deliverfund.org donate."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of "Cleared Hot" serves as a crucial reminder of the evolving landscape of human trafficking and the necessity for comprehensive strategies to combat it. Nic McKinley's insights shed light on lesser-known facets of trafficking, urging society to broaden its focus and reinforce protective measures for all vulnerable populations.

For more information or to support Deliver Fund, visit deliverfund.org.

Transcript

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Balance on required finance agreement due bill credits end if you pay off devices early ct mobile.com Morning everybody. As always, welcome back and thank you for the support of the show. I really appreciate the feedback that I get every month and the support the people have that enables me to do what it is that I do. Today's episode is with a Repeat guest, Nick McKinley. I've had him on a few times and I'm never going to stop having him on because he works in a world that I open my eyes to or was exposed to far too late in life. And that is the world of human trafficking. If you're anything like me, when I first heard that term, my brain immediately jumped. Oh, we must be talking about women specifically and sexual human trafficking. And of course there is an aspect of that, but that's not it. And I don't even think I would have to default to Nick on this. I don't even think that's the majority. Trafficking happens every day in every state in this country. I guarantee you've encountered it, but I bet you it was invisible. So Nick is the CEO of Deliver Fund, which happens to be an organization co located here in Montana, I think less than 20 miles up the road. They are an anti human trafficking organization and Nick does a good job of describing who they are and what they do and to maybe even get some more context on Deliver Fund specifically as an organization. I'll put the thumbnails up for the two previous episodes that I think I've had him on for. Those are a great starting point. Today we lateraled it a little bit and we were talking more about the targeting of young boys specifically because as a country and as a society we are doing a good job of educating young women to the risks of what would be the correct word trafficking would be the end state of that. The steps that lead you towards the trafficking that Seduction, enticement, leverage, whatever it may be, not doing as good of a job when it comes to young men. So strap in for a little bit. I mean, we, we. We drifted and I think gave our thoughts on just about everything geopolitical and, well, related before we got into that. But don't close your eyes to this issue. It's important and it's everywhere. And Deliver Fund is an amazing organization doing the best that they can to step in the breach. Try to stop this now. Before we get into the episode, let's take a few seconds. Let's pay the bills. I am so happy and proud to say that today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. Montana Knife Company was founded by Josh Smith, the youngest master bladesmith ever to be. And I don't know if that was in the world or just in the United States. I'm gonna say in the world. And if I'm wrong, Josh can correct people, but that's what I'm gonna say. He's been making knives for 30 years. Montana Knife Company was born and bred and is breathing vision into where this company wants to go with its roots deeply into Montana. Made in the usa, locally manufactured. I'm sitting in Kalispell, Montana. They're just down the road about probably 110 miles from where I'm sitting right now in Frenchtown, Montana. Designed, tested and built by hunters. Montana Knife Company has their roots and is first and foremost a hunting knife company. They sell sharp knives right out of the box. Their innovation in the last year has been unbelievable. So this is a mini Speedgoat. My original favorite knife of theirs was the Speedgoat, slightly larger than this. And I also love the paracord handle. Not because I am going to use it for anything, but it's super lightweight. Just in 2024, they started releasing their tactical line. And honestly, off the top of my head, I can't remember exactly which version this is. It's one of the goats, though. And this is my everyday carry. These knives are unbelievable. The quality, it's of course, impossible to tell this listening to me talk about it or looking at it on the video. They're amazing. But what I'm gonna add to that is these are hard to get. They sell out quickly. The demand for these knives is outstripping their ability to produce them, even though they are continuing to order more and more and more. So Thursdays is often when they do drops, but Saturdays, starting in 2025, they're gonna be doing those as well. Here is my ask if you want to support an amazing American founded American made brand, Head on over to montanaknifecompany.com and see what they have to offer. And my only ask to you would be this. If you end up buying something at some point in time in their payment portal, it's going to ask you how you got there, who sent you there. Do me a favor, if it says either the Clear Top podcast or Andy Stone, just click on that button so they know that you found them through this show. And that's all I have to say on that. An amazing brand founded by an amazing person with an amazing community. Yep, the trifecta. Let's get into today's episode.

[B]

Okay, got the red smoke. Sun runs north and south west of the smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke.

[A]

I'm looking at danger close now.

[B]

Come on with it. Give it to me. I mean it.

[A]

First off, that's where we're starting. I'm jealous. First off, you shouldn't kill people.

[B]

Why not?

[A]

Okay, as that came out of my mouth, I was really thinking that I'm a liar.

[B]

That's self, isn't it?

[A]

So I'm a hypocrite. But you shouldn't kill healthcare CEOs and then celebrate it.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

But I'm jealous of the fact they're calling him an assassin.

[B]

Kind of. Because we worked for years to get that title and never made it.

[A]

I didn't know it was an option. I would have self declared myself an assassin immediately upon graduating buds because I was assassin trained. Right, Assassin. Like tangential. No, that. First off, what are your thoughts on that?

[B]

The old CEO getting MERT1.

[A]

That remains to come out. Obviously on that.

[B]

Yeah, I understand a little bit of obviously the frustration. I also think that there's a lot of people who think that they are owed things that they are not. And like you think you can do a better job running a healthcare insurance company, go for it. UnitedHealthcare. Yeah. 2 UnitedHealthcare is one of the. I. My understanding is they're one of the worst and yet they're paying out 85 cents on the dollar. So all these people are like, oh, they're just hoarding all the money and they're keeping it all. It's like I'm actually paying out 85 cents on the dollar. So if you had a 15% profit margin, would you run a company like so it's a volume and scale business.

[A]

And why are you using terms like I don't that you think I understand, like profit margin and scale. You know, I'm a retard. Why are you talking to me?

[B]

That black Rifle coffee sells itself.

[A]

It doesn't suck to sell an addictive product. And we'll leave that. No, it does without that. And I. You know what? I am smart enough to know that I'm an idiot. So we have retail space. I have a retail manager with people.

[B]

Who deal with that.

[A]

We have a general manager who does that. We have a kitchen manager. We have somebody who manages off site.

[B]

Do you have an Andy manager?

[A]

No, I think they just consider themselves to be handlers. Yeah, I will walk in.

[B]

Is that your wife's unpaid job?

[A]

Oh, for sure, for sure. I don't know if she realizes she signed up for that, but no, I, I bounce around in there and I can tell they're looking at me like, oh, let's get him the out of.

[B]

Here before he breaks something. There you go. First dose is free.

[A]

What? Going back, the healthcare one I actually read, I think United was at the very top of the list as far as it came from denying claims. I didn't look into it beyond that other than. And this is the thing that kind of sucks about data. A quick snapshot without any context. Context. It was at the top of the list. I didn't even read what the list was. It could have been like best Glassdoor reviews. Sure. So whatever the article was, it was at the top. And it was talking about that dude I am, you know, I think he's 26 year old kid, no military background. From my understanding, it was a manufactured lower on a Glock slide. A manufactured. And people think of that as like a 3D printed suppressor or silencer. There's a lot of contention actually between is it suppressor or silencer? I was always under the term. It was suppressor.

[B]

I was always told suppressor. Apparently I got yelled at if I called it silencer.

[A]

The patent apparently says silencer.

[B]

Whatever.

[A]

Yeah. If Michael is here, which he's getting, he gets a mental health day every other day.

[B]

There are, they're like gun dudes. Like a lot of people think because of my background. I'm sure you get the same thing. They're like, oh, you're a gun guy.

[A]

Nope.

[B]

Actually not really. Like a gun is a tool.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I have some opinions and my opinions are solely based on. Because I used them and it worked. So it must have been good enough.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But like, like, oh, you must own all these guns. Like, no, actually not really.

[A]

People.

[B]

Oh, well, what gun is the best thing I'm Like I have no clue.

[A]

People ask me a lot about.

[B]

I never got an option.

[A]

They asked me where I got the ammo and I would. My response always is it came in a green.

[B]

It came from the green can in.

[A]

A smaller brown box.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they would ask me the specs on it.

[B]

I'm like, no idea. No, I, I know that these things were a little bit better for these things. Do you ever get any of the hundred grain, the blue tip stuff?

[A]

I don't think I ever saw blue. I saw green and black and gray.

[B]

So when I was, I was in Kandahar with, with a damn net contingent and they had this like blue stuff that came in.

[A]

What was that?

[B]

I guess it was like a hundred grains. It was a heavy ass bullet because the gray for 556. Yeah.

[A]

Gray was fringe, green was the AP.

[B]

And then you had, you had the like brown tip which was like the solid copper one. Like blurry or blind one.

[A]

I don't know. Gun go bang gun. Good. That's.

[B]

Yeah. This stuff. But this, that stuff was so heavy. It was getting stuck and you know, our four 16s were what, or like 10 and a half inch barrels? I think it was getting stuck in the barrels.

[A]

Oh, that's not optimal.

[B]

Oops.

[A]

That's not optimal at all.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. We had a bunch of guns go down because it, it like there wasn't enough oomph to get it moving.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

And so, so then this whole conics of ammo went the way that a lot of ammo does when you add some C4 and different things to it at the end of the year. So.

[A]

Yeah. Well, at least the Taliban didn't fly it over Kandahar like they did a day after our withdrawal from Afghanistan when hawks had people hanging from them.

[B]

Yeah, well, you know, who do you.

[A]

Think was actually flying that? I feel like some Chinese specialists were there literally the day after we left flying that thing.

[B]

I don't. I think they. I think they were there before. Before we got there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But they didn't have.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Not that the Blackhawk requires keys. I don't think it's. Probably switches.

[B]

It does, but.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Dude, aren't you a helicopter pilot?

[A]

I am now.

[B]

We're trying to become one.

[A]

I got my license.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Don't tell Mike. I flew his bird one time.

[B]

Okay. Awesome.

[A]

Technically.

[B]

Allegedly.

[A]

Well, instrument rated pilots need a safety pilot when they're doing their refresher.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

So they can look at the instruments and you know, sometimes you manipulate the controls if the hypothetically and allegedly chief pilot was cool. He'd be like, hey, take it for a spin. Sure, yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's there to make sure.

[B]

No background. It's probably not gonna let it die.

[A]

It's not an expensive machine. I mean, what's the worst I could do to it?

[B]

I mean, you know, you, you can, you can basically make the power acquired exceed the power available. And then you get the flight characteristics without a safe.

[A]

I don't think that's true. You're not a helicopter pilot.

[B]

No, I've been in three of them. When I crashed though, that experience I.

[A]

Do have, I tell you what, after.

[B]

And the sound of that, that sound it starts making, you're like, oh, here we go again.

[A]

In the process of learning to fly them, you. I mean, obviously there's. There's safety built into it, but you do a lot of auto rotation type stuff and you'll play around with RPMs. And again, these aren't. These are small Robinsons that are nothing like the birds we used to feel like skeletonized. But the concepts are the same.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And sometimes, you know, the blades, you can hear them thwap it against the air and then you get an understanding of, oh, like that blade was super high pitched. And oh, when that helicopter pilot was making that noise and we felt like we almost fell out of the air. That's because we almost fell out of the air, which I had no understanding of in the back. And I'm really thankful because now I would be so hypersensitive to the noises and the sounds that I understand what they mean. I actually think it's better that I had no idea what was going on back there.

[B]

I. So when a helicopter crashes in the military or any aircraft, right. There's. There's two parallel investigations. One is a mishap investigation, I think is what the Air Force call it, which is the non criminal. Tell us anything you want. It's all protected by privilege, Right. Really just trying to get to the truth of the safety issue for learning. And then the other is a criminal investigation. Right. So I had the. It actually turned out not to be a privilege because I learned all that stuff during the crash investigation of that Air Force Hilo that was doing the rescue on Mount Hood.

[A]

Was that a 53?

[B]

No, that was a 60.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And the. So I was on the.

[A]

Is that the one that settled and then tumbled?

[B]

Yeah, settled and tumbled. Dude. All the freaking PJs. Everybody was fine. Yeah, PJs were in crampons in the back you know, just on a tether, like, nobody even got a cut. It was insane.

[A]

That's something you couldn't repeat ever a hundred times and have the same result.

[B]

No. One of the one. So the gunner. It was the gunner of the flying engineer. One of the. One of the guys shooting guns out the side.

[A]

Do air for. Does the Air Force even have gunners? I mean.

[B]

Yeah. So the guy. The guy in the. The guy on the left is. They call him a gunner.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah, just checking. Flight engineers. Guy in the right.

[A]

Just let me make fun of the Air Force a little bit. All right, dude, feel free to your alma mater.

[B]

Yeah, I'll do a better job than you. He. He got thrown out the window because obviously civilian rescue, they didn't have guns on it. Gets thrown out the window. Helicopter and he's. He's in a tether, helicopter rolls over him. But because it's snow, totally fine. The guy. The guy. The guy lived and, like, didn't even have any broken bones. It was. It was absolutely miraculous. Like, there's just no other.

[A]

The only thing worse than surviving that would be the investigations that you were talking about afterwards.

[B]

Oh, dude. So I show up. I. My. My team chief calls me because as an instructor at the time, and he was like. He was like, hey, you just come to the office. You're. You're deploying literally in a couple of hours. Can't tell you anything about it. And I was like, yes, finally somebody has acknowledged my skill set. And they're like, yeah, you're going. You're going to Portland. What? Yeah, so. So I go to. I. I show up and they're like, here's. Here's the way this works. This is what's going on. Your job is to be the subject matter expert for the dudes in the back. I'm like, okay, can do. Look at training records and all that stuff. Right. And I. And a big part of that is to like, hey, guys. Hey, guys on the team. Just want to let you know tomorrow I'm going to be here at this time. And these are the things that I'm being told to inspect. So we'll see you there. Yeah, right. And they passed all their inspections. It was. It was amazing how that happened. Turned out they were a lot better at paperwork than. Than the Air Force had realized. But then you had the pilots and the engineers and all the science people and kind of putting everything together and.

[A]

Yeah. What was the overall determined cause of the crash?

[B]

Power. Power required, exceeded power available. Right.

[A]

They call that settling with power.

[B]

Yeah. It just was a. I mean, you know now, slight variance in wind direction. Right. So they, they came in, everything looked good. It's the mountains. So you can easily have a 90 or even 180 degree shift in winds. You can have up, up drafts, downdrafts, and they had a shift in wind with a downdraft. That happened all simultaneously.

[A]

And what altitude coming over?

[B]

Basically wind coming over a saddle and then around the side. They were only hovering at like 30ish feet.

[A]

No, I mean, what altitude?

[B]

Oh, this is 2/3, 3/4 of the way up Mount Hood. So I don't know what that is.

[A]

Maybe 8,9000ft probably. I mean, those are powerful helicopters.

[B]

Extremely powerful, but they're just machines.

[A]

At some point the limitations can be exceeded.

[B]

So they get up, you know, obviously is the winter or close enough to the winter. So it was, it was relatively cold.

[A]

Which is actually more beneficial. Higher density.

[B]

Yeah. And so the pilot stuck the, stuck the helo nose into the mountain because he knew they were going down. So he probably saved their lives by that. Stuck it into the, stuck it into the mountain. It slid a little bit and then the landing gear caught and then it just tumbled. But yeah, absolutely. Absolute miracle that everybody was one. There was a PJ who had already been lowered down on a hoist and he had been in a couple of crashes himself and so he had heard the blades and he was on the hoist, on the hook, and he was just like, nope. Disassembled.

[A]

That's when you pull the Jack Ryan going over the red October. You'd freaking hit the little eject.

[B]

Yeah, no, he, yeah, he ditched that cable and saved his life and the patient's life by doing that. And it just. Yeah, but I, but I didn't know any of that stuff. Like all through PJ school deployments, like, I didn't know any of that stuff. And then I went to go do that crash investigation, I was like, I now no longer have ignorance to my benefit. This.

[A]

Yucks, man. It's. I am so one. I recognize that I don't know anything. So I am so cautious. And my theory, I have a good amount of fixed wing time, which some of the knowledge of the airspace rolls over, but that doesn't mean you can fly a helicopter.

[B]

Yeah. My theory characteristics completely different.

[A]

Oh my God. My theory is always like super distant horizon, low trajectory. I'm not going for the. I want to be the brightest star. I would like to be the star that burns for the longest in the solar system.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

You know?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, they.

[A]

It's. I mean, helicopters are amazing until they're not. There was a training evolution. God. When I was on the east coast underways, right. We're taking. We're doing a combined half bath helo. Assault force, Boat assault force. What people should get out of this is if you're in the boats, your.

[B]

Life sucks because you're just getting beat, douched.

[A]

Just these guys are driving on nods. And half the time I didn't even have mine on because it's just more weight on your head. And then you really got to learn, though, if you see the driver's duck, you better get your head down lower than theirs because that means green water's coming up.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And you'll just get smashed.

[B]

So were you in the.

[A]

I was in the bass.

[B]

Were you in the. In the suspended seats? Yeah, they had hydroxy in the hard seats.

[A]

I actually think we. So the drivers were in front of us and there was basically two rows in back. You were standing with a bar that you could hold on in front of.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So legs a little bit out in front of you, knees just a little bit bent. I mean, some.

[B]

These drivers lean into the back and.

[A]

Yeah, bro, they were wearing like back suspension stuff that like Home Depot workers will wear, but that's for kidney support because they're just getting the living shit beat out of them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So there's this big vessel. We're in the bath. Or the boat assault force. Meanwhile, the half is like probably still on shore, you know, in my mind, eating pop tarts around a campfire as I'm in a fucking dry suit, just cursing my career, occupational choices. And then I'm the lead climber. So I gotta go and.

[B]

Oh, okay, yeah.

[A]

God, it was nightmare. And so the Hilo Assault force comes in and. How can I talk about this broadly? There are certain areas in the ship that we will dedicate our energy towards. You know where the capitan of the ship is. Sometimes that's a good place to go and spend some effort. But it's easier for the helicopters to get there. So there's these bridge wings and they. We'd have the little birds come up and they would only rope on one side. So that means people are crawling through the internal behind the pilots inside of a little bird, which. It's a very small platform.

[B]

It's a small platform and you're wearing gear.

[A]

Makes sense to you. I don't. I mean, somebody could look up what an MH6 looks like.

[B]

Well, plus you got the gear Hanging in the back. Totally. Yeah.

[A]

So there's a fast rope down. The last guy gets ready to go. And as he's fast roping down, the helicopter starts losing station a little bit and drifts off.

[B]

Oh, drift the rope off the wing.

[A]

Drift the rope on the wing.

[B]

The last.

[A]

And this is fucking night. The last thing we see is legitimately a man holding on to the bottom of a fast rope as a fucking little bird is like ripping through this right hand turn and then he lets go. And we're talking full recovery stretcher. Put them onto the boats, get closer to shore to throw them back in a helicopter so we could cross deck him so we could take him to the hospital. Helicopters are awesome. Until they're not.

[B]

Yeah, I was. What? I wasn't in the helicopter when this one crashed. I had slid down the fast rope. And, you know, you usually slide down the fast rope and you get out of the way you're supposed to move to because you don't want the next guy coming down on top of you or the helicopter.

[A]

Sometimes.

[B]

Yeah, the. The last man, I. I hit the deck. And as soon as I hit the deck, a half a second later, the rope goes. And I was like, whoa, what? That, that's abnormal. And then watch the helicopter crash into a canal.

[A]

Fuck. We know there have been two accidents, two fatal accidents in the SEAL teams where the number one guy sitting in the. Was kind of holding onto the rope and as it deployed, somehow it released, but they had their grip on it and it ripped him out of the bird at like 60ft. Two fatal incidents like that.

[B]

That's a heavy rope.

[A]

It's a heavy rope. And they're supposed to be safeties. And you double check the safeties, but shit happens. And you know as well as I do, being in a helicopter, I mean, just imagine sitting on top of a blender that's the size of a school bus.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Vibrating stuff around. But two guys that I know of, I didn't know either of them personally, but that's how they ended up losing their life. Just holding onto the rope as it was released again.

[B]

Oh, man. How would that happen? They had the safety pin out on the quick release.

[A]

Imagine the investigation on that one, you know? But it was the number one guy both times or just the guy closest to the door, because they wouldn't necessarily be numbered, but.

[B]

Cause if that, like, if that system is engaged the way it's supposed to.

[A]

It shouldn't be able to release until the crew chief goes through. They're gonna have to pull a Pin and then probably a lever as well.

[B]

So that you would have to have. The pin was out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because that safety pin, if the main pin isn't fully engaged, the safety pin actually won't go in. Right, That's. That's one of the safeties on it. So. Yeah, so you would have. The safety pin would have had to announce because you know how it had those little. Little ball bearings that would kind of hold it in place and you could get it in that. That piece of metal without seating it all the way. So you could see how that could happen.

[A]

I mean, there's been some gnarly ones. There was a loss of life incident where they were doing helo casting, where there was a boat. I think it was a 60. And again, I wasn't there for this, but I went through selection with a guy who. He claimed he survived the highest fall from a fucking helicopter.

[B]

Not on a word you want.

[A]

No. Over water, which I think at that. He said he rolled up the windows for a good like six seconds.

[B]

Oh, sure.

[A]

Oh, yeah. So he. I mean, it basically had the surface tension of concrete.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But at nighttime, or even in daytime, there are mechanisms in place as the people. And this one, the boat was underneath the helicopter, so it's rigged in there. And there was something that was going to be cut. I think it was a large webbing strap.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But. And for people listening who are like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? Like, just come along for the ride. You don't get to cut that whenever you want to. Even fast roping the crew chief gives you the okay because they're talking to the pilot. And it is exceptionally possible, especially over water, to think you're at 10ft and you can add a zero to that.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

So, yeah.

[B]

Especially at night.

[A]

Yeah, especially at night. It gets worse. From my understanding, in talking to this guy, essentially there was a blade that was already exposed, kind of waiting for the go ahead from the crew chief. But that much tension from the boat underneath, that much weight, man, you.

[B]

You touch it, it's gonna go.

[A]

It went. And what is the guy in the door who's gonna do a cast afterwards, waiting for the boat to release. So, like, three guys got out. I believe at least one of them died.

[B]

Oh, man.

[A]

I mean, again, training. Yeah. Helicopters are awesome until they are not.

[B]

And. But also most of the people. What. What would you say? Training loss to combat loss 3 to 1.

[A]

That's a good question. It's at least 2 to 1.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Anecdotally, I can think of God, I can think of a lot of training accidents even starting in the initial pipeline.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Does has anybody who's died in the PJ CCT pipeline?

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

What evolution historically gets them if there.

[B]

Isn'T some type of genetic anomaly that's missed which leads to deaths in selection. Yeah. So it's either going to be selection or dive school or something like that. Right. But those are really, those are actually pretty safe evolutions. They suck. Right.

[A]

But from the safety market students don't know about is wild.

[B]

Yeah. And, and not only that, but the, the students think that you can do whatever you want because you make them believe that. The reality is you have a book this thick. Right. That tells you what you can and cannot do. Yeah. And. And it's like, man, I mean, okay, so, so the Navy, you had a three ring binder. Imagine what the Air Force had. The Air Force is like. Wait a minute, it's like a five ring binder. Yeah. Like what, what do you, what do you. Why are you running people? We have cars for that. Right. I mean, it's pool comp.

[A]

The test that I administered had. I'm trying to think if there was any level of creativity. The only creativity that I had was the order in which I introduced malfunctions into the equipment.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

To some degree. I couldn't start with the final introduction.

[B]

Couldn't start with the whammy knot.

[A]

No. And I could repeat if I wanted to. But as far as what I could actually introduce, no creativity whatsoever.

[B]

Oh yeah. Water temperatures are regulated. Air temperatures are regulated.

[A]

Immersion time is regulated.

[B]

Yeah. It all is. And so, so anyway, in that you don't lose a lot of people because. Because it's so. It's just so safe. There's so many safety margins built into it. The only time we do, it's like they missed a heart condition that they should have picked up or something like that. Right.

[A]

We get a drowning every once in a while.

[B]

We. You know, I don't think we've had a. I don't think PJ Selection has had a drowning. But keep in mind too that PJ Selection classes are small.

[A]

Are they combined pj, cct?

[B]

They used to be.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And maybe they are now. I don't know. My information is very old. Like me. So it's, it's. I know it's probably irrelevant. At my time it was PJ and CCT together. And so PJ and CCT together. We started with. I think it was 336 is what our class started with. And eight of us graduated. So when your classes are that small, I mean, you almost have a one to one instructor to student ratio. I mean, it's almost impossible to. For something to go wrong. Where we would start to see things go wrong was PJ school itself. And that's usually somebody just doing something really stupid. Yeah, because you're, you know, in, in. In our, in PJ school, you're doing, you know, full mission profile, free fall ops. Right. You're doing a lot of water. Water related stuff. But even then, it's usually, it's usually when guys get to their team. Lost my two best friends. One was in one helicopter, one was in the other helicopter. Right. And they crashed six months right out of PJ school. Right.

[A]

So helicopters crashed into each other.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Helicopters crashed into nobody. Nobody kills operators like freaking helicopter pilots.

[A]

And so they don't mean to. It's just now that I have a better understanding of it. Dude, you're up there, you're trying to tame a bull.

[B]

So some of the, some of the helicopter pilots that I flew with were especially TF160 guys were nothing short of, of absolutely amazing. Like world class. Right. But two of the helicopter crashes I was in was the same pilot. I actually testified in his court martial.

[A]

I thought you were gonna say on his behalf, I like this guy.

[B]

No, he, he became, he became a career captain and, and they, they yanked his.

[A]

Army captain or Navy captain? Very large difference.

[B]

Air Force, Air Force captain.

[A]

Do you guys use the up rank system too where a Captain's an 03?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. Captain of the Navy is an 05.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, actually it's an 06. Holy. 06. Right? Yeah, it's the equivalent of our Colonel.

[A]

Why can't we all use the same rank structure?

[B]

Because that would be entirely too easy for us all to remember.

[A]

The Air Force enlisted insignia is like reading Cyrillic Alphabet.

[B]

See, I think that about the Navy, I'm like, you're a, you're a what? Wait a minute, you're an officer. And you're petty officer.

[A]

Heavy on the petty, light on the officer.

[B]

Yeah. What? So it's a mess. Don't salute you.

[A]

How about our initial rank, Seaman?

[B]

Well, it, it's, it's fitting.

[A]

It's actually semen recruit, then you become a seaman apprentice. Then you're just a seaman.

[B]

Semen recruit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So catcher.

[A]

I guess it's fluid at that point. You really haven't determined if you're a power top or bottom. That comes later at a school.

[B]

Fluid, pun intended.

[A]

Always, sometimes unintentionally But I might as.

[B]

Well just own it when unintentionally intended.

[A]

Yeah, no, I think training deaths, man, I can think of. I mean there's obviously sometimes some range stuff for us. I know of a couple diving issues. I mean just stuff that sucks too. Where you'll be under, you're doing VBSs, but from a diving perspective and you take all your stuff off underwater and you're supposed to blow a bubble and follow it. But again and daytime, pretty easy. Hey, it's way brighter up here at nighttime when you're down there totally dark, it's all black guys swimming the wrong direction and just being found fucking dead under the hull of a boat. Skydiving has gotten some guys.

[B]

Skydiving gets guys ice diving.

[A]

Yeah, I can't actually think of. I mean there was a, there was an incident in Virginia beach at the. Over at the compounds where 2, 4, I think 8 and 10 are at. They share a pool. They found two guys who had accessed the pool after hours and both of them were just dead in the water. But like with dumbbells down there as if they were doing some type of like breath hold TR training and they, they estimate that it might have been a shallow water blackout and somebody would have, might have tried to jump in to save the other one, but who knows? Yeah, I mean stuff like that. I mean that's two guys off the roster right there.

[B]

Yeah, ours. Lots of. Not lots of. I would say freefall probably gets more people than anybody. Yeah, I would say second would be diving, third would be. And this is helicopter crashes aside. Helicopter crashes is hands down number one. Right.

[A]

It's going to be. Well, I mean if you look at like extortion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I mean that you're going to get 20, 30 guys depending on the platform. So for as far as a compressed volume perspective.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. There was a helicopter crash after I had rotated out in 2010. They were doing a turnover up and it wasn't due to enemy fire. It was them shifting. So there's in ground effect where the rotor blades are more effective. They shifted out of it and the same thing, they kind of hit and tumbled and it killed almost everybody on the bird.

[B]

Yeah. For us I'd say mountain ops also kill a decent number of guys. And the reason I kind of take, I take helicopter crashes out of that is because like you have no control over that. There's.

[A]

There's guy up front us.

[B]

Yeah. But you have no control so you're just, you're just sitting there. But as far as like training evolutions and the things that we control. It's definitely freefall diving stuff. And then, and then mountain operations, which is either going to be weather or people just making a mistake with ropes at. At, you know, with a bunch of air underneath them.

[A]

Military freefall is so dangerous, you guys, though.

[B]

Civilian freefall is so much more dangerous than, than, than military freefall. I feel like. Well, because I remember I started jumping when I. So I'm in the Air Force. I probably had, I don't know, let's call it 100 free falls under my belt at this time. I'm like, man, this is kind of fun. So I start jumping the civilian drop zone. And at least the civilian drop zones that I had access to in North Florida were like. Dudes were like ripping bong hits while they're packing their parachute. And I was just like, I mean they could fly way better than I could. Yeah, but they're, they also couldn't get.

[A]

A job that required a security clearance.

[B]

Yeah. Should we say their, their, their risk tolerance was, was pretty significant. That's if they even noticed.

[A]

But you think about it though, in the civilian world, the evolution itself is the enjoyment of free fall. For the military, it's just an. It's your school bus to get from A to B and you strap all that shit. First off the rigs, my civilian wheelers in the sky, my civilian skydiving rig with my smallest canopy. I have an 89 and a main and a 150 reserve. So it's sub 300ft.

[B]

It's like a Kleenex overall canopy which.

[A]

Is smaller than the main parachute of a military rig. And it weighs like nine pounds.

[B]

That, that's what, three and a half times smaller, right? I mean, I thought when we got the, we got the military Javelins, when those came out, remember those fit so much better, dude. But when those things came out, I was like, it was still a pretty big canopy. It was still like three pounds.

[A]

Yeah. And your reserve. Yeah, because the reserve has to be built to hold somebody if they're jumping combat equipment. Then again, this is. Yeah, my civilian rig. I don't even feel it on me. So you're out there and you land and that's it. Military wise, like, okay, cool. You guys got free fall nailed in. So here's your oxygen bottle, here's a weapon, here's a rucksack. If you really like jumping. Here's your passenger. Oh, and his rucksack and his weapon and his O2 bottle as well. Work it out on the way down.

[B]

Or like, oh, that parachute canopy's got a what? I think it was like a 360 pound weight limit on it. Was the, like the standard. What was it? The, the MC2 I think had like a 360 pound weight limit on it. And you got a guy on your team who's like, you know, 260.

[A]

All natural though.

[B]

All just eats a lot of protein.

[A]

Just.

[B]

Just what, dude? I just eat a lot of protein, right? A lot. A lot of protein and creatine. He's 260.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And oh, you're the, you know, you're 185 pounds. Guess. Guess whose armor you get a jump. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But you guys, as far as PJs, especially in the National Guard actually use that skill often. I've seen some awesome videos of jumping into remote medical situations. Most often it is so exceptionally dangerous to do from an insertion perspective for. I mean that I know of. JSOC has used it a handful of times and I'm shocked that they actually got mission approval to do that because that is.

[B]

Well, I think dangerous. I think the first. Was it the first combat freefall in Afghanistan was.

[A]

It was a bundle by a CAD guy.

[B]

Oh, so. So no.

[A]

Well, there was a jump into. There was a jump by.

[B]

There was four PJs jumped into a minefield actually side of a minefield.

[A]

Did they know it was a minefield? Because that would be amazing.

[B]

They did. They did. They did. They had the, the. The ISR had my understanding. I wasn't there. My understanding is the ISR had had enough of a heat differential that it could actually see where the concentration of mine was because you know how you can see that the mines actually hold the heat a little bit more than the ground does.

[A]

You can't see that is the motherfucker with the nods who doesn't access to the screen who has to land in.

[B]

That shit for, for mission planning, they were able to direct them to a, to a DZ that was adjacent between. My understanding is like a couple of different concentrations. But man, can you imagine the risk associated factor? Dude, it's like. Well, I mean you hope they got it right.

[A]

Imagine, you know, like you and I know. But for the listener, the higher the risk, the operation, the higher the level of approval. If you start putting high on your mission approval slides, that's probably not even going to be approved by the battle space commander. You might go up to like Siege Sodif, you might go up to SecDef depending on.

[B]

So interesting thing about, about Pararescue missions is most of your approvals happen in the back of the 130 at the team leader level because it's an extremist situation. So there is. Right. So these are not pre planned missions. This is literally intel coming into the back of a 130 or 17 or a frickin 60, whatever platform you're in. And dudes are frickin laying out maps and like, okay, so here's the plan. Like what are you thinking? Well, let's not do that. That's dumb. Let's do this and let's hit this ridgeline instead of that ridgeline. Right? I mean you're doing it. Yeah, you're doing it in real time and your team leaders are basically doing the risk assessment. And at least in my day, I don't know, this might have changed. But you didn't have to get approval from anybody. If, if you were. If ultimately at the end of the day, the aircraft commander technically had approval authority because they had to authorize the ramp to get open. Right. It's not like you could do that. But if you actually know how to.

[A]

Open them in most airplanes, well, you.

[B]

Can open it, but you know, they gotta adjust the pressure a little bit, right? Yeah.

[A]

And they maybe slow down.

[B]

Yeah. So obviously aircraft commander has to be like, yeah, I'm cool facilitating that plan. But it's usually the PJ team and the PJ team leader is the one who signs off on the in extremis.

[A]

Rescue aspect of that. Yeah, we did. I mean, deliberate planning wise. I remember one time that we were pitching an idea that did involve a free fall insertion that may or may not have involved also crossing a border.

[B]

Sure, it happens.

[A]

And that fucker went up to the SEC def sure. And he said, get fucked.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it's like, sir, this is a really good plan. Did you look at our PowerPoint slide? It's pretty amazing.

[B]

Did you see the font we used? And did you see that we actually kept it within the template this time?

[A]

Yeah. And just no, out of respect, he let us practice it. Yes, he let us practice. But there was zero percent chance that was gonna let us. It would have been so awesome. I would have written a book about it. Somebody else would have written a book about it. I would have written.

[B]

Somebody would have. Somebody would have read written a book before you did. Probably taking credit for the things that you did.

[A]

Maybe all this gets us around to where we started. We should be assassins.

[B]

We should be. Who says we're not? Let those conspiracy theories fly.

[A]

I'm Curious how that guy. I would love to know how he planned that. Knew the guy was gonna be there. Did he practice with that stuff? Where did he source it? And how did he think of his little E and E plan? Because it wasn't as if he just threw his plan together that day.

[B]

No, that was. She's very clearly pretty bright, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Had. Had resources.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Understood enough to come up with what was a pretty good plan. Now, at the end of the day, there's 60,000 cameras is what I heard in that area. Like, you're not getting away.

[A]

Oh, you're fucked for sure. But he had a plan and he.

[B]

Had a good plan. And so. But I think a good way to think about this is. Remember Falcon View?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

We're really showing our age here. This is a mapping software that we had used to navigate with vehicles. And I'm pretty sure it was designed for aircraft.

[B]

It was.

[A]

So.

[B]

It was designed for aircraft, and it was designed for, like, calculating, like, nuclear detonations and, like, where you needed to be so the aircraft could be out of the blast zone in time and all that. I think that's its original intent. So think about this. Remember how. Remember the. The. I think it was the 1 meter imagery you could get on Falcon View. And we were like, oh, if you were lucky. Keep in mind, that was highly classified.

[A]

Was it?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Oh, should I turn those hard drives back in?

[B]

You should probably turn those. But, but, but Falcon View was this highly classified program that you had to, like, go into, like, planning skits in order to use and whatnot. And you could only print out so much of it, and it had to be labeled secret and all that stuff. Dude, you can do a better job now with Google Maps.

[A]

Dude, with our phone, we could navigate anywhere in the world at a. At a resolution unlike.

[B]

Unlike anything we had.

[A]

Yeah, there's. There's apps on there that. I mean, a good friend of mine, I had him on, his name is Bill Thompson. He owns Spartan Forge. They have the vast majority of the US Mapped in lidar. So not only.

[B]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[A]

So not only now can you zoom? He's got UAV type stuff, satellite stuff, so you can just totally scroll through and see, like, older imagery. Newer imagery. But then, hey, what's the terrain look like under the foliage? Can you imagine having that shit? I mean, maybe somebody did, but I certainly didn't have access to it.

[B]

I never had it.

[A]

Dude, it's amazing.

[B]

Half the time we're like Russian maps that we couldn't even read. Right. It's like, what's the Cyrillic from north? And so the. So the capabilities today, I think, are so much higher. And access to information yesterday. So for one of my. I've got a data and AI company that I've got this data collection engineer who we call the data breacher. And so he thought he was being funny and he put up a battering ram as the icon for Slack. And I was like, nah, man, you gotta upgrade your technology. And so I Google what I put. I Googled dec cord, linear shape charge. Right. And. Or linear breaching charge and looking for a photo, because I was just gonna be like, hey, use this as your Slack icon. The stuff that came up full on YouTube directions step by step for how to do this. And back in the day that was like, okay, everybody, that was like, gotta leave your cell phones here. You're gonna get on a nondescript plane. We're gonna fly you to the point you're gonna spend a week in freaking suck fest. If you're there in this in the summer and you're gonna build and blow up some cool stuff and then we're gonna fly home and you can't talk about it. And now it's like, oh, no, that's YouTube directions that, quite frankly, are probably better than the stuff that we got trained on. So if you can get that access to that kind of information, like to a breaching charge. And so of course, I had to watch the YouTube video.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was like, oh, that's actually really good.

[A]

Who created those YouTube videos? Just old breachers.

[B]

I freaking. I don't know, man. I look into.

[A]

Like, there is a line there that I worry about being crossed.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

We're not the only people who have access to YouTube.

[B]

No. So all of that is being made and I can watch it from my office out of curiosity to be like, hey, did they get this right? And, like, heavy breaching was not my expertise. Like, if I was the guy who was getting directly involved in that stuff, it's because. It's because the breacher either said, hey, will you hold this for me? Right. Or everyone else is dead. And I'm just trying to like Rambo my way through it.

[A]

My involvement was breaching, as I would always be the security guy to just point my gun in the direction I thought a risk or danger was. Well, he put the charge up.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And then walk backwards, or somebody pulled me backwards to a position of COVID and concealment that often wasn't there because my buddies took all the good spots.

[B]

So Yeah, I just. You just couldn't get around the corner. Yeah. You wonder why your TBI is so good.

[A]

So don't have any TBI or symptoms associated with it.

[B]

Have you gotten a brain scan?

[A]

No. So I'm just diagnosing myself. No post traumatic stress, no tbi.

[B]

Don't. Don't go get a brain scan like I did. And then they'll be like, oh, actually, your TBI is so much worse than you could possibly understand.

[A]

I would want to get one because I had a company, it was Hunter 7, I believe they're doing full body scans. I'm eligible because of the metal still in my body.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yes, because it's very similar to. From my understanding. And again, this is a limited interaction over email. He offered me a scan, and I said, this would be amazing, but I have retained metal in my body. This is where it is. What do you think? And he came back with, it's similar to an MRI type of machine. Not worth the risk.

[B]

Yeah, not. That's gonna hurt.

[A]

So I feel like that means I'm diagnosed with.

[B]

That means you're good enough.

[A]

Tbi. No post traumatic stress.

[B]

Well, should you want to learn, go to the Amen clinics out in Bellevue or San Diego. They got them in both. And, yeah, they did all these tests and injected me with all these dyes and. And did. I think it's an MRI.

[A]

How long are you in the machine for?

[B]

20 minutes.

[A]

Do they have you do anything? Like I've heard.

[B]

So they. They do beforehand. So it's two days. And beforehand they. They make you take all these tests that just make you feel dumb. Right. And the whole point is to, like, get your brain really, really moving. They inject you with some dye, and then they. And they put you in the scanner, and then the next day you come back and they just. Literally just have you sit in a room. Right. Just sit in a room and just like, with nothing. Right. There's some white noise and that's it. And you sit in that room for. I don't remember. You know, when you're in those environments, it always seems like it's a whole lot longer.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But let's just call it. It's probably an hour. And then they inject with the dye and they do it again to see, like, what's the difference between all the brain activity versus no, no brain activity. And their AI puts it all together, and it's really cool.

[A]

I was wondering if they would put you in there and then, I don't know, ask you word problems. Or something while it's actually spinning if they could see it.

[B]

No, they do it. They do. Or I mean they do it before. So they've been. I think they've got. I think Dr. Amonson more brain scans than anybody on the planet. And so they've, they've kind of got the major majority of the data there and. And they came back and I was having a bunch of physical issues. Right. I was down to 165 pounds, so that's 40 pounds lighter than I am now, which is kind of like my normal. There. There was all these, all these issues and never thought like, but they were all physical. A lot of physical pain, even some like respiratory issues and kidney issues. Turns out blast waves and trauma from, from kidneys. But also your brain can affect your kidneys, which is fascinating. That makes sense, I guess. And so yeah, hormonal disruption, all this stuff. Go in, talk to them. They put me through the tests about a month later is my follow up and talked to neurologist and he was like, yeah, this is like. He's like, the bad news is, is that your condition is fatal in that you would probably end up with. People would say that you had early onset dementia around 55, 60 years old. He's like, but it's all just traumatic brain injury. He's like, the good news is you've caught it early enough that we can actually do something about this next time. Lead with that. Right? Yeah. So I'm like. Cause I'm thinking like crap, man. I got little kids and life is.

[A]

A fatal condition as it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean let's some context into what you're saying, doc.

[B]

Yeah. So they, they gave me some, some herbs, some prescription drugs. And then the thing that really was the big, big game changer was they gave me a prescription for a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. So I have my own oxygen chamber in my office and I'm about 80 hours into treatments. Life changing. Absolutely life. I. I haven't like my sleep. I. It's easy for me to get to sleep. But quality sleep non existent. Right. I mean I. There's very little deep sleep. Like my whoop. I used to wear a whoop and I stopped wearing it because it basically was just demoralizing.

[A]

I've actually had that experience.

[B]

It's just all bad news.

[A]

I would wake up and feel relatively chipper and I'd look at my watch or whoop and it would just say, you're a piece of shit.

[B]

Yeah. Like you suck. You can't even sleep right.

[A]

You're prepared for nothing. Your battery is at zero. I'm like, I'd rather just go through my day not knowing that.

[B]

And that's why I don't wear it anymore. Yeah. So anyway, I'd say about probably 20 hours into the hyperbaric oxygen, and it's only. Dude, it's only diving you down to 1 1/2 atmospheres pure O2. Yeah, you're breathing. You're breathing pure O2, but it's pressurized with ambient air. Okay. Because it turns out that you actually don't have to be in 100 oxygen environment, which is a bomb if things go wrong. So it's great. I can sit in there. I can. I can do emails. I've even done a couple of zoom calls. No, hey, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, I agree. Right. It's actually great for productivity because you're locked in there, nobody can bother you. I do about 90 minutes to two hours at a time. So the first 60 hours, you crank it out as fast as you can. I had a bunch of travel and whatnot, but for the most part, I was doing four hours a day.

[A]

Could you sleep in that thing if you wanted to, or is that too much?

[B]

This is not medical advice at all. I have a very good friend of mine, pj. I went through PJ school with who bought. Who bought his own chamber. And he actually was the first of the two of us to buy one. And he may have. He's a pilot now, an experimental pilot, and he may have used that to get over jet lag by sleeping in the. And sleeping at one atmosphere in a 50% oxygen environment.

[A]

All right.

[B]

And said it absolutely was awesome. I mean, so think about when we used to allegedly nurse a hangover with oxygen masks.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or dragger does, or your dragger or whatever. That worked really well. So now do. That is part of kind of your general daily Life. And about 20 hours into it, I started dreaming. I hadn't had a dream in 20 years, at least not that I could remember. Again, my whoop was like, you got zero REM sleep. Like, congratulations, you suck at life so bad you can't even sleep right. And. And then all of a sudden, I'm getting dreams. And so I put the whoop back on. Just started using it at night, and my sleep scores were. I think it's like 0 to 100 is your sleep score. My sleep scores were in the 80s, high 80s. Sometimes they were in the 90s.

[A]

What'd you start dreaming about, dude?

[B]

The freaking, like, weirdest stuff. Like. Like, there Was I. I had a dream that my old PJ chief and this guy named Wayne Fisk, who's like a freaking PJ legend, and I were like all out on this like civilian rescue operation. Like, like walking in circles because we couldn't find the person that we were supposed to be looking at. Like, like, like, you know, I don't. I. Grace of God. I don't have any PTs or anything like that. I don't, I don't have nightmares or anything like that. Just these like really random weird dreams.

[A]

It's wild. After not being able to dream for 20 years, you're dreaming about being back at work.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just like, yes, we might be a little institutionalized. Yeah, I. I had a dream. Like the entire dream that I can remember was just taking my dog for a walk. That's it. I was just like walking around my neighborhood with my dog. Like, weird. But the point is like a lot of the pain, a lot of like, like the, the joint pain that I had, turns out a lot of that is actually traumatic brain injury symptoms and that has subsided considerably. Hormone disruption, like everything kind of has come back to. Back to normal. It's crazy. All just for pressurizing my body and breathing some oxygen. And that was incredibly helpful. Go pills are very helpful. I've been able to cut what are.

[A]

In these things since you forced me to take two and we started.

[B]

So that's a company that I'm part of now. Super brilliant guy named Christian D'Andrea.

[A]

He and his first line military go pills are legendary. Are we taking creative license here, Nick?

[B]

Hey, he writes it, not me. I got involved in it just because we ended up on a call on something else. It was something tech related. And he started talking about nootropics and I was like, oh yeah. I was like, man, I have done all the racetam family of drugs and I've done all these different things. And he was like, do you know what you're talking about? It's like, yeah, look at my stack. This big stack of pills on the side of my desk. And he was like, hey, I've got a project I'm doing. You might be interested in it. So everything in there is, is either herbal or a derivative of something herbal or it's something. It's creatine. Caffeine, Right? How much caffeine? Only, only 150 milligrams.

[A]

So it's about a cup of coffee?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, like a large, large cup of coffee. Because one of the reasons we didn't like stack it like a pre workout is. Because in the morning when you take those, or in the afternoon, right around like noon or whatever, we have these rituals of drinking coffee. So we don't want to put anybody in caffeine toxicity, which happens at about 450mg, which is pretty easy to do.

[A]

Those are rookie numbers.

[B]

Yeah. So we put them in caffeine toxicity. Like, we want to be able to like, wash. Wash that down with a cup of coffee and.

[A]

Yeah, plus if you go too high up the mountain, you're face down after you come over the top of the peak.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But this is. This has L theanine in it, which basically is a. It. It's a neurotransmitter that puts a. Think of it as like a protective layer over the caffeine molecule. So it. It makes the half life last longer so you don't get that crash.

[A]

That makes sense. I know what I was gonna ask.

[B]

Viagra for your brain.

[A]

Yeah, it's a good analogy. I know what I was gonna ask you. As somebody who used to work for the deep state, ticked into the intelligence apparatus and infrastructure.

[B]

Who says used to?

[A]

Exactly. What are your thoughts on this desire that people just want to carve the government into pieces and downsize? Specifically agency, the ICE world, intelligence collection, just the whole intelligence infrastructure. Because you saw behind the curtain.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Let me start by saying the. It all needs reform right there. There. There's room for reform everywhere.

[A]

Did you feel that way when you were there?

[B]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. At the same time, you know as. As well as anybody, that the reason that you and I get to safely sit here and have this conversation and not be worried about our wives and children at home or whatever, is because there are incredible men and women who are daily taking the fight to the enemy on our behalf. Like that is happening right now. And I really. One of the big problems, I think, with the intelligence community is they have to get into the modern era and they have to start talking to people. The whole we don't confirm or deny anything is old and stupid. And boomers, you gotta go. There is no reason why the intelligence community can't confirm some great things that it does now. Yes. Sometimes you might, you know, there might be a chance to reveal a source or a method. We don't want to do that. But otherwise, like, there's incredible things happening. And one of my biggest pet peeves is like, when people are like, oh, the black helicopters. You know, the. The black helicopters are coming. I'm like, oh, you mean the JSOC bilateral exercise that's being done in conjunction with some city because they're getting ready to destroy the old city hall? Like that kind of conspiracy, also known as a rut.

[A]

Yeah, Realistic urban terrain.

[B]

Right. I mean, so it's like, you know, you'll have people, as an example, listen to this podcast, and they'll be like, man, Andy's an American hero. Love the stuff that he and the guys were doing, you know, thank you for your service kind of thing. And then turn around and have these black helicopter conspiracy theories. It's like, hey, the very people that you are saying that you have so much respect for and are thanking for their service, who do you think was sitting on those black helicopters? And does the government do things that I don't agree with? Of course, that's actually probably a large majority of it with my relatively libertarian, consequential libertarian political stance. But we need. We need that. And the biggest one that I think is the biggest uneducated opinion that I see is people saying that we need to completely just ban the FBI. And the FBI's got some problems. We can all agree with that. The FBI at the senior levels has become increasingly politicized. We can all agree with that. However, the Internet crimes against children often, and offices across the United States are funded by the FBI. They are staffed primarily by the FBI. And the people who are working in those offices to, I don't know, fight child porn are FBI agents. There's an FBI agent who lost her life. Now, she was under trained and shouldn't have been there in the first place, but that's big FBI's problem. So FBI agent who lost her life in, I believe it was Florida. She was an Internet Crimes Against Children investigator.

[A]

Is this recent?

[B]

This was, I want to say, like 18 months ago, maybe 24 months ago. What happened? She and her Internet crimes against children computer nerds decided that they were gonna go hit a target because they were FBI agents. And they figured they had badges and guns and should do that. And she got shot in the threshold because you had a pedophile who was a violent pedophile who fought back. And so now the FBI never should have allowed that to happen. They did. That's on FBI leadership. But. But the point is, is that this woman lost her life going after child predators. And so to say that we just need to completely do away with everything is to not look at like, that's a very privileged thing to be able to say.

[A]

It's too much of an absolutionist. Approach. Yeah, I don't believe in the term never or always.

[B]

No reform, absolutely. Like there are things like the FBI and the DOJs from my limited knowledge, because I don't follow this stuff real closely, but the way that they were working with and really you could, I would use the word colluding with the social media companies and big tech during COVID Criminal. Whose fault is that though? Is that big tech's fault or is that the DOJ's fault? Because if big tech or the DOJ comes to you and is like, hey, we need you to do this thing and if you don't do it, well, that's your right. But you know, we've also got some SEC regulators that really want to start breathing down your book, your, you know, your books and looking at everything that you're doing as a publicly traded company for which you have criminal liability and you're Zuckerberg and you're trying to open in the next market and you're just like, fine, whatever.

[A]

I want to believe that if I was in that position I would say go yourself and I'm going to go as loud as possible to the American people to show them the government overreach. But I've also never been in that seat with that type of leverage.

[B]

I would think that you probably would, but look at the background that you came from that would lead you to do that.

[A]

Which is probably why I'll never start a multi billion dollar tech company, unfortunately.

[B]

Yeah, so there we go, right? So you look at somebody like Zuckerberg who, who was a child who got handed millions and millions of dollars and suddenly became the CEO of one of the most powerful companies on the planet. Is he prepared for that? Is he probably going to find the easiest way possible? So I think that this, this demonization and I hear it a lot about the intelligence community like, oh, the CIA is trafficking children. You could imagine with my background and the things that, that, that, that I do, I hear that all the time, right. The CIA is trafficking children. I'm like, thus the CIA.

[A]

First off, most people probably don't know that you used to work for the CIA. So they don't realize who they're saying that to.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

You'Re now working in anti trafficking capacity.

[B]

Valid point.

[A]

You are an odd individual. Your Venn diagram has more overlap than most people's would.

[B]

Right.

[A]

For that particular comment.

[B]

Yeah, that's a great point. But maybe that's good that they're saying that. And so they'll be like, oh, the CIA is trafficking children. I'm like, okay, but okay, who is this? Thus the CIA? Like, who is that? Like, well, well, that's a bunch of freaking people who are serving their country.

[A]

It's the same as the deep state. I always ask people, who is the deep state? And talk to me about like, do they get together? My question I always ask is, is there a roundtable where they put their sword down and it's 12 people who move levers or what are we talking about?

[B]

The deep state? I think is easy. That is something. I've had conversations with our mutual friend PDB because he really likes that stuff. And I was like, man, first of all, your government isn't competent enough.

[A]

It's a donkey with a fly buzzing.

[B]

Around its head to do that. So do I believe that companies like BlackRock and Goldman are capable of conspiracy theories? Absolutely. Because they've got the money and they've got the smart. Do I believe that the government is. No, because you just don't really have your best and brightest at all levels. Great example. We both worked for the government for a really long time, for decades. What does the General Services Administration do?

[A]

I have no idea. That might actually be the first time I've heard that term.

[B]

Yeah, they put out a list of prices that things can. Yeah, I mean, so like, what do they do? It's huge. So think about these government agencies of which, I mean, you're working at freaking JSOC level and you have no interaction with them. Literally, you go to work because the President of the United States says that something needs to happen and yet the entire government will support whatever that initiative is and we've no interaction with these agencies. So I think that is your deep state, so to speak. I think it's career protectivism.

[A]

It's the attitude and mentality. I was having a conversation with somebody recently and I asked him the same question and he said it's not people, it's the attitude and the embedded mentality. It's like, you know what? That actually makes sense.

[B]

That makes a lot of sense.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And I think we tend to look at it. A lot of people tend to look at it as like, well, where are you going to get your best and brightest? You're going to see that in places, let's call it middle management. And down in your special ops and intelligence community.

[A]

Yeah, the sausage makers.

[B]

Because if you want to go, if you want to go jump out of airplanes and shoot people, you can do that. But there's really kind of only one place you can do that legally. Right? Is that Mississippi? Yeah, Mississippi, Alabama. If you want to. If you want to, you know, go to other countries and break their laws. Best if you have some type of state backing to do that. And so CIA is a good place to go. To go. If you want to do that kind of stuff. Right. So you're gonna. You're gonna just by nature of the work, you're gonna attract really good people there. But again, if you're an accountant in the General Services Administration, if you're a lawyer for Health and Human Services, are you really the best and brightest?

[A]

I have no idea.

[B]

And that's the major majority of the people who are working in our government. I mean. I mean, I think between the two of us, we probably know more billionaires than Trump at this point. And yet how many. And how many of those guys.

[A]

It's a weird statement, but likely true.

[B]

Yeah. Right.

[A]

As odd as that is. Yeah.

[B]

Because I'm just like Forrest Gump. I fall into situations. I'm like, I don't deserve to be here, but this is actually really cool. Yeah. So most of those guys are really smart. Has been what I've seen. The generational wealth exception. I would say there are exceptions.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But the guys who built their own.

[A]

Wealth, the G1 guys, are sharp.

[B]

Yeah. Sometimes G2 as well, because they got a chip on their shoulder because they want to show they're just as good as dad was.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But. But they're. They're smart, very capable, nothing but resources. And every time somebody brings up politics, I'm like, man, you should run for office. What do they always say?

[A]

No.

[B]

No possible way. Not doing that. So who's left? So that. That's. That's my general.

[A]

Like the government Alexandria cost to you, Cortez.

[B]

Yeah, whatever. Right. My general.

[A]

She says some wild. Dude.

[B]

She says some really wild stuff. Like up here in Montana is a great example. Like we are. Our last election, we had all those judges.

[A]

Yeah. You know that if your office is at the first floor.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's also empty now. That turned on a dime.

[B]

Well, I mean, kind of had no choice. Yeah.

[A]

I guess he saved that last rent payment for that last month. I walked by it the other day.

[B]

I don't need my security deposit back. I'm out. Yeah.

[A]

That was quick.

[B]

Yeah, the. The. The way that I look at it is the. The. It's. It's almost like we're. We're creating this, like, Ayn Randian Gulch. Gulch. You know, type. Type atmosphere where the real producers don't really want to get involved anymore. And I couldn't blame them. I wouldn't want to. Right. And you. I was looking at the people like, like for city council, for. For Kalispell is a great example. I was. I was looking at who we had to vote for. And I try to be an informed voter. Right. Try to do my best to kind of understand what my. What my. My check mark is, is facilitating. And I'm looking at these people and these are just not impressive people. Their running platform was like, I'm a third generation Montanan. Who cares? Right. Like, what value are you bringing? How are you going to solve our budget issues? How are you going to solve the homeless issue? How are you going to. Right. How are. How are you going to deal with a fentanyl epidemic? How are you going to do these things? Well, I'm a second generation Montana cannon.

[A]

Yeah. It's kind of irrelevant.

[B]

It's completely irrelevant. And. And. But you're not running for city council. I'm not running for city council.

[A]

Like couldn't pay me enough to run for city council.

[B]

Oh, we could pay you enough. Everything's got a price.

[A]

Not me.

[B]

Everything's got a price. Oh, you got a price?

[A]

Nope.

[B]

Oh yeah, you do.

[A]

Nope.

[B]

Imagine the power you could abuse.

[A]

Is there even power in city council? I mean, what could I do?

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

I don't know. You know, probably not. You know why I would want to run for city council? Because I want to with dude who writes the goddamn parking tickets. Cuz he's my immortal enemy.

[B]

Oh yeah. Yeah. That's another thing. We have parking tickets in Calis Spell. Really?

[A]

We are. Yeah. We are a city with limited parking. You're don't even talk to me. You don't even come down and see the bourgeois class in Kalispell. You're.

[B]

I don't. I don't go white fish. I don't go south of Costco. If I can just.

[A]

Cuz your butler drops you off at work doesn't mean you should talk. This. The parking situation in Kalispell. You pompous.

[B]

That's why I don't come down here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Parking problem.

[A]

Here's a question for you. Given your experience in the intelligence world, Epstein and Diddy. I've had some interesting conversations about whether or not they, you know, whether they were facilitated or allowed to operate is a conversation in and of itself. But knowingly we're doing what they were doing so leverage could be gained, gathered and applied later to other people. To me, it actually makes a little bit of sense.

[B]

Makes a lot of sense. But our government, it wouldn't be our government. It would be the same thing with Epstein. Was Epstein part of some type of intelligence activity? I don't know that for sure, but, boy, that. That kind of makes the most sense.

[A]

It rings true. Yeah. And it also explains how the guy had a Teflon suit until he didn't.

[B]

Yeah. So who could pull that off? A nation state?

[A]

Why do you think it wouldn't be our own nation? They would just do. They would just use a contractor cutout or some shit. You know what I mean? They would.

[B]

Because we wouldn't need to. I look at, like, incentive alignment, and we just wouldn't need to look at. So as an example, if we needed to do that, would the DOJ have gone after Trump as hard as they did in the ways that they did with this, like lawfare that is starting to happen within politics. It's probably been happening for a long time. We're just now paying attention. I don't know. But I think when you look at the ways that our government can put pressure on its own citizens, you don't need to do that. So why go through all that?

[A]

Because you want to pressure them behind the scenes.

[B]

Without the doj, you can do that all day long. All day long.

[A]

Wrong.

[B]

Right. Banks can start, you know, closing accounts.

[A]

Audited every year by the irs.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways to do that. Our government, Our government has a monopoly on the violence, on obviously physical violence. Our government has a monopoly on financial violence, but our government also has a monopoly on the violence of time. There's a billionaire that I know, lives in Miami now, lived in New York, left New York because of the insane taxes. And I guess the, the racket from the, from the city of New York is that if you leave, they basically have created this type of, like, exit tax.

[A]

Oh, I've heard of this.

[B]

Yeah. Every. And, and like, okay, so like, that's not a conspiracy theory. That's actually happening because every person of means that I know who has left New York, especially for Florida, has experienced the exact same thing. Well, most people, you know, they, they, they run them through the ringer and they say, hey, you owe us $20 million in taxes. But I tell you what, you pay 10, and we'll just, we'll do a settlement. We'll make it all go away. And so rich billionaires, like, like $10 million round off area. Yeah, that's dinner. Signs a check and gets out. Well, this, this friend of mine who's at A big time biotech investor. He fought back. He's a little spectrumy and quite frankly was having a really good time doing it. Yeah.

[A]

So for whatever it was that was.

[B]

His, probably, probably spent more on forensic accountants and attorneys than the actual settlement would have been, which is like. Yeah, that's why he's a friend of mine. Freaking love this guy. So he's like, no, we're going to war. And. And he does. And it turns out they proved that New York actually owed him money. So he actually got a couple million dollars back because he, he very smart guy, overpaid his taxes every. Every year that he lived in New York because he knew that this was eventually going to come. Well, then he goes to New York. For some it was like a, like a buddy's birthday party or something like that. Right. Flies to New York, is there for the party, leaves the next day, New York tries to come after him and says that they owe him a day of income tax.

[A]

What is he fucking NBA player? Played a game at the Garden and they want to tax his salary?

[B]

Yep. So. So he fought him on it and, and proved that. No, actually I wasn't doing work. I was there for a social event, supporting a friend and, and all this stuff and. But that's like. So again, does the government really need to have all this behind the scenes we're going to pull things? No, but who does need that? That? China, Russia, France?

[A]

I was going to ask Israel who you thought would be if it wasn't the US based. An ally wouldn't need to do that. I was curious if you thought it was an adversarial state.

[B]

Why, why do we assume an ally wouldn't need to do that? Think about.

[A]

Okay, that's.

[B]

Think about every French bunker you ever saw. Where were their antennas pointed? They were all pointed at our antennas.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

That's the word. Frenemy. Right.

[A]

So especially if they wanted to have. I mean, fuck the leverage. I mean the circles that these people navigated in were. It just makes sense to me because. And again, also think about this.

[B]

Was Diddy really smart enough to know how to set those things up in such a way so there'd be virtually no evidence?

[A]

Is anybody smart enough to do that in a silo? It takes people a cascading and you know, the only way to keep a secret is everybody else is dead. Yeah, you know what I mean? They're talking large sums of money. They're talking wealthy and famous people with influence. I just. To me it makes the most sense that this shit was happening because somebody did know and was facilitating that.

[B]

That's. That's what I think. I don't know, obviously, but that's what I think. So I.

[A]

Did Epstein kill himself?

[B]

Define kill himself.

[A]

Was he involved? Was he.

[B]

Was he. Was he in the room? Yes. And did he die? Yes. But I don't buy anything else.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or, or there's something that he cares about more than his own life. And they had that and whoever they is, had that as leverage. And he actually did kill himself because that was the price.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which we all know that stuff happens for sure. Right. Especially. Especially when you look at our adversaries. That's a Tuesday for them. They do that all the time. So look at Hollywood. So who's the major financier for Hollywood? If I know it's primarily Middle Eastern money.

[A]

Is it really?

[B]

Yeah. So look at, look at who owns Miramax Films.

[A]

How do you know all this?

[B]

Qatari industrial.

[A]

Your reading list is different than mine.

[B]

There's a reason I was given the name Buzzkill. I can't tell you about a Louis Lamour novel. But I can tell you that the Qatari Investment Authority owns. Owns Miramax Films.

[A]

When did they get deeply involved in that world? Do you know?

[B]

You know, I don't know.

[A]

I wonder if it was recent or within the past few decades.

[B]

I don't know. But if you look at the money out of Eastern Europe, Russia and the money coming out of. Out of the Middle east and not, not the Emirates, Right. We're talking Qatar, we're talking, you know, even Iranian money being moved in. And then you talk about the Chinese money coming in. Put all those together and that's a lot of money and control and investments in Hollywood and kind of all the things that make the population churn. So think about it this way. This is kind of way I like to think about everything is in terms of economics. Right. So who's got the incentive? And the US government has. Is zero incentive to create chaos in our country. It makes getting elected harder. It makes collecting taxes harder. When people see a little something, then they start to dig into more. Right. Next thing, you know, all of the parts of the Patriot act that are quite frankly unconstitutional on an American suddenly start getting covered. Must be a good thing. Thing.

[A]

It was only the biggest land grab in personal privacy and rights in the history of the country.

[B]

Yeah, all. All in the name of keeping us safe, right? Yeah.

[A]

Dude, don't be non patriotic like that.

[B]

So overseas conflicts are very much to the direct interest of the US Government. Defense industrial complex all that, but internal strife that, like, nobody benefits in. In the US Government from that. But who does benefit? Well, the same people have been doing it since the 50s.

[A]

How would a foreigner.

[B]

So my guess is the Russians.

[A]

Okay, so say it was the Russians. How would the Russians facilitate somebody like Epstein but keep him, like, off the radar of the doj or same thing with Diddy. I mean, are they buying people? You know what I mean? Like, what's the mechanism that allows that they could use, that would allow them to do those things but escape scrutiny? Ladies and gentlemen, today's episode is also brought to you by Element or lmnt, depending on who you are and how you choose to say it. I've heard it said both ways. This is a brand that I have been personally using in my life, actually for a couple years now. And I feel very fortunate to know one of the co founders, Rob Wolf. I know his wife Nikki as well. But Rob and I started working together years and years ago in a strength and conditioning company almost 20 years ago. And I am glad there are people out there like the founders of this organization. They remind me that in most rooms I go into, I'm much more similar to a golden retriever than somebody who should be at the table having an educated conversation. They're very smart. Getting back to the product, I've heard it described a few different ways. I've heard it described as electrolytes. I've heard it described as salt. And the reality is that it's actually a combination of both of those things. This has absolutely changed my physical recovery. And the beauty is there's a couple different ways that you can integrate it. One, they started last year with the rtd, or Ready to Drink and Stay Salty. It says it right on the side. It tastes salty. And because what you're doing is actually replacing what it is that your body needs, the electrolyte, the magnesium, potassium, sodium, before that, they came in these packets. That's what I'm going to call it. I don't know necessarily what they would call it. When I started jiu jitsu, and this is probably true of everybody, I was sore pretty much 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, probably because I was training like an idiot and too hard, but I wasn't paying attention, paying any attention to my hydration or what it was that I was sweating out of my body. And when I started integrating these, which is actually the activity that I use them for, the difference even later in the day, shortly after consuming one of these things and My normal routine that would be, I think it was a 12 or 16 ounce bottle of water. Pour this thing in there and slam it right after class. The difference for the rest of my day, instead of augering in, I could actually perform and start to recover. In addition to that, this also helped me focus on just consuming more water from a hydration perspective. But it was a game changer. I travel a lot with my wife doing jiu jitsu and we take, I'm not joking, a 1 gallon Ziploc bag full of these very convenient packets and we take them all over the world. And it's the first thing both her and I do as soon as we get off the mats. Replacing your body with what it needs. If you head over to drinkelement.com they're going to be able to explain a lot better than I can the science behind this and all the different offerings that they have. What I can tell you is this is something that I have used for years and has been incredibly impactful. And I'm going to add a slight warning note to the end of this. Magnesium is a part of this beverage and you can overdo it with magnesium. So when you start with this and integrate it, titrate yourself in. Unless you want to play Russian roulette with the contents of your stomach. A little bit too much magnesium can get you onto the toilet at times you may not be prepared for it is all I'm trying to say. Couldn't be happier that these guys are involved with the podcast because like I said, I've been using this product for years. It's an amazing product. Amazing people drink. LMNT.com LM Lima Mike November Tango Check them out. Let's get back to the show.

[B]

I think when you get people participating in unethical and immoral things, they get embarrassed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So then they, they just don't talk about it like it, it they self select and so if, if people, something's happening at a diddy party and maybe something gets awoken in them that probably shouldn't have been and now they want more of that, then are they really going to go talk to a bunch of people about it or are they going to keep it to themselves?

[A]

Especially if it's the wrong side of the law or morality.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. Especially if it's not going to boost their own personal brand. So I think they're, they're gonna, they're gonna keep it to themselves so it becomes a self selection. Right. So why don't, why don't, you know, CIA Assets go tell everybody that they're an asset for the CIA. Well, because that's a good way to get a bullet in the back of the head, whatever.

[A]

There's probably an NDA that says you can't.

[B]

So they, yeah, but that, that, that has no teeth. Right? The consequences, the consequences have teeth. Again, incentive alignment. So the reason that you know, some Russian general who is, you know, spying, you know, giving the plans for the whatever to the, to his CIA handler, to his case officer, the reason he's keeping his mouth shut, not telling anybody about it is because the consequences, so the, the, the disincentive is, is higher than the incentive of saying that. So if you look at, I think if you look at it through that lens, people self select into secrecy. And most people I know, I mean definitely every soft dude that I know has secrets that will die with them for sure. And why are they doing that? They're self selecting that they don't have to. They can tell people about whatever happened, but they're not going to.

[A]

Some things can never be understood by those that weren't there and lived through it.

[B]

Yeah. And I think even then, even if you had somebody who was there, if you weren't the person behind that buttstock, even, even the other people aren't necessarily going to understand it. Right. Because they didn't have that very specific amount of information within that very specific window of time at that very specific view. So which is why when people are saying like, oh, this soft guy's lying and this guy does this and this guy, some of those stuff like that. Oh, I'm sure they are. One in particular I know for a fact is lying, but I'm, I'm not loud because it doesn't like why I got other things I got to deal with and I don't need the drama. Other people are doing it fine. I, but when I look at like why wouldn't somebody say anything? Well, they self selected in the secrecy, right. A friend of mine was on, he's very good friends with Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton. Epstein offered Bill Clinton and this friend of mine a ride to a charitable event in Africa on his plane. And so I was talking to him and he said that he got on, he got on the plane and this is, you know, big billions world, they're always on private jets. Like this is very normal. And he said he got to Africa and immediately called his pilot and was like, come get me. This dude is freaking weird. Right. Went, went to the event and flew him and Clinton home on his jet because he was like, yeah, this, this dude is. There's something wrong here.

[A]

Smart.

[B]

Yeah. So when you, when you work at that level, like they're going to, they're going to run into all kinds of different people. Right? You only meet people at the yacht club if you have a yacht. You only meet people at the private airport if you have a private jet. Right. I mean, so, so yeah, when you look at it through that lens, it's like, oh, well, there's going to be people who are involved and then there's probably people who were involved in the Diddy thing who, who didn't say anything and now are very embarrassed. Like showed up one time, we're like, yeah, this isn't for me. They left.

[A]

Now they're trapped.

[B]

Now they're embarrassed and they don't want to say that they knew the whole time. And so they're going to continue to self select in secrecy and hope to.

[A]

God their name doesn't show up on a list.

[B]

I don't think there are lists.

[A]

What are you talking about? Have you not heard of Microsoft Excel? People are keeping Excel spreadsheets, evil henchmen and foreign adversaries use Excel.

[B]

Yeah, they're very, very good.

[A]

Column A. Epstein column. Well, I was going to say B, but maybe that could be.

[B]

Do they name the file extortion material?

[A]

Yes. Yeah, Epstein extortion material.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

And then it would be. I wonder if it would be Diddy or P. Diddy extortion material. It'd be pdem.

[B]

That'd be a great question. Do they password protect their sheets?

[A]

Yeah, but it's very simple. They don't use uppercase or lowercase.

[B]

They just use the word password protection.

[A]

But is key record somewhere. Yeah, and I agree, I don't think it's ever going to be released, but I'm kind of here for the popcorn show.

[B]

If it was, oh, 100%.

[A]

100%, I can you imagine?

[B]

I think, I think we'll, we'll learn a lot more about the Diddy story than we learned about the Epstein story.

[A]

Do you have a lot more?

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

I mean, again, life is a fatal condition. But will his life expectancy be cut short? Especially if he decides to flip roll, whatever it may be?

[B]

Or will he end up in a non extradition country?

[A]

Oh, that's an interesting question. How would he get there though? The DOJ would have to let him out.

[B]

We trade things all the time, don't we?

[A]

God damn it, Trump. Don't trade for P. Diddy. The information is too valuable.

[B]

Or we get to find out exactly what was going on in trade. I mean, there's so many thousand bottles.

[A]

Lube. I'm just saying.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

I'm not gonna tell people how to party. That's a lot of lube. My God.

[B]

Or that's a lot of people at the party.

[A]

Or both.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy.

[A]

It doesn't look good. It doesn't look great. And it also doesn't look like it was a very closely held secret.

[B]

No, I think it. I think it was an open secret that everybody kind of knew. Yeah, but. But if there were videos surfacing, like, okay, Diddy's got some crazy parties. Define crazy. Are we talking like.

[A]

Like midgets and bowling balls crazy? Because that's a different type of crazy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or trafficking of underage minors. Like, that's crazy. Different type of crazy.

[B]

And then that would be the other thing that. That leads me to believe that you're obviously looking at a foreign adversary. Because the way that we look at trafficking as minors, we look at it through a moral and ethical lens of what. What is right and wrong. The Russians don't see it that way. Right. Middle East. They sure as heck don't see things through the same lens.

[A]

Why do you think we have such a moral difference there?

[B]

Because we care about life.

[A]

I mean, I've met some Russians and some people from Middle East. I think they care about life. Maybe you're talking about, like, at the government level.

[B]

I'm talking about the government level. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So your average Russian certainly cares about.

[B]

Life because you can't. You can't be part of that type of an apparatus without being part of it, like. Like being. Being integrated into it. Right.

[A]

The means justify the ends, essentially. More. More so that justification. I would like to believe that the US holds that moral line, and I have no data to support what I'm about to say, but I feel like we've probably crossed it at times as well.

[B]

I mean, I. I think the rendition.

[A]

Program is probably a good example.

[B]

I think we hold it. I think we hold it better than anyone else.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that doesn't mean that we're that good. It just means everybody else is that bad.

[A]

I can agree with that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I don't think there's anybody pure left at the table, to be honest.

[B]

I don't either. Yeah, I don't either. And. But again, I think that's because you have this massive disalignment of incentives.

[A]

People should really Google rendition. CIA, Gulfstream, have fun. Oh, yeah, I love you. CIA and nsa.

[B]

Yeah. But you look at what happened there. You had a bunch of who was giving the decision makers the information. It was all politically motivated.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You had other countries who were like, America's on its heels. This is our time. And they went, oh, psyop number one, number two, and number seven. And they just pulled them off the shelf and started executing.

[A]

You know how that rendition program started popping its head up in the non classified realm?

[B]

I cannot speak on anything on the rendition program because I don't remember what I read where. So you go ahead and opine.

[A]

They tried to sell the aircraft.

[B]

Shut up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You mean for the amount of like after ops, the amount of like very valuable things we took out in the middle of the desert and put a thermite in the back seat. And it was a particular Gulf stream.

[A]

That they tried to sell and people were reverse engineering where it. Sure did. And they're like, what the is up with these flight plans? And then, you know, shell companies beget shell companies. Yeah, sure is. Because they tried to sell. And this is, this is one avenue that I have read a little bit on. They. It was, I think it was a G4. They tried to sell the Gulfstream G4 on the open market. And let's just say there was a thorough pre buy inspection.

[B]

Yeah. Like the fact that you didn't just like put, put Andy in that with a parachute because fixed one time, 100%. Just, just go out into the Atlantic, open that back door and out you go. And it runs out of fuel.

[A]

I would pay them to do that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I would pay them to let me fly a Gulf Stream and somehow get out the luggage compartment door. I would request a vessel to be picked up, of course.

[B]

Sure. It's a long swim.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it's got some, got some gas mags.

[A]

Can you imagine that though? Like just burn the asset. Literally burn the asset.

[B]

But does it really surprise you?

[A]

No, because they go back to the donkey with the fly.

[B]

When I get all these conversations. I was on a podcast in Vegas. Was it Brad Lee? And it was just after the, the Trump assassination attempt.

[A]

Which one?

[B]

The first one where he got shot in the air. And there was all of these conspiracy theories that I had to spend half the podcast talking about, which is like, oh, you know, the Secret Service had to be in on it. Oh, the. So then he was like, well, JSOC was probably in on it because he's like, who has snipers that are good enough to just hit somebody in the Ear. I was no, nobody, nobody. If anybody does, that's probably going to be coming from jsoc.

[A]

And I know all those guys and they're not that. Trust them implicitly.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

But with an M4 platform, iron sights. There is not a human being on earth that I trust to shoot me in the ear.

[B]

No. So you know, what I, what I tried to explain is like, look, what you got was a window into the incompetence of your government. That happens at all levels every minute of the day. So sleep tight, America. Yeah, but that, that's all that was. That was just a window into the incompetence of the government. And the Secret Service rarely gets tested.

[A]

Almost never. The 80s was the last time they got tested like that.

[B]

Yeah. Often fail when they do. So what's going to happen to people when they're prepared? And nothing ever happens, and nothing ever happens for decades and decades. They're obviously going to get extremely complacent. And I think one of the reasons your soft community is, especially over the last couple decades, is so good is because there was no room for complacency because people were getting killed. And so they had to rapidly learn and get better and better.

[A]

But in the time. I can only speak for the SEAL community in the time between Vietnam and 9 11, there was a little bit of involvement in Panama and Grenada though.

[B]

Gulf War.

[A]

Gulf War.

[B]

There was a. I don't know what the seals did during Gulf War, but.

[A]

Mostly everything, but it's not a big deal.

[B]

They pretty much fought the war, drove the tanks.

[A]

GS14 classified. No, I think they did a hydro reconnaissance on a beach that.

[B]

Oh yeah, that was text.

[A]

Yeah, that ended up not being used.

[B]

That was, that was. Guy named Terry. I don't know if you know him, maybe called Tex. Straight up, he's from eastern Texas. The stories he would tell of that particular, of that particular op are hilarious.

[A]

Oh, I bet it was a shit show hilarious. Because my point in this was, you know, Vietnam. And this is funny because I've met all 800 members of SEAL Team 1 that were there with Vietnam and 600 members of SEAL Team 3 that were there. I'm like, that's funny because Seal Team 3 was commissioned in the 80s, you lying fuck. But. And there's like 50 seals there in Vietnam. They were. That's really where the SEAL community kind of got their chops from. The amphibious world environment in the. In, I would say direct action, but dude, it was three decades of nothing. The blade was put away and it was pretty dull. Yeah, I mean, the reason we were successful in Iraq and Afghanistan is we were fighting an enemy that was a couple centuries behind legitimately.

[B]

And air power. And we had air power.

[A]

Oh, shit. And I mean drones. I mean they had everything. Drones, radios, the ability to see at night, weaponry, like all that stuff. But the blade got really, really sharp. But if it does get put down again, there'll be some dulling. It happens in all organizations.

[B]

The. One of the interesting things about pararescue teams and one of the reasons I wanted to do that was in peacetime, PJ teams have a insanely dangerous mission, right? So those are those free falls into the freaking North Atlantic, you know, that you see, and you're like, dudes are hanging it out there. It looks cool to your average civilian on YouTube. But if you know what you're watching, you're like, bros, like respect. That is awesome.

[A]

Like barely under the clouds eight, you know, 800ft above jumping into a, you know, sea state level four. Like get some.

[B]

Yeah. The Alaska PJs do tours on Denali with the park rangers. So they're. They're doing rescues on a, like, on a regular basis. And now that's not your. Your combat knife. Because I think pararescue's combat knife got just as dull as everybody else's during that time. But the ability for the teams to focus on learning quickly and, you know, not. Not getting themselves killed, they're that. That peacetime mission. The most dangerous stuff I ever did as a PJ was in the mountains during peacetime. 100.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just because that is just a environment that you can't. That you can't control under any circumstances. You can't. Right. You can't. Like the mountain hidden is trying to kill you. So you kill the mountain first.

[A]

Yeah. It's the same thing as my community in the water.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

They. The water. God. It's funny up here too. And knowing some of our mutual friends and I was joking about flying the helicopter which is actually donated to the valley for its use. Two bear the number of rescues they do associated in and around the water. And I'm good friends with a couple of guys who ride in the back. The deputies that are in the back doing. I think they're paramedic stuff. The number of people that will come visit here or anywhere, I guess, and not respect water shocks me.

[B]

Especially cold water.

[A]

Well, and it's maybe because I was raised in Santa Cruz around the beach and I was in it and you have some early experiences like this riptide Sucks, but I know how to get out of it. Or you got kind of get your learning how to surf. You're like, holy shit, I'm caught in a place I shouldn't be.

[B]

I'm on the bottom of the ocean. This is bad.

[A]

And I can take a breath and then it's coming for me again. And you work your way through that and you develop this sense of I am such a small peon in the world of. And then the job of in the boats and breaking down or capsizing or the diving or just all this stuff that can go. The ocean doesn't give a. No water does. And people come up here and they just. I don't know if they don't know or they throw caution to the wind, but the water up here eats people every year.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At a rate that I don't think people realize.

[B]

I don't. I don't think so. I don't think. I don't think two Bear Air gets near enough credit for the lives it saves and what it does. And quite frankly, I don't think Mike Gogan gets near enough credit for making that whole thing happen. You know, he. He personally funds that 100 of it every single year. Could you imagine?

[A]

No, because I like to understand the level of wealth to begin with, but.

[B]

Just, just the budget of two Bear Air and what they do, I mean, that's state of the art helicopter.

[A]

That helicopter is probably not expensive and it probably doesn't cost a lot to run or maintain.

[B]

Yeah. Or. Or fuel or.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, keep the dudes in the back paid and the dudes in the front paid.

[A]

And you know, my favorite part of that whole operation, and this is going to sound so stupid, is you actually get in the helicopter before you start it and you drive it with a little remote control pad.

[B]

Oh yeah, the little freaking.

[A]

I like that thing more than the helicopter.

[B]

That thing's pretty cool.

[A]

I. If I, I looked it up, they're about $70,000. If I had an extra 70 grand, I think I would put a lawn chair on that and just drive around.

[B]

Drive around downtown Kalispell.

[A]

And legitimately was one of the coolest aspects of it that he's starting the engines while he's driving with the joystick. And I'm sitting there like, this is awesome. And I don't mean the helicopter start. I mean the dude, the freaking robot below. Yeah, yeah, it was awesome.

[B]

Yeah. But that, that complacency is what kind of get gets people killed. And we were talking about the, like the uptick in child trafficking stuff that we're seeing with boys, right?

[A]

Oh geez. Yeah. We've only been at this for like an hour and a half and you finally want to get around to what you want to talk to. Sorry, Intelligence asset.

[B]

It largely comes down, down to complacency is, is what we're seeing.

[A]

Well explain well so this can be standalone a little bit, unpack a little bit about deliver, fund your role there and then let's talk about the shift you're seeing.

[B]

Yeah. So anybody who's brand new to your.

[A]

Show, anybody who's still with us so far, we're about to hard change to the right and talk about human trafficking.

[B]

Yeah, the, and what we. Everything that we've talked about, complacency of the government and all that, complacency of individuals, the nation states being involved, all applies to this conversation. And that was what, what I've seen over the last couple of years and really, really recently that, that shocked me that I didn't see coming was how could you have nation states getting involved in the trafficking of children in the United States of America? Like that is happening right now.

[A]

Nation states involved in the trafficking of.

[B]

Children of American children and foreign children.

[A]

But, but is the attempt there or the desire there to erode from within? Is it like a long term strategy?

[B]

So what do we got going on here, the strategy? I don't know. I got a lot of questions around like why would they be doing that? I, I haven't, I haven't figured that out yet. And I think once there's a case happening right now that once it, that will probably illuminate that and when it does, I'm probably not gonna be able to talk about it. So I don't know what the, what the strategic level thinking is in these different, different nation states. But, but from a tactical perspective, what's happening is absolutely appalling. So we all know, so two things happening here simultaneously. We have the illicit massage parlor business, which everybody knows what's happening inside the illicit massage parlors. Let's not people pretend like you don't. There's probably a decent percentage of people who are listening to this podcast who are going to those massage parlors to get their rub and tug, so to speak. And is that really a thing that is really a thing that is really.

[A]

So uncomfortable in that environment? Like I don't think it would be possible.

[B]

I don't think it would would be either. But, but they are they. And so, so for people listening, if you're participating in that, you are participating in human trafficking. There is no there, there is no gray area there. It doesn't exist. So we had a. We have a nation state. Well I'll say it's China who is using these massage parlors in rural America to distribute. We think probably using them as kind of safe places to distribute narcotics which are killing our kids. But then also using them to recruit primarily young girls to. Into their network so that they can then put them into other massage parlors in rural America away from their communities like that. That, that is, that is a active investigation that's happening right now in a rural American community that spans multiple states.

[A]

How far up the chain can you connect that to China?

[B]

Like we talking right to the freaking border. And then it disappears. And what's the, the only people who can make money disappear is a nation state. Yeah. Like literally to the border of the mainland. And, and I'm not a China expert.

[A]

But from my limited understanding not a whole lot happens in that country without the government itself. It's kind of their own eligible or involved.

[B]

It's kind of the one thing they're really good at. Yeah right. Is, is control their population. Keeping a lot. So, so you have that happen simultaneously. You have, you have this extort, sextortion issue. Right. That's we know has been happening to young girls for a while. And it's a lot of young girls are. They're so on to the game now that it's not really working as much as it used to.

[A]

What did the traditional template look like?

[B]

The traditional template was just a good looking younger young boy, but who's older than the 12 year old girl they're targeting. 13 year old girl. They're targeting. Hits a girl up on. Pick your social media app, you know, Tick Tock, Kick Instagram, not really Facebook anymore. Still a little bit of that hits her up, tells her all the things that she wants to hear, gets her to send a picture that she regrets and then uses that as the handle to control her to then get her to send more and more pictures. And those pictures end up on pornography sites. So.

[A]

So, so the game's kind of up on that one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah. So the game, the game is it's not completely up. Parents still need to have conversations with their, with their teenage daughters about that. Right. Do not take pictures and send them to people over the Internet. Just, just full stop. Like make that a principle of your life.

[A]

It's really not hard to do.

[B]

No, like don't do that. If you do that and somebody tries to get you to do something else. Pay them money, whatever. Go tell your parents, go tell an authority figure. Do not comply. Right. So, so there, there's that on the, on the, on the young teenage girl side. And what you find if you talk to young teenage girls and you say have you ever been solicited by an sexually solicited by an older man online? You're going to have a hard time finding a teenage girl with social media who hasn't had that happen happen.

[A]

Unfortunately, that doesn't surprise me.

[B]

It's. It, it's happening at levels of scale that it's kind of hard to comprehend. So okay, we, we've known that is happening. We've put information out about that. The FBI has put information out out about that. That's fine. A couple of years ago we had a story called that we call the Noah Story that happened at Deliver Fund. And essentially it was a young teenage boy, dad worked in tech for a very recognizable tech company and tech security, so knew what he was doing and didn't allow his son to have a phone that wasn't kept like in the living room. Right. Didn't allow his kid to have a computer in his room, none of that. But he did have an Xbox and Xboxes are obviously connected to the Internet. And I actually don't remember if it was an Xbox or PlayStation. I don't want to get sued by either. But a gaming point, a gaming console, but he let him have that in his room and so he's. I don't play these things, but I guess you can like chat with people while you're, while you're playing.

[A]

I think a lot of the time they use it and I'm repeating stuff I hear my kids say they'll use a Discord server, which I'm not necessarily sure.

[B]

The Discord server's a little bit different. That's almost like a, that's almost like a special social media platform for.

[A]

There are built in. In game.

[B]

Yeah, in game communication. And so he's chatting with this person who thinks, he thinks is another boy his age from another state. And over a period of weeks this kid gets off platformed which is where they take them from the Xbox to a WhatsApp account, text message signal, whatever. They off platform them to something else. And then nothing really like explicit had happened yet. And the, the boy then one day texts him and says, hey, don't you live in, you know, wherever he says he lived? And this case was actually in, in the southwest United States. Don't you live in this town? He's like, yeah, hey, I'm. I'm up the road with my dad. He's a truck driver. I'm in his truck. Come say hi.

[A]

Oh, boy.

[B]

So the kid walks out the front door. Really nice community, right? Upper middle class to wealthy community. Walks out the front door, climbs up in the cab of the truck, and they find his cell phone, the boy's cell phone, in. In the neighbor's front lawn. And one of our analysts at the time and a number of us worked to get law enforcement the information they needed. We figured out who the trafficker was. Who was a truck driver is his day job, who the trafficker was. Figured that out in a few hours. And then the next morning they went and a SWAT team went and kicked the door and rescued the boy. He was four states away.

[A]

How was that truck driver finding time to spend time online, facilitating these relationships? That was his evening activities. I mean.

[B]

No, that was his, like, while driving the truck activities.

[A]

No shit.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And evening activities and all that. Very interesting sextortion case involving young girls.

[A]

And then he was burned alive.

[B]

Right, Right, Let's. I'd like to think so, but no, he skinned alive. Perhaps he got a. No, the potato peeler. It. It h. It. It's a bill before Congress, but we're still. We're still waiting on it. Right?

[A]

There's no punishment severe enough for people like that.

[B]

No, there isn't.

[A]

And I would volunteer my time pro bono to be the person that comes.

[B]

With that and alleged expertise and. And creativity.

[A]

God.

[B]

Right. A lot of room for creativity there.

[A]

Just give me a room and some tools, you know?

[B]

Do you really need tools?

[A]

I mean, it could be creative. It could be like a rake and a frying pan and a nine iron.

[B]

You know, a nine iron and a comb. Sure.

[A]

Yeah, I'm good.

[B]

We'll make this work.

[A]

Give me 20.

[B]

So that happened a few years ago, and it was very much a one off case. We weren't seeing a lot of that.

[A]

One off. Meaning because it was a boy.

[B]

Yeah. Now we're seeing a lot of. And what has happened is we as a society and those of us who are in the fight on a daily basis have been very successful at helping young girls understand that this was a problem. So now it's shifting to young boys. Just a few weeks ago, I get a call from very wealthy individual lives in the Southern United States who said, hey, I need you to call me. This is urgent. And I know when my phone gets that, it's a child. It's a child. In danger issue. Like, that's 99% of the time. That's exactly what it is. And so I was actually in France at the time and I called him and I was like, all right, this is what's going on. Like 2:00 in the morning, my time. What's up? He's like, well, my son got contacted online. I'm like, I know exactly where this story is going. What I didn't know was the tactic that had been used. So the, it's. It's the same story, right? Attractive girl contacts boy.

[A]

Literally. The reverse script.

[B]

Yeah. Gets boy to do dumb thing. But in this case, the attractive girl was a spoof account of the guy's girlfriend. Okay, so the boy thought that his. The teenage boy thought that his teenage girlfriend was ready to cross the line with it, take it to the next level, whatever.

[A]

How did they determine the relationship between those two?

[B]

There's another that we don't know.

[A]

There's another depth of sophistication here.

[B]

Right. That we don't know.

[A]

Social engineering.

[B]

Some social engineering. The spoofing of the cell phone number. So he thought he was texting his girlfriend.

[A]

How does that work? If there's a spoof cell phone number and a real one with the number is the same, how do you intercept that traffic? Or is the girlfriend also getting a picture she may not have asked for?

[B]

I know, I know how to do that at the nation state level. I don't know how to do that.

[A]

Because you're the spy, Nick.

[B]

I'm sure there are people who do. There's obviously gray hat hackers and black hat hackers who know how to do that.

[A]

Holy shit. So match the phone number with the girlfriend.

[B]

Match the phone number photo spoke to him as if it was the girlfriend, but it was actually some Eastern European organized crime with obviously direct ties to the government.

[A]

Do you think they might have targeted him because of his relationship to his father and the level of wealth that is.

[B]

That's a one of the working theories.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay, so like, why pick that kid?

[B]

Because that's a lot of effort to put in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And for what?

[A]

That's a full workup on that kid.

[B]

To figure out the social engineering and the song. Now they do the same play. Hey, we've got you. Send us $500 and we'll make this all go away. So, of course, wealthy kid, he sends 500 bucks and then it continues. Luckily, his dad had. Well, eventually it's probably going to be like, hey, your dad has a thumb drive in his desk. Drawer. We need you to get that for us or whatever it might be. Be that kind of rolling back a little bit. The, the sextortion case that happened in Virginia beach, it was a Navy F18 pilot when he. So he got wrapped up. And when he got wrapped up, one of his victims was the daughter of a contract of a Navy, or I'm sorry, a DOD contract software engineer who was living in Japan. Man.

[A]

So hold on, the F18 driver was the one doing this?

[B]

Yeah. Was the one doing this extortion.

[A]

What's the background on that guy? How the did he get into that?

[B]

Well, wait for the rest of this. So we find out that. So this guy's targeting kind of local girls, but one of the girls he's targeting and ended up extorting was the, the young teenage daughter again of this DoD software engineer, like the guy who literally holds the keys to the kingdom. And he is. He's working on an assignment in Japan. Right? On a multi year assignment in Japan. So his family's over there. So why is this F18 driver who's usually been targeting these local girls, now targeting this very specific person who happens to be, who happens to basically be a. A very good way to control somebody who's a software engineer for the dod. Right? So. So law enforcement does what it does. Did an amazing job. Actually closed the case pretty quick. The guy ends up getting, getting sentenced and all that justice is served. Then one of his letters out of the jail, out of the prison gets intercepted and who is it to? The Chinese embassy. It's to the Chinese embassy giving them very explicit instructions on how to break him out. So why did he assume that the Chinese embassy was gonna break him out?

[A]

I mean, you know this. I'm a retard, but I'm gonna put some dots together on this and say they might have had a working relationship.

[B]

Right. They may have known each other. Like they may have been expecting that letter.

[A]

Fuck. I wonder what leverage they had on him and how long he had been an asset.

[B]

I think he was. I think my guess is total speculation here, but just knowing how asset recruitment works, I think he was probably into some sick stuff. It was probably. They. Yeah, right. The. They're always looking for vulnerabilities and, and folks with security clearances. And so they were looking that they figured it out with him and then that became the lever they used and said, cool, cool. We're not going to tell anybody about this. You keep doing whatever it is you're going to do, but we're going to have Some people we want you to do this for.

[A]

I just wonder when in that journey that happened. Let's assume he was an academy guy because that's the commissioning source for probably more than half of the.

[B]

So he was a, he was a Naval Academy guy.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And like, did this happen one of the.

[A]

When he was a teen and then they just wrote it out and maybe gave him some career guidance along the way. You know, like. That's the shit.

[B]

Yeah. Because the Navy is only doing CI poly. Right. Do pilots get polyed?

[A]

I don't think the pilots get pollied.

[B]

Oh, there you go.

[A]

And there's also. What is there. There's a lifestyle poly and then the CI poly.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Which for people listening this, have no idea what we're talking about.

[B]

The counterintelligence policy is just like, are you a spy? Yes or no?

[A]

Have you ever stolen anything from work? I'm like, yes, what have you ever stolen?

[B]

Like, how long do we have?

[A]

Do you have another ream of paper? Because I like batteries and sometimes five, five, six rounds. Like, have you ever stolen any secrets, Mike? Definitely not secrets, but a lot of.

[B]

Legal pads, post it notes, the occasional therm.

[A]

If I can may be really clear on what you mean by stealing because I just. Lithium. Lithium. AA batteries are so expensive.

[B]

I swear I'm practicing at home.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

On, on that appeal. That, that. Oh crap. I should probably write that down. Yeah. Anyway, the, the, the, the point is, is. Yeah. So you got counterintelligence poly. Are you a spy? Lifestyle. And then what you get at the agency is the lifestyle poly, which is rather invasive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And long.

[A]

And they're probably going to hit you direct. He did not have that. Because if he would have had that, they would have said things like, hey, are you into fill in the blank? And when he broke out into an athletic sweat and his needles started looking like there was the earthquake.

[B]

We're gonna pull more trans fault. Yeah, that. So, so what we're seeing is this connection in this like three circle Venn diagram between the trafficking of our children, between nation state level espionage and organized crime. And if you think about it, that's really freaking scary.

[A]

Yeah, I don't like that because you.

[B]

Can'T, you like, you can't counter that unless you've basically just got things that you will and will not do. And so that's part of all of this is fathers and mothers and parents and caregivers and all that need to be having very candid conversations with their kids about the reality of today. If you've got I'm sure agency dudes and military guys and whatnot listen to your podcast. They need to understand that their children are now a target that our adversaries will use to get to them. And the fact that you've got it primarily happening to boys, right. Boys have more pride, they get more embarrassed. They, they, shall we say, they tend to be a little, a little more fast to loose with the camera. If they think they're. They're going to, they're gonna cell phone cameras bait in some girl. They, they. It tends to be a quicker conversion. And then one of the interesting pieces that we're seeing also is that the, the girls, the young, the young women will ask for help a lot faster than the young men.

[A]

That doesn't surprise me. Look at the community.

[B]

I'm 46 years old and I still don't ask for help.

[A]

Look for the community we came from. Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day too, because somebody asked me a question that I'm going to answer on the one of the Friday episodes coming up and he was talking about where they are in life and they're unhappy and, you know, breaking down crying and they're getting to that point and they're in the military. And I was thinking about it. All the stupid military uniforms. Right. Whatever branch you're in, or the stupid designator pins or the rank insignia and military awards, there's not a single one of those for suffering in silence. Yet those people are the most likely to do so. It is so stupid and I so deeply understand it because I've been that person that did ask for help as well.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

But in this world where it's like, look at my salad, my war salad of all of my achievements, literally not one of those things by doctrine exists for silence and suffrage. Because I'd have a lot of gold oak leaf clusters on that.

[B]

A lot of valor devices.

[A]

Yeah. I don't even know what comes after silver because each silver one is for five. I mean, yeah, it's so stupid, but that doesn't surprise me that the guys aren't reaching out for help because we're idiots.

[B]

Yeah. So. So you've got young boys who then think they can handle this on their own. And, and it's linearly predictable where that, where that goes. They get themselves into a situation where we're seeing an increase in suicides on, on the young boys like, like this literally will kill your children. And so if you're having conversation with your kids about fentanyl, that's a, That's a one time mistake these days you gotta have a conversation with your, especially your young boys about this. And, and so, so there's the doom and gloom. What can people do about it? Like what, what's the ROE here? It's actually really simple. Have your children understand that every single picture they take exists for forever and that anybody who truly has their best interest at mind, that boyfriend, that girlfriend, whatever, would never ask them to send anything.

[A]

I actually add to that with my kids because I say exactly those things. I say if it happens on the Internet, it exists forever. Anything you take a picture of, potentially even say, not that the NSA has massive banks of servers all over this country that is gathering things, but everything that you write is held somewhere. And I always, I tried to frame it when they were younger of at some point in time you're going to go to a job interview, you or maybe you're going to go meet the parents of somebody that you care deeply about and you want to marry them and they slide something across the table and say, nope, is this you? And you have to answer for it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In your testosterone fueled, 16 year old boy mind, for the love of God, please try to think about that for a second.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're like, whatever dad, you don't know.

[B]

Yeah. Think about how this is. Think about how this is going to be leveraged against you so it lives. So don't do that. Like that's the first thing. Second thing is kids are going to do that, right? And, and so I'll have these dads call me. I know what the conversation is. I'm like, yep, let me guess. This is what happened there. I was like, so what do we do? That's what they always want to ask. And so, so here at the, the biggest scale we can on this podcast, which as a quick aside, nobody ever thanks podcasters, right. For having a podcast and the. Huh.

[A]

I don't know where the. Are you going with this?

[B]

Where I'm going with this is where I'm going with this is. Thanks for doing this kind of stuff because since I first started coming on your show, we've had countless law enforcement officers reach out for help on human trafficking cases and there are human traffickers behind bars because I sat at this table. Table.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

That's pretty freaking cool. Yeah.

[A]

Be better if they were on fire.

[B]

But I mean it would be better maybe, maybe they get, you know, malfunctions happen all the time. People kill themselves, undercook their food or something.

[A]

You know, can we give them slightly Raw hamburgers. I mean, what can we do here?

[B]

Can we do that at scale? So, so that we have had donors reach out and get behind. Because everything we do at Deliver Fund. Right, Deliver Fund is my, I like to call my lowest paying, full time job. It's free for law enforcement, it's free for the, obviously the people that we help. So. And donors reach out and help us fund some really cool tech. I'll tell you about some of that when we're, when we're done here. And so that's all because you were like, yeah, dude, let's, let's talk about the hard stuff at this table. So that was, it was. Thanks. But talking about this hard stuff is trying to get as many parents listening to this to actually take action and it's to talk to their kids about the fact that this is going, that this could happen, probably will at least bump up against it at some point if they're a child on the Internet, but then they're still going to do dumb things. So what do you do? The biggest thing that parents should do is call everybody and like go to war, be the squeakiest wheel. You call your city police, you call your county sheriff, you call the FBI, you call the Department of Homeland Security and you call the national center for Missing and Exploited Children. Make sure that you give all of the evidence and definitely the photos that your child took to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children and to obviously law enforcement. But when you give them to ncmec, they'll hash those photos and then they'll distribute. Essentially. A hash is basically, basically the math equation on, on a photo. Right? They'll send that equation, that hash to all of the big tech companies and then they just automate looking for that photo. So if somebody tries to post it, it gets crushed, it gets put down.

[A]

Okay, that's like the metadata. Metadata.

[B]

No, it's, it's actually so photos, like.

[A]

A unique identifier for a photo.

[B]

Essentially photos are just ones and zeros. Add them all up, it comes to a value. Each value is going to be unique.

[A]

Gotcha.

[B]

That's, that's a way to think about.

[A]

It and the tech behind it can find it and just.

[B]

Yeah, it's a mathematical fingerprint. And so yeah, the, the AI can find it just instantaneously and, and if somebody tries to post it, pull it down, the one place that doesn't happen is on porn sites. Your child's photo will end up on porn sites and it will end up staying on porn sites, which is, which is why you need to let your children know that this will happen. And there's, there's most of these porn sites, a lot of them are outside of US jurisdiction. There's really nothing that the US can do about that. And nation states like Romania are involved in looking the other way so that these sites can make as much money as possible.

[A]

Don't talk about Tate Brothers like that.

[B]

Tate Brothers being a great example of that.

[A]

I know nothing about them other than an article I read that they were somehow involved and made a lot of money through a video camera service that seems to flirt with some of this stuff.

[B]

Stuff not flirt with. Straight up. Is. And they're actually being, they're being, I think, prosecuted in Romania. And if you're getting prosecuted in Romania, you were way over the line, Way over the line. And I believe the uk, I don't know this for sure, but I believe I read some, some news that the UK is actually looking at extraditing them once Romania is done, because they're also UK citizens. And so, so like the, the fact that they were involved in this kind of horrific stuff is, is quite quickly, I think, going to become a statement of fact. The point here is that there's nothing we can do about that, and that is just a consequence of making dumb decisions. But as far as making your child, making sure your child knows that if they, if they send a photo and then somebody says, I'm going to post this and I'm going to ruin your life and your reputation and all that, that it's not true, it's not actually going to happen. And if they get their parents or if they don't trust their parents, a teacher, principal, walk into a police station, but you get authority figures involved, like people do care, and heaven and earth will move in order to make sure that those photos don't get widely distributed. And then also if they, if you are a child and they do send that payment, send another photo, they just need to always know that that can stop anytime they want. Literally all they have to do is shut the computer, turn off the phone, delete the app. That's it. It just, it can stop anytime they want. The, the, the extortion and the coercion that, that these traffickers are using is, is not real. It's a, it's, it's mental chains. And, and the reason I say traffickers and so it's predators and it's traffickers, because then one of the things that these traffickers will do, they're using the exact same playbook. But then the control becomes, meet me at this McDonald's on this corner and. And we'll make this all go away. And then child gets in the car and. And it's over from there. Now they're trafficked. And so now it's happening at a much, much larger scale versus the predator side, where they're just trying to get as much. As much content as possible. And that content becomes a currency within the sicko community.

[A]

I'm sure it does.

[B]

Really interesting book. If anybody thinks that I'm full of it because they're very confronted by maybe some of their personal decisions and sites that they're going to. Incredible woman named Lila McIlwait wrote a book called Takedown, and she's. She's a freaking straight up hero. She led the fight against pornhub. So pornhub was going after me pretty hard because I was pointing out, really, this stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[A]

Where are they based?

[B]

They were based in Canada.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It's called Canadia, but Canadia. So they. They.

[A]

You.

[B]

You can't make this up. Up. They actually. When all this stuff started to happen, they actually pled. Pled guilty to human trafficking. There was a.

[A]

Did they really?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

There was an organization.

[B]

As an organization.

[A]

No.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That didn't make the headlines.

[B]

No. Oh, no. Why? Because Visa was. Was indicted as a co. Conspirator.

[A]

Payment processor.

[B]

Yep. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, Pornhub was working with a company called 5WPR, which is a just terrible PR company out of New York, and they run. So most of the, like, hit pieces that come out on me and come out on the work that we do at Deliver Fun is run by 5 WPR. It's our enemies trying to. Trying to hit us with pr, which to me is freaking awesome.

[A]

Dude, start sending me these links because.

[B]

I want to send them to you.

[A]

I want to read the shit that's talked about you.

[B]

It's all the validation I need. Need to know that I'm doing the right thing and I'm on the right path.

[A]

How dare you not share this talk? You know, I can consume this content.

[B]

So one of them. One of them, this. This woman freaking out of nowhere writes this article. You add all the pejoratives, negative pejoratives that you can about somebody like, and that's me, right? I'm a white supremacist. I'm anti immigrant. I'm anti woman. I'm anti every.

[A]

All the magic words.

[B]

All the magic words, Magic words. And then all of a sudden, there's no, like, spotlight I'm like, I'm like, nobody's talking trash about me. Everybody starts talking trash about this woman, Lila McElweight. And I was like, like, okay. And so she started going after pornhub directly where I was going after traffickers and talking about how pornhub is essentially in cahoots or in collusion with, with traffickers or looking the other way and as well as other predators. She's going after them directly.

[A]

And she did fall back dive directly.

[B]

Dude. She did it on a Twitter campaign. Like really? Oh yeah, yeah. Like freaking cool stuff. So she goes after him. The, the whole thing culminates with, with Back Page getting into or not Back Page pornhub getting indicted by the DOJ and Visa being brought in as a co conspirator. I mean this is this like woman out of of, you know, the eastern United States who took down freaking Visa, man.

[A]

That's insane.

[B]

Big deal, right? Straight up heroics, right? Better anything I've ever done in my life. So anyway, she, the reason that I stopped getting all of the, the bad PR was because she picked it up. She was doing a better job, so she started picking it all up. But that's how we know that this stuff that these pictures from these kids and these, these webcams and these, these extortion rackets that get run against them and their families. That's how we know that that that stuff ends up on porn sites. It is. And so for people who are like, oh, I don't know if that's actually really true or that's just a one off thing. Read the book. Takedown. Yeah, it will inf. Like it will infuriate you to the point that you're like, you know, maybe man on Fire is a man is a follow documentary. It's just, it's so infuriating. And they, they try to protect all this stuff under free speech, right? Like, well, I can say whatever I 16 year old girl because, because First Amendment, it's like, well, no, actually you can't.

[A]

Freedom of speech and freedom of consequence are two very different things.

[B]

Very different things. And so, so that's, that's what we're seeing now. And it's a level of sophistication we've never seen before. And that's what every parent needs to be. Needs to be aware of is you look at, you look at what happened to that teenage boy down south I talked about. Where is basically his. His girlfriend was spoofed. The fact that he ended up sending that photo, that is not really. Let's just say it's very understandable. He's not a bad kid. Right. Good grades, played sports, great family, very wealthy family. So when you look at it through that lens, it's like, is there anything that kid could have done to prevent that? That. Well, the only thing he could have done was, was, was say, you know, when, when the photo request came, have.

[A]

A hard line there.

[B]

Yeah. And just been like, hey, I thought we talked about this. We're not going to do this. Right. Like let's link up in person, whatever. But like this, this is a line I'm not willing to cross. That. That's literally the only thing that could have been done to prevent that. The fact that he didn't, the fact that it came in as his girlfriend. But you know, and there's probably a way, there is a way to check that, but no one's ever going to really do it, right. Because you gotta, you gotta go to different sites on the Internet and you got to see like where, like where numbers are actually registered and all that kind of stuff. So, so when you look at the levels of sophistication and you look at the fact that we have now evidence and, and proof that nation states are involved in this kind of stuff. Right. Not all of it is espionage. Some lot. In fact, the major majority of it is just organized crime. But if you've got, as we all know, happens in Russia and Eastern Europe and Africa and a lot of countries around the world, organized crime and the government, same thing. Right. The government is saying, hey, as long as you're not doing it here, you do whatever you want to cause as much chaos in America as you want. Oh, and we're going to ask you to, to do very specific things for us.

[A]

Just go over to Myanmar where we have less regulation. We don't know what's going on in those apartment buildings. We have no idea the call centers, we don't know where they're originating from.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As you're talking about this, I'm thinking about this purely from the espionage perspective. Can you imagine how long of a play and how complicated it would be if you were going to use the child of the person you're actually going after in a world pre Internet it. To put all that together, how would.

[B]

You even do it?

[A]

I don't know. But it has removed. I mean you have to have, you'd have to have assets that were that kid's age.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which that to me sounds like a.

[B]

Like how you gonna do that? So, so we've had, I mean you think about it too, the, they can hit that boy with, they can hit him a hundred times in a night.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All for the same cost and the same person without ever, without ever getting in physical proximity.

[A]

I mean that's the downside to the advancement of the world that we're living in from at least from again from the espionage perspective that would almost be an untenable task. A kid would almost be out of reach. You'd probably have to target the person you were going after directly, which again would still be a robust process of time. And now they're just sitting there looking at signatures, digital signatures and putting shit together.

[B]

So we, we see it with, I see it with my company, 10 point data. You know, we, we, we build custom AI and, and essentially collect custom data sets and we see where companies will get a OpenAI ChatGPT spoof or a Claude spoof spoof website. So. And what it is is it's a foreign adversary that knows that the lawyer or the engineer, whatever is going to upload a paper to get it edited and. Right. Do things better, faster and cheaper because that's what AI helps us to do. But it's a spoof site and so they end up uploading their dietary and sensitive documents directly into the enemy's bucket.

[A]

Fuck.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It saves them time.

[B]

Yeah, pretty much.

[A]

You know, let's just cut out the middleman.

[B]

So, so we, we see those types of spoofs happen and so we build, we build custom platforms that make it so that, that can't happen and they can, they can use, they can take advantage of AI and they can take advantage of proprietary data sets without that ever leaving their own, like their own ecosystem. Air gaps. It essentially, it's a way to think of it. Yeah, it's a way, it's a way to take advantage of the AI physically. But yeah, think of it as a digital air gap. So if, like what would it take for a company to, or for a foreign adversary to do that against a company pre Internet. Right. Those, those were entire multi year, sometimes multi generational intelligence operations.

[A]

Yeah. Getting somebody in the right position to have access to what it is you're looking for but planning backwards like you said, two decades.

[B]

Yeah. What I, what I don't think we have ever, we've ever seen before probably in the history of our country was nation states being able to leverage the children of their targets against them. I don't know that that has ever really even been possible without, without the, without the parent being able to pick up on it.

[A]

Do you Think the advancements in technology are reducing the tradecraft of legitimate spies?

[B]

Yes. Yes.

[A]

I don't see how it couldn't.

[B]

Right, yeah.

[A]

I was thinking about that as you're talking about how long it would take. Like, I wonder, you know, if the tradecraft of the legit spooks is hindered or just reduced because they have these new tools.

[B]

People talk about, like, oh, when do you think World War III is going to start? I think we're already in it.

[A]

We are who we fight. Are we winning?

[B]

I have no idea.

[A]

What's the score? Come on, dude, don't say that and don't give me the score.

[B]

I just think we're already in it. What quarter are we? I think if you look at, like, Operation Olympic Games. Right. Stuxnet, all of that, this is all open source. I'm not saying anything classified. So that's. That's stuxnet. That's where I feel like I've heard.

[A]

That, but have no idea what it means.

[B]

So that's where a consortium of individuals with five eyes decided to go after the Iranian centrifuge.

[A]

Oh, yes, I watched a documentary on that. Yep.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Broke that right at the right moment.

[B]

So big thing, the whole operation. And again, this is all open source now. Whole operation called Operation Olympic Games. Stuxnet was just a. A. And that's not even really what it was called, was just essentially one of the many viruses and one of the many components to it, and those were air gapped systems. I mean, it was a intelligence win. I. I think that was probably the last of them. I think our adversaries are still good at it. You look at, like, look at what the Israelis did with the pagers and the radios. I mean, when I heard that report, that was amazing, if I'm being totally honest.

[A]

When I read that headline, my first thought was, who the fuck still uses a pager? Well, that was legitimately my first thought. Like, why? Like, I'm definitely safe from that threat because there's no reason to use a pager.

[B]

But the icons, like, like the whole way they did, man, it was incredible.

[A]

I'd love to know, how do you think our.

[B]

Our government could actually do something like that?

[A]

I want to believe.

[B]

I want to believe we can.

[A]

I think the Israelis might be a little bit more nimble, though, because they're.

[B]

Smaller, they have more to lose.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, and I would love to know. I would love to know when in the production process they got a hold of that, because those were obviously modified devices. People are like, you do you mean that my radio can just blow up? Like there was explosive device inside of that particular radio. I don't think you could harmonize it to be able to make it warm in your pocket, but I don't think it's going to blow up and kill you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So somewhere they got physical possession of that, modified it, put it back into that stream knowing it was going to.

[B]

Go where it went and knew knowing who it was going to go to. That's what I'm saying. That's a win.

[A]

That's the gm. That's what interests me.

[B]

Like, that's pretty cool. But our enemies aren't trying to do stuff like that. They're. They're hitting up your kid on Snapchat.

[A]

Which is way more dangerous than a pager.

[B]

Way more dangerous. Because if I was asking one of the polygraphers at the agency, they never asked me about like I was married when I took my first poly. Right. Obviously promptly ended in a divorce as my entire unit did, but whatever, I was the guy who was going to defeat the odds. So he never asked me did I cheat on my wife or any of that kind of stuff. Right. Which I'd heard before. Other people saying they had gotten those questions.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I talked to other guys in my unit and I was like, hey, they gotta get asked that. And, and they were like, no. And so.

[A]

Which is interesting because that's an incredible point of leverage.

[B]

Well, can be for some people.

[A]

Yeah, some people don't give a right.

[B]

And so that's where. And I asked him, was like, hey, I'll come in and ask about this or this. And he's like, because it doesn't matter with guys like you. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, because they've got, they got 50 years of data. They know what they're talking about. They have kept everything since day one.

[A]

They were a square peg to them.

[B]

And they were like, they were like, oh yeah. They're like, because if somebody came to you and said, hey, we've got pictures of you cheating on your wife, you'd be like, oh, those are the only ones you got, Matt, Check out the ones I got. Right? They were like, that's something that can't be leveraged. That, that, that's, that's a way that you can't be leveraged.

[A]

Interesting. Do the polygraphers have to take a polygraph? Cuz that would be very interesting.

[B]

Oh yeah, the. Do they ask each other. Could you imagine knowing that kind of stuff about like Your co worker in the cubicle next to you. No, because they know some stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because as long as you're honest, you're good.

[A]

Yeah, well.

[B]

Well, I mean, as long as you're.

[A]

Touched children, you know.

[B]

Well, yeah, you didn't. You didn't, like, admit to a felony or something, but. But yeah, as long as you're honest. For the most part. So that guy, the seal that I was telling, that we were talking about, I. I wanted. I don't want to use his last name out of disrespect that he's out of central casting. Man. Man, Text. A lot of people listening to this will know Text was on my team and allegedly at the agency for a couple rotations. Great dude. Great dude. Just a good old boy, right? And he. So he was taking his poly and. And, yeah, he's an older dude. I want to see. He was like. I say that being in my mid-40s, but I want to say he was in his early 40s when we were in. We're in Kirk Cook. And so he was one of the guys with system access. And. And so he's taken his poly and. And starts asking about drugs and, you know, have you ever done illegal drugs? Yes. And, you know, well, what illegal. You know, if you've done this illegal drug. Yes. And. And so he. What he says is, he finally was like, young lady, I was a Navy SEAL in the 1980s. It'll be a shorter conversation and we talk about the drugs I haven't done.

[A]

Yeah, go the other direction with this.

[B]

Yeah. At which point they were just like. I was like, oh, dude, like, you passed your poly. He's like, yeah. He's like, I was completely honest.

[A]

He told the truth.

[B]

Maybe a little too honest. And they were like, oh, okay. So that's not really an issue. Like, have you done drugs within, you know, the time period that. That they. That you're not allowed to have done any? And he was like, no. And they're like, okay, moving on to the next one. So as long as you're not admitting felonies for the most part, but could you imagine, like. Like, you're like Polly and like, you're a buddy and. And some of the stuff, you know, like, hey, dude. Yeah, I know I said to barbecue on Saturday, but turns out my grill's not working, so we're not going to have that now.

[A]

Yeah. God, what a weird world.

[B]

And anyway, I digress.

[A]

What do you want to leave people with? We've been out, like, two and a half hours.

[B]

So your Government's not as competent as you, you think it is.

[A]

In some things they are and most they're not.

[B]

In most they're not. Hence the conspiracy theories. You don't want to tear apart your government, you want to reform it. Because like it or not, this is, this is the best on the planet. Right? I mean, it just is. And then third, if you're a parent, you have to have this conversation, especially with your young boy around gaming consoles and being recruited. And you have to help them understand that the people, it's not one person, it's teams of professionally trained people who are very specifically maybe targeting them because of what dad does or what mom does, or targeting them because they think they can get money out of them. And if you're in Romania, US$500 is a lot of money and that juice is worth the squeeze and that that train will never stop unless they stop it. So anytime they say that, oh, this will go away if just pay me $500, that's not true. That's never going to happen. You feel make sure that children understand that they feel powerless, but they are completely in control. They are in control of the situation and the outcome and they need to ask for help, especially teenage boys because the girls will eventually break and they will go ask for help. The boys just are tending to try to do self deletions and that's not okay. And we can't live with that. So we've got to make sure that everybody understands what's happening and then parents understanding how to deal with it. And again, it's call everybody, go to war, be the squeaky wheel. Do not let prosecutors say that they're not going to take cases. If it's a local prosecutor, it's probably just because they don't know how and they have a full caseload. So get it taken federal. It happened on the Internet, so it's a federal case. And if it's outside of the US jurisdiction, then there's still things that you can do. Just making sure that all the proper, the system moves in the way that it's supposed to so that everybody in law enforcement understands that that specific account, IP address, whatever is a, is a threat. That's what I want to leave people with.

[A]

And what's the best way to support Deliver Fund?

[B]

Best way to support deliver fund is deliverfund.org donate. Everything we do is free for law enforcement. And it's a lot of tech and it's hard to keep it funded. And it's a lot of really brave men and women working with law enforcement to build these target packages. So. So yeah, please consider supporting us.

[A]

Boom. Done. Until next time.

[B]

Until next time.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

Thanks man.

[A]

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