#338 - Navy SEAL on China-Funded Meth Soldiers, BlackRock in Ukraine & God | Ephraim Mattos

Summary

Julian Dorey Podcast #338 — Summary

Guest: Ephraim Mattos (Navy SEAL, founder of Stronghold Rescue & Relief)
Released: September 22, 2025
Host: Julian Dorey

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Julian Dorey Podcast features Navy SEAL veteran and humanitarian, Ephraim Mattos, for a deep-dive conversation on the civil war and atrocities in Burma (Myanmar), the rise of Chinese and Russian influence in the region, the realities of the military industrial complex (including BlackRock's involvement in Ukraine), and the psychological/spiritual aftermath of war. Mattos offers ground-level insights from his direct involvement as founder of Stronghold Rescue and Relief, blending wild frontline stories, historical and geopolitical analysis, and a personal exploration of faith and trauma.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Updates and Reflections

• Fatherhood and Family:
  • Ephraim discusses becoming a father, the birth of his daughter (with a lighthearted take on his multiracial family), and the shift in his worldview and priorities since his wife’s pregnancy and daughter’s birth.

    "Watching her go through the pregnancy and give birth… it just 10xed my love for her…" — Ephraim (02:00)

  • He recounts his wife’s background as a war refugee from Burma and their meeting in the jungle while she was volunteering at a clinic.
• Living Stateside & Abroad:
  • Ephraim details living in Milwaukee and Thunder Bay connection, the safety/violence pattern in American cities, and why he wants his children to have perspective on global poverty.

2. SEAL Training, Combat Psychology, & Lessons Learned

• Survival and SERE School:
  • Training occurred in harsh Alaskan environments, with unique anecdotes (e.g., wild cows left from WWII for survival scenarios) and humorous commentary on Navy traditions.
  • Ephraim explains the limits of survival training (“If you have to rely on these traps, you’re probably going to die”), and the difference between competence and confidence under extreme stress.
• Interrogation Training:
  • Recounts his SERE school interrogation by a female instructor, playfully describing how he avoided getting hit through deep eye contact and “reverse psyop”.

    “I just made like really, really deep eye contact… I think I made my instructor get a crush on me or something, and so she didn’t [hit me].” — Ephraim (22:02)

• Combat and Afghanistan Deployments:
  • What separates enduring operators from quitters in elite units. He notes that middle-of-the-pack mentality (grit, not flash) fares best.

    “I was never at the front of the pack. I’m always like, trying to catch the dude in front of me.” — Ephraim (36:51)

  • Reflections on the combat experience and realization that confidence is born out of surviving failure and chaos rather than initial skill or bravado.

3. Psychological and Physiological Effects of War

• PTSD & Cold Water Therapy:
  • Ephraim shares the story of being bombed in a targeted airstrike in Burma, surviving but developing strange new physiological responses to basic stress (tremors, sweating) unrelated to conscious fear.
  • Details how cold-shower therapy helped him re-regulate his stress response, and the adjustments he had to make to “reset” his nervous system.

    “I started having these really weird… reactions to stress… My body started to physiologically react to stuff… Cold water helped me sort of reset.” — Ephraim (43:39)

• Post-combat life juxtaposition:
  • Returning from war zones to elite academic environments (Harvard) and ordinary daily life, the sharp contrast between laying in trenches and classroom discussions.

4. Geopolitics — The Military Industrial Complex, USAID, and the West's Dilemmas

• On US Foreign Policy:
  • The tension between isolationism and military internationalism is dissected. Ephraim takes a nuanced position: avoid military overreach but project stabilizing soft power.
  • USAID and soft power: He both critiques and advocates for reimagined, less corrupt international aid and soft power programs to compete with Chinese Belt & Road strategies.

    “I think in general, it’s good for the US to project power, not aggressive power, but stability-type power.” — Ephraim (68:19)

  • Notes the blurring line between imperialist motives and strategic necessity.
• BlackRock & Ukraine:
  • Unpacks the example of BlackRock’s role in rebuilding Ukraine, seeing it as a double-edged sword: both economic imperialism and a necessary postwar function. Compares Belt & Road vs. Western investor-driven models to shape developing nations post-conflict.

    “If it’s not BlackRock that goes in to rebuild… who else is it going to be? ...I don’t think there’s this cabal… but [sometimes] that happens.” — Ephraim (93:38)

• On Conspiracies and Public Skepticism:
  • Discusses why skepticism toward state/corporate power is warranted, yet emphasizes humility in not knowing, the need for trial and error, and the limits of attribution to malice over organizational stupidity.

5. AI and the Future of War

• AI on the Battlefield:
  • Explains how AI is being used for strategic and tactical advantage: battlefield analytics, logistics, drone strikes, and even sniping (e.g., Ukrainian sniper’s AI-assisted record kill).

    “AI is going to use AI to come up with its own opinions in the future… There’s going to be a much higher premium on truth and reality, and it’s going to be a lot harder to find it.” — Ephraim (105:11)

• Implications:
  • Predicts an “infinity loop of untruth” as AI recursively digests its own outputs, further muddying public information and decision-making.

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The Burma (Myanmar) Crisis: Ground Truth

A. Historical Context and Geopolitics

• Ethnic Civil War:
  • Rooted in ethnic, not religious, divisions dating to the British colonial breakup. The majority Bamar (Burmans) have long sought to dominate diverse tribal minorities, with systematic campaigns of “passive cultural ethnic cleansing” (language bans, suppression, forced assimilation).
• Strategic Importance:
  • Burma is pivotal for Chinese and Russian ambitions; both are heavily backing the junta/regime via arms (jets, drones) and are building deepwater ports for strategic access to the Indian Ocean.

    “If China has control and influence over Burma… any kind of blockade on China’s eastern coast is going to be relatively moot.” — Ephraim (121:00)

  • China and Russia send advisors/operatives to the regime; Ephraim confirms field sightings of Chinese agents training Burmese troops.

B. The Atrocities on the Ground

• Scale of Violence:
  • Over 52,000 killed since 2021 — the highest of any active conflict globally.
  • The cruelty of Burma army operations: villages erased, targeted bombings, use of child soldiers.
• China-funded Meth Soldiers:
  • The army’s funding: rare earths, resource theft, and a massive narco trade (yaba — meth) across Asia.
  • Soldiers are routinely given meth before operations to stoke aggression and suppress fear, with reports of them acting like “zombies” or “demons,” leading to frenzies of violence on civilians and enemy fighters.

    “They will give their soldiers this crystal [yaba] before they go into battle. And these guys… become like demons.” — Ephraim (145:19)

C. Stronghold Rescue & Relief: Mission, Structure, and Impact

• Origins:
  • Founded to empower local fighters and provide frontline humanitarian relief, notably through medical support and casualty evacuation.
  • Embeds a small cadre of trained Western volunteers with larger local teams; focus is on sustainable support and training, not foreign control.
  • Example: establishing the only functioning ambulance services in vast regions, performing jungle blood transfusions, facilitating trauma care, evacuating wounded mothers, children, and fighters.
  • All delivered with “charity with dignity” and attention to not creating dependence on outsiders.

    “The way that we measure success is the lives they save when we’re not there.” — Ephraim (171:25)

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Reflections on Evil, Masculinity, and Faith

• On the Roots of Atrocity:
  • Explores why rape, murder, and dehumanization proliferate in war —bad ideology leads to horrific consequences, and “the side that commits sexual assault is always the bad guy.”

    “Ideas have consequences… the more important thing is that ideas have consequences… you cannot fathom this evil… because you were raised right.” — Ephraim (153:04)

• On Western vs. Other Masculinity:
  • Contrasts the Western ideal (protector, servant-leader) with toxic models of masculinity rooted in “taking what you want.”
• On God, Free Will, and the Problem of Evil:
  • Ephraim’s frontline experiences have deepened his Christian faith, even while confronting relentless suffering.

    “When I see the evil that happens in the world, I believe that God gave us free will… I don’t blame God for what happens in these cases.” — Ephraim (180:54)

  • Discusses the humility of not knowing, the impossibility of fully grasping God, and the imperative to “do good with what you have and the time you’re given.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Surviving SEAL Selection:
  Timestamp 28:11
  “I always wondered: how would I react if I was under fire? ...I didn’t think I was going to make it. I had no intention of quitting, but... there’s no way a guy like me... is going to make it... And then I look around and see these other guys quit...” — Ephraim

• On American Ignorance and Geopolitics:
  Timestamp 64:46
  “There’s an American mentality... we don’t really think too much about the rest of the world... But as the most prosperous, powerful nation... I think we have a moral obligation to hold back those dark forces.” — Ephraim

• On BlackRock and ‘Rebuilding’:
  Timestamp 93:38
  “If it’s not BlackRock that goes in to rebuild an area... who else is it going to be? ...I don’t think there’s this cabal… but [sometimes] that happens.” — Ephraim

• On the Civil War Death Toll:
  Timestamp 133:33
  “Conflict that killed over 52,000 people since January 2021, a figure higher than any armed conflict globally during this time...” — Julian (reading data)

• On China’s Realpolitik:
  Timestamp 159:15
  “China doesn’t care who’s in charge [in Burma]. They just want access to the rare earth minerals... They’ll help anybody. They just want to back the winner.” — Ephraim

• On Faith in the Trenches:
  Timestamp 180:54
  “When I see the evil that happens in the world... I believe that God gave us free will. I don’t blame God for what happens... That’s what free will means. You are free to do good. You are free to do evil.” — Ephraim

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:48] – Meeting his wife in the jungle; background in humanitarian work
• [12:29] – SEAL survival training stories; wild cows & Alaskan cold
• [24:07] – Combat deployments, Afghanistan, and what sets SEALs apart
• [39:39] – Airstrike in Burma; PTSD, physiological aftermath & cold water therapy
• [64:46] – American foreign policy; military industrial complex & USAID
• [81:06] – The realpolitik of aid: US, China, and how nations choose their benefactors
• [93:38] – BlackRock in Ukraine & reconstruction, the blurred moral lines
• [105:26] – AI’s impact on truth, information loops, and war
• [121:00] – The strategic value of Burma for China and Russia
• [129:15] – The nature and history of Burma’s ethnic war and passive ethnic cleansing
• [140:36] – The scale, brutality, and surreal reality of jungle warfare
• [145:00] – China-funded meth (‘yaba’) and the zombification of Burmese soldiers
• [152:04] – Power, masculinity, sexual violence, and the roots of atrocity
• [166:54] – Operational methods of Stronghold; building trust, field medicine, and sustainability
• [180:54] – On faith, free will, evil, and the limits of human understanding

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Follow-Up and Calls to Action

• Stronghold Rescue & Relief – Visit for more information and to donate (links in episode description).
• Instagram: @strongholdrescue — For graphic, unfiltered ground-truth reporting (see show notes for direct links).
• Ephraim’s Message: Encourage awareness, humanitarian engagement, and resistance to cynicism.

  “Do good with what you have and the time you’re given.”

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For listeners: Whether you’re drawn in by geopolitical intrigue, harrowing battlefield stories, or searching for philosophical comfort in a world of darkness, this episode provides a raw, unvarnished exploration of both the horrors and hopes found at the intersection of war, morality, and humanity.

Transcript

[A]

Has there ever been a point when you're in the middle of this where you've questioned something beautiful that would have created this Earth would allow that to happen on it?

[B]

Literally the worst stuff you can imagine. I've seen it all. The first time I actually came across the Burma army in a combat. I had been working in the jungle by myself in an area where they said there was fighting happening. I get in the scope and I look, there was this hail of bullets and gunfire and rockets and mortars, and it was all the Burma army guys trying to kill the civilians. And so that was the first time I realized, oh, man, this is a whole different animal. Dude, this is crazy, too. The Burma army has a giant truck with these huge speakers on it. They're blasting death metal music. But then they will give their soldiers this crystal before they go into battle. And these guys, they're like zombies. They become like demons. And the level of atrocities of what the Burma army is doing, it's unthinkable. I saw this other situation where when I see the evil that happens in the world, I believe that God.

[A]

Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge, huge help.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Ephraim. It's good to have you back, man.

[B]

Dude. Good to be back. Yeah.

[A]

Got to hit another Eagles game this year.

[B]

Dude, let's do it.

[A]

We were like the Lucky Charms last year.

[B]

We went to.

[A]

We went to the Browns game. They turned it around after that, and here we are, super bowl champs.

[B]

There we go. Yeah. I think it was us. I think we did.

[A]

I think that's what I was thinking, too. It was like the magic. The magic of Rob o'.

[B]

Shea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Like sprinkled fairy dust into Saquon's box there. And then, you know, the rest of the year was what it was.

[B]

That was it. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

But you become a father as well.

[B]

I'm a dad now.

[A]

How's that been?

[B]

It's been unbelievable. You know, it was. It was. You know, the funny thing is, like, I. So. I loved my wife when we got married, obviously, and then. That's good. And I. You know, the thing is, like, I started to love her more and more every day since we got married, but watching her go through the pregnancy and give birth, like, I just. I just. I don't know, it just 10 xed my love for her, and it was. That was. That was something I didn't expect, so. It was just so Great. Seeing her go through that. And then we actually. We actually had a very, very easy. Not easy. Let me. Let me rephrase. We had a very short delivery. The wife had a very short delivery. It was.

[A]

She's watching this, right?

[B]

Yeah. She's like. She's like, boy, that was not easy. No, it was. It was. She. It was incredible. And, yeah, so it was like. From the. From the moment that her water broke to the moment that I was holding the baby, it was like four hours and 15 minutes.

[A]

This is amazing, like, how much you're like, oh, my God. We made that.

[B]

Yeah. No, I get. I do that every day. I see the little baby girl, and I'm like, oh, my goodness. That's my. That's my baby. My little. I call it my little Asian baby because my wife's Asian and I'm white, so that's my little Asian baby. A little mixed baby. She's so cute.

[A]

God, I love 2025. We can say this.

[B]

I know. We can say it now, man. It's great. Yeah.

[A]

If I had said Wagin in 2023, they'll.

[B]

You imagine off the Internet. He's off the Internet. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, my God, man.

[B]

But that's.

[A]

That's awesome. How. How many months has it been now?

[B]

Five. Five and a half? Yeah.

[A]

Five months.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right. You're working on the next one?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You know.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Hopefully. Hopefully get another one going soon, boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

We're.

[B]

We're all about it. Yeah.

[A]

Now, are you gonna put them right into labor in the war zone, helping you out, like, once they're five or.

[B]

Yeah, that's cut off. Yeah. The plan is to make them child labor as much as possible. You're gonna be carrying Dad's pack. You're gonna make any coffee, whatever.

[A]

And over there, someone's got to make my Nikes.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. No, I actually. But in reality, I. You know, there's some folks, they take their, you know, kids over to those places. I don't intend on doing that. I want them to. I want my kids to see the reality of, you know, many of these different places where I. Where I work with Stronghold. But, yeah, I'm definitely not willing to risk their lives in any kind of meaningful way, but I'd like for them to see the. Yeah, I want to see. I want them to see the. The, you know, the poverty and see, like, how. How good and amazing these people are in these other places, too, who. Who live in really, really Rough conditions. And so I think it's important for them to. For the kids to have that and see that, so they can develop some gratitude and understanding of. Of what they have here in America.

[A]

So your plan is to raise them here in America?

[B]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Right.

[A]

So your wife's here now as well?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, we live in.

[A]

Originally from there.

[B]

Yeah. So my wife. So she was a war refugee, so she was in a refugee camp in Thailand. So she's from Burma, but her father, family lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for 10 years. And then when she was 10, she went to Canada, and so she grew up in Canada, and. And then. Yeah, met her in the jungle a few years ago, and it was. It was over.

[A]

Wait, how'd you meet her in the jungle? How did she end up back there? I think you did. It was.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You were. You were on the podcast last year. That was episode 244, I think.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And we. We spent a lot of it going through, like, ISIS and that whole fight, because for people who don't know your background, you are a former Navy seal, someone who uses those skills now in your organization, Stronghold. But we got to the Burma War and genocide, let's call it what it is, in the last 30 minutes or so and got, like, a highlight of it and some quick things. And I think one of the things you did mention in there was exactly how you met your wife. But if you wouldn't mind just telling that story again. And today we're going to go. All the work you're doing it, Stronghold. We'll go through some good geopolitical stuff, too. There's a lot of going on in the world. I love your perspective on that, but I want to give a more. Give it more room to breathe with what's going on in Burma and. Well, it's Myanmar, and that's a whole nother thing. You can explain that as well, just so people understand, because, you know, there's certain things the media always focuses on, and that's important. But, you know, there's a lot of other things that happen in the world that are like, the same thing sometimes, and we don't pay attention to that. And you've been at the front lines of this for a long time.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, just. Just a quick hum. And my wife, so obviously I run Stronghold Rescue and Relief, and I've been working there in Burma for. For years. And so my wife, like I said, she was a. A refugee, grew up in Canada, and so she just randomly went back to Burma to, to like back to the, back to the same area where her parents had, you know, had to run away from. And she wanted to, she wanted to come back and help the people there in some way because she speaks the language, you know, so she's fully Western and she's also fully Karen. She's from the Karen tribe and. The Karen tribe. Yeah. And so, so she was back there volunteering at a clinic run by another nonprofit that was out there that's run by some Americans. And she was just out there kind of checking it out, seeing what she could do. Sort of a fact finding mission.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And yeah, so we had just gotten off a mission the next morning at like, I don't know, five, six in the morning, I saw her and within five seconds of her talking, I was like, if everything checks out, I'm gonna marry that woman.

[A]

What was it? Within five seconds of her talking? You knew you were gonna marry her? What was that?

[B]

You know, this sounds super corny, but. No, the, the truth is I, I just, when I look back at that, I'm like, how did, how did I know? And it was like my soul recognized hers and it was, I was like, that's my, I was like, that's my wife. You know, I was like, you know, everything has to check out first. But so.

[A]

That would have been.

[B]

Yeah, like, okay, let's not like, my soul's blind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

No, that is something about us guys. I, I talking with a lot of my friends about it too. There's just a thing sometimes where, like, you don't know them, but you just kind of know.

[B]

Yeah, you just know.

[A]

It's a strange thing. It's happened a few times in my life.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Yes. We got married four months and 16 days after we met, and it was on 4th of July in Canada, so.

[A]

4Th of July in Canada.

[B]

Yeah. So her, like, what? So random.

[A]

But are they even happy about that? They're, they're this, they're the descendants of.

[B]

All the people that lost. Well, yeah, yeah. So. So that's, that's why we got married on the 4th of July. Because nobody's doing anything on the 4th of July in Canada. So, like, that was the day everyone had off, so. Because, because they're not, because they're not celebrating. So it was just a total, totally ironic, random, random thing that, that ended up being my, my anniversary.

[A]

Yeah. And there's her family still up there now too.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They all live up in Thunder Bay area, so. And There's a huge Karen community. All these different folks who've settled in.

[A]

You know, different parts of Thunder Bay.

[B]

Where.

[A]

Where is that?

[B]

Just north of the. Just north of the Minnesota border.

[A]

Oh, so that's, like, relative to America and where you're from? That's not like, that far.

[B]

No, no, no, no. It's not bad at all. Yeah, it's like we can. We can hop in the car, you know, on a. On a Saturday morning and be. Be to Thunder Bay by dinner.

[A]

Where. Where are you living today?

[B]

Milwaukee.

[A]

You're living in. Yeah, I was just there with Tommy.

[B]

G. Oh, no kidding.

[A]

I did not know people live there.

[B]

It's.

[A]

It's awesome.

[B]

Human beings do live in the.

[A]

I got off the plane, they picked me up, and, like, we're driving. I'm like. There's buildings. They were, like, 15, 20 stories, too.

[B]

Oh, yeah. We have, like, a nice downtown area. Where. Where'd you guys go in Milwaukee?

[A]

So we went to an abandoned warehouse and got waterboarded.

[B]

Oh, you guys filmed that video in Milwaukee. No kidding.

[A]

Yeah. So we went to. After that was all done, Andy and I. I guess again, at that point, we went to the Milwaukee Public Market.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Like, right there, which is, like a mini reading terminal. Sick place. Honestly, big fan of Milwaukee. I feel like I wouldn't be a big fan of it in January, but it is a beautiful place and, like, would. I would definitely go back for sure.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Milwaukee's a. Milwaukee is a great place. That's where I grew up. And. Yeah, it's really cool being back there. Being back there now, basing out of there, but still bopping around the. Around the rest of the world doing. Doing crazy stuff with Stronghold. Yeah.

[A]

Now, are you living in Milwaukee proper or, like, just on the outskirts?

[B]

On the outskirts. A little town called Menominee Falls. Yeah. Just right outside Milwaukee.

[A]

How close is that to, like, Giannis?

[B]

Oh, I have no idea. I don't know where he lives.

[A]

I don't remember the town, but.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He wasn't that far from Tommy G. Okay. BO is beautiful.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Great. Great spot. Seems like a really good spot to raise a family and everything, too. A lot of good places with yards and they even need picket fences around there. It's great.

[B]

Yeah, there's. There's some. There's some really, really dark places, though, to be fair, around in Milwaukee. But. But yeah, like, where we're at, it's. It's like. Yeah, it's a beautiful.

[A]

Yeah, I've seen those places.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think yeah. Didn't some guy make a documentary? It was like 53020 or something. It's like one of the zip codes there in Milwaukee. And it was like, this is like the deadliest zip code or something for like gang shootings or something somewhere in Milwaukee. I forget what that was.

[A]

That was part of.

[B]

Why didn't see it.

[A]

But when Tommy went to have his kid, he moved out of Milwaukee because, you know, he covers a lot of stories and he's like, you know, do I need to be like sitting with a gun out at night?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Gonna come after me if they don't like it? So he's like, I feel like we should probably be out in the suburbs. He went out into the suburbs? Yeah. Here's the documentary.

[B]

You're talking about Milwaukee. Oh, yeah. 53206. Yeah, interesting. I forget. Yeah, I forget. Yeah, I forget the premise of it, but yeah, there's a documentary just about. About all that, I think. Lots of. Unfortunately a lot of violence in some of the inner city areas, which is so unfortunate.

[A]

I forget. Are you from the Milwaukee area originally?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grew up like right by the airport. Okay, yeah, Milwaukee airport. Yeah.

[A]

Decent airport too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Quiet at night, though.

[B]

Nice place. Yeah, it's actually wonderful. Get like when I. When I travel and I land home back in Milwaukee, you know, it's a very quiet. Yeah, like you said, it's very quiet in the evening. There's not like lots of stuff going on. And so it's like, it's always. This is nice, peaceful arriving home. It's not. It's not hectic, it's just.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Yeah, it's really great.

[A]

No, actually, it's a good thing to ask you a little sidebar for a second, if you don't mind.

[B]

Yeah, of course.

[A]

Like, you know, we did some bullshit stupid documentary where we went through little, you know, walkthroughs of how bad things might be able to get at some point and get like a little preview of that.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But when you guys are training for like Special Forces and things like sear school happen and all that, I. The temperature gets pushed up to 200 degrees. And you know, I've heard some of these will be three to six week programs and all that, but specifically within the SEALs as a part of your training, you know, at what point did you guys go through, you know, survival skills in the instance of being captured and how you might handle interrogations and, you know, some rather difficult situations that you had to be simulated in? Like, what was that like in your training?

[B]

Yeah, so for our survival training, we actually did it up in Alaska. So after you finish buds, which is the initial six month, you know, selection course, you, you then begin another six months of what's called sqt, SEAL qualification training. And at the end of that entire year, that's when you become like a seal.

[A]

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[B]

But one of the first trips that we did, we spent a month in Alaska. And during there was a point there, I believe it was three or four days where that was, that's where we did our survival simulation thing. So basically, so you're, you're on Kodiak island and then they put you in boats and they take you off Kodiak island to this other tiny island and it's snowing, it's freezing cold, and they drop you off there. You have. You have, like, you have. You're allowed to have a little survival kit, and then you have, like, warm clothes on. And then you basically sit there for three days. You have to build a shelter, find food, find water, all that kind of stuff. And. Yeah, so. And that was freezing cold. I mean, so, you know, you got to build a fire and just kind of just suck it up for the. For the. For the three or four days there.

[A]

Are you with other guys, doing.

[B]

Yeah, you're with, like, a little squad of guys. So it's actually really funny. There were. There randomly were cows on this island because back During World War II, the Navy had put. They had put cows on the island just in case the island got cut off. If, like, the Russians or the Japanese or whatever, like, invaded the. The U.S. they. They wanted their. They wanted the guys there to be able to survive because you're going to be cut off from all food sources, right? And so there's still these cows, these wild cows on this tiny little island. And we found one. My squad found one of these cows, and we were told, like, all right, like, just leave it alone. The SEAL instructors, like, leave it alone. Whatever. We're like, please, we want to kill it and eat it. They're like, no, you can't do that. You know, you're, you know, like, you can't do that. You. Well, so. So we leave, and then all of a sudden, I don't know, like an hour or two later here, we hear a gunshot. And we're like, the heck. Come to find out, another. Yeah, another squad came across it, and one of the SEAL instructors was like, sweet, Looks like we're eating, boys. So he shot. He shot the cow. And then. And they used it as, like a. Like, as a. Like a training thing. So these guys, they took the cow, butchered it up. And so they're. They're eating. They're eating good.

[A]

You know, that's something. They can sleep inside it, too, for warmth.

[B]

Oh, there you go. Yeah, I don't think they did that, but. But, yeah, they were eating good, man. So they were eating good food.

[A]

So we were way of being like, yeah, no, don't go that far.

[B]

Yeah, but. Yeah, so. So. So that was like the. The sort of survival training aspect of it, and you're, you know, you're going down into, like, the water, and you're, you know, you're pulling, like, little, like, little crustaceans and things off the rocks, and, like, because they taught you which ones you can eat, and you're pulling like, you know, some sea algae and like different things that you can eat. So it was, it was, it was interesting. It was just miserable. It's just kind of like, kind of a gut check. And at night it was just freezing, freezing cold. But, you know, we just kind of. We all huddle together and, you know, take turns trying to rotate, you know, keeping the fire going. Yeah.

[A]

How applicable is some of that, like, for, for food survival, if you're taught like, what algae you can eat and stuff like that. How much of that is applicable across climates, though? Meaning in this case you were in Alaska. And then another case you might be off the coast of New Zealand at some island or whatever, and an algae might look similar, but that one might kill you.

[B]

Yeah. I'll tell you, I'll answer it this way. Of our. One of our instructors, I don't know if he's still in, so I won't say his name. Really, really great guy. He was a chief. And so he was like. So he, his job was to teach us how to basically how to build these traps to catch animals and stuff. And so he called it Coops Trap Trail. And it was kind of this funny little thing. So we walk along this trail. He shows us all these different, all these different traps and things that are set up. And so I think somebody asked him the same question. They're like, like, how often are these traps actually, you know, catching anything? And he just kind of giggled and was like, so, yeah, honestly, if you have to rely on these kind of traps, you're probably going to die because he said they all over. So you're like, oh, my word, it's too funny. So. So yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't know, like, what the, what the local flora and fauna is going to be, but that's why when you do deploy to one of those regions, you need to, you know, sort of look into that and figure out, okay, like, what can we eat? You know, I don't think anybody actually does, but it's pretty. Would be a wise thing to do that if you're thinking you might be in a survival situation.

[A]

For sure. I mean, a cow's straightforward, but you can't count on random cows that were dropped.

[B]

You cannot. Survival. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't count on it.

[A]

Yeah. Now, did you do anything? Did you also get training where you were simulated through, like, you know, enemy combatant interrogations and stuff like that?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So we got. So there's different levels of that, of that kind of interrogation training. So I went through like a pretty, like a pretty basic level one. There's more, there's more advanced ones where you're going to have like pilots or like CIA guys or, you know, Delta or dev group guys are going to go through these much higher levels of, of, of those, of those courses. I went through the, like a pretty basic one. It's still not fun. You gotta, you're simulating the whole thing. You're, you're, you're escaping and evading. Eventually you get captured. You know, they're, you know, they, they're sleep depriving you, putting in, putting you in small boxes, putting in tiny rooms, dumping cold water on you, taking in, you know, taking you into rooms and interrogating you. And there's, there's one point, you know, where, where you get hit where they, where the instructors hit you. And the funny thing is, so I was getting interrogated and I was getting interrogated by a, by this woman. And so I was like, okay, this is like, this is where I'm gonna get hit. You know, like, this is like, I just kind of know this is, that this is the time of the, of the training event where this is going to happen. So I'm in a room alone with this instructor and she's interrogating me. And so I was like, I really didn't want to get hit. And I was like, I just, I'm like, I don't really want to deal with this, you know, So I was like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to like, try to reverse psyop on this lady if I can. And I don't know if what I did actually worked, but I will say so. Basically she was, she was interrogating me. And so I just started getting her like, really deep eye contact and just kind of like mellowed out and was like, hey, look, you know, I hear what you're saying. Look, I just want to, I just want to take care of my guys. Like, I'm not trying to, you know, be difficult here. I don't know anything, you know, but like, you know, here's what's going on. Blah, blah. She's like, well, here's information I can confirm. I'm like, yeah, I hear you on that. But, but like my squad, but like, but like, but the thing was I, I, I just, I just, I like, I just made like really, really deep eye contact with her. She like gets up in my face and I just like just stare like in her eyes. And she never Hit me. She never hit me. And so when. When Sear training was done, we were doing this. We had. We were doing this big debrief, and there's. I think there's 40 or 50 of us in the. In the class. And so at the. At the end, the instructors are just randomly assigned five or six students to kind of debrief and go through, like, how the. How the whole training event went. So right before that, though, the lead instructor, he goes, maddo, where are you at? So, like, here. Right here. And he goes. He's like, instructor, so. And so I forget her name. She wants to. She's going to debrief you. And so I was the only guy in the class who got debriefed by my instructor, like. Like, personally. I was the only one who's selected personally to be DeBrie. And so I go to debrief, and then I see her, and she's, like, all dolled up with, like, makeup and everything. And I was like, oh, my goodness. I think she likes me. I think that's what's going on here. And I was like, I think that's why she wants to talk to me. And I don't know. So we go into the room and we talked down. She was very professional. To be very clear. She's very professional. There was no issue. But I was like, like, you know, but. But she was like, no, no, no. Yeah, I'm sure you weren't looking down. Yeah, so she. No, so. So she just walked me through debrief, and she's like, I want you to know, like, I selected, you know, I wanted to talk to you because you did a really good job, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. Thanks. And I was just like, all right. Then I got out of there. But, yeah, it was. I thought you got out of there. No, no, no. That wasn't interesting. What do you mean you got out? I wasn't interested.

[A]

You weren't interested?

[B]

Not in the slightest. I wasn't.

[A]

Turning your own?

[B]

No, no, no, no, not in the slightest. So I was like. It was. No, it wasn't. It wasn't good.

[A]

You're, like a good guy.

[B]

I try to be. I try to be some demons in them, but, yeah, so I so, so got out of there. But it was definitely, definitely funny. So I don't know. I think. I think I made my instructor get a crush on me or something, and so she didn't.

[A]

Yeah, deep eye contact could do it, bro.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Soft little list.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, listen, I'm saying I'd love to help you.

[A]

I'd love to. I'm trying, I'm trying.

[B]

I'm trying to help you.

[A]

How I can help you. Help you help me.

[B]

Yes, exactly. That's my, that's my sear school experience right there. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So they, but there's some ones like I'll talk to guys and you know, they'll have been in the teams or something for Delta or whatever for 10 years and then they'll be asked like, hey, come do this your school. Like, I don't really even understand how it works because there's guys who have been in there forever and then they'll have like a special one for them and it goes a lot farther and they'll do crazy bury them in a box or stuff like that. You were never asked to do that.

[B]

Yeah, so I want to be like really clear too. So my time in the seals, I was just, you know, a regular seal. I wasn't at Devgru, I was at Delta. I wasn't like a, like a, one of those tier one dudes. So like when you, and, and so when you are in one of those units, there's this whole different level of you because those guys are on a whole different level. They're operating at an entirely different pace. An entirely different level. Like those are the dudes. Beeper goes off, they're doing the Hostage Rescue 24 hours later kind of thing. Right. I was never in a unit that was, you know, that was like that. So we were just a normal SEAL platoon. You know, you do your, you do your 18 month workup, you deploy somewhere for six months. During that six months, you're on call, you know, or you're doing operations or you know, training with local forces.

[A]

Let's not. That's also not under. You're being humble.

[B]

Well, but it's, but, but I understand like those guys. Yeah, those guys are, you know, I get a whole different level. So yeah, there's these other different levels and of stuff because those guys are, you know, I think, I think in protect in particular, some of the guys who do like plain clothes operations, they're sort of acting, you know, they're, they're in some really squirrely stuff. So they got to be, you know, really ready to resist any kind of interrogation because they're really, really hanging it out there operating solo or let's with or with just like one or two dudes.

[A]

What was your favorite part about being a seal?

[B]

This is, this is a really dumb answer. But it's the first thing that pops in my head. I really like. I really liked flying around in helicopters. That's a really silly answer. I. I really enjoyed the helicopters, but actually, in reality, my favorite part of being a SEAL was when we got to deploy to Afghanistan and, like, do the job. That was like, that's. I was like, yeah, this is what I signed up to do. Let's go. Let's go crush some bad guy souls. And love that. I love that aspect of the job when I actually got to do it. But also, you know what, we talked about it last time on the podcast, too, when I had the, you know, I did my. I did my minimum time and then got out and started doing like six years or something. Six years and four months. Yeah. Six years and four months.

[A]

Oh, bro.

[B]

Yeah, it was definitely. It was interesting.

[A]

That's. I mean, this podcast has been around for five and a half years or so, and that feels like a lifetime. Six years and four months doing that kind of job at that level. And like, even, like, we've laid out even the training, there's so much that goes into that, so much mental fortitude stress that they have to put you under righteously so to be able to get you to pass and get in there, and you have to learn every single possible thing so that you can effectively be at the tip of the spear and then go perform like you did out in Afghanistan when bullets are flying. I mean, it's. It's something that no one in my seat and nobody listening right now, who hasn't lived it can ever fully comprehend. You know, we can understand some of it just based on how you guys explain it and show us, but, like, you can't know what that's like until you're forced to, you know, go through that 12 month, 18 month, whatever it is, process and then actually get out there and do it.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I, I always say, too, the. The best decision I ever made was joining the, Joining the SEAL teams, and the second best decision I ever made was getting out.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So it was a. It was a. It was a good experience. I'm glad I did it. It set me up for what I do now, which.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. Even beyond, though, the fact that. And we're, again, we're coming back to Burma. Don't worry. But, like, you know, even beyond the idea that there are so many literal things that you take into what you do now. Like, don't you think being a SEAL could qualify you from, like, a Mental fortitude standpoint to do goddamn near anything in the world. I mean, you put yourself through the hardest situations and you have to have a brain up there too. They're not high, they're, they're not the guys who are making it. I'm not saying every single guy. There is a 1600 SAT guy, though you probably are. But like, you know, these are people that can process things very quickly and make decisions. Which is probably the most critical thing you can have for success in the world.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And, and it's, it's, it's also interesting too because you look at the, you look at the selection courses and there's always this question of nature versus nurture. There' question of are you selecting guys who already have this particular skill set and this aptitude or are you developing that aptitude in individuals? And I think it's a little bit of both, honestly. I think it's mostly guys who already have the aptitude. I think that's probably 80% of it. And then I think what it does is it gives guys the opportunity like the, the stress, you know, whether it's like, you know, in any of this, in, in any of the selection courses, Rangers, Seals, Green Berets, whatever, it's like they're putting everybody under so much stress. But it gives you the opportunity to see if you're one of those dudes that can, you know, that can push through, that can, that can, you know, have that mental fortitude. And then you continue on past what you thought your, what you thought your boundaries were. And so now you start to develop an even higher level ability to be resilient, to think on your feet, to, you know, to suffer, Suffer in silence, as we would say. Sure. In the teams. Yeah.

[A]

Outside of the obvious things like new worldviews, understanding what the rest of the world looks like when you go to the most dangerous places and seeing battle, like the very high level stuff. Outside of that, what would you say about yourself being in the SEAL teams change the most about you, whether that be from a personal perspective or like a personality perspective. What was, what was the biggest change to happen as a result?

[B]

I would say, I would say I had this level of confidence that I didn't have before. And so I wasn't, I wasn't a person who had a lot of self doubt. I, you know, I was fairly competent at whatever I did in high school. I wasn't the smartest kid, I wasn't the dumbest kid. I wasn't the worst athlete, I wasn't the best Athlete. I was just kind of middle of the road and you know, so, so hearing, you know, about the, about the, about the SEAL program or hearing about all the stuff or guys in combat and all this stuff, you always wonder how would I react if I was under fire? How am I going to react if there's, you know, bullets landing between my legs and, you know, and guys are getting hit and stuff and, or how would I react to going through SEAL training. So when I, when I showed up to SEAL training, I actually didn't think I was going to make it. I didn't think I was going to make it. I had no intention of quitting, but I just figured they were going to kick me out. I just figured like, okay, this is like so elite. There's no way a guy like me, just sort of middle of the road dude, is going to make it. Again, I had no intention of quitting and I wasn't, I wasn't being, I wasn't feeling sorry for myself. I was just. I know I need to, I know I need to pursue this or I will never be able to live with myself if I don't. And then as I, you know, as you're going through the, as you're going through, through buds, there were, this is, this is a true story too. There were three guys who I really looked up to and they were guys with great work ethics, great attitudes, they were in great physical condition and really hard working guys. And I really looked up to them and I was like, okay, those dudes are for sure gonna make it. I'm just gonna try to emulate them as much as possible. So we get into buds. We're in like the second week, so we haven't even got to hell week yet. We're in the second week. And so every time somebody quits, you have to take off your helmet and you line it up, up. Basically you line it up next to what's called the Grinder. It's basically a giant parking lot where you have to do a bunch of like push ups and stuff. So you have to line up your helmet next to all the other guys and like your name is on the, is on this green helmet that you line up, right? Well, we were doing, we were doing Grinder PT one day. So it's like, you know, just doing like hundreds and thousands of push ups and sit ups and all this kind of stuff for like hours on end. And as we were, as we were doing this, it's brutal. It's like the worst. They're spraying you with Water, you're covered in sand. You're like bleeding. You're like, back is bleeding because you've been doing so many sit ups on, on, you know, on, you know, like on the concrete. Right. Anyway, so I look over and I can see the names of all the guys that were there. And the most, the three most recent quitters were all three of those guys. Whoa. And I couldn't believe it. It was just so symbolic. It wasn't like they were scattered out between all the different helmets because there's dozens and dozens and dozens of helmets. All three of those guys were the three most recent quitters. And that gave me the realization that, okay, now I understand what this whole mental thing is about, because there's no reason those dudes couldn't have made it. They were much more qualified than me. And that's when I started to realize, like, oh, maybe I will survive this thing because I'm like, I'm still here and those guys aren't here now. I get it. And so to answer your question, like, what changed? When you go through, when you go through that training and you, and you, and you pass it, there's just this level of confidence that now you realize you know who you are and you've proven it to yourself. And then you go into combat that, and you prove to yourself that, oh, I actually do have the ability and the intestinal fortitude to hold my position when, when things are going really bad. And so, yeah, you just, you, you learn, you just learn a lot about yourself and then that hopefully gives you some confidence. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. It's a common pattern. I've heard from every Navy SEAL I've talked with. It's like when they get their day one whatever dude they point to that they're like, oh, he's these flying colors gonna make it. That's like one of the first guys that gets cut for whatever reason. Yeah, it's just that thing like, like the person who on paper looks the best, you know, it turns out to be like the 2011 Eagles. It's a dream team on paper, a nightmare on the field, you know, it just doesn't work. But it, you know, I had asked you this last time as well, but I asked every Navy SEAL when they come in here to give me, you know, the, the main mental thing they think people need. And I get a different answer every time. And it's always, it's always something interesting. I'm trying to remember what yours was, but I remember being like, like, damn, I hadn't thought of it. That way. I don't know about you, but I am so particular with jeans. When I go out, I want to look good, but of course I want to be comfortable. Which is why I love Rag and Bones jeans. Built in all different styles for all different occasions, Rag and Bones jeans are a must have for all you guys out there. From slim and straight to athletic and relaxed, Rag and Bones infused denim is a wardrobe staple that pairs perfectly with any outfit in whatever fit you prefer. What I like when I first put on Rag and Bones infused denim is how the jeans felt like they were broken in right away. They're not too loose, that they're baggy or anything like that, but somehow they're like an offshoot of sweatpants. And the quality is great too. In the past when I've been shopping for jeans, it's always been about choosing the ones that look great versus the ones that actually lasted. With Rag and Bone infused denim, you finally get both crafted with a proprietary eight step over dye process. Each infused denim piece has a rich dimensional color that gets better with every wash. The company spent the last 20 years obsessed with making jeans that get better with time. Their infused denim will last season after season and actually get more comfortable each time you wear them. Rag and Bone doesn't just make your go to denim either. They've perfected everything from buttery soft tees and elevated essentials to jackets and knits that pull your whole look together. It's premium wardrobe staples made to last and made to live in. So go upgrade your denim with Rag and Bone. For a limited time, our listeners are going to get 20 off their entire order using code Julian at ragmiddle-bone.com. that link is in my description below. That's 20 off at rag-bone.com using promo code Julian. When they ask you where you heard about them, please support our show and tell them I sent you. At the end of the day though, outside of like that thing, the most common pattern that every one of you guys talks about is like that ability to just be gritty and just take it and just kind of like, how much do you have it up here to just be able to be like, I don't need to go be Michael Jordan in this drill, but I better damn well finish the game like he does. You know what I mean? Like, I can't go to the bench and take a breather and. And there was that old speech. Maybe it was. Maybe it was McRaven who gave it. Okay, I might be remembering that wrong. Correct me in the comments. If I am. But he's like, don't ever, ever ring that bell. And he talks about the symbolic bell you ring like if, if you're quitting or whatever. And I don't know, that just always stuck with me. It seems like It's. The Navy SEALs are just a bunch of guys who just don't ring that bell.

[B]

Yeah. And I think, I think there's a, there's another. So there's two sort of interesting elements here. One is you have, you have these guys who are hyper, who come in hyper confident. And so actually this is one of the things that, one of the things that I learned about. There's an actual psychological phenomena where there's like a direct correlation between how confident somebody is and how competent they are. The more competent and better you are at something, ironically, your, your level of confidence modulates significantly. And so you're, you go into something less confident, ironically. And that's not to mean that you, that's not to say that you don't believe that you have the ability to do the job. Like you, you're not, you're not. There's not a lack of confidence because of your own competence. It's just you're unsure because you're like, okay, this is, this, you know, there's, I've seen too many things go wrong. So when you have somebody who goes in extremely confident, that is a, that there's like a direct correlation between that and them like having a lower level of, of competence. So for example, like at an elite level, you know, you have a, whether it's a sports team or, you know, Delta Force going on a hostage rescue mission, they are going to sit there and go like, yeah, we know we're the best, but this could go wrong, this could go wrong, this could go wrong. This could go wrong. And then they just, and then that's what they focus on, is mitigating all those things. And so when they do show up to game day or they do show up for that hostage rescue mission, they're ready for all those things and they're ready to adapt and they know they're going to get punched in them mouth. You know, the, like the bin Laden raid, they went over like what happens if the first helicopter goes down? And it did. Like, who would have, who would ever thought that the helicopter is going to randomly crash? Right. And they'd already gone through that. And so when you have guys show up to SEAL training, you have these guys that are overly confident. A lot of times it's the dudes who are the stud, right? And they might have a great work ethic. They might have, but, you know, whatever. But like, they are used to being the top dog. They're used to being the, you know, the jock at, in college or at school, you know, and they're used to being the top dog. And so when they, they have no idea what it's like to be at the back of the pack, running, trying to keep up, covered in vomit with their, with an injury, they don't know what that's like. And so then their confidence just gets destroyed. Whereas someone like me, ironically, it ended up being to my benefit that I was just sort of a middle of the road guy because I knew what it was like to, to grind. And it was like, yeah, I'm never, I'm never at the front of the pack. I'm always like, trying to catch the dude in front of me.

[A]

Easy, steady.

[B]

Totally, totally used to it. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. No, it, it makes like, like every time I talk to one of you guys, it makes total sense why, why you got to where you were. Like, it's just, it's. It's hard to explain. Like, there's all different personalities. There's different personality types and whatever, but that same kind of pattern of just kind of lasting through comes through for sure. But it's like, you know, you were saying this a few minutes ago, you can't know. It's one thing to beat down your mind in the training, to be able to grin and to grit and bear things and be able to take pain and all that, but you can't know how physiologically you're gonna react when you are actually on a real battlefield and real bullets are flying. And every person I ever talk to from any level of the military will tell you some version of you, find out who the guys are when the bullets start flying. And I think it's, you know, even at the highest level like you guys is, it's still the case because, you know, the stories you told last time about Afghanistan are some of the greatest told stories in the history of my podcast. I mean, it was just like we're sitting here like this, like, holy. And I'm just trying to imagine myself like, damn, F. From age 20, like, you know, in the middle of like 08 or whatever it was, or I'm sorry, 2011, 2012, Afghanistan, whatever it was in that area. Right when was 2014. Right. Okay. So things had gone even worse. Things had gone really south at that point point. And you just got people shooting at you from mountains and trees, and you don't even know where you are. You're fighting the geography as much as you're fighting the ghost. It's like you can't prepare yourself for that.

[B]

No. And there's. So you. You mentioned you bring up something very interesting, the physiological response to stress. So when you're. When you're healthy and, you know, things are good to go, you can train your mind for combat itself. Right. But I'm going to give you a really interesting anecdote. So last year when we did this podcast, you couldn't tell. Well, but the first, I don't know, five minutes of the podcast, I was like. I was having, like, this really weird nervous reaction. My body was physically reacting because the fact that the cameras are on me, and I was having this weird physiological reaction, which I didn't understand. And so that is where. And I'll explain. I'll explain what happened and, like, what I did to get over it. So I guess maybe six months, seven. No, six or seven months before I came on this podcast, I was in a. I was in a battle in Burma. And I don't know if we talked about this or not, but I was in a building that got hit by an airstrike and the roof got blown off. I don't know if we talked about this or not.

[A]

I think we talked about this, but I think it was off camera. I'm trying to remember.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I feel like we talked about this at the Eagles game.

[B]

Okay, gotcha.

[A]

Go ahead.

[B]

So anyway, airstrike comes in, blows the roof off of the building that I'm sitting in. Myself and a couple other my stronghold guys were in this building and it was a targeted. It was a targeted assassination. They knew we were in this building. They cut the cell phone. The Burma army cut the cell phone towers and they completely changed the attack vectors that all their aircraft were doing, trying to hold back the rebels. And they came in and so we didn't even hear or see the aircraft until the bombs were already going off. So anyway, so we're in this building. It gets like the roof gets blown off the top of us. We run out of the building, we jump into the trenches. Immediately, two more aircraft come in and drop bombs directly on the building building that we were just in, completely obliterating. And all my stuff was blown up. All my guys stuff was blown up. I'm barefoot. It just happened to be barefoot at the time because I started to. I was. Actually had a mild fever. And so we get out of the building, we're in the trenches. We have actually have a video of this too, of the aircraft dropping bombs on us. You can see, you can see the jets flying over us. Joe, maybe we can try to pull it up on Instagram. The strong, the stronghold, Rescue Instagram. I think we have that on there. But anyway, so I was in there and I remember at the time I was so calm. I was so calm. I was. There was almost no fear. The only thing that was going through my head was as these aircraft are coming and you hear, you hear the jets like screaming in and you know this bomb, this 500 pound bomb is going to hit somewhere within like 50 yards of you or maybe right on top of you. You don't know. And so as I'm in this trench, I'm literally just thinking, oh, I'm still alive because I'm thinking. I'm still alive because I'm thinking. And I was like, am I dead yet? Am I dead yet? It was just this really weird thing, but I was very to close, calm, right? So we finish, we finished that operation and you know, a few months later, you know, we're, we're back here in the States or whatever. But I started having these really weird sort of reactions to, to stress. So a normal, just a normal conversation with somebody, your stress level goes up a little bit. You're like, I want this person to like me. Am I gonna, am I gonna speak? Well, right? Just normal human being stress that you don't even think about. It doesn't even rise above the level of considering it stress. Right. Well, I started, mentally, I felt fine, but my body started to physiologically react to stuff. And so I think, I think one of the first times that I recognized something was off was actually it had been. It had been the couple weeks prior to coming on your podcast because I think I just finished up the, the Harvard summer program that I had just finished up. And then I was sitting here and I'm like, why am I. I started like sweating. My hands started getting a little bit jittery and I, I was like, what the hell is wrong with me? And I realized, only after I realized later that it was from. It was because this, this thing, I'd come so close to dying and I. And I didn't realize the physiological effect that was happening. So there's. There was this disconnect between the stress level that my brain felt and like the stress level that of how my body was reacting. And so when I was in school too, I'd be sitting in class and I would raise my Hand to answer, you know, to answer a question or whatever, whatever. And, dude, it was nuts. It was like, you would think I was in. You would think I was in a firefight with somebody. Because again, your stress level goes up a little bit. There's 50 people in the class. You're at Harvard. You're like, you don't want to look dumb, right? So there's a little bit of stress, right? Not much. And I don't feel that stressed about it. But my. My hands would start shaking, and my feet would shake a little bit, and then my voice would get shaky, and I would start talking fast. And then when I was done talking, there'd be, like, cold sweat on my face. I'm like, dude, all I did was just give my opinion on some geopolitical thing. It wasn't even controversial. Like, totally normal. There's 50 other people that are raising their hand, too. And I realized something was wrong. And so one of the things I did was. It took me. It took me, like, months to try to figure out what to do. Like, what can I do with this? And it took me. It took me a while. What I eventually started doing was every morning for about two months, I got up and I went into the shower, and I put the water as cold as it would possibly go. And with no, you know, no, like, you know, sort of easing into it, I would just jump right into the freezing cold water with freezing cold water on my face. The cold. The coldest I could get. And I would do that every morning. And I would just sit there and I would hold. Hold for two to three minutes, just sit there and hold with freezing cold water on my face, on my back. And I was just fighting the, like, sort of the physiological response to the stress, and that actually worked. So a couple months later, after, basically after. After a couple months, I started realizing when I was going into conversations or things, my hands stopped shaking. I stopped getting all nervous. Like, I started. I stopped having this physiological response to just basic stress, you know, to basic stress. And so, yeah, ironically, it was the. The cold water helped me sort of reset that and just train my body.

[A]

That's like the only thing that was.

[B]

That was the thing that I did. Because, you know, for me, I. You know, I have my. I have my faith, so. And I have a wonderful family. And so, like, my life is really, really good. And I knew it wasn't necessarily a mental thing. I was like, it was just a physiological thing. And so I was training the physiological stress response. And the cold water worked, worked amazing.

[A]

I'm glad it did. You know what's. And I want to watch this video in a second, too. It's just really. You know, when you were here, when you first came in, like, yeah, you. You did have some nervous energy, but that didn't stand out to me. Like, a lot of times when people come to do this, especially, like, you know, you had done Mike Ritlands, but, you know, I think at this point, it was like you knew you were going to start doing a lot more of these. So people started to think, like, oh, is my story going to be good enough? Which, by the way, it is. But I didn't really think anything of that. And then we were talking afterwards, and you were great, and, like, felt like. It almost felt like you. You had kind of let a little bit of a weight off your shoulders. Like, all right, yeah, I can do this for a few hours. That was easy, as, you know, and. Which is like, a really good feeling for me, too. So I didn't think anything of that. You know where I did think something, though?

[B]

What's that?

[A]

At the Eagles game.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But I. I was wrong. I thought it was, like, a lot of you guys, like, the Tier one guys and some of the intel guys, you're so into your schedules and controlling it and everything. You know what I mean? Just from the world you're in, especially when it comes to flights. And I knew you had a flight that day getting out of Philly, and you were thinking about the traffic and all that and whatever. At least this is what I thought.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I could see when we got up into the box, and it's more of a constricted space, and there's like, 35 people in there, 32 of which we don't fucking know. You know, I could see you, like, nervous about stuff, but you kept talking about you, your flight, so I just figured, oh, right, yeah, they get like this. But was that a little. Still a little bit of that? Like, probably.

[B]

Almost. Almost certainly, yeah. And also, my wife was pregnant at the time, and I was like. I was like, I'm good. Like, I'm just. I kind of want to get home. I think it was. The other thing, too, is I was. I was. You know, so I'm doing a master's program at Harvard, and then, like, on a weekend, I'm, you know, doing a. Doing a trip or whatever. Right. So that's. So, like, I had no rest. I had no soft little.

[A]

He goes to Harvard home.

[B]

I used to. I graduated, graduated. But yeah. So. So then. So like, yeah, I wanted to get home to my wife. I wanted to get home and rest. And so I was burning myself out. And that was one of the things I didn't realize. Like, so you talk about confidence from the. From the time in the seals or whatever. Well, that's great. But sometimes. But then sometimes you can get overconfident, and so you. You start to. You start to think like, oh, I can. I can do this and this and this and this and this. But in reality, you can only do two or three things. And I was. I was just doing too much. But, yeah, also my. My body was not handling the stress well, and I was like, what is wrong with me? Why am I so stressed out? Out? And it was just because, like, I just. I just had this residual combat stress, which, luckily, I was able to deal with with cold water for the most part. Yeah.

[A]

All right, I got another question about that, but let's see this video first. In this video, just to be clear, for our YouTube reviewers out there, this doesn't include actual bloodshed.

[B]

And.

[A]

And by scene, right?

[B]

There's no. There's.

[A]

You guys have that on the right.

[B]

You can scroll down. Let's see if we can find it. I. I think we have it on here. And we'll keep going down.

[A]

Keep going down, by the way. Everyone go follow Stronghold Rescue. We'll have that link down in the description so you can check out what they're doing.

[B]

You can go just a little. Look, you just go a little slower for me. Sorry. Thanks. No, you're good. You're good. Keep going down. Keep going down. Okay.

[A]

Some dudes in the trenches got some of the. And some of the videos I'll see from. Because you guys really show it, too, on other videos.

[B]

Yeah, keep going. Keep going. You know. Sorry. Yeah, there's a lot of. A lot of injuries here. Jeez. Well, I haven't looked at our Instagram in a while.

[A]

Who. Do you have someone manage this, I imagine.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, we're gonna keep going down here.

[A]

Good call having this on camera, too, Joe. We'd be getting demonetized. Every scroll.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, he's got it off camera.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah, we're gonna talk about this in a few minutes. Obviously, to go through this, but all people have to do just for. I'll talk while we're looking for this.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Is go to an Instagram like this and see what Efren's been posting. You know what. What Stronghold's been posting for years now to be. It doesn't take a genius to see we got a problem here, Joe.

[B]

Yeah, sorry. We definitely passed it and this is too far back. I think we have it on here. My apologies to everybody.

[A]

Is it.

[B]

If we don't.

[A]

Does it have the I thing on it?

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

All right, I'll tell you what, we'll pause for one sec, we're gonna find this video and then we'll be right back.

[B]

Back.

[A]

All right, we're back. So long story short, you have a, a video you can now put on social media so people can see it. Cuz apparently we, we, we must have missed that.

[B]

I could have sw. I would have been a million dollars that we had already posted. Okay, yeah, we're going to, we'll post it before the episode comes out so people can go to stronger rest.

[A]

So just, just so I can get the image again. One more time. This was a few minutes ago. It was an airstrike that was coming in. You could hear it coming from far away. You didn't have any intel that this was going to be coming a few minutes before.

[B]

Zero chance.

[A]

So you just heard them coming. You're like, oh, that's sounds dangerously close.

[B]

Well, no, no, no. So I was in a building. So, so the rebels were trying to clear the Burma army out of a, out of a, you know, this, this city. They were trying to clear them out. And so we were providing medical support and frontline, you know, frontline support for those guys. Not quite frontline. We were a little bit farther back, but medical support and the, my, myself and two of my guys, we were in a building and we were kind of hunkered down because it was kind of a lull in the fighting. This was like a multi day, ended up being like a multi month, month operation. But so we're just sitting there. It's totally quiet. So imagine it's, it's as quiet as sitting here in this room. But then all a sudden a bomb goes off and blows the roof off of the top of the, the, the room that we're in right now and it blows out all the windows. We all just so happen to be laying down, taking a rest at the time and I was actually starting to get sick. And so this bomb goes off and then we hear the aircraft. So the bomb goes off. Boom. And then we hear the aircraft, aircraft flying over and we're like oh shoot. Like, you know, because we had always been able to hear the aircraft coming beforehand and we always had early warning from, from people messaging us. Well what had happened was the Burma army found out from people who were fleeing the city that there were. That we were in this particular building. We found this out later. And so somebody called the Burma army was like, hey, there's white dudes in this building. And so what they did, the Burma army shut down all of the cell phone towers for the entire region and launched three. Launched three aircraft. And they. And they did an entirely different vector, attack vector. So that way any of the lookouts or whatever wouldn't be able to tell us that there were aircraft coming over, radios or anything. So everybody's cell phone stopped working. No radio calls. First thing we knew about these aircraft coming in was that the bomb was going off. So we run outside, we jump into these trenches. It's like, maybe 50 meters away from the building. And then that's when I. I pulled out my phone and just literally, I put my head down, just put. I just put my phone. Just faced it straight up. Just faced it straight up and was like, all right, let's see what happens. You know, they'll know how I died.

[A]

And, like, content.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got to get the content. Yeah.

[A]

Gary v. Gary Vee said content. We're gonna get the content.

[B]

And then I didn't post the content. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah. So, like, I. And it just so happened, like, the. One of the. One of the jets comes over. You can see it come over. You see that? You see the jet. The bomb goes off. You can see the blast from it, like, goes right over top of us. And, yeah, it was as we got hit. Yeah. Three times.

[A]

Now, here. Here's the thing. And. And how long did that last, those three hits?

[B]

It's a matter of, like, five minutes. Like, not even. It's like three minutes. Maybe that's longer than I would have thought, even. Yeah, it's. It's. It's.

[A]

But you're just hunkered down, like, praying that, you know, you can, like, suddenly go like this and be like, oh, I'm alive. Yeah, yeah, kind of deal.

[B]

That's it.

[A]

So time is. Is kind of.

[B]

Time is irrelevant, right? Yeah. Which is very, very strange. And that's why I was saying I was. Was. I was thinking, okay, I know I'm not dead yet because I'm still in this trench, and I have the ability to think. It was very much. I think, therefore I am, was literally what I was. What I was, was. Is what I was experiencing. But I was very calm, and I was like, oh, that didn't affect me. I was totally fine.

[A]

Were you doing anything to kill time, like counting in your head or something like that.

[B]

Nope, just breathing. I was just like, no, like, all right, let's just. You just got to sit here and take it, you know.

[A]

Well, this is what's so interesting about this. And then how it had had you later learned in the coming months that it was having physiological effects on you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's not like you hadn't been through things like this before. You had been with bullets whooshing by your head, you had seen bombs go off, you'd been shot in the leg by ISIS and kept moving. Which that video is insane. But you know, like, for. That's what's so fascinating that even someone who is quite literally a hardened warrior like you, you can go through all this in your life and then just one random one happens and that's the one. It just kind of sets you off. And it obviously like, luckily you were able to get control of this, but it did something, it changed something about you. And you had to like, look inward and be like, holy, this is affecting me. So just goes to show you, you can't ever, it would, it would seem, get numb to any of it. No matter how much of it you may do or may see. It could just be that one where you're like, like, well now, now the dominoes fell.

[B]

Yeah. And it's, it's a whole different. It's a whole different animal. I think it stacks up over time. I think there was just this realization of, I don't know, just this thing where it's like, man, that was so close. I should be dead right now, but I'm not, thank God. And, and so it, it took me, it took me months to figure out the whole like cold shower thing that would, that would really help me sort of reset physiologically. But I had another, I had another incident. So during. So during the summer or, sorry, during the, during the winter break, Christmas break from school, I. I did a one month deployment to burn this past one. Yeah. Yeah. So just in December, so I was there in Burma again working with the, working with the guys. And I was, I was maybe I had like an hour and a half, like hour and a half, two hours left before I was going to start my journey back home. Right. So I missed Christmas. I was working with the front line, these dudes. I wasn't at the front line. I was a little bit farther back.

[A]

Back pregnant wife at that time.

[B]

I've got my wife's pregnant baby's. Baby's due in just a few months. And so I'VE only got a couple hours left there at the front and I'm gonna leave. Well, as I'm sitting there, we hear this noise. And of course a bomber shows up. A Burma army bomber shows up and it circles our position for an hour and a half and it just circles all around us. Us. It's flying right over above us. It's flying all around the area and it randomly drops these salvos of bombs. That's anywhere from like four to six bombs. So like, we'll call it five bombs. It drops five bombs at a time. So it's just for an hour and a half. There's just this sickening sound of. And then it flies right over you. You hear it and then it's. And so anyway, so I'm. I'm in this. I'm in this trench myself and my interpreter. There's a very low chance. I mean, there's no way they're going to see us. They can't see us. But it's all, it's all luck of the draw. You just have no idea where they're going to decide to drop those bombs. Or like in the jungle. In the jungle. Like, they're not going to see us. So I'm laying in a trench in the jungle and with, with my interpreter, I'm listening to the sound and again my hands started shaking and I was like, dude, like, again I was like, there's something wrong here. But this one, this time it was a little different. And as my hands are shaking, all I could think about was like, I just want to meet my daughter. I just want to meet my daughter. Like, that's, that's the only thing I care about in life is meeting my little baby girl. That's all I care about. And that was like the. All that was what I fixated on. And that's not necessarily a. A good thing. You might, you can't, you can't be fixated on that. When you're in a, when you're in a war zone, you need to be focused on the mission. You're gonna be focused on the job. You got to be cold as ice, right? Because you got a job to do and you got a function. Function. But yeah, I, that was, that was what was going through my head. And I thought, oh my goodness, like, I, I have, I have something to lose now. You know, I'm also too. I just gotten married during that, after that bombing had happened. So it's like, I think that also affected me. It's like, oh, I've got a Wife to take care of. I've got, you know, and then this, you know, this December, it was, oh, I've got a wife and a baby at home, or, you know, I'm gonna have a baby here in a few months. And yeah, so that, that definitely changes everything about, about how you see the world and about, about the risks you're willing to take and, and all that. So, but yeah, it's very, very interesting, all the handshaking and stuff. And that's, and that's when I got back to school. So it's kind of funny. You're, I'm like literally laying in a trench getting bombed in like the third world country.

[A]

How's your winter break, dude?

[B]

Exactly, exactly. So I get back to school, everybody's in class. I was like, oh, how was your winter break? Like, oh, it was great. I went to some homeless on my family for Christmas and like, oh, I went to, I went to Costa Rica and went surfing and like, oh, that's great. What about you? And I'm like, I, I, I just traveled for work.

[A]

You were, at least you weren't the dick that's like, you kids know nothing.

[B]

Yeah, no, I'm way past that about this world.

[A]

I was laying in a trench.

[B]

Yeah. I don't think I told anybody. I might have told like one or two like, close friends, sort of what it, like where I'd been. But I just was like, yeah, I was like, I, it's, it's not even worth trying to explain. It's just I was like, yeah, I had to travel for work and, you know, and that's sort of what I, I, that's sort of what I said. But yeah, it was this, but it's so weird like, going from. And that's sort of how I see my job in my role in life currently is I'm in the trenches with literally the, the poorest of the poor people who are, who are, you know, being exterminated, who are being hunted, literally hunted. And you're with them while they're being hunted. And so you're being hunted too. And you, you don't have anything to shoot down those airplanes. You got nothing. And it's my job to connect those guys then and those people. Like, so the third world, connect them with the first world. And it's like, hey, we have security. We've got, you know, we've got financial stability here. And it's my job to basically to connect those two worlds. And so it's, it's, it's been, yes, it's it's very interesting though, because these juxtapositions.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Where it's like, yeah, you're laying in a trench next to dude, next to a guy that, you know, yeah. Just is, Is extremely poor, but he's just an awesome dude. And then, you know, three days later you're back in the United States and like, nothing just happened.

[A]

But it's also, you know, you can relate to that from a lot of things you did in the seals, but especially like in Afghanistan where you're, you're going out there with the teams, you're also relying on the people in the villages who are under the thumb of the Taliban. You're relying on, you know, some freedom fighters or people representing the quote, unquote, new government to fight back against this thing that's still happening there. And, you know, you come from totally different backgrounds and experiences, but the end goal, at least for the people on the ground, I won't talk about the suits and offices in D.C. but for the people on the ground like you, the end goal is the same as it is for those people, you know, because they're trying to free their land and you're trying to help keep them free.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, so it's, it's like these basic human things in the worst situations can bring you together. And I gotta tell you, I had in, I had in the reaper.

[B]

Oh, Nick.

[A]

After you.

[B]

Oh, that's great.

[A]

That's my guy.

[B]

He's nice.

[A]

One of the coolest guys ever. You, you would love him, but humble as could be and like, you know, his episodes especially, we did two while I was here. The second one went crazy. And, and it's, it's, it's not because he's the most charismatic storyteller, teller. Like, he's a good story. He's a really good storyteller. He's very matter of fact and very like, under underselling of what he does, but people can see, they're like, wait a minute, that shit's crazy. And to him, he's like, yeah, no, there were a few guys out there really doing some cool.

[B]

I was just helping him out.

[A]

But, you know, I, if, if there were people out there who wanted to make like a cross section documentary of just like the back and forth of you and him telling a story from your perspectives, him being a Ranger, you being a SEAL in Afghanistan, like, that would be an amazing ju. Position from those two episodes because you can see just how crazy it got and how much you guys were forget like, tip of the spear you guys were kind of, in some ways, when you're coming into that era, once we get five, six years past nine, eleven, and everything's focused on Iraq, where went south, it's like Afghanistan started to become this free for all, and you guys were like the last line of defense, keeping that. Keeping that thing in check. And I. I don't know. It's just. I did that. I did that one, I did yours, and I did Daniel Corbett's, all within, like, two months of each other. And you guys each saw Afghanistan from a different perspective, and I. I don't know, I just get chills thinking about that because it was so insane and so underreported here at the time. But you lived it.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing about war. It's. It's. It's very difficult to understand from. From the outside. It's. Sometimes it's. I guess it's also very difficult to understand from the. From the front line as well, you know, being the tip of the spear and like. And anybody. Anybody who's taken. Anybody who's taken bullets is as. At the tip of the spear in my book, because it's like, yeah, you're. You're there. You're doing that. You're doing the damn thing. Yeah. And so it's. It's. It's. You know, it's. So I had a cousin of mine, she. She. She said. She said. I wish. She's like, I wish I could understand, like, what you go through and, like, what. And what you've. What you've done. I wish I could understand. And I just said. I was like, I'm glad. I'm glad that you can't understand, because if you did understand, that means that we didn't do our job. That means that things have gone horribly wrong here. And so there's this fine balance of, you know, of people supporting the troops, you know, sort of giving them the benefit of the doubt, like, understand that they're in these rough situations, but at the same point, you know, educating yourself on, like, what's going on in the world geopolitically and making sure you kind of understand so you can. So you can, you know, vote accordingly, making sure that you're voting based on, you know, based on the best information that you can find and stuff. So, like, this stuff does matter. Your voice does matter. It's important for you to understand it. But it's good that the average American, in my opinion, isn't sitting there obsessed and knowing all of the crazy details of every bad thing that's going on in the world. It's like, you know what? Just, just, you know, support the guys who are going to do it. But also, don't, don't feel bad. Don't, you know, don't feel bad about the fact that you don't understand it or that you haven't been in there or that you haven't seen it. It's like, that's a good thing that you haven't been there, that you haven't seen it. But just, yeah, just listen to the guys who have been there and let them tell their story. And to your point, with Afghanistan, you have, you could have 50 different guys on, you know, talking about the war in Afghanistan. You're going to get 50 entirely different experiences because is, it's, you know, you read a book about Afghanistan and It's like, oh, U.S. troops over the course of these few months, you know, occupy these areas. It's like, it's one sentence, but there's like, dude, that's like thousands of guys having these life changing experiences in each of those sentences. Each, each word is a, each word is a book. And then there's 50 other, you know, stories to be told.

[A]

Yeah, crazy, man. And that's, I'm, I'm really grateful. One of the things we get to do in here, I have on a lot of different people, but I'm very proud of, over the years we've gotten a good little subcategory in there across the many categories where we have guys like you and Reaper who have come in here and given like the oral history of what they saw on the ground. And I, I don't know, I, I take a lot of pride in that because it's like, and there's some other podcasts that do an amazing job with that. Obviously, like, Sean Ryan's done unbelievable content on that because he literally lived it as well. So it's a whole nother level. But you know, when people are looking back on this time, you know, 100 years from now, 200 years from now, know, it's cool to me that they'll be able to hear these stories on places like this and be able to understand like, whoa, I didn't know it was like that there. I wonder what was, what the bigger picture was. And you start to like, I sit here and I piece it together when I hear each of you guys, because you don't, you know, unless you listen to all the other podcasts, which, you know, almost no one does, like, you know, you don't know what these guys said or where they were. And then I can make sense of it, like, wait, he was over there and that was happening that year. And then he was there and that was happening. That. How do we get from there to there? It's crazy to me, but you start.

[B]

Seeing all those patterns.

[A]

Do you ever get like a little cynical that, and I don't want to put words in your mouth here, so feel free to give whatever opinion you have. But do you ever get a little cynical that maybe when it comes to foreign policy in particularly, there seems to be a little bit of a uni party holier than thou system where people who have no experience in most cases just decide to make decisions that guys like you are going to have to pay the, pay the price for.

[B]

Yeah. So I think one of the, one of the interesting things about our governmental system, if you look at it, is so if the President, let's say, let's just take the President, for example. So the President, if he wants to do anything regarding policy in the United States, you got to go through, you got to go through the lower house, you got to go through the upper house. And it also, it can also be challenged in the judiciary. So there's, and you know, and then you got to sign off on it. And so it's like it has to go through all these checks and balances to do any kind of decision. Right. When it comes to foreign policy, there's not nearly as many rules. The President can, for example, just say, like, hey, we're going to leave Afghanistan in five minutes. And you're like, well, we need more than five minutes. And he's like, well, too bad. Get it done. You're down to four and a half minutes now. Let's go. And you know, one individual can make a decision like that. And I'm not sure what the solution is. If there's, if, if you necessarily should have, have. Congress has to approve every single foreign policy decision. I'm not really sure what the solution is there, but that just goes to show, like, think about the absolute disaster that can happen on foreign policy and that's what day to day life would be like if we lived under a king or under a monarchy or a dictator or whatever. And so that's, that's one element of it that there's, I think there's, I don't want to say there's too much power that the President has to make foreign policy decisions because I'm not sure the solution is to run through Congress. I don't know. I haven't thought about it enough. But I will say it there, there's a, there's an American mentality because of just geography and culture and where we live, where we don't really think too much about the rest of the world. Like, so, for example, if you're a European, you have a very similar culture to American culture, maybe a similar language, similar values, but you're hyper aware of all the other countries because it's, you know, you're so close and you're just surrounded by 50 other countries. Right. And so your history and the way that you think about the world is entirely different. And the relevance of what happens in other countries is so different. And so when you're an American, a lot of us, we don't really think about it. You're like, well, who cares what happens in East Burma? Like, what does that affect? What does it have to do with me having dinner here tonight? And that's a tough question to answer directly how it, you know, how it directly, directly impacts people. But, but so, so there's that. There's sort of this indifference that we have kind of to the rest of the world. We think about, okay, Canada and Mexico, but it's just a cultural thing. It's not a nefarious thing. But then there's, there's also this. The other side of the coin, though, is that because we are the most prosperous, you know, powerful nation in the world, and I believe morally, I would say, yeah, morally superior in a lot of ways to these other, to these other dictatorships and these other systems. It's like, yeah, we're morally superior to China. We're morally superior to Russia. Absolutely. And certainly like Burma and these places. And so there are, you know, so there's this debate. It's like, do we, do we use our power and our influence to help these other countries? Do we use it to pressure them into, you know, pressuring them into doing what we want them to do? It's like, are we being imperialist or are we being realistic here that we have to have, you know, we have to project US Power. My personal opinion, as it stands today, and things can change, obviously, situation to situation is like, I think in general, it's good for the United States to project power, not aggressive power, but stability type power. Where we are, we're going into places we're not allowing criminal elements to, to take hold. And let's say it's a country or, you know, for example, I really believe that we should be involved in, in assisting the armed groups that are fighting against the Burma army. We can get into that a little more as well.

[A]

We will.

[B]

So I think that the US Has a moral obligation, in my opinion, to go help people who are trying to live free, who are trying to. Who are trying to, like, live in peace and who are being oppressed, who are being attacked. And I think we have the. I think we have a moral obligation to help them in some way. Now, that doesn't mean that we go in and we invade and we take over their countries and all this stuff. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying we use, you know, we use once what. Like, once USAID is, let's say, restructured, let's say we restructure it properly. Right. But, like, the idea of, like, using, of using a mechanism like that to invest and build up these other places, it would have. It would. You can sow peace and prosperity in a lot of places. You don't need to put US Troops on the ground. It's good for America because that opens up a lot of, you know, economic opportunities for us and it builds friendships and stability all across the world. And make no mistake, stake if, if you have. Okay, so you, you might not want to be playing the game where you say, like, I, you know what? I don't even care. I don't care what Russia and China are doing. Like, I don't care. Like, who cares? It's like, I'm not going to go hunt them. I'm not going to go fight them. It's like, well, dude, they're hunting you and they're coming for you whether you want to or not. Like, whether you want to realize it or not. Like, China and Russia, like, would love to. Just. Would love to see America fail.

[A]

And not necessarily, like, like, aggressively just throwing a bomb at you either. I mean, you're talking about all the other ways that they do this quietly.

[B]

Economics, we're talking about Belt and Road initiative, all this stuff. And that also comes back to Burma as well. So, you know, like, if you stick your head in the sand and you say, like, well, I don't really care what happens overseas. It's like, dude, make no mistake, they're coming for you. Like, they, China and Russia want to destroy us and want to see us again. Like you said, it's not necessarily that they want to drop nuclear bombs off us. What they want to have happen is for us to become a weak power so they can continue to, to exert their influence all over the rest of the world. Right? And so I think that we, as Americans have a moral obligation to hold back those dark forces. And that sometimes means that you got to make friends and allies with people that you might not necessarily get along with or you don't really like, hey, we're not super, you know, hot on this. Or it might, you might be now operating in a place that most Americans couldn't of, you know, couldn't point out on a map. But it's like, this is important because we're trying to prevent a war, you know, let's say five years from now, or we're trying to prevent these guys from enabling the Chinese to come in and build all their infrastructure. Because now this place, like, now we can't even work here. We can't be friends with these people. Maybe not friends, but we like, we can't, we can't work in these locations because all the infrastructure, all the communications infrastructure is built by China. Right. And so there's this, there's this long term geopolitical game that has to be, that we have to play. So my, my personal opinion is I think, you know, each situation is different, each country is different, but I think we need to project our power in, in an effort to create stability and prevent the next war or delay it as long as possible.

[A]

All right, There's a lot on the bone here. And, and I do want to see this come back to Burma, because that's fascinating, that, that could be like a, like a piece to this puzzle, a road map that gets to an estuary to the river, if you would. But you said a lot there, so let's, let's bite these off first. It's refreshing when I get to hear someone like you comment on this because you are, you have actually been the guy who, you have to back up the actions with words and opinions because you get sent to these places to do this stuff. Even in retirement now you're literally on the front lines doing stuff.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You were a Navy SEAL. You're not like Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi or whatever, who's just like in a office somewhere riding out their paycheck to trade stocks. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So there's a huge difference there. The second thing is the USAID stuff and the soft power stuff, I'm with you. I see why it's so necessary. Unfortunately, human nature across everything that's ever existed, this is just the way it works, is that anything that starts good eventually slips down the slope and gets bad. And that's what we saw happen with usa. So instead of, of using soft power to make sure we buy we buy off the right diplomats in Hungary to avoid a problem with Poland that then would not have, you know, reverberating effects in Russia. We're paying for transgender operations. 10 grand a pop in Uganda, you know, Ugats for what? Right? So, like, obviously it gets out of control. Mike Pence has been in here. He was the guy, like, blowing the whistle on that, like, talking all about that. So I. I get it.

[B]

You said Mike Pence. Yeah. Former vp.

[A]

No, no, Mike Benz.

[B]

Oh, Mike Benz. I thought Mike Pence. Yeah. Okay.

[A]

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Where the is Mike Pence these days?

[B]

I haven't heard from that guy.

[A]

Yeah, I guess he's not.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But anyway, so this guy, Mike Benz.

[B]

Oh, he was on Rogan talking about usa. Okay. I. I listened to his episode on Rogan.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was on Rogan twice, on Ryan twice. He's been on everything. But he came in here a couple times this summer and was really, really good. And like, like, he's with me too. He's been the one screaming about it, but he's like, I do think there's a space for something like a usaid. We just have to get control of it. But you know, when. When you think about the reverberating effects, what you're getting at here, the main point that was standing out to me and what you just went through there is the line between military industrial complex and isolationism. And I'm one of these guys where I need the answer right here. And what I mean by that is, I don't like the military industrial complex. You're saying, war, war, war. Blackrock will rebuild. That's. And it's terrible. It gets us involved in stuff we shouldn't. People die in the middle of it. I don't even care if they're not from here. Like, these are people around the world. And that's how I view it. I. I get sick when I look at the numbers. And that's what they are, the numbers on the page. They get reported from Ukraine still, where people are just getting shot over what? You know what I mean? I think that's crazy. On the other hand, I do my best to be a student of history. I know you do. So, you know, you. You probably knew this long before I did. But, you know, I've read some books last year, and I was very unaware of sentiment in the United States in the night in the late 1930s, in particularly. And what I mean by that is, prior to December 7, 1941, we were rabidly Isolationist. And I understand this too, by the way. I understand where it comes from. We had had World War I. It was horrific. It's one of really like the overlooked parts of modern history in a lot of ways. And then we'd had the Great Depression and people were like this, I get it. But it was so bad that Franklin Roosevelt knew in 39 when Hitler, you know, because you have to remember Hitler had the fastest growing GDP in the world. He was about to be the biggest GDP in the world. So that does matter, right? You know, it's not like he had the GDP the size of Italy. You know, he could really do something with what he was building. He knew that we had to get involved. But he had an election on November 5, 1940, and his opponent was running to the isolationism side, and he had to match him there. So much so that while Britain was getting the shit bombed out of them and Winston Churchill was begging him basically, basically for like a used condom to help out. I mean, he was asking for the lowest stuff. Roosevelt was like, I want to help you, but like, we're going to lose. We're going to get crazy isolationists in here if we don't, because we're going to get voted out. So ironically, we have to be isolationist. Good luck, buddy. And then suddenly, boom, Pearl harbor hits. Everyone's like, let's go to war. Right? Because it takes that kind of event. And so when you look at this, this, I see a lot of the same patterns of isolationism now, and I fully understand where they come from. I'm sick to my stomach over how Ukraine, Russia's been handled. I'm really sick to my stomach over how Israel, Gaza has been handled, the funding and the proxy warfare that goes into that. But people not, you know, my question for you is how would you calmly. I don't know if that's the way to say how would, how would you sell to the average American right now who's very. War exhausted, righteously so that there could be situations where it does require us to do something? And no, that doesn't mean we're being imperialist. Military industrial complex. How would you express that in a way that maybe the average person could understand?

[B]

Yeah, so first and foremost, I would say that, that each situation has to be handled entirely different. There's this. There's this idea, whether you're talking military industrial complex, where the answer is always war, war, war, or the isolationists where it's like, oh, who cares what happens in Uganda or whatever, right? That doesn't Affect me and, you know, my job. I, I, those, those are the two extremes. And, and in some cases that's true. Like, in some cases that is true. Like, sometimes it's like, yeah, we got to go to war, like to get some stuff knocked out. Sometimes it's, we just got to stay out of this because it doesn't really affect us. So, but, but the reality is in most situations, it's a lot more complex. So for example, when, when I look at a, just, let's just say a general foreign policy, this is like my general foreign policy as of, as it stands right now would be if we do, if we do need to get militarily involved in, somewhere in, in some place, right? Which I think this is. Okay, hear me out. I think we should actually get more military involved, more militarily involved in more places in the world. World. But we should do it in small, in small ways. And what, what I mean by that is you send in a special operations task force and you build up the capability of the locals over time to stand on their own. Right? And so this is, and so you can do that in multiple places. Let's say in Africa, we could do that in Burma, all these different places. This is a way to counter the Chinese and the Russians and, and other nefarious forces, destabilizing forces. That's a way to counter them, them with guys that really want to go and do this, first of all. So let me say, like the special operations guys, they really want to go hunt bad guys, to be clear. And so it's, it's a small group of people that actually want to go do this job and you do it in such a way to where we're not going to go fight your wars for you. Let's say if you're a foreign country, like, we're not going to fight your wars for you, but we're going to build up your capability now. Now, with that being said, we also couple that with proper, let's say, USAID program. So we're going to come in, we're going to help provide, provide a little bit of stability. Mostly your guys, right? It's 10 of your guys and one of our, you know, 10 of 10 of your guys for every one of our guys, let's say, right, militarily, let's some sort of operation fighting a terrorist group in your country. And then we're going to help come in and let's say stabilize with some infrastructure, some schools, some roads, whatever that might be. And again, this is just a general idea. And I think that that would be a good use of military power in specific locations for limited amounts of time in ways where there's a very specific objective. The objective here is to make sure that hopefully, let's say within the next seven years, this country can completely stand on its own. Let's build up their capability. We do that kind of a little bit already, but we just, we completely, I don't know, we like almost like half asset to where the point where it's just not effective. It's like, no, we need to actually go in and do this. Use, use both. Right now that should be, that should be used in just in the extreme case places. Now in the, in most cases, I'm a big believer in the projection of soft power with usaid. Right. So go in and make friends with these countries and manage the money and manage the resources that you're putting into these places in ways that, where it's not going to be corrupted, it's not going to be siphoned off by the government. And it requires a lot of attention. It requires a lot of attention to detail. And there's going to be situations, there's going to be times when people mess it up. Right. But I think that is one of the best ways. I'll give you, I'll give, actually, I'll give you an example of this perfectly. Because the USAID stuff was cut around, around the world. So again, I work heavily in Burma. The, the local, like resistance guys that were fighting against the, the Burma army and the, and like the, and their governments, these, these tribal groups, they actually came to me, one of the tribes actually came to me and they said, said they were just having a conversation. They were like, they're like, we might have to talk to China. Like, we do not want to talk to China. They're like, we do not want to talk to China. We do not like China. We like America. We love America. We fought with the Americans and the British during World War II, but they're like, we are dying here. And now there's all this aid was cut for these refugee camps. And so now, like, we don't, you know, we're not sure what to do. And now we have no support coming in anywhere. And we're like, we're, we're really struggling here. And so they just were having a conversation. They're like, we might have to just go have a conversation with the Chinese knees, baby.

[A]

Out with the bathwater kind of thing happened.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I'm like, oh, my Word, this is. And I was like, don't do that. Like, do not do that. You cross that line, you're going to have real problems in the future. It's like, hold. You know, hold. Do your best to. To hold what you got. Like, don't, like, don't go down that path, because once you go down that path now it's. Now you're going to have some real problems. And, you know, the US Is never going to come help you now at that point. Right? And so they feel, you know, they feel abandoned. You know, the thing, the thing that the guys always say to me every time I leave Burma, it's the same thing they say, don't forget about us. Don't forget about us. And that's what they always say, because that's the last thing on their mind or that. That's. That. That is the. That is. That is the. The main thing on their mind as I'm leaving. Their last thought is, I hope this guy doesn't forget about us. Because they feel so abandoned. Right? So that's a perfect example of a situation where, you know, usaid, soft power, they do not want to deal with the Chinese. They do not want to deal with the Russians. They want nothing to do with them. But they're like, well, well, if I talk with the Chinese, my wife might not get killed tomorrow, so maybe I need to have that conversation.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Listen.

[A]

Yeah, I get.

[B]

Yeah, I get it.

[A]

I get that completely. And this is what. This is an amazing example. Yeah, I guess this is how it ties back. How Burma ties back to. Okay, this is what you were getting at. All right, this is good. So people are always going to do what's in their own best interests. And also when it's quite literally life and death, I would expect nothing less. And that's what they should do. So if, if. If 1. If they have their mouth open to be fed by one hand and that hand is taken away, they're gonna go find another hand that has food. And that's essentially what you're saying has happened here. And I say, baby, out with the bathwater. Because. And this is. And to Mike Benz's credit, by the way, he and I have had this exact conversation. He's had the same concern, to which then people out there will be like, oh, he must be controlled opposition. Like, no, this is exactly what we're talking about. Like, how do you. How do you set up a system like. This doesn't have to be called usa, right? Let's say we just fucking make a Whole new office somewhere else, someone else runs it, other the whole new team. But we're setting it up from square A, trying to make it good this time. How does something like that get set up up and not get taken advantage of by, let's just say, the underbelly of the bureaucracy, which is always going to exist. There's always going, whether it be people at CIA, people at State Department, people at the Pentagon, what, insert blank here. There's always going to be some people that their hand gets access to the cookie jar and they take the cookies that they want while you're not looking. How do you set it up so that you can minimize that?

[B]

Well, so I'll say this, the founding fathers, they even said that the U.S. i'm going to butcher this quote, but they said the US Constitution was made for a, or the US government system, whatever was made for a moral and religious people and it is wholly inadequate to the governance of any other men's unbridled passions or whatever, you know, will break through our system like a whale through a net or something like that. Like there's this, there's this quote, I forget what it is, but basically they were saying there is no system that you can build if the individual person is immoral, if the individual person is, is unethical. There's, there's nothing, there's no system you can do that would build it perfectly. So that's one. So what do you do? Well, my answer is you deal with, you deal in the world of incentives. When people are going to be a little bit immoral, you start dealing with the world of incentives. And so, okay, let's, let's look, let's look at how China does what they do. So they have this Belt and Road initiative. They go do all these infrastructure projects all around the world. That's how they exert their influence. Their. China doesn't go around and sponsor refugee camps and water projects to try and get people to like them. What do they do? They go in and they say, hey, we're going to do, we'll invest in infrastructure with you. So we'll help you build these roads. It's like it helps you build your, you know, it helps you build your economy. But guess what, like, we're happy to do that too as China because, well, we make some money too. So you guys are making money? We're making money. Traffic's flowing because we got this new road and bridge. And don't get me wrong, there's all these different cases where these development projects haven't worked. But so my point is, I think a, A, a better way to do it would almost be sort of the Chinese model where you go into a country and we say, hey, you know, we have these US Investors and US Investors can choose whether or not they want to get involved in a particular project. And we're like, hey, we're going to come in and help you develop these roads, we're going to help you develop these schools. We're going to do that stuff. And you, you know, you make some kind of deal to where now it makes sense for the investors, it makes sense for that country. You work out some kind of deal where you do like the, that and then now you're able to actually project some soft power, but you're using, you're using the power of, of money instead of just giving it and then it just goes wherever. Because like these, a lot of. There's a lot of corrupt politicians that will take it.

[A]

No.

[B]

Or there's a bunch of bureaucrats that'll, that'll, that'll shift it over to wherever. But if you have an actual business deal going on, it's like those, those, those ev. Those, those evil greedy capitalists will make sure that the dollars go where they're supposed to go go. Because they're like, hey, I'm personally, I personally, you know, JOHN Smith INVESTOR from Wall Street I personally want to see this project happen and I care about it and it makes economic sense. And so, because the, because the other thing with the, with the bureaucracy where they start dishing out money is they'll put it in places where it doesn't make sense to do it because there's no economic incentives. There's none of, none of that stuff is in place. And so I think there's a way to sort of basically do, I guess you could call it impact investing. That would make a lot more sense sense. And so is that gonna be perfect? No. Is, Is some guy, is some billionaire in the US Going to be able to, you know, sponsor a road in the middle of Africa and make some money off of that? Yeah. And it's like, is that evil? No. Unless you're absolutely ripping the people off and the road is, is crappy, but it's going to be, it's going to be allocated astronomically better than if you just sort of start throwing money hand over fist to, to people who, you know, their, their, their country doesn't work for a reason reason. And it's usually because corrupt corruption in the culture and corruption in the government. So the last Thing you want to do is hand them a whole bunch of money. Right. It's like a drug addict, the last thing you want who's, like, who, who's hard up for money. What's like the last thing you want to do is give him a bunch of money.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because what he's gonna do, he's gonna buy a bunch of drugs. It's. He's not going to use it well. Right. And so this is, this is a way, in my opinion, to. To actually be able to project that power, help these people out, build friendships. But it benefits the United States, which is great. And it benefits them, which is great. And deals don't get done unless both sides are, you know, happy with it. And then you still do have the aid stuff, you know, from time to time as well.

[A]

If we're gonna look at this in practice, that, that includes looking at it in places that are wholly unpopular and at least asking the question to explore it. So, I mean, people are gonna freak out when I say this, but, huh.

[B]

I'll make great content. I'll make great content.

[A]

Effectively, you could make the argument under what you're saying that deploying BlackRock to Ukraine to rebuild all this shit that we just paid to destroy effectively makes a country that is between Asia and Europe and on the border with someone that we don't view as a friend, a client state economically in a way that supports. Supposed to be friendly because of that, while using some form of soft power that got there through hard bodies falling on the ground. But that's neither here nor there. Point being, afterwards, when it's done, an American company comes in to rebuild that. It is a little belt and roadie.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's, there's an argument to be made where. So I don't know if. Are you talking about an actual deal that was, was made.

[A]

Okay, can we pull that up, Joe, just so that I'm not talking out of my ass. BlackRock rebuild Ukraine deal.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Yeah, let's pull this up on the screen just so that we have it right, and then I'll let you do a riff on it. That's an investor document. Wait, wait. Actually pull that up for one sec. Just the headline. Zelensky BlackRock announced new investment initiative to rebuild Ukraine. Yeah, that'll do.

[B]

Okay. Okay. There we go.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, I love how they put the picture of Larry Fink in front of a World Economic Forum. Him image. That's so reassuring. Excellent. Okay. Yeah. What date was this, Joe? Do we have it? Because this was a while ago.

[B]

Does it show right down at the bottom?

[A]

Yeah. This wasn't like, yesterday. The epic time. Okay, here we go. Yep. Can we get the date? Oh, yeah, Mike. Ben's taught us this cool trick so we never have to pay for a page again.

[B]

Is. Yep.

[A]

It. Unbelievable. This page was last archived nine months ago. Here we go. Okay, so this was. Yeah, this was 1228. 2022 was the original. Was the original date that this was published. So point being this, you know, that was eight, nine months, ten months into the war.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Where they were already talking about, hey, here's how we're gonna rebuild it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I. You know, the optics aren't great that it's blackrock, but. Yeah, thematically, I see where it would tie into what you're saying. I just wish we weren't funding another at this point. Three years of this for a hundred, 250,000 more people to die in the meantime.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just to get there. That's where it gets very corrupt. And it's like, you know, I. From. I understand the world's not a perfect place, and sometimes you. You gotta squeeze some lemons to make lemonade, which means you gotta play ball with people that. That probably not going to heaven.

[B]

Yeah. Right way of putting it.

[A]

But if the. I guess it's a mathematical thing where if doing that has a percentage greater good than whatever the alternative is that makes you avoid doing that because you feel bad about doing that, then you swallow your pride and you do it.

[B]

Yeah. And I think. I think there's also a reality here where you're. You're dealing with. With. You're dealing with war. Have you ever read Machiavelli's the. The. The Prince or.

[A]

I have not read all of it, but I. I have read that book.

[B]

I've read some of that. Yeah. So there's a. Basically, the whole premise of the book is just all these different. It's. It's a. It's. It's what they call an amoral book. It's not saying what's right or what's wrong morally. It's just saying this works. If you want to go into a country and take over, you got to do this. You got to get rid of the leader, or maybe you keep the leader, but you got to keep the people happy. Whatever. Whatever. Right. So there's. So it's just. It's just an amoral book. Talking about. That's just the reality of. Of this kind of stuff. And so my point is to. I'm basically just saying reiterating what you just said, which is that, yeah, there is a, there is a harsh reality to this stuff and how it works. And it's, it's tough because, you know, we have our, we have our morality, we have our values, and we have to stick to them as much as we possibly can, right? But there comes a point when you're in war and you're, or trying to rebuild from a war or whatever it is, and, you know, the ground gets gray and you got to do the lines get gray and you're like, I don't know if this, Is this the right thing? Is this not the right thing? But the important thing is to try to do your best to try your best to stick with the ethics and stuff. But the problem is that, you know, okay, so for example, right now there's the negotiations about like, Ukraine, Russia, ceasefire stuff. Morally, Morally, Russia shouldn't have a single, you know, a single square mile of, of Russian or of Ukrainian territory. Morally, like, that doesn't belong to them at all. Like, go home. Get the hell out of here. That's, that's Ukrainian land. In reality, the Ukrainians do not have the ability to push the Russians off, right? So are they compromising? Are like, are the Ukrainians compromising? Are they sellouts? Are they weak? Are they corrupt? Because they, they're making a, they might potentially make a deal to give some land to Russia. It's like, well, they didn't give the land to Russia. Russia stole it. But at some point you're like, well, if we can't get it back, we can't get it back, right? And so it's like, is there some evil cabal of corruption going on there? It's like, no, dude, it's like, it's, people are trying to deal with these really, really complex situations. So also, and then talking about, like, the, the blackrock, you know, rebuilding thing, you know, I'm not familiar much with, with BlackRock. I hear the name pop up all the time, but I've never actually, like, read about them or anything. So my, my, my ignorance here is.

[A]

I'll send you.

[B]

Okay, just send it to me. But my, my point is the general principle of. Okay, so if it's not BlackRock that goes in to rebuild an area, it's like, okay, well, who else is it going to be?

[A]

It's Jang Wu.

[B]

Okay, it's going to be Jane Wu. Exactly. Or it's going to be some other investor, right? And it's like, I, I, I don't, I don't think necessarily that there's this. This, you know, cabal of nefarious people trying to, you know, trying to intentionally start wars just so they can make a bunch of money. I. I think that has happened in the past. I think that there's cases to be made, and you certainly got to pay attention to it. But I. When I see. When I see, like, what goes on in, like, geopolitics, it's not. It's not that much different, in my opinion, than what I see that happens in interpersonal relationships with people. Like, relationships between countries is, in my opinion, is not that much different than what happens between. Between two different people. It's like, okay, oh, let me guess. There was a miscommunication. Oh, let me guess. Your values weren't aligned. Oh, let me guess. You both want this same thing. Okay, all right. Well, yeah, like, that sounds like. That sounds like an argument with your, you know, with your friend or a regular person. And so my point is, is think about how. How difficult it is to sometimes get along with somebody that you don't want to get along with. Maybe, maybe you work a job and you're like, you're stuck with somebody that you absolutely hate, right? But you got to, like, you got to work through it. You got to make it happen. Well, the same thing is happening on the international stage. So that's one. One. The other part is never attribute to this statement I've heard is like, never attribute to mouse, which you can attribute to stupidity, right? And it's like, in a lot of cases, like, that's what's going on. People are just. They just really dumb and. Or. Or they. Or it's ignorance. Like, they just don't know what the right decision is. And it's really easy in hindsight to go like, oh, well, these guys shouldn't have done this and they shouldn't have done that. And, you know, in 1940, Churchill should have done that and, you know, whatever, blah, blah. Right? But it's really easy to do that in hindsight, but it's very, very difficult in the moment to make quick strategic. To make quick strategic decisions.

[A]

The reason people get really uptight and upset about that line. Never attribute to malice. What can be explained by stupidity is, in my opinion, not because it's necessarily wrong, it's because it's overused. And this is an argument I have with Andy Bustamante all the time, who will take the government line on a lot of these things and shoot down any conspiracy or anything.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Not all of them.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You know, there's some that he's. That he'll talk about that. I feel like people probably don't give him enough credit for that. But there's a bunch where it's like, all right, dude, I get it. Like, you're still working for him. But what I always say to him is, I say, Andy, a line like that basically gets to use percentages. And that means you can say, yeah, 99% of the time it's just stupidity and not malice. And because that number is so large, that means that every time something comes up, you can be like, yeah, this is part of the 99. And never give that 1%, never explain. Because if you look on the Internet now, fucking everything's a conspiracy. And I know that's not the case. And sifting through that, sometimes it's like, guys, all right, touch some grass. You know what I mean? But does that mean that like something like Epstein, which is so clearly a conspiracy, is not. Of course it doesn't. That's absolutely conspiracy. It's being covered up by everyone, including the current President, United States. It's like, you know, you can explain something like that away by saying, nothing to see here. This is just stupidity, not malice. And I think that's where people out there, and you'll hear it in the comment sections, I'm sure, and I understand it, they'll be like that. Like that's just what, that's what the status are going to say. And, and that's not the lane you come at it from. All, like at all. You're working on your own out there. And it's not like you came from the intel world or something like that. You were a Navy seal. It's very different.

[B]

Different.

[A]

But a lot of these other guys who, who do come from those worlds or come from Washington D.C. and work in these think tanks and stuff like that. When they use the lines like that, I mean, can you understand why people are like, wait a minute.

[B]

Yeah, no, I, I totally get that. That's fair. And again, I'm not really in this online world. Online space with that for you. So. But the. So to your point that 1% of time. And this is where, this is where you, you can't write off what people are saying. Saying, Right. So, like, you're going to send me some stuff about blackrock, right? I'm honestly going to go into it with the attitude of, I don't know, I have no idea. You might be 100 right? You might be 100 wrong. Yeah, I have no idea because I've. I've Heard the name, I've heard the name Blackrock and Larry Fink, usually in a negative way, but I, I've never looked into it. Right. And so this is where it's important to have an open mind and look at the different facts. Like so. It's so funny. It was, I don't know, five, six years ago. My. My uncle, he was. He was like, yeah, man, they got this island, they got kids out there, you know, these underage kids and like these, these, these, these, you know, these politicians, they're going out to this islands. This guy called Epstein. And I'm like, dude, I'm like, all right, okay, Uncle. Like. Like what? Like, like, what are you talking about? Like, that's insane, Charlie. Yeah, yeah, we lost him. We lost him, dude. And then like all this stuff started coming out and, and, and so then I actually went and went down the rabbit hole and I looked at it and I was like, oh, my goodness. Yep, he was 100% correct. So I learned very early on, anytime, like one of these conspiracies pops up. If there's even an. If there's even like the slightest amount of, like, okay, there's. There could be something legit here. So you gotta, you gotta immediately go. Instead of, Instead of having an opinion right off the bat, you have to immediately go, I don't know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna jump in and go like, yeah, 100% agree with you, but I'm not gonna be like, no, no, no, no, that doesn't make any sense. No, no way. Until I've actually looked into it. And because, because the, the. The repercussions of getting it wrong, even that 1% of time are so disastrous and are so horrible that you can't, you can't ignore it. Right?

[A]

And that's the thing. It takes a lifetime to build up a reputation of trust. It takes one second to rip it all down.

[B]

Just to rip it all down. Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

You can do a lot of things right, and then if you do something, something so provably wrong. It's just human nature. That's what people hone in on and focus on. And sometimes very righteously so. And I think that, you know, like, probably pretty much everyone out there. There's a part of me that views the world as pre covered and post Covid. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we saw all the things that happened there. And so I get it when people are like, I can't trust any of it these days. I try to play middle ground on some things and say, like, like, again, like, don't throw a baby out with the bath water. All right, so, yes, all these people here lied. Let's. Let's be very wary of anything those people ever say again. But, like, all these people over here who maybe knew less about that or weren't really a part of it, that have a lot of other great ideas. Let's not just throw out all their great ideas because of their title, you know, like, there has to be some reasonable nature there. But I get it.

[B]

It.

[A]

You know, like, even look in pop culture. Like, you see the attacks Joe Rogan was subjected to, right. About stuff that he was largely right about. I'm not saying he was 100 right, bro. He was a lot more right than wrong. And the people that attacked him were very wrong on almost everything. And then they would lie to attack him. And, you know, he's putting out shows every day and it's coming up in different ways and whatever, whatever. And so when I see him after, I thought he handled it with the utmost class, by the way, and was like such a good example of not freaking the out at people and yelling. But he's still a human being. So when I see him have some stronger opinions now on other things that he wouldn't have had four years ago, sometimes I'm like, man, I wish. I wish you would just look at it like a little more balance. But as a human being, I'm like, like the. Am I to say how I would think of that? Because I'd probably be doing the same thing. Like, all these people were saying that, well, them. They must be wrong about this too. Yeah, it's gonna happen to all of us. So, you know, we're living more and more in a world now post Covid, where that is a trap you can fall into. So how do we not. And that's why we're having this discussion, how do we do something like a USAID or something like that where we actually keep a lot of the decent things and like, whoever the. These actors are who get in there through the back door, we kick them the fuck out.

[B]

Yeah. I think one of the most important skills in life is, is they come hand in hand. One is being willing to say, I don't know, and also being willing to say, I was wrong. So, for example, we earlier, we were talking about confidence and overconfidence, and this is a perfect example of. Of. Of that sort of overconfidence versus confidence stuff in. In. In play. So the wiser somebody is, the more experienced they have. They're going to go. You want to know what? Yeah. Sometimes These conspiracies are 100% correct. Oh, my gosh. Like, I had no idea. And, you know, maybe whatever, eight times or nine times out of 10, it was total baloney. Right? But they, they go into it with a. This is what I was talking about where, like, your confidence level goes down in your opinion, because you're more competent. Does that make sense? So you go in and you're like, like, I don't have strong, confident opinions about Black Rock and Larry Fink because I've never looked into it. I've never looked into it. So I can go into it. And I'm like, like, let's. Let's see. Let's see what's up. I have no idea what you guys are talking about. And so, but that comes from the experience of, oh, my uncle told me about Epstein island, and I thought he was a nut job. And so I'm like, oh, yeah. But then. And then there's also like, you know, the. All the COVID stuff that happened and like, the lying that happened, and you're like, yeah, you got. You got to at least look at it without getting, you know, too dogmatic about it. Because then there's all the, you know, there was a bunch of, like, I don't. Was like QAnon was like a thing for a while. People were. I don't fully understand what that ex. That whole thing was about either. There was like, some, like, cabal of generals who were going to choose the president. And I was just like, what is like, what is this about? Like this. No, this is silly. You know, so it's like, some stuff is true, some stuff's not true. And so it's. It's a, it's a. It's a mark of a mature mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. I forgot get who. Who came up with that quote. But there, there's somebody who said that. I think it was one of the ancient philosophers or something. But yeah, you have to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it if you're going to ever find the truth. And I think that that's such a. That's such an important, just life skill because there's so much. Especially in the. Where we live in the age of information and especially with AI and everything now, you know, you look at. I think this is another interesting thing too. So AI is gonna. AI Right now, everybody's using AI to create content for the Internet, right? And then AI uses content from the Internet to create its own opinions. So we're about to look at this giant. Over the course of the next few years, we're gonna like the. All of the world is just gonna be the AI commenting on AI, on. On AI written articles. That's literally what's going to start happening. And so all these things like. So I don't know what. I don't know what that's going to cause. Certain ideas are just going to get doubled down. I was like, no, we have 57 sources that say such and such. Such. Well, it's because 57 sources went to chat GPT and wrote an article about whatever, you know, from one source, from whatever. You know what I mean? And so, like, I think that's going to really do. That's going to change. It's going to change the nature of truth. And it's going to. Or not the nature of truth, it's going to change the nature of how people can see truth and whether you're going to trust it. Like AI is going to use AI to come up with its own opinions in the future.

[A]

It reminds me, Joe, I. Tell me if I'm getting this right, the old Bo Burnham video about reacting to the reaction and then the. Reacting to the reaction of the reaction. And then we. Where he keeps making these videos where it's just like. It's just like. Sorry, I have your mic off. That's it.

[B]

No, yeah, that's it.

[A]

All right. So it's like just a reaction loop.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But now it's AI.

[B]

Yes. Yeah, that's exactly.

[A]

That's actually kind of scary, though.

[B]

Yeah. And it's like, what are. What are the implications for that? Now truth is going to be. I think there's going to be a much higher premium on truth and reality, and it's going to be a lot harder and harder to find it because it's just going to. It's all gonna. It's gonna feed itself.

[A]

One of my favorite things that I've been able to come across and doing this podcast for hundreds and hundreds of episodes now is when I have in people, obviously we're here for three hours. Sometimes people are here for six hours. If they keep going and we do two episodes. And it's like I'm oftentimes bringing in people who are an expert on something. It could be an expert on their own story because that's why they're here. Or it could be a, you know, a journalist who's an expert on this topic here, whatever it might be.

[B]

Be.

[A]

And one of the Things I respect the most and I've stated publicly to certain people on camera, and certainly a lot off camera is when I ask them a difficult question that's in their lane and they say things like, you know, I don't, I don't know, or they're, they're humble enough to say, I used to think this and here's why I got better evidence and I think I'm wrong about that. And unfortunately, the Internet often, and this existed long before I was, was on it, making content. The Internet has created this world where we like to incentivize people. Saying you, you change your opinion or you, you know, you didn't know about, you need to know about this. You're supposed to know everything. But I think that we, over delta or whatever you would say, the effect of comment sections versus the average person listening. And I think a lot of that, what I've learned over the years, especially when things like this come up, is that a lot of the people listening, listening have also shared my respect for people who, you know, in the course of a three hour conversation have, have the balls to be like, you know, I'm not sure about that. Now someone's saying I don't know to every question, then maybe they shouldn't be sitting there. And that's my fault for putting them there, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But when you're talking about a million subject matters and intricate questions and things like that, the idea that someone just off the top of their head is going to have the answer to everything is kind of ridiculous. And so I, I like to, I appreciate that, you know, someone else was actually pointing that out on my podcast, like that idea. And it's, and you know, it's not just me doing it because I always like to reassure those people on that when that's happening. I'm sure listeners out there have heard me do that because it's like, we need more of that. We need, we need a little bit more, you know, humble, like, hey, things can change or information can change or information may be beyond what I've looked at on the Internet because, because, you know, people now have to make 60 second vertical videos where they tell you every thing that's happening and what they think about it and why they're right, because that's what they need to feed the algorithm today. And I don't think that's healthy.

[B]

It's not healthy. And that's why I was saying too, there's going to be, there's going to come a point online or wherever, maybe we're sort of. There already is where there's going to be a premium on truth. There's going to be a premium on real non AI generated ideas and thoughts because people are going to, people are going to get lazy. They're going to continue to just use AI to come up with all their thoughts and opinions and everything. And I think there's something deeply human about being willing to admit that you're wrong and hedge your bets a little bit too. And that's why I said too, we were talking about like my sort of my take on foreign policy a little bit. And I was like, as it stands right now, this is my idea. And I say that intentionally as it stands right now, because you want to know what, in five years, years, I'm probably going to have a slightly different view of foreign policy, if not wildly different. Right? And so it's, it's important to, I think one of the most important things is to, is, is you have to be willing to admit that you're wrong. But it's also, it's not even just about being willing to admit that you're wrong. It's not even just about you as an individual. It's the only way that you can find truth. It's the only way that you can find truth. A scientist will never discover, will never make a scientific discovery if every single time they do an experiment it doesn't work and they won't admit that they were wrong. Like they, it's never going to work, right? Like you look at these, you look at like the scientific method and they're, and they'll do, they'll do fifty, one hundred, a thousand whatever iterations of some kind of thing putting two different kinds of chemicals together to try to try to finally get something to work. And. But it's like, it's obvious. It's like, well, that didn't work, right? But we as human beings, instead of going through a thousand iterations or additional information or looking for additional information, we go, go, well, yeah, this is what I think this is. This is my first hypothesis. Therefore, the scientific method says this must be the truth. And it's like, no, dude, that's probably not the truth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it takes time. And then this brings up another thing too. It's in life, trial and error is the rule, not the exception.

[A]

Trial and error.

[B]

Trial and error is the rule, not the exception. In every single thing that you do, whether you're, you know, you're trying to find a spouse, you're going to date multiple people till you Find your spouse. Whether you're starting a business. Like, one of the things that you look at entrepreneurs, I forget the number. I think it's like six or seven. But most entrepreneurs start six or seven businesses before they have an actual business that works. And it's so over and over and over again, you're going to develop opinions and ideas and things, and you have to be willing to shift and change, because the only thing that's certain is that nothing is certain and that you have to. That you have to keep being willing to evolve over time. And so that's why trial and error mirror is. Is the most important thing. And it's okay to hold opinions and say, like, I. I truly believe this. But you gotta also, if you're, if you're a competent thinker, you also have to sit there and go, Maybe there's that 1%, maybe I'm wrong, right? And that's why you gotta go like, hey, maybe I'm wrong. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think, I think it's refreshing to your point, when people say, yeah, I was actually wrong about this. This was my opinion. Here's why I thought this. Like, when was the last time you heard a politician go, hey, you want an old. What, 18 months ago? I said this on a podcast, right? I said this on a podcast. I was promoting this idea, and I was wrong. And the reason I was wrong is because I was thinking A, B and C. I realized, you know, X, Y, and Z was the reality. So I shifted over to here. And here's why I truly believe this. Think about how much you would respect a politician or a president or a senator who came out and did that. You would go, okay, now I can actually trust what you're saying, because all the other stuff that you're saying, you actually really, truly believe you're not going to double down and go like, you know, because every time there's a scandal with the politicians, like, oh, we meant to do that. Yeah, yeah, we meant to do that. And it was, you know, it was. This was. Yeah, this is the. This is the thing. And like, or no, that didn't happen. That didn't happen, you know, or somebody else made a mistake. They always come up with some way to. Instead of just going like, yeah, we messed up, somebody hacked our Twitter. Or, yeah, I tweeted this and it was stupid. But instead of saying that, they're like, oh, we got hacked on Twitter, the Chinese hacked our Twitter. And it's like, no, he didn't. You know, so that that sort of, of thing. But just be willing to admit that you're wrong. That's the only way to. That's the only way to grow. That's the only way to live.

[A]

Absolutely, man. Well, you mentioned, you mentioned in there. The idea is very interesting to me of like AI in this age now building on top of AI to create a circle of loop on information based on AI, which creates a potential infinity loop of untruth where, you know, one thing that's wrong grows into a whole tree of wrong. And people don't even realize it because they don't know where it came from in the first place. It's very scary to me. But also from a, a, from your perspective, still being on the front lines of things, how, how much do you know about or have you looked into how much AI is threatening to change warfare?

[B]

So I haven't personally dealt with anything where AI was changing warfare in the, in, in real time. Personally, I know that it is. There's a lot of stuff that's being deployed in, in Ukraine, for example, like lots of new technology is being developed. Developed because of the war in Ukraine. Right, Everybody. So talking about military industrial complex here, there's actually a slight benefit there to, to, to the. Let me be very clear here. The war is not good. Right? But we're bad. War, bad. War bad. Developing technology to stop the next war. Good. So like, we're getting the chance to like try out all these new things and iterate really, really quick. So we're preparing for the, for the next war. Right.

[A]

And everyone works for Palantir, by the way.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. I do.

[A]

This podcast is sponsored by Palantir.

[B]

Sponsored by Palantir. Yeah. And Pfizer. So, so crap. What were we talking about before that? I totally just lost my train of thought.

[A]

I'm an idiot. I'm sorry, I shouldn't.

[B]

You're good.

[A]

It was a joke. But you were talking about how it's going to change. War is bad, but it's going.

[B]

AI is going to change. Yeah. So I haven't personally seen it used at all, but I've, I've heard of multiple use cases. So. So you feed all the information of a battlefield. The map, terrain, your troop numbers, your ammunition amount, the amount of fuel that you have. You feed all this information in there and then you, you could, you could have these AI programs. I know they're developing them. Where. Okay, what is the, like building a timeline of how quickly I can deploy my troops and how far they can go before, like Let me know when I need to do resupplies. How far can my, you know, my, my aircraft go? All this kind of stuff, and it can factor all these things in, in, and so you can build a much more you, you. So that way you have a much better idea of what your, of what your military is capable of. Right? So it's sort of like Sun's Know yourself, know your enemy. You'll never lose in a thousand battles. It really helps you know yourself because you can feed information into it, right? And then you can also use it to sort of predict maybe what the enemy is going to do. What the information that you currently have, you can ask a questions about, you know, like, what am I missing here? What am I, what am I not thinking? What pattern am I looking at at here? What, what pattern? What pattern am I missing here? So that's as far as like battlefield analyzing. That's one thing now going into the technology itself. So obviously drones are now like the thing and they're even like all over Burma now. It's crazy. So like jungle warfare with drones and stuff is going on. It's insane. And so now you can have autonomous drones that are going to much more accurately be able to identify targets and figure out where, you know where things are. And then they, they might be able to listen to sounds of gunfire. This, that. The other thing you might be able to analyze like, oh, that's a, that's an M16. Our guys don't use M16s. Our guys are using this. All right, so fly over here. So there's, there's a million different things are. I think a Ukrainian sniper just set the new world record for the farthest kill shot. I think it was. I saw this somewhere. I think it was like 4 km or something. Something insane. 4 km? I think so. I think so, yeah. Yeah. And I, I saw the headline. Saw that. I saw, said he used AI I don't know if this is true or not. I didn't look into it. But, but that's, that's another thing too. You can use AI you can put it, you can use that to build into the ballistics of these, of these weapons.

[A]

Ukrainian sniper claims to have killed two Russian soldiers with longest shot, longest ever shot of 2.5 miles. The sniper was part of the Privet Sniper, you, unit defending the key Ukrainian town of Pokrox. I definitely said that wrong. From advances by Putin's forces.

[B]

Yeah. Does it say anything about AI can you do a command F and see if the AI is in there? Yeah. Artificial intelligence. The second. The second. Sorry, the second line there said artificial intelligence. Right. The second. The record shot was. Was fired on August 14th with the assistance of AI using a 14.5 millimeter alligator rifle. Yeah, so that's. That's pretty gnarly. Wow. So, yeah, you can just. You can more accurately predict information and, and make better decisions. It's going to help the commanders, it's going to help vehicle drivers, it's going to help fighter pilots. It's going to help everybody because it just process processes information so much faster.

[A]

Imagine if the Reaper had AI in Afghanistan. We might have won that war.

[B]

That's all you do. That's all you need.

[A]

Like, four miles away. Got him.

[B]

Yeah, the, The. The frustrating. Well, not the frustrating thing, but the reality, though, is the enemy is going to use it, too. The enemy always gets a vote. So that's why there's these, These, These. These wars of, like, arms races, right. Where you're trying to, like, outdo the other. The other person. I've seen it over the last, you know, three, four, five years in Burma where the. The rebels started using, like, very basic drones, and then the Burma army started using drones and they started coming up the jammers and like, so the. So then the rebels started using drones that could go up higher, above the jammers, and they started getting even better jammers. And then now, and it's just this crazy arms race where there's just like these giant drones flying around, like, dropping bombs, and there's jammers and stuff everywhere. And it's. It's just. My point with that is just technology totally changes.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

The game. Yeah.

[A]

All right.

[B]

We.

[A]

We've been talking about Burma a bunch today, given a bunch of previews, but let's get. Let's get deep in the weeds just very quickly. In episode 244, you went through the whole story with fighting ISIS and, And. And Iraq, and even when you were with the Navy seals. But then right after, when you immediately went back over there. So I don't want to retell all that. People can go watch that episode. But just very quickly, what made you want us. For people that aren't familiar, what made you want to start Stronghold? And what was the mission from the beginning? And then how did you end up in Burma?

[B]

Okay, perfect. So I started an organization called Stronghold Rescue and Relief. It's a nonprofit organization, and I started it right after I left the military, but within, like, a year of leaving the military. And the goal was to create some kind of organization where I could Hire veterans to go back into conflict zones and help families who were caught in the middle. Originally, the intention, the intention was always humanitarian aid, that kind of thing, but then also helping the locals build up their defensive capabilities using what they already have. So it's like mentorship for, for what they already. For what they already have there. And so that was the original goal. And so after the Iraq incident, which we talked about last episode, I was in Thailand doing, doing a Muay Thai camp recovering from the gunshot wound. And some of the, some of the guys who worked in Burma heard that I was there. And so they said, can we can, you know, through mutual friends, like, we want to talk to him because we think that there's. The ceasefire is about to break. That tribe currently had a ceasefire with the Burma Army Army. And so they said, we think the ceasefire is going to fall and we need to start preparing now, because within the next 12 to 18 months, we're going to be at. In total war with the Burma army and we're not prepared. And so I met these guys, agreed to go in sort of as an advisor to show them how to better use what they already have. And that's sort of how the Burma stuff started working. But that's kind of how I got started into it. But then I, I realized eventually that there's a much bigger geopolitical political game being played in Burma. So if you look at a map, when you look at where Burma is, it's right on the, you know, southern portion of Asia itself and has access to the, the Andaman Sea. And we got it up here on the screen.

[A]

Joe's got it.

[B]

Bengal, Andaman Sea, you see right down there.

[A]

Okay, cool.

[B]

So Joe, can you actually, can you zoom out a little bit? I. To want. I want to. This will help make my point. Keep zooming out a little bit so we can. To where we can see Russia and China. A little more. There's good. Okay, cool. So if you look at where China has access to the ocean, right? We have the South China Sea. All this stuff you look at where Russia has access to the ocean, it's all really far north. And so if you look at what happened during World War II, and this is important to understand, like, what's happening today. So During World War II, the Japanese were trying to conquer. Conquer China. And so in order to conquer China, they sent hundreds of thousands of troops to Burma. And you think, why the hell would you go to Burma if you're trying to conquer China? Well, it's because if you look at the map there. Burma is a backdoor directly into China. And so you can get resupplied by the sea, you can get resupplied by the air. You can get resupplied. If China has control and influence over Burma, Burma, then any kind of blockade on China's eastern coast is going to be relatively moot. And it sort of opens up an entire new corridor for them. Corridor. So that's why the Japanese sent hundreds of thousands of troops into, into Burma.

[A]

Myanmar, kind of like taking Sicily to go into Europe and take Germany.

[B]

Somewhat similar. Yep. Yeah. So you got to go for the underbelly. So now what's going on is China is heavily backing the Myanmar, our military, the Burma army. And the Burma army is in charge of the country. So they don't have a president or a prime minister, they have a general, General Meowlai. Is the general in charge of the country?

[A]

General what?

[B]

Meow Lai? It's like Meowlai or Meow. Yeah, exactly, Meow. Yeah, he's definitely not meow. He's an evil, he's an evil guy. So what's, what's going on right now is the Chinese and, and the Russians are building up, they're, they're supporting the Burma army because the Chinese and Russians get this, are building deep water ports in the south of Burma.

[A]

Damn it.

[B]

Yeah, they're building those ports right now. And not only does Burma have a lot of natural resources and things like that, but they want access to those deep water ports. So China and Russia are, are building there. Now China also has oil pipelines, lines that go through Burma. And right now they're not very secure because the rebels of course, you know, try to choke that off. And a lot of the air power that the, that the Burma military has actually comes from Russia. I just got a message like a week and a half ago. My guys in Burma were like, hey, three Russian warships just showed up and dropped off four Russian fighter jets. And a bunch of Russian troops got off there, there to help sort of set up these, these, these fighter jets. And during my trip when I was there in, in, in December, this last December, I was woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of a like a thousand pound bomb going off maybe half a mile away from me because this fighter jet had come in through the middle of the night and dropped a bomb in this nearby village. We were not in the village, but it was a Russian, it was a Russian built jet that could fight at night. And so we didn't hear it coming. Nobody Heard it coming, coming. It just literally popped up over the mountain, put a precision bomb right in. Right. Actually, ironically, it hit the huts, hit the two huts that myself and my other guys had been sleeping in three nights earlier and somebody had seen us there. So I don't know if that was a targeted attack on us. I don't know, it's probably 80. It was going for us. But my point is like, that's, they're bringing in these Russian, these advanced Russian aircraft piloted by Burma army pilots. The Burma army also sends a lot of their officers to Russia to learn how, how the Russians fight. And basically. And so when you're, when you're dealing with the Burma army, they fight extremely aggressively and do not care about the casualties that they take, for example, because they, they think like the Russians do. They think like the Russian military and it's very different. So the US is not used to fighting Russian troops. And so like when I was there and I started to see and was advising and showing these guys what to do. Talk about needing to admit that you were wrong. Wrong. There were times where I made a decision or I was, I, I made it. I, I advised them to do something because I was thinking like an American. And then I realized, oh my word, no, these guys fight like Russians. And so I had to, you know, change the, change the way that I advise them, would advise them on what they should do. So geopolitically, China and Russia are backing up the Burma military because they want access to the South China or to the, to the Andaman Sea. Now let's think about this. Let's play this out a few years. Years. Let's say China decides to go for Taiwan, right? Let's say they just do a blockade of Taiwan. This is just one scenario. There's a thousand different scenarios. Right. China decides to blockade Taiwan, to go for Taiwan. Well, what's something that we could do that's non, you know, non kinetic, where we're not firing, we're not shooting at them? It's like, well, we could potentially do a counter blockade. We could do a counter blockade of mainland China. Well, now that no longer is an option if these deep water ports get built. Because now China can last for as long as they want to to, and they can just bring everything in through Burma. So what, so then what do we have to do? Well, now we have to take half of our navy and go over there. Well, guess what? Now our blockade isn't as effective. Right? So there's a, there's a, a much deeper sort of strategic move that Russia and China are making right now that nobody's paying attention to. And the level of atrocities of what the Burma army is doing to the civilians is just, it's, it's unthinkable. It's so beyond easier.

[A]

People, before you get into the details of that, because I, I do want the details so people can understand this. Can you. You did a little bit in that answer there, but that was more focused on Russia and China, which is great. But can you give like a full outline of the history of what the origins of the struggle were and like how it got to where it is today before we even get to, you know, who's building ports and who's funding or not funding?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, gotcha. So the, the, the, the, the conflict that's in Burma is primarily an ethnic one. So it's not necessarily religious. It's primarily an ethnic conflict. So the British made, made Burma a, a colony a few hundred years ago. I forget the, the timeline on that. It ended during World War II. That was when the British left. But even before that, the ethnic Burmese people who control, who are the, they are the, they are the ethnic majority in the country and they control the center of the country. For hundreds of years, possibly thousands of years, they had been trying to subjugate all of the ethnic minority groups that are in Burma. So if so, so in Burma, all along the border regions there are, they're like a, they're like a dozen different major tribes with entirely different languages, entirely different cultures. It's. So it's not like they're all speaking the same language and everything like that. It's, it's entirely different, entirely different languages. And so the ethnic Burmese population has been trying to subjugate all the other, all the other groups. And so of course naturally all the other groups fight back, but the problem is none of the groups by themselves are strong enough to defeat the, the, the Burmese. Right. And so this has led to just non stop conflict because Burma, the Burma army isn't strong enough to, to control all the areas that it wants to control. But the other guys aren't quite as united because they don't have the same language. And you know, there's geographical issues issues. And so During World War II, the ethnic Burmese, the, the Burma army, they actually sided with the Japanese. So they sided with the Japanese because they wanted to get rid of the British. They want to get rid of their, what they saw as British oppressors. Right. Whereas all the, all the ethnic minority groups, not all of them, but the vast Majority of them, they wanted the British to stay because they were like, this is great. The British are protecting us from this large ethnic majority group that like, wants to, you know, control us. And so the Japanese come in. The ethnic Burmese fought alongside the Japanese. Well then when the Burmese realized that Japan was losing the war, they switched sides and started fighting alongside the British to get rid of the Japanese because they wanted to maintain control of the country. And so at the end of the war, the British left and who got all the weapons and ammunition, everything. The Burma army got a lot of that stuff. And so then that's the, that's the, the beginning of this. And at the time that some of the other ethnic minority groups were strong enough to, to, to resist properly. But for the last 75 years or whatever it's been, the ethnic minority groups have been continuing to just slowly but surely lose ground. The Burma army will go into areas, they'll, they'll control the area and then they'll start to sort of do like, like re. Education stuff. So you're not, you're no longer allowed to speak. So they'll control the schools and they'll say the kids are not allowed to speak the language of their own tribe. They can only speak Burmese and they're not allowed to have the religious customs of maybe the tribe where they were from in some instances as well. And if you resist, well, we're just. The Burma army will just come in and rape and murder and destroy whatever they want to. If they want your village gone, they want your village to. Village gone. And that's what they're going to do. So it's not necessarily an ethnic cleansing to the point where. Well, I guess, yeah, I guess it's kind of an ethnic cleansing. But it's, it's, it's not to the point where it's like if they see you. Well, it's not to the point where if they see you, they're just going to kill you.

[A]

Yeah, it's.

[B]

But it's like, no, if, if they see you, your village better bow to them and do as they say, then, then we'll let you live. But you're going to start speaking our language.

[A]

It's a, to me, the way I'm interpreting it, it's a passive cultural ethnic cleansing.

[B]

Yes, that's because they want it more.

[A]

Make sure that whatever ideology exists within this generation is gone for the next one. And that is in a lot of ways as sinister to me. And what of course goes without saying is, is as sinister as anything is the Fact that when they don't, they are killing them. So there's a genocide.

[B]

Yep, yep, Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's, it's all of that. And there's also that sort of dehumanization factor that goes on because like where the, the Burma army looks at the other ethnic minorities as like inferiors, you know, it's typical, typical racist crap. And so then they justify all the evil that they do. So that's the way the war has been going for the last like 75 plus years. What happened a couple years ago? So the Burma army set up like basically a fake governmental system. It's not really a democracy. And so, but they, but they, they sort of set one up. They went through the motions to sort of say like, oh, we're, we're, you know, we're trying to make steps toward democracy. They're about to do the same thing again here in a few months, months, by the way. And so what happened was they, they, they set that up and then I think it was, I believe it was 2021. So many wars kicked off around 2021, 2022, I believe it was 2021. The Burma military basically did away with their, their sort of their fake democracy. And so that's why everybody, if you look online, it's like, well, there was a coup in 2021. You know, there was this big couple coup. It's like really wasn't a coup because they were, the, the democracy was sort of fake anyway. But anyway, they got rid of all pretenses of that. The military came in and was like, no, we're not even going to have these discussions anymore. We're not going to play this game anymore. We're done. And so that was a huge mistake. The population of ethnic Burmese people who had sort of been indifferent weren't necessarily, they didn't necessarily hate the ethnic minority groups. They were just sort of like, they didn't like the Burma army. They don't really care about the ethnic minority group groups. They're just trying to live their lives. When that happened, the people saw any chance of democracy go away. And so then the entire country rose up against the Burma army. And that's been this new phase of the war for the last few years where the Burma army's been losing a lot of ground and been getting their butts kicked because now everybody on all sides is. And including the cities where they used to be totally peaceful and fine, where they were safe, the Burma army was safe. Safe. Well, now it's not like that anymore. Now those People in the cities are rising up and, you know, throwing Molotov cocktails at them and, you know, fighting, like, actively fighting.

[A]

Why do you think? Because actually, before I ask this question, can we Google this death toll in Myanmar? 2024. Let's see, last year. Yeah, what it was. Okay. And let's. Let's put. Let's be callous and just put math on it for a second. Okay. Civil war report. Conflict that killed over 52,000 people since January 2021, a figure higher than any armed conflict globally during this time. Okay. That says what I need to say next or it gives me the juice I need here. Why does the media choose not to cover something like this when even to be cynical for a second? If we're going to look at the media as having, you know, dark alliances with intelligence and things like that, this seems like this is something intelligence would want covered heavily because it has massive geopolitical implications against some of their largest enemy, two of their largest enemies in the world, including their number one enemy, mean by a GDP perspective, which is China, to be able to get access to a country like this. Why is this not being pounded through? Not that I agree with that system that they have in place, by the way, but seeing as that is the system where, you know, intel feeds the media all this, why are they not pounding this into the. Into the front pages? Because, I mean, it's unfortunately, like, you know, the quote, if it bleeds, it leads. Like, it's horrible. But, yeah, this has all the makings of that kind of story. And yet no one talks about it.

[B]

About it. So two angles on that. One is, again, I don't think there's any malice here. I think there are so many things going on. Everybody's focused on Israel, they're focused on Ukraine, they're focused on, you know, the. Whatever the administration's doing. And so it becomes very difficult to track every single thing that's going on. So for me, Burma is like a heavy. It's like a major part of my life. Like, my wife's from there. Like, it's. It's a. It's personal. It's very personal. So for me, this is. This is my thing. Right. But you could also ask the question, why aren't we talking about. There's. There's like seven or eight, like, major wars going on in Africa right now. No one's talking about it. The media's not talking about it. So part of it is because this is my honest opinion, as I think that there's too many things going on. And so they just sort of focus on the main stuff that people care about. But this is the, this is the second part about it of the answer is I don't think people fully understand the geopolitical ramifications of what's going on in Burma. Right. I, I understand maybe why people are like, okay, so some wars going on in Angola, like, what does that have to do with us? Or like drc, it's like, okay, maybe we want some, you know, some rare earth minerals deals in drc. Like, okay, I can kind of see that. But like this is major. This is. The Russians and the Chinese are making their next moves, making their plans for making their five and ten year plans right now. I don't think, I just think they don't know about it. And so this is one like, well, okay, let me, let me rephrase. People know about it, but they don't pay attention to it because they don't understand the geopolitical aspect of, of it. And this is something I'm trying to change. This is why I come on and talk about this stuff. And I will be also be making some, some intentional pushes toward media to try to explain, explain some of the stuff and try to get them to start talking about. That's one of the reasons why I'm in town as well, is to try to get, get this story into, into their sort of lexicon where they understand it. I was just talking with a journalist last night and I was explaining a bunch of this and he was like, I have never heard about this. He's like, how come I've never heard about this? This? I was like, well, that's why I'm talking to you. Like we need to, this is, there's. And he was like, I never heard about the geopolitical aspect of this. Like, I had no idea Russia and China were so interested in this little country. And we look at it on map. You're like, oh yeah, this makes sense. And so like, yeah, well this is why I'm trying to get you this information. So I think they're, I think a year from now it could be different. I think a year from now people might know where Burma's out on the map maybe. And I'm trying to make that push so people understand because it's not, it's not even just an issue issue of, you know, you know, because like, oh, I care about the situation. It's not even, it. It's like I care about my country. I love the United States and I want us to be successful encountering these evil empires that are expanding and backing, you know, and they're doing these terrible atrocities that I see firsthand. And I know the people and they're my friends, and I watch them get killed and I watch them lose their legs, and I see their villages get bombed and I go to their houses and I meet their f. Like, I, like, this is very personal to me. And I. Because I see it, but I'm trying to. And I care, but it's like, this is about helping the United States. This is also about helping. Helping to prevent the next war and making it less likely. The weaker that they are, the less likely Russia and China are to. To do something squirrely. And so I think a big piece of that puzzle is Burma. And so I'm trying to educate people on that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And where I can help with that, we're gonna do that.

[B]

That's.

[A]

That's why I like having you in as well, because you're out there doing things. I, I like having people back who are constantly coming across new stuff that they can bring to this table, which is just like a podcast studio. But you can, you can say, like, I'm doing this thing at this crazy place in the world and you guys don't know about it, so let's get a full conversation so that you can understand. It's like the coolest part about what I do do. Yeah, but when you first got there and, you know, you've been told what's going on on the ground, it's one thing to be told, it's another thing to go see it. What. What was the first moment that you had personally where it became far more than a number on a page and it was up close and personal and you're like, whoa, this is worse than I thought.

[B]

Thought the, the first time. Okay, I'll tell you about the first time. Like, I actually came across like, the, the Burma army, like in a, In a combat situation. So I'd been working in the. This was like 2018. I had been working in the jungle by myself. Literally just me, solo operator for five or six months with the, with the local defense guys, going from territory to territory, just, you know, advising. And at one point they decided to go do a. An operation. Now, keep in mind, this is during the ceasefire. This air quotes ceasefire that's going on. And so I didn't think I was going to see anything. I didn't think anything was going to happen. I was like, you know, there's a ceasefire going on. Well, so anyway, they wanted us to go do this reconnaissance mission in an area where they said there was fighting happening. And I said, well, what do you mean there's fighting happening? They're like, well, there's a, there's a, there's a, you know, there's fighting going on here. So I was like, all right, well, let's go take a look. So we hike up to this area, we, we walk for several days through the jungle to get up to this remote area. We get up on top of this mountain and I, I was actually sitting behind a, a sniper rifle and very, very far. And I'm, I, I, I get, I get in the scope and I look and I see this, this entire Burma army camp and this long row road of just hundreds of Burma army guys, like ants crawling all over this hill. And they're in the process of building a road deeper into the Karen territory, deeper into the Tribal Territory. So what was going on was, even though there's an air quotes ceasefire, the Burma army was using the opportunity to build infrastructure in a place where we don't want you to have infrastructure. Basically they were using it to build a road. And so they were building a road and so the local guerrilla guys, guys were fighting the Burma army and they were trying to stop them. They're setting up claymores, they're trying to set up ambushes, but they don't really, you know, know what to do. And they're, they're doing their best to stop these guys. And so then I realized, so we basically they reported back to the, to the, the, the, the, the general and he was like, yeah, we, I told you, he's like, they're, they're like this. Because he was mad at the politicians. The, the, the leader of this, of this rebel group was like mad at the politicians because he's like, they say there's a ceasefire, but I know there's not a cease ceasefire. I'm glad you see it, right? And I was like, yeah, there's, there's definitely fighting happening here. Anyway, so the, the, the rebels kind of went up into, into a position. I wasn't there. I just kind of, I was watching from like two hills over and was kind of watching what they were doing. One of the, one of the rebels snuck in and he fired one shot and he, I believe he probably, he probably killed a Burma army guy who was trying to, to, you know, build this road. And when he fired that one shot, there was this hail of bullets and gunfire that I had never like, heard before. It was the sound of, like, 150 dudes all opening up with automatic weapons and rockets and mortars. And it was all the Burma army guys trying to kill whoever it is that just had just fired that one shot. And it was.

[A]

You had never heard anything like that before.

[B]

In training, I had heard stuff, but this was a whole different level. This is. Is like hundreds of people shooting. So when you're on a SEAL operation, are you doing training? I've heard. I've heard, like, thousands of rounds a minute going. But this was, like, a sustained battle or a sustained volley of fire from, like, 150 guys. Like, in the SEALs, it's. You're dealing with, you know, maybe 30, 40, 50 guys max shooting. But, like, this was an actual combat scenario where there's 100. Yeah, like I said, like 100 maybe, you know, 150 guys all firing at the same time, rockets, you know, everything. So I've heard this sound, but this was. Was. But it was. There was this juxtaposition that I realized one bullet and then thousands of bullets. And it was. And listening to the sound of this. Of this battle that happened, I realized, oh, this is. This is a. This is a perfect example of how strong and powerful this army is versus these little guys in the jungle just trying to stop these guys from. Trying to stop the Burma army from building a road close to the villages where the. Their. Where their families live. And so that was the first time when I realized, like, that was my first time when I. When I got to the war there and realized, oh, man, this is a whole different animal. This is something I didn't. I don't, you know, fully understand.

[A]

Crazy that a dude comes from Mosul and then is able to say something like that. That puts it in perspective, because Mosul, I mean, all you got to do is look at imagery of that, and it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Before we even get to some of the videos you literally have, it's just like, can't believe that exists in the 21st century, but it does.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, it absolutely does. And this was jungle warfare, and I'd never been in, like, actual combat in the jungle. And so I was just seeing this.

[A]

And a movie, like a. Like a scary one. But, like. Like, this answer. This isn't real. This. I'm in a jungle and this is happening, you know?

[B]

Yeah, I guess there is some of that. There's a bit of. Sometimes it's a little bit surreal, Real. Even now, honestly, I still go back there. I'm like, what the hell am I doing here? Like, how did how did a kid from Milwaukee end up here in the middle of the jungle with some like, rebel group, you know, tried to like, you know, shoot down like fighter jets and you know, defend villages like. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, so it can be a little surreal at times, but. But yeah, that was like my first time there in the jungle seeing this juxtaposition of like this, this incredibly like weak force up against this just Goliath, this Goliath army.

[A]

Do we know how big the army is? Can we Google that?

[B]

It's a great question.

[A]

Just to get. Let's. I like giving numbers to people on some of this stuff just to see mathematically what you're up against because you can picture the weapons and the advantages. 150,000 to 400,000 personnel who have access to insane weapons that the regular people and rebels do not, as you correctly point point out.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

And then how big is the population in Myanmar? Approximately. And again, it's not like the whole population's fighting them. You know, there's rebel forces that are fighting them and then men, women and children. So there's 50. There's roughly around 55 million people as of last year that live in the country. And I would imagine a lot of them obviously don't support the military, but the military has a concentrated hold on power. They may only be, you know, 250, 000 of them if you, if I split the difference there.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Roughly, you know, but they have access to the most weapons and they're the biggest, baddest, scariest people and they have access to the outside sources that can get them things. So you've, and you've explained out. So, you know, there's some nefarious relationships with other countries and stuff like that where there's weapon trades. What are the other ways that they are funding their existence? Perhaps nefariously it is it just they're, you know, taking tax dollars from people or are they dealing coke to other countries? Like what, how, how do they get their, get the income to be able to, to get all the backup that they have?

[B]

They, they steal and sell a lot of natural resources. So there's lots of rare earth minerals, there's lots of gold, jade, emerald, all kinds of stuff in the hills there. The other thing though is they, they sell what's called yellow yaba, which is yaba. They call it yaba, it's crystal meth. So there's a huge amount of drugs and stuff that comes out of Burma and goes into all of Southeast Asia. So there's a huge. There's a huge drug trade.

[A]

There we go.

[B]

And that. That funds a lot of this stuff.

[A]

Is that Y A B B a yabba?

[B]

Yeah, Yaba Y A B. Oh, Joe's already got.

[A]

Look at that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you see the little pills there, dude. And this is crazy too. So they will give their soldiers this. This crystal mass they do before they go into battle.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And I. I've seen it. I've seen it. And these guys, they're like zombies. They. They just. No fear. They don't care. I was a couple years ago, the. The rebels had taken this. This town. And so the Burma army was sending reinforcements to come in to take back this town. And the Burma army had to come up this long road. And the. The rebels knew exactly the direction they had to come from. So they had a bunch of ambushes and so stuff set. And so what the Burma army did is they brought in. And I watched all this happen. They brought in a bunch of fighter jets and bombers and bombed the crap out of everything alongside the road, of course, where the rebel guys were. But then I started hearing this noise. It was like this. And I was like, is that music? Like, is there a concert going on over there? And so the, the rebels that were up closer to the front, they radioed back and they said, said the. The Burma army has a giant truck with these huge speakers on it. They're blasting like this, like death metal, like Burmese military music. And they're all shooting guns into the air and they're all on yabba. They're all. They're all on crystal Met. So literally what they did in prep. So what the, what the Burma army did in preparation to do this counter attack was they had all these guys on drum bugs and we're blaring this music. So that way these guys would just rush the rebel positions. After the rebel positions had just been hit with all these airstrikes and stuff, of course our guys couldn't hold. We took a bunch of casualties. And so that's. And so the Burma army came in like a bunch of zombies. Like a bunch of like Nazi zombies.

[A]

Like the sound of, like thunder to the sound of.

[B]

Yeah, whatever this music was. Yeah. And so, like, I personally, I personally witnessed and saw that. Saw that happen. Yeah.

[A]

Look at this. In Thailand, it went by Yaki. Yeah, Yan definitely said that wrong.

[B]

Sorry.

[A]

To my Thai friends, hard work, which means hard working pill, then as yama, which means horse medicine, and then yaba, which means crazy pill. These translations are nuts. In 1996, according to an episode of the television series Drugs Inc. It is commonly referred to in North Thailand as chocoli. It's dangerously close to chocolate due to its alleged sweet taste. There it is. And chocolatey smell. In Myanmar, formerly Burma, it is also called. Called kathy, which means literally button, athi and palarkar. In Malaysia it is. No. How do you keep track of all this?

[B]

Like, we just call it meth.

[A]

Like, you know what I mean? Like, let's keep it simple. In china it's called Mr. Magoo.

[B]

Magoo. Look at that. Yeah.

[A]

What is this even? And I feel like you get executed in China if they catch you with this.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably, yeah. Unless you're the one selling it and they. Right there. And they're saying it to the other countries. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. So it's. It's really bizarre. I actually, I saw this other situation where there was a sniper. One of the. One of the rebel snipers was taking a shot at this Burma army guy. I was watching it through. I was. I was watching it through a scope. And so there's this Burma army soldier and he's standing out there kind of by himself on the side of this hill. And so it's a very far shot. So the sniper fires and the bullet lands like five or six feet away from this Burma army soldier. And as I'm watching this, the Burma army soldier turns, looks directly in the. In the way that. In the direction that the gunfire came from, put up his arms like this and started yelling and like laughing. And so the sniper took another shot, went in pretty close and he just started taunting. He was like, ah, like beating his chest.

[A]

Tropic thunder.

[B]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. But he's. Yes, imagine that. Imagine that. But he's not getting hit. And so he's just like, he's so. He's like taunting the sniper. And I'm like, what is wrong with this guy? Like, he's on yabba. He. He doesn't care. And then I think the third round hit like right at the guy's ankles or something, and then he jumped into a trench. But up until that point he was, I mean, so stupid, so unbelievably stupid. But it also enables them to. It's sort of like the. It's the same stuff the Nazis were using that allowed them to do blitzkriegs, right? It's the same stuff. And so like, they march really fast. They. They show up in places where you wouldn't expect them to show up. And then also while they're on this stuff, they become like, they become like demons, right? And so when they go into a village, just this is why they do this is one of the reasons why they do the evil things that they do to the villagers is because they're all hopped up on, hopped up on this stuff.

[A]

To your knowledge, not to get too graphic here, but I mean, mean, these are realities on the ground. To your knowledge, when they take over villages and stuff by force or you know, people aren't complying, are the soldiers ordered to do things like, you know, are word the, the women there or is that just, it's just a natural side effect of what they're doing?

[B]

It's going to be, it's going to actually be both. So the, the, the officers will force their guys to do so stuff. But they're not getting much resistance from the, from the guys themselves because they've been indoctrinated. This idea that these people are ethnic minorities, they're inferior. It's just, you know, your textbook case of racism. And then there's just this weird, you know, power dynamic I guess that happens in those situations where guys that are on the bad side. And this is also. So when you look at something like sexual assault in war. For me, one of the, one of the first things I do when I look at a, at a war and I don't know who the different, who the two sides are or like who I should have an opinion on, which side is doing all the sexual assault for the most part, like those are, I mean every single time I can't think of a single case where the side that's doing the sexual assault is the side that is on is that is on the side of the right on. Of right and good. They're, they're always, always, always the bad guy. And then you have cases where both sides are doing that to each other, each other. And then in those cases, like you have wars where like both sides are the bad guys. It's, it's. And it's, it's such a textbook cut and dry thing. It, it, it's, it's an almost perfect system for looking at like who you should side with in a particular world, which side is going in and, and committing sexual assault. And it, it shows you which side is full of hatred and racism and anger and, and are just like demonic barbarians and which sides are actually, actually, you know, fighting for what they might believe is a good cause.

[A]

You know, I'm really glad. I can't comprehend how you could Ever think that way? That. And, and it's just, it's something that's happened throughout human history and the fact that it still happens today is just insane to me. But how common it is in armed conflicts around the world, every, everywhere.

[B]

It's extremely.

[A]

For this to be a side effect of, or whatever you want to call it, of what conquerors do. To me, it's, it's the most not masculine thing you could possibly do. It's. Yeah, it's, it's a disgusting. It's like I can't. You understand what I'm saying?

[B]

I know exactly.

[A]

I can't even process what, like how.

[B]

What does that even be a thing? Yeah.

[A]

Why is this, why is this even turning you on to do that? You're just, you're striking the worst fear in someone who has utter disgust for you. How is that? And, and you're, you're doing like the lowest thing you can do outside of murdering someone. Maybe, maybe as low because I mean, you basically murder their soul when you do that. Like, I don't.

[B]

This is so, this is something I think about often. Not this particular question, but just the evil of. Just the nature of evil itself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the reality is, one is that everybody thinks that they're the good guy no matter what. So you have to keep that in mind. But, but number two, the more important thing is that ideas have consequences. Ideas and ideology have consequences. Is you cannot fathom this, this evil, atrocious thing because you were raised, right, you were raised in Western civilization. We respect women, we protect women. That's the most mass, the most. It's interesting you said like that's so, that's so non masculine, it's so beta to do something like that. Because you've been taught that a man, because the idea that you have in your head is an ideal man, protects and cares for women and, and earns their trust. Earns their trust and takes care of them. And you know, and that's, that's what you do. You're there to protect and provide and defend them. So that's the idea that you have in your head. These other guys in these other cultures, they are not raised with the idea that women are to be defect. Defended and protected and stuff. Maybe in certain instances, maybe their mom, maybe their wife, maybe their sister. Sister. But other than that, their, their ideology is not that women as a whole deserve respect because they've not been taught, and they are taught that as a man it is masculine to take what you want. Right. So the idea is, it is Masculine. So the idea that they have in their head is that it's. It's masculine to. To, you know, to take what you want. Whereas the. The Western idea of masculinity is ultimately an act of service. It's an act of sacrifice, it's an act of provision, it's an act of defense. It's an act of you, you know, putting yourself between the bullets and the. And the. And the women and children, right? And so this is why ideas absolutely have consequences. This is why ideology is so important. And this is why, you know, it's like tying it into the United States and our cultural. The cultural questions that we have. It is so it is so vital that the right ideas is. And that the good ideas proliferate in society. Because when people start to. When people start to accept certain bad ideas, there's these unintended but completely foreseeable consequences, right? Because you can say, like, what's. What's the harm in saying that? Like, a man takes what he wants, right? What's the harm in saying that? At first glance you think like, oh, that's not a bad idea. It's like, yeah, man's gonna go out there and, you know, whatever, he's gonna do his thing. But it's like, no, that's selfishness. This and that. Ultimately, that guy who's. Who's thinking in those terms, he's going to go out to war and he's going to start taking what he wants because that's what it means to be a man. Whereas American soldiers are going to show up and they're going to, you know, be covering people with their bodies as airstrikes or whatever are coming in. And it's an entirely different thing. And so when I look at. To tie this back into American society, when I look at the divisions that we have in. In our country, it's because we have two entirely different. Different sets of values, which is basically just another way of saying two entirely different ideas about how the world works and about how it should work and about how humans should behave. And this is where morality comes into it. This is where, you know, religion comes into it. Because as a. Like, so my. So I just had a daughter. I heard somebody funny. I heard somebody. I heard somebody say something funny. And they said, children are little barbarians when they're born. They're just little barbarians coming into the world, and it's your job to civilize them, right? And there's something true to that because it's like, I mean, my daughter's only five months Old. So she's just like a little angel that just wants to eat and cuddle. But as she gets older she's going to want to say no. She's going to want to start hitting people. She's going to want to scream when she doesn't get what she wants. So. Well, how do I, how do I correct that behavior? Take her to bur as she gets older. Yeah, well, so we're, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put ideas into her head and I'm going to tell her like oh no, this is how humans are supposed to behave. This is how a young lady behaves. This is how a good person behaves. And so behavior is dictated by the ideas that you have in your head. It's like a computer program. The computer, the hardware is all the same. It's what, what code did you put in there? What is the language that you put in there? Because that's how people are going to actually think and then that's what's, what's going to end up having the results. And so this is why I can't stress it enough. Having the right, having the right ideas and going back to what we were talking about earlier where you have to be willing to find true truth is so important because then if we don't have truth, if people don't have the right ideas in their head, if they're not willing to find truth, well then civilization just decays back to our natural barbarian tendencies.

[A]

Right. All great points, Ben. It's, you know, we, we can only know, be, be fortunate enough in some cases to know the environments that, that, that we've come up in. And in this country we are even in places that aren't as well off. We are so much better off than the rest of the world in so many ways. And there's things that luckily don't. A lot of us are fortunate to not have come to our front door that then when we hear about it coming to someone else's front door it's like how does that even become a thing? But now that we have a layout of, of what's happening over there and everything. I want to, I want to get to exactly what your guys mission is on the ground right now in a second. But you were going through the Russia and China funding to build ports and creating dark alliances is the standing right now. I want to focus in on China for a minute because obviously Russia has a lot going on in Ukraine and that's a whole rabbit hole that we'd be here for hours on. But with China, who's been very successful through the Belt and Road Initiative at building economic influence, which includes funding situations where there's a war footing going on in some of these countries, it would appear, obviously that's what they're doing now. So there's funding going from them to the, to the Burmese military. They're giving them weaponry and stuff in exchange for port space. What, what is the full nature of the, I don't know, financial or, you know, mutual beneficiary society relations relationship that, that decides have at this time.

[B]

So when the, when the coup happened, there was, there was a, there was a period where China actually kind of backed off a little bit and they were not helping the Burma army because they were, China was sitting there and looking at the rebel groups and it looked like the rebel groups were going to take out the Burma army. Now that it's been several years. The Chinese, a few months ago they, one of the leaders of the Burma army went to China and basically there was this big conversation that they had these meetings and then from that point forward, China's policy went back to shift. It shifted back toward helping the army. So what does that tell us about China's intentions? China doesn't care who's in charge. They just want to make sure that they have access to the rare earth minerals. They want to make sure that they have access to the ports. They want to make sure that their pipeline is secure and they'll help anybody. They like them, they lot, they, they just want to back the winner. Right. And I'm sure there's some discussions with the Russians as well to make sure all that's all that's there. The nature of the actual deals themselves, I don't know because that stuff's not public. They, I don't know how much money the Burma army, or excuse me, the China might be giving to a Burma army general, you know, whatever, I don't know. But I do know the, that they are bringing in a ton of weapons. So I'm getting all these photos as well. It's not just weapons like, like bullets and bombs and stuff. They're. The China is now, over the last few months has started, started bringing in a lot of drone technology, specifically in the places where they are planning to build their ports. And there's also discussions around a nuclear power facility, which I believe is something that the Russians are wanting to, but I could be wrong. That's either Russia or China, but there's, there's discussions about building a nuclear power facility. So the, the, the Chinese, their entire goal is just to be able to de facto have access to that entire country as a, as a logistics hub. And they'll be back. Anybody, they'll, you know, whoever's, basically whoever's winning. So there's no, there's no sort of moral code there. They're sort of doing China first policy at the expense of, at the expense of anybody in Burma. And they, and again, they don't care. They, they know exactly how the Burma army is using the drones. They know exactly how those, how the, how they're using the jets. Some of the jets of the Burma army has, are actually from China. So the, the jets that bombed us, those were Chinese. Those were Chinese jets.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

Yeah, it's always a good time. Yeah, it's.

[A]

So even if you can't see the, just real quick, even if you can't see the money trail, like you were saying, the fact that you already know the weaponry trail, that is money.

[B]

Well, and I'll tell you as well, too. So my guys reported to me as well. They said there's a, there's a particular village. I don't know if I should say this. I'm not going to say. Just, it's just an intel thing. Our guys are, I'll just say this. Our guys are, are observing. When I say our guys, I'm just like my friends in Burma. They are observing movements of actual Chinese nationals moving from certain locations to other. Certain locations to provide technical and military advisory and support stuff. So our guys have reported they, they see the Chinese guys on the ground, ground, and they see where they go and how they're helping the Burma army. So my point is it's not just, oh, here's a box, you know, here's, here's a truck full of bullets. It's. We're going to send in advisors. We're sending actual Chinese nationals on the ground. We already knew the Russians were doing that. That's been going on for a long time. But these are cases of our guys actually spotting actual Chinese operatives on the ground, like as, as, as advisors. Whoa. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So pouring kerosene on the fire.

[B]

Exactly, because they are preparing for something bigger. I think it's, I don't know if they're necessarily, that's, I don't know if that's a correct characterization. They might not be, be preparing for something bigger, like they have some specific plan in mind, but they are definitely building, building up their, their infrastructure and everything in Burma as a way to sort of Support them. China and Russia in, in the future logistics.

[A]

How worried do you get about dealing with locals who are in highly impoverished, war torn situations and, you know, are looking to survive? How, how worried do you get about them not necessarily even being just sources for the Burmese military, but, you know, potentially being sources for like China or some sort of foreign power like that, that where, where, you know, information that you give could be used not just against you, but against the interests of.

[B]

The United States with the information I.

[A]

Give could be that you might share with people that you view as friendly who are, you know, trying to fight against us.

[B]

But. Oh, I see what you're saying. So to be really clear, anything, any, any work that I do on the ground in Burma, I'm literally just showing them how to use what they already have. There's no greater, like, there's, there's no like greater geopolitical thing going on. I'm just like, okay, okay, we're in this area, you got how many guys? What kind of guns do you got? All right, the Burma army is trying to do this. All right, maybe here's your best way to, to kind of stop them, you know, from, from doing what they're doing. So there's nothing that could be used against the United States at all in anything unless I was maybe captured and they tried to use me as a pawn or something like that. Which that's not going to happen. That's not gonna happen.

[A]

I'll take it back.

[B]

Well, I will kill myself before they take me. It's like, it's not gonna happen. So cyanide right here. So, yeah, so that's, so that's, that's one aspect of it as far as being able to trust the locals. One of the, one of the, or one of the main things is that we focus and working in areas where we have total and complete trust with the locals. And there are places where it's gray and then there's places where it's like, yo, there are straight up, like, there are bad guys here watching you that are civilian informants and things like that. So there are certain levels of, of risk of where we go into certain. So when we're in the green area, we have total trust with these guys because they, they know their territory and they know their people so well. Any outsider, any stranger comes up, you know, the one road that's there, you know, it's like everyone's going to know that, like, oh, there's some weird guy here. Who the heck is that? So everybody knows everybody. There's no, like strangers walking around. That's so, like, that's like in the green zone, like, good area. And then you have your gray zone, which is where it's mixed. Mixed. And there are some people who are, you know, like, loyal to the Burma army, maybe, and some people who are like, the, the majority of people maybe are, you know, pro democracy. And so in those areas, we can operate pretty well, like, because, like, because the locals have a pretty good sense. They're like, hey, we're just, we're just not going to go to this village. But, like, we're gonna be fine. When you drive through here, just make sure you put a face mask on. Just, just so they just, you know, initial. The initial scrutiny. You pass initial scrutiny. So they're not like, looking back like, oh, that was a white. White guy, you know, on the back of a motorcycle or something. And then there's like, red zone areas where it's like, everybody in this area is supportive of the Burma army. We still have, you know, maybe the rebels have, like, a little bit of control of that area. So the Burma army is not there currently, but they're like, so anytime we travel through an area like that, we have to move very quickly, usually at night. Just get through here. Don't let them see you. And then. And then we move on. Yeah.

[A]

How did you. I mean, you mentioned you were talking about first being there in the jungle alone and just working with some locals, but how did you go about setting up operations here as a white guy from a foreign country who has a particular set of skills, for sure. But, you know, I mean, you've told stories today about them doing targeted bombs at you because you attract that kind of attention because of. Of your skills. How do you even go up about setting up an organization in a country like this? This that's so worn, torn as an outsider like that?

[B]

Well, again, it starts with you going in alone, building up just relationships with the guys. You feel them out and they start to, like. And they start to understand you. You start to understand them. And, you know, when I, when I first went in, I thought I was just going to go in for a few weeks, maybe a month, and help them out a little bit. That was my original thought. And then now I've been there, you know, going. Been going back for eight years. So, like, when, when you go in, it's a matter of going directly to whoever's in charge and you explain who you are, you explain why you're there, and then one of the. Or the tribe that we Work with. They have this thing culturally where they don't care what you say. It's sort of like, show me. Until, until you, until, until you show me. It's like, okay, cool. You can talk all you want to. They do not care. Show me. And so this is why I've also, you know, gone on a bunch of operations with them because they're like, all right, you're telling us we should operate this way and you know, you do this particular tactic to defend our villages and families, great, cool, but show me. And so that's why I've gone, you know, I've done, done this with the guys a lot as well. And so you just build up trust over time. And so, and so again, right now we're focusing heavily on the sort of kinetic action action stuff as well. That's like our main focus at the moment. But when I set up the non profit Stronghold Rescue and Relief, our primary focus is still, you know, embedding directly with those local rebels and stuff. But we're bringing in, we're basically teaching them how to do emergency medicine, evacuations, all that kind of stuff. So we have the, we have, we're at the point now where we have a bunch of, we set up a network of ambulances which are in the back of souped up hiluxes that are moving patients, which is, you know, this, and crate this crazy logistical operation. We've got to the point where one of our ambulances, one of our crews can actually go in and do blood transfusions in the field. So they can. Yeah, so you got a critically injured patient, you can take blood from one person and put it into another person if you have to. So these really advanced trauma based skill sets. And so we've spent, you know, years and years just sort of slowly building up that capability. And it started at the front line with me going in alone. And then it, and then it became, all right, let's, let's start, you know, helping with medical evacuation. And then like, well now let's put in, you know, ambulances. It's like, well, now we need roads to get the ambulances to where we need them to go. And well, we need bridges now. So the vast majority of what we do now is that emergency medical evacuation. And then while we're there, we also do the, the, the mentorship aspect as well.

[A]

Approximately how, how big is, is your team now?

[B]

I have, we have five full time guys who are, who are veterans who, who work for us. And then we have two people who are administrative. Oh my word.

[A]

Jesus Christ. My bad, man.

[B]

That guy's still going.

[A]

I know. Like he's gonna do something. I'm sorry.

[B]

Oh my word. Oh, my God. Goodness. That's unbelievable. If you guys couldn't hear, that was a guy holding down his horn for like a solid 30 seconds. That's unbelievable. Yeah, so we have, we have like five or six veterans who work full time doing this and a few administrative people as well. But on the ground in burma, we have 25 full time employees who are local Karen people and they're the, they are the ones that run and manage all of the ambulances. So kind of going back, back earlier to what I was talking about with, you know, the USA 2.0, right. This is the exact model that we use with them. We are, we, we set up teams of locals and we organize them and we train them and we bring in the supplies that they need and then they're able to run their own ambulance evacuations. I call it charity with dignity. It's. It's the ability to stand on your own when you're not there. Like the way that we measure success us is the, the lives that they save when we're not even there on the ground. And I also have a rule where I don't send in any more than four Westerners at a time into one place. Because if you bring in, yeah, you bring in a. I could, you know, I could put out an email tomorrow and get 57 people who want to go volunteer in Burma, but if I do that, we all show up. First of all, it's very expensive. We can't maneuver easily at all. It's very conspicuous. And then now we're doing all this. Now we're doing all the treatment and all of the, and all of the work and then you leave and then the locals don't know how to do it on their own.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. So that's why I keep the team very small. It's enough so we can work with each other and support each other in the field. But yeah, it's small enough to where the locals. It has to be, it has to be a partnership. They greatly, greatly outnumber us a lot.

[A]

Of this and we can't show it on the screen because it's a lot of. It is highly graphic. But people can follow using the link below. Follow Stronghold Rescue on Instagram. So you can see from the ground because I think it is important you see. But a lot of the images and videos that you show these are people, correct me if I'm wrong. Usually not Always. But you're going in and rescuing them from where they were caught in the crossfire or where they were actually rebels battling against the army and are injured on the field, and you're trying to save them and, and get them back to a hospital or somewhere that can treat them.

[B]

Yeah, that's correct. So all these patients that you'll see on there, and again, if you go check it out, the, the Instagram account, it's, again, it's very graphic, so fair warning. But you're seeing people who are stepping on landmines, people who are getting hit by mortars, and when you go on there, you're going to see a bunch of, you know, local folks who are, are doing the evacuations. And it's, you know, it's pregnant women who are having complications. I don't know if we talked about this on the last podcast, but we, the reason we started the ambulance service, because at the time I was pretty much we were just doing like, human, like, basic humanitarian relief and then like, frontline mentorship. The reason we started the ambulances, which is now, like, our main, main thing, is because we were driving along a road one day in this part of Burma where there were only two trucks. One truck was owned by the governor of the area, and it was broken, and then Stronghold had one truck. And these are the only two trucks for this very large, for this very large area. And so as we were driving along this road, the villagers came out and they stopped us and they said, there's a lady. Can you, there's a lady in this hut. Can you take her to the hospital? Now the hospital is, is literally just a, it's bamboo huts in the middle of the jungle, five and a half hour drive away from where we currently are. And so we're like, yeah, absolutely. Like, get her in. Like, let's do this. This. So they're, they're, they're bringing, they bring the lady out. And so I asked, I was like, what is, like, what's, what's her issue? And they said, well, it's a pregnant lady. She's been pregnant for. She's, she's, she's seven months pregnant, obviously due in two months, but for the last 12 hours, she's been bleeding in her hut. You know, there's been like this steady flow of bleeding for 12 hours. And they had her hooked up to an IV and they were. So they said, we've been trying to find a vehicle that could take her. They can't throw on the back of a motorcycle or anything, obviously. And so we were the only option. And so luckily we were just so happened to be driving by, so we brought the lady with us and drove five and a half hours. Five and a half hours while she's in the back of a pickup truck, just literally in the back of a picture. And there's no. It wasn't set up to where it was comfortable or where the medics could work easily or anything like that. And there's plenty of, like, local medics and people who were able to help them out. And so that was, it was actually during that five and a half hour drive where I looked over at my interpreter order and we, we both just kind of looked at each other and we were like, yeah, we need to set up ambulances. And. Which is crazy because that's now sort of our, our main, our main mission there.

[A]

Yeah, but that's, I mean, again, something you take for granted, like, crazy. This is stuff we have all over the place at the highest level in this country. Even though our health care system has so many problems, it's like, narratively speaking, you know. Yeah, somehow this is. Might be a piece of. But it's is the best piece of.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like, for context, the, the, the places where we're running these ambulances, there are no other ambulances. That's the thing. So people who, you know, again, we're nonprofit, so we work completely off the donations of people who, who help support us. When if you're helping us put in one of these ambulances and helping us sustain these ambulances, like you're, you are actually investing in a place where if we were not there, there, nobody else is going to be there. It's not one of those things where like, oh, like, we're gonna, we're gonna set up an ambulance to like, help out because, you know, it's like we want to help out the other ambulances. It's like, no, no, it doesn't exist. It's not a thing. We have to explain to them the concept of an ambulance. And like, what. So you just have a truck sitting here with. And, and to be clear too, we bring in like O2 bottles. We bring them in from other countries and have them like deep in the middle of the jungle so you can actually have oxygen support while you're getting transportation. And then we have all these different, you know, advanced medical equipment in there as well. So it's. Yeah, it's a really good program. And it was put together by one of our, our head of field operations. He was like, the dude who spearheaded it a couple years ago when we started, former Ranger and somehow was able to make it happen because it's extremely complex logistically to make this happen. But it's amazing what, what can be accomplished when you have a small squad of highly dedicated, highly skilled, skilled individuals who, you know are dead set on making sure you're going to bring ambulances into a place that's never even had them.

[A]

And so far, you had none of the guys you've brought in to do this. You haven't lost any of them?

[B]

No, none of us. None of us have been. Have been wounded.

[A]

Close calls.

[B]

But yeah, we've had. We've unfortunately had some close.

[A]

You worry about that, though, I would imagine?

[B]

Well, yeah, absolutely. Of course. Per se. Worry about the guys. We, we're very selective about what we do and where we do it and how we do it. Again, we're not looking for a fight. We're not looking to go, you know, do gunslinging. We'll. We'll do what we have to do to help the locals when needed. And sometimes we'll take risks that are above and beyond the call of duty. But that's for strategic reasons, and it's because we know there's going to be an outsized, an outsized return on that. But yeah, truly is. You know, these guys take, these guys take huge risks, the guys on the team. But, but you also have, have this, you're able to have this, you know, huge impact on the world. And yeah, so I just. So much respect for, for my guys. So, actually, so we were talking about those air strikes coming in, most likely in the video that we're going to, that we will post after this podcast to our Instagram of these, of this air strike coming in. You'll see in there one of our guys. Guys, he's wearing a Stronghold T shirt and he's in the trench with his body covering a wounded soldier who was hit in the first one or two airstrikes that came in. And he's in the trench on top of him, you know, treating him as these airstrikes are coming in. And you can say whatever you want to. You can be your keyboard warrior. I would do whatever if I was in such and such a situation or, or, or like, oh, I care. I care so much about people. I'm just, you know, whatever. You can say whatever you want to.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

I promise you, your real personality, what you really believe is going to come to the forefront when you're laying in a trench and bombs are dropping right on top of you. And, yeah, shout out to Adam this little video clip. He's. He's in there, like, covering this patient with his body while he's. While he's treating him.

[A]

Oh, that's amazing.

[B]

And that's the caliber of dudes that we have on the team.

[A]

That makes really fucking cool, man.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Are you. Are you able to talk at all about. I don't even know if I would imagine this is a thing, but are you able to talk about any relationship without going into details you may have with, I don't know, intel sources to provide information about what's going on on the ground?

[B]

That's a great question. And I can talk about it because there's nothing to talk about. And of course, all the conspiracy theorists can be like, yeah, right.

[A]

Hey, listen, you said that really. That was a good performance. I almost bought.

[B]

You almost bought it?

[A]

Yeah, I almost bought it.

[B]

So he looked up, though.

[A]

That was where I knew it was full of.

[B]

He's like, such a lie. Right? So we. We do pass whatever information that we get on things, and we do. We do pass it to, you know, to the U.S. um, none of it is. Is, like, super secretive, anything. It's. It's a lot of the same stuff that we're talking about right now, but it's just, like, more timely. I'm like, hey, we just got some information that such and such. We pass it off to, you know, whoever, and they do. Whoever and they do whatever they want with it. The flow of information, unfortunately, only goes one way. We are getting zero support coming the other direction, which would be wonderful if we could, but I honestly, you know, it's. It's. It's. It's hard to know, like, what they. They. What they even know or, like, if they have, you know, I don't even know. But yeah, I can honestly say we. We send the information to them, we get nothing in return, but it's all good.

[A]

America, you're. You're a guy, and you mentioned this a few times in this conversation. I've talked with you in the past about this, and, you know, we. We got into some of your background more on. On the last podcast we did as well. But, you know, you're a guy of faith and.

[B]

And.

[A]

And have been consistent on that your whole life. Has there ever been a point when you're in the middle of this stuff, seeing these things up close, where, you know, innocent people are being slaughtered, maimed, essayed, all these different demonstrably evil things? Have there ever. Has. Have there Ever been points where you've questioned your faith and, and question whether or not, you know, something beautiful that would have created this earth would allow that to happen on it.

[B]

So my, my history with, with faith was there was, there was a period in my life for a few years, mostly when I was in the military, when my attitude was no longer, my attitude was sort of like, I respectfully disagree. I'm not, I wasn't super into, I always believe that there was a God, but I wasn't, I wouldn't consider myself a Christian or religious. There was a few years there when I was in the military and even a couple years afterwards, that has completely changed. I am a Christian. I would consider myself to be a Christian now. My faith has gotten deeper. So to answer your question, when I, when I see the evil that's, that happens in the world, and again, I've seen it at all, the, the literally the worst stuff you can imagine, I've seen it all many times. And when I see that, I, I, I believe that God gave us free will. And so when I see a terrible tragedy that happened, I don't think, why did God do this? I think, why did this evil human being do what they just did? I don't blame God for, for what happens in these cases now. It's very easy to kind of go down the rabbit hole of like, well, why would God allow this to happen? Right? And because, like, God knows everything. Why doesn't he stop this? Why doesn't he stop all this stuff? And that's a very, very, very tough question to answer. But at the end of the day, that's what free will means. You are free to do good. You are free to do evil. And I'm, I'm a believer that the, the good you do in this world is God doing good in this world. So you would say, like, well, you know, why doesn't, why doesn't God stop the, the massacres happening in these villages? Why doesn't God stop these things? And it's because it's, people haven't stopped doing that and people haven't gone in to stop things. So I personally, as I, as I get older and I get deeper in my faith, I see my mission to help the world. In some ways I see it as, as more of me sort of doing God's work in a way. It's like, you want, you want good things to happen, you want God to do good things. It's like, well, well, you need to go do good things. Everybody wants to sit around and you Know, hope that God will bend the bullets away or make a miracle happen or make a million dollars show up in your bank account. It's like, no, it doesn't work that way. You got to go. You got to go work for it, and you have to go do the right thing. And so this is what I'm saying. Ideas have consequences. And so all the evil in the world, I just. It's just a. It's an outgrowth of free will. And there's a lot of deeper questions in there about, you know, like, well, why would God make a world that, you know, could. Knowing that it was going to go down this. This. You know, this. This dark path? There's a lot of questions like. Like that. But for me, that doesn't make me doubt God or doubt the goodness of God. It just makes me think, like, there's a lot that I don't understand here, and that's. That's more. My.

[A]

More humble in what you don't know.

[B]

Humble in what I don't know. And I'll also say this, too. So one of the. One of the reasons why I actually came back to Christianity was because of all the evil that I saw in the world. And what I realized when I looked around the world, world, I saw all these evil things going on, and I realized I was like, you know, in particular, I was in Haiti, where I started having these thoughts because I was looking at Haiti, and I was like, man, this is such a beautiful place. It has such great potential. And I was like, you know, if, like, the top 20 people who controlled the country would just get their act together and would just stop lying and stealing and cheating and stop being so corrupt, it's just like the top. Just few people would just. I was like, why don't they just, like, follow the Bible? You know, that was like. That was like my thought process.

[A]

Or just get killed.

[B]

Yeah. I was like, why don't you just. Why don't you just stop, you know, acting like this? And then I realized I was like, you know what? You know, you look at places where people actually do follow biblical principles. And the Bible says where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And you think about that, and you're like, well, okay, what does that mean? It's like, well, because when you see yourself as. When you see us and all people as, like, children of God, like, we're all God's creation, We're all God's children, there's this instant level of equality that you have with each other. Right. And you Go like, oh, like I'm no better than you because I'm not king. God is king. Right, like you're not king. And so what that also does is that then causes, hopefully it results in some humility and some love for one another, but it also is foundational for creating like a democratic society. Because no, no, no, you, you're trying to be king. You're not king. King, God is king. But also I'm not going to be king. God is king. Right? So what do you do? It's like, well, why don't we vote because we're all equal here. Why don't we all take one vote and see who's going to lead us for a short amount of time until the next thing, Right? So built within this ideology is a, is a pathway toward, toward peace and stability. Is our human beings going to be able to perfectly implement, you know, the biblical principles and like everything Jesus taught? Of course not. But the, the attempt to do so I think heals a lot and creates a lot of good and stability in civilizations and society. And so when I saw that, that just made me realize there must be some truth here. It's like a cheat code that fixes a lot of, a lot of problems if actually implemented some great perspective.

[A]

And it's something I think about a lot. Not even just from a, you know, whether it's faith or wonder what happens in the afterlife or what religion is right or all that. Beyond that, it's like the great catch 22 of life is that for the light you need the darkness, you know, for the good, you need to know the evil. For the up, you need to feel the down, and for the success, you need to understand the failures. And so to live in a world where everything, we're all good and heavenly, if you will, would defeat the purpose of the great chase that this short life we have on earth is. And the downside of that is that we do have to see those things. And some people lose more than others do through no fault of their own. And some people, you know, no one chooses where they're born, no one chooses who they're born to. No one chooses the environment that raises them and molds them, them. But you do choose how you react to it. Some people have more difficult circumstances to try to overcome and maybe it gets the best of them and others are able to break through. It's a, it's a strange thing about what, what we have here, but your point about free will dictating both directions and the fact that, you know, if There is a creator above here who has allowed this system to happen. It would then reflect that that creator has not, not decided who's going to do what. Instead, he's giving us the opportunity to make our own way and look at it from the perspective of there will be winners and losers and the winners to that Creator will be the people who do more good than bad and, and leave the world a better place than, than how they found it. But you know, you, you've lived it on, on, on front lines and, and seen these things, seen the lowest of the downs, but also seen, seen the spirit of the ups where people overcome massive odds to help other people or save lives or do things that are objectively good.

[B]

Yeah, and I think, I think there's also we as humans, we try so hard to understand God. Whatever, whatever God is, it's spirit, it's like I don't know, I don't know what God is. I just got his God, right? Whatever that means. And so the, the way that I, the way that I try to explain the concept of, of God to people is, is something like this. Imagine you're playing a, a video and you played one of those games like the Sims city simulators or whatever, or whatever. So somebody sat down and developed this game and there's all these little people and they're pre programmed to do things and you know, there's a little bit of chance thrown in there and there's all these different scenarios. So I think. But these, but these, these little, these little characters might have a tiny little bit of like algorithmic autonomy, but for the most part they're just kind of running around doing stuff, right? Because when my point there is like they're very non complex little digital beings, right? So if you were the creator of that game, of this world and you wanted to be friends with these little things that are so beneath you, you. Well, how would you communicate with them? It's like. Well, one of the, one of the things that you could do is you could give them a, give them a, a document, a digital document, a bit of code written in a language that they would understand, right? And, and if, imagine you try to do that to these little, for these little digital characters and you try to explain to them the concept of love. You try to explain them the concept of help, three dimensionality. You try to explain the concept to them that you like to eat food, they would have no way to fully comprehend that. Because you are, because you are the creator of this game. You are so complex above them. It is Impossible for them to fully grasp, like, who you are and what you want. Right. So you would use very simple terminology, right? You might use stories, you might use parables, you might use examples that kind of demonstrate certain ways on how they should live and how they should play the game. Right? Now, what's another way that you could interact with them? Well, you might create a character that is all powerful, that you are personally directly controlling, that is interacting with all the different characters. And you would do miracles, right? What they would consider with these little digital characters would consider to be miracles. You see what I'm saying? And so, in my personal belief is that that is what sort of, I guess like what Jesus was, that was. Jesus was God come to earth, earth. And it was God's way. It was. Was God. And it was God walking around saying, like, no, I am God. Look at, look at me. Heal people, look at me. Make things happen that just shouldn't not be able to happen. And I'm also going to teach you these totally counterintuitive ideas about love your enemy and things like that. And so that's God communicating with us. And so the whole point of this analogy is simply that God. I look at God as being so complex that it's impossible for us to fully, fully understand everything, everything about Him. And so when, when people get dogmatic or they start arguing about this or that or the other thing, I'm like, I don't. I don't engage with it because it's like, it's so complex, dude. I don't know. Like, however it is that I picture God in my head, there is a 150 chance that I am off majorly. And so that's kind of, you know, so that's kind of how I look at it. And so I try not to get too dogmatic about any of that kind of stuff because, like, dude, I don't know.

[A]

Like, that's great wisdom. Yeah, it's like, do good with what you have and the time you're given. And I think if you do that over the course of a life, whatever happens after that, you'll be in good shape. And that's. I don't even know that. That's not even something I know.

[B]

But maybe you're 100, right?

[A]

That's just my peace with it. Yeah, like, I don't know what. I don't know. And whatever gets people through the day to try to imagine what's on the other side. I think that's great if you, if you're using it for good I don't care what you believe. I think that's awesome. But, Ephraim, I love talking with you, man. I love the work you're doing. It's amazing stuff. I mean, you gave your life to defending the country, and now you're voluntarily giving it to defend people who are in horrible situations around the world. Not just in Burma, by the way. Your organization does more than that. But we're going to have the link to Stronghold down below so people can donate there and help fund this. I would really, at the very least, love to see people follow these guys on Instagram and on other socials. So give me all those links and I'll put those down there as well. But as you guys continue to do stuff over the years, I'll continue to bring you in here to talk about it. And it's. It's always great getting your perspective. You're a really, really smart guy and a really good guy, too.

[B]

Awesome. Much appreciated. It's been fun.

[A]

All right, everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me.

[B]

Peace.

[A]

Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that, like button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagra and X, those links are in my description below.